“Don’t use that tone. You know I’m right.”
“I know you’re insane.”
“Also right.” She grabs my shoulders and turns me toward the mirror taped to the back of the supply closet door. “But right now we have a larger crisis. What are you wearing?”
A tired woman stares back at me. Copper-brown skin. Curls with an agenda. Eyes that have seen too many deadlines and not enough sleep. A blouse with a faint coffee dot near the hem that I absolutely pretend not to notice. “I didn’t know I needed to present myself to alien royalty. I thought I was coming in to write copy about fall boots and pretend Todd’s expense reports don’t look like crimes.”
“You are not walking into that room dressed like leftover takeout.” Loora shrugs out of her blazer.
“No.”
“Take it.”
“Loora.” I give her the look. “You are six feet of legs and muscle tone. There is not one garment on your body that will fit around these hips, and I am being generous calling them hips.”
She winces, then laughs, bright and unashamed, because Loora has never met an emotional land mine she couldn’t tap-dance over in cute shoes. “You’re right. And I would kill for your body.”
“You probably would.”
“Don’t sound so smug.”
“I’m not smug.” My mouth gives me away before I can stop it. “I’d trade you for controllable hair any day of the week.”
Her eyes drop to my curls, and an evil light enters them. “Sit.”
“No.”
She pulls a hair tie from her wrist as if she’s been waiting for this moment since birth. “Sit.”
“Nobody tames these curls. I have been fighting them since junior high. Products, silk pillowcases, a very expensive YouTube tutorial from a woman in Atlanta who promised me definition and gave me an electric socket afro. Nothing works.”
“Sit.”
I sit. She works fast, fingers separating, pulling and coaxing the chaos into something that at least looks intentional. In the mirror, her mouth firms with the same focus she gets when she believes in a story. Not likes it. Believes in it. That look is why she’s the best research coordinator in the building, even if Todd keeps calling her “creative support” like she’s a decorative pillow with a laptop.
“Lipstick,” she says.
“No.”
“Not a question.”
“I don’t wear lipstick.”
She digs in her purse and produces a bullet of deep purple.
I stare at it. “That is purple.”
“Plum.”
“That is the color of a week-old bruise.”
“It’ll work with blue skin.”
“His skin. Not mine.”
She considers me, then the lipstick, then me again. “Fair.” She rummages deeper and comes up with a gloss. “Fine. Warm brown. You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t ask.”
