I don’t bother with makeup. Since Caylon’s revelation session, I haven’t touched the supplies again. A part of me wants to sweep the expensive bottles, pallets, and brushes into the wastebasket with one dramatic flourish. Most of me understands my flatmates would kill me if I dared since they’re always happy to take things off my hands.
A knock at the door startles me. It’s fifteen minutes until Zach is due and even accounting for nerves, that’s a bit early.
What startles me even more is when I answer the door and find Trent standing there. Before I can ask why he’s there, I clock that he’s even more shocked and confused than me.
“S-sorry,” he stutters, checking his phone and staring along the street as though expecting a deus ex machina to lift him from the scene. “I didn’t know you lived here.”
My confusion deepens at the admission. Then he steps back, frowning again at his phone. “Do you know someone called Rosa?” His device buzzes with a message. “Don’t worry. Wrong address.”
He moves away from the door while my mouth remains open, gaping. Then my brain plays a game of connect the dots. He doesn’t want tovisitwith my smart-mouthed smart-brained uni attending flatmate; he’s a client.
Before I can move inside, Zach pulls to the curb. Exiting the vehicle, his eyes narrow as he stares at the two of us, especially since Trent already looks like a possum caught in the headlights. “What are you—?”
“He needed his jacket,” I say, pointing to the rugby puffer that had warmed my shoulders on more than one occasion. “It’s hard to woo a late date to the Senior’s Dance when you’re not flying the team colours.”
“Didn’t know you were coming tonight,” Zach says, a crease still clear between his brows as he moves closer.
“I’m not. Thanks,” Trent waves and strides back to his vehicle. Sitting in the driver’s seat, he momentarily bows his forehead to the wheel.
“You look fantastic,” Zach says, dismissing the incident to twirl me in a circle.
“Come inside.” I grab the front of his dress shirt and pull him through the door when he hesitates, giving Trent a discrete wave over his shoulder. “Since you’re early, you get to watch me pin and unpin my hair a dozen different times, a dozen different ways.”
“Just leave it down.” He grabs the nearest curl and winds it around his finger. “I love it when it falls over your shoulders.”
The words do something very complicated to my internal organs, setting some ablaze and others twisting into tight knots.
“Oh,” he says, patting his pockets. “I bought you something.”
The jewellery box ignites my nerves. Even when we were more together than… whatever we are right now, accepting his expensive gifts always made me wary. Now, that goes double. Perhaps triple.
But his expression is so happy when he opens the box that I can’t deny him the pleasure. “This is instead of a corsage.” He lifts the intricately worked string of rosebuds and petals on a gleaming platinum chain from the inner cushion and snaps the box shut, sliding it back in his pocket. His hands shake.
“It’s beautiful.” There’s a lump in my throat that shouldn’t be there, and I turn to let him fasten it around my neck, so I don’t have to meet his eyes. “Thank you.”
A kiss lands on my bare shoulder and I jump, jerking away.
“Sorry, I…” Zach trails off into a shrug.
“Why don’t we go?”
“We’re far too early.”
But I don’t want to stay alone with him in my suspiciously empty flat. “Then you can take me on an extensive tour of the city until it’s the right time.”
It also gives me the chance to catch glimpses of his disturbingly handsome profile while he concentrates on the road in front of us. After a few desultory laps of the central city, Zach snags one of the few available carparks near the venue, and we walk inside.
“Pose for the photo with me,” Zach insists, dragging me back into the pre-set frame when I try to dodge around the booth. “Otherwise, how’ll our grandkids ever believe you were so beautiful?”
“Trust?”
My stomach churns. The other teens in attendance are radiant, excited. Giggling and talking too loudly, elbowing each other, or openly staring at the change wrought in their fellow students.
But I let him talk me into the commemoratory picture the same way I let him talk me into attending in the first place. When the photographer tells us to say cheese, I even dredge up a smile.
“See?” Zach says when our image displays on the preview screen. “We owe it to the world to get this photo printed.”
I roll my eyes but smile at the man organising the picture. Besides, it’s not my money going into the venture. If Zach wants to waste his on something so frivolous, let him.
