Ihumpheddown at my cleavage. “Well, it’s not there yet, but it’s more even.”
“No, I mean, you look better than you did a few weeks ago. Like you’re back from the dead.” She shook her head, sending her pin-straight dark hair swishing. “Must be all the Vitamin C. From the citrus.”
I sputtered a laugh. I loved Ines’s jokes and her insistence on explaining them. “Must be.”
“It’s good that you’re doing this. If you didn’t get out there soon, I was going to drag you along to my kung fu classes and Magic: The Gathering tournaments. It’s not good to stay in bed and be sad all the time.” With a shrug, she added, “It wasn’t worth moping around over that rat-faced man-pig, anyway.”
I stopped fussing with my dress to peer at her. “Wait. When did you meet him?”
“I didn’t, but I know he was a dick to you and that makes him a rat-faced man-pig to me.”
I turned away from the mirror so she wouldn’t see the tears that’d filled my eyes. “Thanks,” I managed.
“You do look nice,” she said, trailing the back of her finger over the bodice. “It’s the kind of dress that regular people never get to wear.”
I knew she was right and I also knew Teddy would’ve hated it. He would’ve made that sour milk face and told me to change into something that fit. Or he would’ve eyed my plumped-up breasts and said I looked like an overstuffed sausage. If he really wanted to shut me down, he would’ve poked a finger into my belly or hips and simply walked away with a disgusted shake of his head.
Once again, I exited Teddy from my mind with a mental scream ofFuck you and the horse you rode in on. He didn’t belong there. His voice had no place in my inner monologue. He deserved none of my energy. “I love the yellow and orange. It felt…fun. And I didn’t want to wear black.”
“You deserve some fun,” she said.
The truth was, I’d hated almost all the dresses Ryan’s stylist Wren had selected for me. They wereso boring. All the same silhouettes, all the same colors. What was the point of shopping for an actual ball if I didn’t have a good time with it?
Black, gray, and navy blue were my day-to-day staples, but I’d always spiced it up with something bright and bold. Maybe I was living this dress-up fantasy a little too loudly, but I wanted to look like myself tonight. Just…fancy.
And that was how I’d landed on this sequined dress of deep, rich marigold with subtle swirls of sunset orange and pale yellow. It’d taken Wren a second to come around, but when I’d tried this one on, she’d agreed. I didn’t know if it was my dark hair or the light olive of my skin or some other fashion thing I’d never understand, but exploding citrus worked for me.
When I had my chest even and organized, I gave my hair another fluff. I’d splurged on a blowout this afternoon because my hair was longer than I usually let it go, and the only thing I could reliably do with it at this length was twist it up with a claw clip and I didn’t think that was the vibe tonight.
Jamie was right about it being time for a cut. I’d put it off because I hadn’t cared enough about how I looked to want something new and I hadn’t wanted to feed into thenew do, new youstoryline.That would’ve required me to make an effort at getting out there again, and I knew deep in my heart that if it wasn’t for Ryan, I wouldn’t be going anywhere.
“Aren’t you going to be cold?” Ines asked. “You’re basically half naked.”
I glanced down at the dress pooled around my bare feet. “How is this half naked?”
She motioned to her shoulders. “You’re…bare.”
“I’m okay with this,” I said. “But there’s a cape that came with the dress if I really want to?—”
“If you have a cape, you wear a cape,” she cried. “Put on the cape!”
I froze with a bottle of setting spray held in front of my face. Aside from the ongoing train wreck of her internship situation, Ines did not have huge reactions to much of anything. She was reliably neutral. It was her operating system.
So, I found myself startled when she yelled at me about the cape.
“Where is this cape?” she asked. “I must see it.”
I pointed to the short doorway that led to the strange annex off my room that functioned as a closet for me. My best guess was that it was used as a nursery back when this building was one grand home. It was too small even for an extremely narrow bed and?—
“Oh my god you have to wear this.”Ines returned holding the cape up by the hanger, her eyes wide and her mouth open. “If I had something like this, I’d wear it every day.”
I studied the matching marigold satin with its delicate bursts of sparkling color, and tried to imagine Ines trudging through Kendall Square with this cape flung over her backpack.
It wouldn’t be the most unusual thing to pass through Kendall Square on a given day. Not even in the top ten.
“I’ll wear the cape,” I said, taking the hanger from her. I’d meant to skip it because it seemed a little excessive, and as much as I loved some excess, I wasn’t convinced I wanted to draw that much attention to myself. Though I probably should’ve gone with one of the simple black dresses if I was hung up on subtlety. “And we’ll find you something equally rad. Okay?”
She helped me get the cape situated without messing up my hair and asked, “Can I take a picture? To send my mom? She’d love this.”
