It’s fun, a little flirty, but still appropriate for the occasion.
It suits my hair. I left it down for the fitting, and the dark loose waves look darker, shinier against the deep blue. My eyes, traitors that they are, go vivid in this color. Blue on blue. The seamstress was right about that.
The heels are higher than I’d pick for a normal night—slim straps, a little twist of satin at the toe—but this isn’t a normal night.
Caterina said the word “ball” with a straight face and then told me I was going as a guest, not staff.
“Everyone who isn’t working goes as a guest,” she said, already texting before I could argue. “We celebrate our people on the final night.” Which apparently means we go full fairytale.
She also said she was covering the gown, shoes, and accessories. “Non-negotiable,” she added in the same tone she uses when she wants the last word. The shop had me on the schedule fifteen minutes later. “This place is family,” she said. “They will take care of you.”
They are.
There are dresses of all colors on display in the store, everything from casual to royally formal. Tuxedos on one side, gowns on the other. A steamer hisses from somewhere in the back.
I shift my weight, and the dress shifts with me like it can anticipate my moves. In the mirror, a woman stares back, shoulders bare, a hint of breast visible above the soft neckline. She looks… composed.
I try to keep my gaze on the hem, on the fall, on the details—anywhere but the place where my brain goes if I let it.
Three weeks is long enough for a bruise to fade. The crescent he left where my neck meets my shoulder is gone from my skin. I still see it when I turn just so. I still feel the echo if I press my thumb there. I’m ridiculous, and I know it, but the memory lives in strange places. In mirrors. In fabric. In the way my breath hitches when certain doors slide open.
The beaded curtain clatters again, but the sound isn’t the seamstress’s whispering shoes. It’s heavier. Confident. Familiar in a way that gets under my skin before my mind catches up.
I don’t turn right away. I see him in the mirror first.
Roberto.
He’s in a tuxedo jacket, open. The shirt is crisp and white, and the black of the lapel looks carved. The tux fits him like it was made for him. It probably was. His bow tie is around his neck but not knotted yet.
It feels intimate in a way that surprises me. His hair is neat. His jaw is clean-shaven. There’s the shadow of a smile that isn’t a real smile, just a softening at the corner of his mouth like he’s practicing one.
He sees me see him. His eyes do a quick sweep, the kind that takes everything in and then does it again slower, like he wants to be sure the first pass wasn’t a trick.
For a heartbeat, neither of us talks.
Then he finds his voice. “Olivia.”
I swallow. “Hi,” I say, because I’m very cool and impressive, apparently.
His gaze flickers to the workroom hall, and he does that quick, easy calculation he always does in public—who’s around, what doors are open, what can be seen.
“I should’ve asked before coming through,” he says softly.
It’s a courtesy, a bit of cover, a way to say I didn’t mean to walk straight into you like this.
“It’s fine,” I say, and it is, and it isn’t, and all of it is true at once.
He steps closer but stops with a respectable space between us. The music lifts—strings now, with the bright notes of a piano.
“You look…” He stops like he’s searching for an appropriate word. “Beautiful.”
“Thank you,”I say, because I want to say a dozen things and none of them will help. “You look—”
He lifts a hand, palm out, pretending to block praise. It’s a joke. It breaks the line of tension just enough for me to breathe. “It’s the tailor,” he says. “Not me.”
“No,” I say, and my voice gets brave, surprising me. “It’s you.”
His eyes meet mine and hold me there. One side of his lips tilts up in a half-smile. Then he glances down, then up again, and when his gaze reaches my collarbone, I feel it in my stomach. Three weeks. You’d think it would dull. It hasn’t.
