“For what?”
“The moment I have to put them back on.”
She placed the silver heels on the floor and stretched her toes against the carpet. Sophie had selected them after Ellie rejected four other pairs on the grounds that they appeared to have been designed by someone with a personal grievance against feet.
The fifth pair had been declared survivable for forty minutes.
We had already used twenty-three of those minutes taking photographs at the hotel.
“You told Sophie they were comfortable,” I said.
“I told Sophie I could walk in them.”
“That was misleading.”
“It was technically defensible.”
Rachel looked up from the opposite seat.
“That phrase has caused enough damage.”
Ellie wore a dark green dress that reached the floor and left her shoulders bare. It was elegant without looking as though someone had wrapped her in a marketing strategy, which had been her primary condition.
Her hair was pinned up loosely. She had removed one pin in the hotel elevator and threatened to remove the rest if anyone described the style as effortless again.
Nothing about the evening had been effortless.
For six months, Ellie and I had been seen in airports, restaurants, and once outside a hardware store where she spent twenty minutes explaining why my house required a different kind of exterior paint.
There had been photographs.
There had been rumors.
One entertainment site had devoted nearly eight hundred words to whether a famous singer purchasing a ladder with another woman suggested domestic commitment.
We had not denied anything.
We had not formally confirmed anything either.
Tonight would be the first time we arrived somewhere together on purpose.
Officially.
The word had followed us all week.
Our first official appearance.
Our first official red carpet.
My first official girlfriend since publicly coming out.
Ellie disliked it because it made our relationship sound as though it had been waiting for government approval.
I disliked it because I understood exactly why it mattered.
The limousine slowed.
Outside, barricades, lights, and crowds appeared through the tinted windows. The entrance to the American Music Honorswas surrounded by cameras, reporters, assistants with headsets, and enough electrical equipment to power several small towns.
