Not going to lie, I did the first one for a little while. But now I surveyed the nude lace heels I’d be wearing later, flexing my toes in anticipation. It was about being tall and proud and all that, true. But also? I couldn’t help but feel a little dark thrill every time someone clocked who I was and what I was wearing.
“You look incredible,” said Vienna as we admired ourselves side by side in the mirror.
“You do too,” I said, and it was true: she stunned in a simple black sheath dressed up by a dazzling diamond lariat necklace and matching earrings, each one a big square-cut diamond swinging on the bottom of a thin gold chain. I touched one briefly, watched it swing. “Where did you get these?”
She turned her head so that they sparkled. “My mom got them back in the eighties, so they’re vintage. She finally let me borrow them.”
“They’re beautiful,” I said, spinning back to the mirror to regard myself once more. The last thing I hadn’t been able to figure out was my jewelry situation—I was wearing a thin gold chain around my neck, but I knew it wasn’t quite right. “You know, they’ve inspired me. Do you mind if I wear a similar pair?” One I’d inherited from my dead grandmother once the will had finally been sorted out. “Or is that twinning too hard?”
“You know I love to twin with you,” Vienna said, which was enough to send me hustling toward the jewelry safe hidden in my second walk-in closet. “Besides, nobody’s going to be looking at me tonight. All eyes will be on you!”
Exactly what I wanted to hear. The more people were focused on me, the more they’d be focused on what I had to say about my nonprofit. I removed my necklace and put in my earrings, which were the same design but on a slightly shorter chain. Lowered my hands. Admired myself. “Perfect.”
“Beyond perfect,” Vienna said. “They make your eyes sparkle too. That’s what my mom said about the earrings on me: that they sparkle like my eyes. Even though my eyes are dark, so it doesn’t really make sense.”
“Nice,” I said, and by that I meant,It must be nice to have a mother who gives you compliments instead of telling you that the diamonds make you look dull in comparison. I could practically hear what she’d say about me now.Knee-length skirts make yourlegs look stumpy, Pom. And don’t you think you could use more blush so that your cheeks don’t look so sallow against—
“Pardon?” Vienna said, and wait, that wasn’t my inner self-critic that sounded suspiciously like my mother, butmy actual mother. In my apartment. Where I’d specifically banned her from entering by stealing back the spare key she’d stolen from me.
I spun around, a headache already pulsing at my temples, but my fake smile was fixed on before I finished the revolution. “Hi. I thought you were still going to be in Italy for another two weeks? Also, how did you get in here?”
My mother swooped in to kiss me on both cheeks, her lily perfume so sweet it made me a little nauseous. (Fun fact: lilies are extraordinarily toxic to many animals, including house cats.) “Oh, darling, you couldn’t possibly lock your parents out of your apartment. What if there was an emergency?” She dabbed at the corners of her eyes, which were stone dry. I’d heard rumors from the staff that she’d gotten her tear ducts removed during her eyelid lift so that she’d never have to worry about looking weak or smudging her mascara. Probably they were false, but when it came to my mother, you never knew. “Right, honey?”
It was right then I realized my father was there too. He had a tendency to blend into the background, with his graying hair and black tux and—
Oh no. Black tux. And my mom… was wearing a shimmery silver gown so tight you could see the divots of her hips.
Gala attire.
“Oh, Vienna, hello,” Mom was saying, pursing her lips at my best friend. “Pom, are you going through a lesbian phase again?”
One, Vienna was bisexual, not a lesbian. Two, my mother knew perfectly well I was in a committed relationship with “the nanny’s son.” Three, I’d never gone through a lesbian phase; my mother was just terrified of female friendship. And finally, most important, my parents were here, when they should have been in Italy, and they were dressed in gala attire, which meant—
“You’re coming to the gala, aren’t you?” I said faintly, and if Gabe were around, I totally would have taken this opportunity to swoon into his arms.
“Of course we’re coming to the gala,” Mom said. “We could never miss our baby’s very first gala, right, dear?”
My dad cleared his throat. I got the very distinct impression that he’d much rather be in Tuscany right now, drinking glasses of wine that had been aged in crumbling castle cellars alongside mummified skeletons and hidden Nazi gold. “You’re always right, dear.”
“Of course I am,” Mom said. “Now, Pom, is that really what you’re wearing? Is it too late to—”
“Pom, is that your phone?” Vienna interrupted.
I blinked at her. No, it hadn’t been my phone. I hadn’t heard any—oh.Oh.“Oh, wow, yes,” I said, pulling out my phone and clapping it to my ear. “Hello? Oh my God, are you serious? Alligators? In the moat?” I lowered the phone, wincing at my parents. “I really have to deal with this. Sorry.”
My mom was glaring at me. “What moat?” But my dad had already wrapped his arm around her shoulders and was steering her toward the door, giving me an apologetic glance over his shoulder.
“Dear, we can’t keep distracting Pom. We’ll see her soon.”
She called after me, “You really need to work on your…” but the door closed in her face and that was that.
I heaved a heavy sigh, tossing my phone on the bed, and followed it with my body, landing face down in the blankets. (It was okay. Kai hadn’t come to do my hair and makeup yet.) “Ughhhh.”
“I thought they were supposed to be in Italy,” Vienna said, her voice muffled by the feathers around my ears.
“They were,” I groaned, as weary as if I hadn’t slept in four days (something I thought I’d done once during a bender in Ibiza, until Millicent told me I’d passed out on her shoulder each night at the club while dancing. Apparently a member of the minorAustro-Hungarian nobility had tried to grind with me and I’d snored in his face).
“They didn’t RSVP, did they?”
