I point my feet toward the stylist as she looks me up and down, trying to evaluate what to do with me.
“Is this your natural hair?” she says, twirling my thin, wiry strands. All I can think is,Please don’tPretty Womanme.
“Wait, you look familiar.” She squints her eyes at me while putting a few color swatches against my skin. I feel more exposed than ever with each new “test” she conducts on me.
The strange sounds she mutters—“mm-hmm,” “ughh,” uhhhh”—each sound progressively more unsettling than the last. It takes a while before she finally comes out with a full sentence.
“You’re Charlotte Tate, right?”
“Yeah, I booked an appointment with you the other day.”
“No… No, I mean—” She pulls out her phone to show a picture of Holden and I kissing at the garden party. I never bothered to analyze our kiss, but now that it is up close in front of me, I’m not sure what to make of it.
“I guess—”
My thought remains fleeting as the next thing she says is, “You’re pear-shaped,” before walking away to fetch something.
When she comes back, she brings the shorter, male version of her by her side. He doesn’t say his name or make a polite greeting.
No, he is just as prickly as she is.
“How tall are you?” He grabs me by the hand, lifting me to the podium to twirl me.
“Five foot six,” I reply.
Rebecca points at Holden. “How tall are you?”
“Five foot eleven.”
For the first time, I feel relieved that he didn’t do what most guys do and round up to six feet. He only looks at me, amused at being puppeteered by both stylists.
It’s the cheesy grin on his face that puts me at ease. When Rebecca clasps her hands with excitement, I prepare for another prickly question.
Instead, she says, “Perfect,” then disappears to the middle of the showroom where all the racks of clothing are. The man moves over to Holden with a measuring tape.
I stand there awkwardly, waiting for her to come back. When she does, she has several dresses laid against the crook of her arm. She pushes me behind the curtain and throws her first dress of choice at me.
“I am going to go get matching heels. Don’t come out until you have them on.”
I quickly get undressed, every untrimmed edge of my body exposed to the mirror. A diet consisting of coffee, Taco Bell and hating the idea of physical fitness with every fiber in my being.
I was nowhere near rail thin, but I hoped the designer of these dresses had magical shaping powers that can make every dress look perfect.
The first one is white and mid length. Fitting it over my head is a whole workout. When I see my final form, I accept that I am now a fluffy cupcake with large sliver stilettos.
“Come on, let’s see,” the stylist asks.
“Absolutely not,” I say quickly before throwing the cupcake back over my head, heaving from the weight of it.
Rebecca shoves the next one at me. This time, the dress is shiny and metallic. A floor-length drape that sits heavy with a million and one beads sewn into it.
“I am a human disco ball,” I mumble to myself.
“What was that?” she calls from behind the curtain.
“Is there anything more simple that you have out there?”
“Is she always this difficult?” I hear her grating voice, directing her comment to only Holden, as if I am not there.
