by Shea Olsen
Eventually, the two salesgirls usher me back to the fitting rooms; they help zip zippers that I can’t reach and smooth out wrinkles in the fabric when I stand before a massive full-length mirror. They swap out sizes and bring me shoes to try with different outfits. Soon I can’t even keep track of what I’ve tried on and what I liked. But they seem to have a system.
Occasionally, I emerge from the dressing room to show Tate, but he rarely gives his opinion. “If you love it, then get it,” he says, smiling. “And stop looking at prices. It doesn’t matter,” he adds when I try to put back a dress because it costs more than I make in an entire year.
My mind gets hazy somewhere around outfit number twelve, but before I know it, we’re heading back out the doors, an enormous bag tucked under Tate’s arm.
I’m not ready to think about how much he spent. Instead I smile down at the much smaller bag looped around my wrist. As embarrassed as I’d been when the salesgirls had brought me the pretty, pale blue push-up bra to try on under one of the dresses, the reflection in the mirror had been so...un-me, so strangely grown-up, that I knew it had to be mine, no matter the cost. It’s the one item I wouldn’t let Tate see or pay for. I considered it a personal victory when he moved away from the cash register with only a token amount of grumbling.
Outside, I look for the valet but Tate grabs my hand. “Time for the next surprise,” he says, tugging me down Wilshire before I can protest.
The salon is tucked back off a side street. A discreet stucco building with a sign that reads simply Q. A man steps into the waiting area and introduces himself as Steven. His bleached blond hair stands up from his forehead like spikes on a fence, and when he smiles, it reveals a narrow gap between his two front teeth. Like Hank, he is tall and built like a weight lifter, with arms that flex beneath a skintight lavender shirt.
I look back at Tate once more, savoring his reassuring smile as the man leads me into a long rectangular room, to a seat among a row of empty chairs facing a stretch of mirrors.
Tate waits in the lobby. The entire place was cleared out just for us.
“How long have you had this hair?” Steven asks, pulling away the hair tie that held my ponytail in place, letting the coffee-brown strands hang loose over my shoulders.
I recognize Steven, I realize. I’ve seen him before, just snippets I think, on one of the reality TV shows Mia likes to watch. He’s a hairdresser to the stars. Steven Salazar is his name, I recall. And Q, I remember now, is the name of his tiny white dog. His salon is named after his dog.
“Since about 1999,” I answer dryly, then bite my lip, not wanting to offend the man who’s about to take scissors to my hair.
He spins me around suddenly in the chair, pressing his palms into the armrests and staring directly into my eyes. “Close your eyes,” he tells me.
“Close...my eyes?” I echo dumbly.
“Yes. I don’t want you to see your hair, I want you to envision it.” Steven Salazar’s skin is like marble. He raises one perfectly arched eyebrow and the skin of his forehead doesn’t even wrinkle.
I blink, then give in, shutting my eyes. “Now,” Steven says in a hushed voice, as if whatever he’s about to tell me is a secret. “Imagine you could have any hair you wanted. Imagine you could take any risk, and if you didn’t like it, your old, boring hair would grow back tomorrow. What would you do?”
Boring? I open my eyes and squint, like I can picture something new. The word is right at the tip of my tongue but I hesitate to say it.
“Oh, do tell. I can see you have some scandalous thoughts swirling around in there.”
“Blond. A little blond,” I hedge.
Steven stands up straight and his eyebrows lift. “So the lovely brunette wants to go blond.” He taps his finger against his temple and rolls his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “Hmmm,” he says, pondering the word. Then he says definitively: “Highlights.”
He whips me back around in the chair so I’m facing the mirrors.
“Hold on tight, girl, I’m about to give you the most exhilarating two hours of your life. Unless of course...” He winks and flicks his chin toward the waiting room, where I last saw Tate. I glance in the same direction, but I can’t see him anymore. He’s not sitting on any of the sleek wood waiting chairs. “Perhaps Mr. Tate Collins has already...enlightened you?” Steven adds, then pauses, bending low beside me and staring at me through the mirror.
“Not entirely,” I hear myself say, and Steven flicks his head back in a laugh.
“Smart girl. Never kiss and tell. Not in this town.”
Steven goes to work brushing a chalky purple liquid down separated strands of my hair, then folding each strand into its own foil. Then I wait, flipping through a gossip magazine. My heart trips when I spot a photo of Tate on one of the pages. He’s standing in a crowd, one hand above his face, like he’s trying to move unrecognized through the swarm of people. The caption reads, TATE COLLINS SPOTTED IN PUBLIC AFTER A YEAR IN HIDING. I realize it’s a photo from the night we ate at Lola’s, when he was mobbed outside the bar—the night I found out who he really was. Already that night feels like a hundred years ago.
Once the blond streaks have been seared into my dark hair, Steven wields a shiny pair of shears and begins trimming my hair one section at a time. I hold my breath, watching as pieces float down to the white tile floor.
When he’s done cutting, the noise of the blow dryer fills the salon, and I actually close my eyes, not wanting to see the final result, afraid I’ll hate it. Afraid I’ll have regrets. But when he tells me to open my eyes, I can’t help but blink at my reflection.
My hair drifts down to my shoulders in swooping layers that give the effect of a day spent at the beach: effortless and sun-kissed. The blond highlights magnify my green eyes—two emeralds that seem almost translucent against the platinum. I run my fingers through a section; streaks of my natural brown are still threaded among the beachy-blond. I lift it up and let it settle back against my shoulders.
I stand, leaning closer to the mirror. “I didn’t know my hair could look like this.”
“I am rather amazing,” Steven says, winking. I smile and spin around to face him. “Now you look like the Charlotte you were born to be.” I actually feel like I might cry, the emotion welling up behind my eyes. So much has happened today: Tate surprising me this morning, taking me on a whirlwind shopping trip, and now this. Without even thinking about it, I step forward and hug Steven. But he squeezes his arms around me like he’s used to it. He smells like coconut and clove. “They all cry after their first time,” he says, winking and laughing at his own implied joke.
“Thank you,” I tell him, and I mean it.
“Oh, you’re not done yet,” he says. “This was only the beginning.” Again, he gives me a sly look. “Marielle will be doing your makeup next.”
A woman emerges from a doorway to my left, her cheeks a rosy pink and her hair straight inky-black with severe bangs that almost touch her eyelashes. She takes my hand and Steven gives a little bow when I look back at him, just before I’m led around a corner and into another part of the salon.
I sit in a plush white chair, nervously tapping my foot against the metal rung beneath my feet. I’ve rarely worn makeup and I have no idea what to expect. The mascara wand feels like it’s going to poke my eye out, and I’m pretty sure the eyelash curler is going to pull out every hair. But she artfully tilts my head this way and that like I’m her canvas and she is lost in the rhythm of each stroke of her hand.
“All done, Charlotte,” she finally says, and I open my eyes. The reflection staring back at me belongs to someone else.
Seeing the new hair was like putting on a wig at Halloween—it looked cool, but somehow temporary—but seeing my face like this, so transformed, is like waking up from some strange dream.
“Do you like it?�
� Marielle asks. She drops her hands from her waist, still holding a makeup brush in her right fingertips.
I can’t take my eyes off the mirror. My lips are glossy and somehow plumper, a pink that matches my cheekbones, like I’ve just finished a quick jog in cold weather. My eyes are lined with a sultry charcoal gray, and my entire face seems brushed in creamy porcelain. I look...incredible. And yet, I still look like me.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She smiles and unclips a cape that had been draped around my neck. I look down and am reminded of the sad shorts and T-shirt I’m still wearing.
“I think there’s something waiting for you in the bathroom,” Marielle says. She takes me down a short hallway and opens a door on the left. Inside is a restroom with white chaise lounges and ornate mirrors painted gold with ribbons hanging along the edges.
And then I see it. Draped against a wall, hanging from a hook, is a long red dress. It’s flowy, with a high neck and bare shoulders and one long slit up the leg. I had noticed it at Barneys but didn’t try it on—I knew it would be too expensive, I could tell just by glancing at it. But here it is.
This feels like too much, more than I can accept. But when I run my hands down the soft fabric, I know I have to try it on.
I strip out of my old clothes and pull the dress over my head. It settles perfectly against my body—like liquid poured over skin, like it was constructed just for me. I touch my stomach, feeling the smooth fabric, then eye myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. I look...stunning. I can’t say no to this dress. Just like I seem incapable of saying no to Tate.
Then I spot a pair of strappy black heels waiting on the floor—for me, I assume. I step into them, standing up and marveling at my height. Will I even be able to walk in these?
I fold up my old clothes, then stuff them into a plastic bag hanging from the back of the door, with Q printed on the front—clearly usually used to tote hair products.
Sucking in a deep breath, I leave the bathroom and walk out into the lobby.
Tate is standing beside the front door, staring out the window.
As if sensing me, he turns—and stops, frozen.
His expression is arrested, and for several breathless moments he’s silent, his gaze washing over me. Then his eyes meet mine. “You,” he says slowly, “are incredible.”
The heat in his eyes unsettles me and I have to force myself to exhale, to breathe, to not crumble in the wake of his gaze. “Thank you for the dress,” I say, touching the fabric along my waist. “It’s beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” he says, and he takes the plastic bag from me. Already it feels like a lifetime ago that I wore the clothes inside—a different Charlotte, in a different reality.
But I’m getting used to this one.
* * *
Il Cielo is not a restaurant—it is another world. Enchanted and magical and dripping in vines that crawl up the redbrick walls and chandeliers that hang from a sea of lights that turn everything a smoldering golden-white.
I feel like I’m in a fairy tale: some lost scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A world imagined by Shakespeare, where fairies and unrequited lovers dance and make love and confess their obsessions for one another.
Tate sits across from me in the outdoor garden, nestled into a far corner. Our waitress is a tiny, bouncy thing with a pixie haircut and rosy cheeks, which only further inspires the feeling that we’ve been transported to some romantic otherworld.
Tate watches me as we eat and it sends threads of heat across my skin. I wonder again how just a look can make me forget everything I promised myself, forget my mom’s mistakes, and Mia’s.
“Tell me about your family,” Tate says, almost as if he’s reading my mind.
I sigh. “Well, my mom had me when she was really young, and she died when I was twelve. I never knew my dad. I have an older sister, too, and she has a son named Leo. He’s almost nine months old. And we all live with my grandmother. There’s not that much else to tell.”
He levels a look at me, like he knows there’s more. “I’m sorry about your mom,” he says. “You must miss her.”
The memory of the night she died seeps into my mind, even though I try to keep it at bay. Mom and her boyfriend at the time, Ray, drove their brown Chevy straight into a concrete barrier on I-5 just south of San Clemente. They had been drinking, and were so pumped full of drugs that the police said if the car crash hadn’t killed them, they might have OD’d later that night anyway. Which is not exactly a comforting thing for a twelve-year-old to hear. But I had been eavesdropping from my bedroom doorway when the two policemen stood in my grandmother’s living room, telling her the news. Mia and I had been living with Grandma for three years at that point, only seeing my mom sporadically every couple months when she’d show up, needing a place to crash for the night.
“I do,” I say. “But it’s sort of complicated. My mom left us when we were pretty young, so I don’t know...” I shrug. “I’ve spent most of my life trying not to be like her, to be honest. That’s why I didn’t want to go out with you in the first place. She couldn’t tell a good guy from a bad one, and...” I trail off.
“You thought I was a bad guy?” Tate asks, his expression bemused. “Do you still think so?”
I examine him, as if I’ll be able to tell more the harder I look. “Well, going by your very well-documented history in People and Us Weekly, I’d have good reason for thinking that.” He starts to defend himself but I go on. “But my own empirical research is leading me to a different conclusion.”
His scowl becomes a laugh, and I find myself savoring the sound. It’s the first time I’ve heard him laugh like that—easy and unrestrained. “Empirical research, huh?”
“I’m very scientific,” I remind him with a smile.
* * *
We are still laughing when we step back onto the sidewalk, and the flash of a camera explodes across my vision.
“Tate,” a man shouts. And he snaps another photo.
Tate reacts immediately, pulling me against his side and putting his hand in front of my face to block the next series of bursts, the staccato of camera flashes.
“Tate!” the man shouts again, clearly trying to get Tate to face him. “Who’s your date? Why have you been in hiding? Tell us her name!” He uses the word us, as if there were more of them—other paparazzi—but he’s the only one. Either he was tipped off, or camped out in hopes of spotting someone famous leaving the restaurant.
Tate pulls me away from the man, up the sidewalk. The camera keeps flashing and I shield my eyes with my palm.
I see the Tesla ahead. Tate rips open the side door and pushes me inside. He dives into the driver’s seat and peels away. Flashes from the man’s camera continue to explode against the blackened car windows until we weave into traffic.
* * *
Tate pulls up to my corner, puts the car in park, and leans back against the seat. The easy mood from dinner is a distant memory; he is stiff, his jaw set.
“At least there was only one of them,” I offer, tentatively reaching out to touch his arm.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I should be more careful with you. I should never have taken you there.”
“I’m fine,” I say. It all happened too fast to process. And Tate seems more shaken up than I am. They’re just photos—it’s not like we were doing anything scandalous, anything worthy of a headline, at least I don’t think so. I can’t imagine the photographer will be able to sell them or use them for anything.
But Tate doesn’t look at me, his expression still rigid. “I don’t want you to be photographed. I don’t want your life to change just because I’m in it.”
“I know. But it’s already changed. Not just because of the things you did today—the clothes, the salon, or the movie yesterday. You’re changing me just by...by being
with me. And it’s what I want. I told you before that I’m willing to do this with you—I’m all in. You don’t have to feel like you need to protect me.”
His hands loosen around the steering wheel, falling into his lap. He turns to face me. “How do you do that?”
“What?”
“Say exactly what I need to hear, at exactly the right moment?”
I stare at him in the bluish glow from the dashboard, his features lit on one side, a sharp contrast. “You’re the one who usually says exactly the right thing,” I tell him, thinking of all the moments when his words undid me, convinced me to go on a date with him, go for a ride in his car, then when I agreed to be with him on his terms. He has a way of making me forget about everything else. Except him.
He smiles, his eyes falling to my lips.
I meet his gaze, then say what I’m thinking, damn the consequences: “Can we go back to your house for a while, before I have to go home?”
He doesn’t answer right away. “I can’t take you to my place,” he says finally, looking away out the front windshield. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to control myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way you look tonight... I can’t keep my thoughts focused.” He swallows. “I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust myself with you.”
I feel my heart rise swiftly in my chest. Desire suddenly sings through my veins. This day has made me someone different, bold, and I’m not afraid to touch him this time. I lift my fingers and reach across the car, stroking the side of his neck, letting them drift upward, finding his jaw and then his lips. The tips of my fingers graze his bottom lip, pressing against them, feeling their warmth, and my insides shudder.
