“Let’s build toward horrifying.”
“Love that for us.”
I laugh, and it surprises both of us. The sound dies quickly, but it lingers long enough to feel human.
Sonny doesn’t press as she drives. She chatters instead, lightly, about some girl from high school who got bad Botox and can no longer fully blink, about a bartender she hates, about a pair of boots she almost bought but didn’t because they made her look like she was trying too hard to be Beth Dutton.
By the time we get to her place, my pulse has dropped from jackhammer to merely bad decision.
Her apartment smells like vanilla and dry shampoo and the expensive kind of candle that tries very hard not to admit it’s a candle. Clothes are draped over the back of a chair. Makeup sprawls across the bathroom counter like a cosmetic crime scene. There’s music playing low from somewhere in the bedroom.
She turns on me the second the door shuts.
“Okay. Talk.”
So I do.
I don’t tell her all of it. Not the deepest parts. Not the things that still feel like exposed nerve endings. But enough. Enough that her expression shifts from amused to intent. Enough that she knows this isn’t me trying to feel pretty for a fun night out. This is strategy.Bait. Armor. Maybe a last meal disguised as lipstick.
When I finish, she folds her arms.
“You are absolutely out of your mind.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m helping you anyway.”
“Yes.”
She points at me. “Not because I approve.”
“Of course not.”
“Because if you go into Noir looking like sadness in a motel T-shirt, you’ll get eaten alive.”
That earns a tiny smile from me. “This is why I came to you.”
“Sit down.”
For the next two hours, Sonny does what women have done for each other forever—she turns me into a prettier version of myself.
She starts with my hair, dragging a brush through it with enough force to make me yelp once.
“Beauty is pain,” she says.
“This is not beauty. This is assault.”
“You’ll survive.”
She blows it out smooth, then curls in just enough shape to make it look effortless when I know damned well it wasn’t. She steps back, squints, adjusts, pins one side, then changes her mind and lets it fall.
Makeup comes next.
Not too heavy, she decides. Not for Noir Night. Too much and I’ll look like I’m trying. Too soft and I’ll look too young…which could be good, could be bad. She darkens my eyes until they seem larger, meaner somehow. Smudges liner at the corners. Defines my mouth in a color deeper than I would’ve chosen but exactly right once it’s there. Contours just enough to sharpen what grief and hunger have already started carving into me.
Then comes the dress. Or rather, the dresses.
Because apparently helping a friend prepare for possible emotional warfare also includes throwing half a closet on the bed and vetoing things with increasing disgust.
