Dictatorship of the Dress (9780698168305)

by Topper, Jessica

  I had tried; believe you me. My Pink Pearl and kneaded erasers could do little to minimize or soften the low points in my life.

  Noah was studying me, but it wasn’t in a bug-under-a-microscope kind of way that got under my skin. “Fair enough,” he said slowly, and he reached for the box of cards that had fallen to the floor as well. “‘Naughty Sleepover Q and A.’ Work stuff, huh?”

  “Well, those were for girls’ night, for when I got to Hawaii.” Danica was spiking the drinks, my cousin Miri was bringing good chocolate, I was providing the entertainment, and we were going to have someone from the spa come and do facials. Kind of like a bachelorette party, except we weren’t going to invite the bachelorette, because she’d ruin all the fun. “Just something goofy to pass the time.”

  “Well, since we’ve got nothing but time . . .” Noah raised a wicked brow.

  I almost choked on my Crown and ginger. Oh, he should not do that, or say those words, in the presence of a lady . . . especially while she had a strong drink in her hand putting dirty thoughts in her head.

  “Seriously? Mr. Rigid Tech-Boy, who could barely deem the Magic 8 Ball worthy of a shake?”

  “Hit me.” His eyes were chocolate truffle dark with a sea salt sparkle to them. Did this guy know how tempting he was?

  I took possession of the deck of cards and slowly shuffled them. Noah grabbed his drink and lowered himself into the Jacuzzi nest.

  “Okay, then, first question: What’s the most important item in your makeup bag?” I giggled.

  He took a haul off his drink. “Pass.”

  “You have to keep drinking till you answer, you know.” I settled on the edge of the Jacuzzi with my bare feet dangling in. “How about . . . what’s your favorite”—oh, Laney, don’t go there—“body part of your partner?” My mouth just keeps on talking and drinking. “Assuming there is a partner.” Argh, shut up! God, I hope he’s as buzzed as I am.

  “Body parts,” Noah began, raising his glass as if he were going to toast a limb or a digit. “Body parts are overrated. What about the mind? The mind can be a sexy tool.”

  He’s talking sexy tools. And he’s sprawled in a hot tub. Mind you, it was dry and swathed in three-hundred-count cotton sheets, but could I help it if my mind was in a far wetter and hotter place right then?

  A hand circled my shin. Was he going to pull me in?

  “Ankles. I’ll go with ankles.”

  “Final answer?” I asked with a gulp. Wait, did he confirm or deny partner?

  “Yep, just a simple, surgically unenhanced ankle.” Yeah, he was buzzed if he was talking about cosmetic surgery for cankles. “Your turn.”

  Noah relieved me of the deck and very deliberately extracted a card from the middle of the pile. “Name one thing in your purse that you can’t live without.” He snorted. “Let’s see, is it going to be the Magic 8 Ball, Batman, Duck Tape . . .”

  “Very funny.” I gave him a nudge with my toe. This was a no-brainer. “My sketchpad and pen.”

  “That’s two things, but you’re cute. I’ll let it slide.” He winked and laid the deck back in my palm again.

  “Here’s a benign one. Name one thing you wish you had done differently today.”

  I discreetly studied his features and waited as patiently as a girl with a couple drinks in her could. His lips twitched, and I wondered if he was thinking about the kiss request close call we had had on board the airplane. I knew I was.

  His eyes widened, and I swore I saw a spark of something: realization, regret? He looked pointedly at me, and I felt my face flush.

  “That quip I made on the plane. About curing cancer. That was low. Sorry. About your friend.”

  Oh. That.

  “Whatever,” I said softly. “How could you have known?” I gave him a tiny smile to let him know his apology was accepted. I was, after all, the Queen of the Daily Do-Over Wishers. Fanning the deck out like a magician, I let him extract his next card.

  “Favorite guilty-pleasure music,” he announced. “The kind that you jump around and dance to when no one else is looking?”

  “That would have to be . . .” I cringed a little before continuing. “Billy Joel.”

  “Seriously?” He laughed. “The piano man?”

  “Come on, he was raised a Long Island boy; it’s a local pride thing.” That and my mom used to wear the grooves out on his albums 52nd Street and The Stranger when I was little. Dani, born and raised in Jersey until she moved to my town as a teenager, would always have an undying love for Springsteen and Bon Jovi, no matter how much I tried to brainwash them out of her system.

  “I guess it’s rock and roll . . . to some,” Noah teased.

  “Pick your passion,” I said, swallowing hard as I read the next card aloud. “Dirty talk, or role play?” Talk about a loaded deck . . .

  There was that blush, creeping up his neck again. “How come I’m getting all the naughty ones and you’re getting all the snoozers?” he demanded.

  “Because the deck of cards is trying to corrupt you? I don’t know! But you were the one who wanted to play this,” I reminded him, fanning myself with the card and blinking my eyes expectantly.

  “I believe it depends on the person you are with,” he finally admitted. “I think . . . playing off each other’s passion is a turn-on in itself.”

  “Yes. I tend to agree. But the card specifically asks your passion. What turns you on?”

  Did that just come out of my mouth?

  “Wait, wasn’t I supposed to save some of this for my online dating profile?” he said mockingly, taking the card from me and tucking it under the pile. “I like a healthy dose of both, okay? As long as she is into it, too.”

  Adventurous and accommodating. And looks good hanging out in a dry Jacuzzi.

  “Best”—his eyes scanned back and forth, and he bit his lip—“pass.”

  “Hey! It’s my turn. You can’t pass for me. Drink!”

  Noah took a big swig, shaking his head. “Best sex of your life, who-where-when.” It all came out in a rush, and he wouldn’t make eye contact with me. Ha, I bet he was wishing for a snoozer card now.

  “Allen Burnside, Lake Shore Hotel, five-year high school reunion,” I answered without hesitation.

  While it was one of the few Allen encounters that had not morphed into a graphic novelization on my part, the milestone had been played out in my mind more than once in the last eight years. Perfectly perfect. We had ditched our classmates before dessert was served and hightailed it back to his hotel room, stripping each other of those silly paper name tags and every stitch of clothing. There was nothing awkward or fumbling as we fell into each other’s arms at last, crashing and moving together perfectly. Fresh, but not foreign. Allen’s hands had gone to work laying claim to every inch of my skin that had missed his touch since high school. And my lips rememorized every cut of his muscular frame, my tongue slicking its newly colored landscape as his sighs punctured holes through every lonely night without him.

  He was back. Allen. Mine. Those strong drummer’s fingers tangling through my hair as we kissed like mirror images; knowing exactly how the other would respond, anticipating and absorbing it, then throwing it back like a thousand points of light on a disco ball.

  “That good, huh?”

  Noah was watching me over the rim of his cup. I don’t think he had stopped drinking since I had ordered him to imbibe. Good thing the card didn’t ask how or why.

  I flipped my next card over with a raised brow. “Who’s the one that got away?”

  “Jemma Fine.”

  “Jemma Fine? Sounds like a porn star to me.”

  “Yeah, well . . . she’s not,” he sniffed. “She’s a veterinarian. And she had it going on back in the day. We’d have these long talks for hours, lying on our backs watching the clouds. She always knew what to say when things were blea
k for me. And she could make the most amazing grilled cheese sandwiches.”

  Jemma was sounding less like a porn star and more like a keeper by the minute.

  I covertly watched him, lost in his memories, as I drained the dregs of my glass. Going from head in the clouds with Jemma Fine to lying in a dry Jacuzzi fully clothed with Laney Hudson must’ve felt like a crappy hand dealt to him.

  “So what happened?”

  “She raised her rates and my mom found another babysitter.” He shrugged, a slow smile teasing into a full-on grin. “My heart was broken and my grilled cheeses were burned from then on.”

  “Cheat!”

  “Ah, fifty-two-card pickup, my favorite game,” he said, as I showered him with the deck. Hard to believe this joker was the same uptight guy from Flight 1232. “How is that cheating? I answered my turn and now . . .” He shifted his hip up and unearthed a card that had slipped to the bottom of the tub. “Now I believe it is your turn. The million-dollar question.”

  With a flourish, he whipped the card up to his face, those dark brows knitting in mock concentration.

  “Worst night you’ve ever spent with someone.”

  “It doesn’t say that.”

  “Who-where-when,” he insisted, holding the card close to his chest. I sighed. “You can always take a pass. And drink,” he reminded me.

  “I’m past drink,” I said with a groan. “I am drunk.” Time to change my nickname to Lightweight of the Party Laney. Only drunks would stretch the word drunk out to two syllables. I drank anyway. And I still answered.

  “Five-year high school reunion.”

  Noah tapped the card to his lips, waiting for me to go on.

  “Lake Shore Hotel.”

  “Allen Burnside?” he finished for me.

  “Yep.” My warm-fuzzy buzz had gone from flirty to fizzled.

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  “Not particularly.”

  It was never something I spoke about. But I saw it in vivid four-color panels like a comic strip, even though there was nothing funny about it.

  I had used my ever-handy artist pens to sketch one of his favorite heroes, Mighty Mouse, on his biceps, in flight, with drumsticks in hand. “Ace,” Allen had said. “Can’t want to get this inked when I hit the road. Speaking of which . . .”

  He gave my forehead a kiss. A kiss of consolation if I had ever felt one.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Bus lobby call is at six A.M. We’re midtour. This was just an off day, kid.”

  Off day? Kid? I thought we were basking in the afterglow, getting ready for round two. “I thought—”

  Things in the memory got hazy then. What I thought wasn’t exactly what I said, and it all ended with Allen blowing up like I had never experienced before.

  “Were you expecting a tidy arc for us, like your characters in comicbookland? For me to be part of your benefits package, like your 401(k) and your health insurance? Nothing’s guaranteed in this world, Laney! You gotta live and learn that shit.”

  I was being dumped, ditched after the first course. Just deserts, I supposed.

  “But I love you!” My wail was pitiful, even to my ears.

  “Don’t use that word with me.” His voice was quiet venom. “Not if you’re trying to harpoon me with it. Love isn’t a weapon, Laney! Love is wanting the best for someone, even if it makes you feel fucking awful.

  “Working on the island, at a job you hate? Living with your mom, too, I suppose? What the hell happened to your art? You blew off California, and you’re not even in Manhattan? It’s like . . . like living next to fucking Everest and never attempting to climb it,” he had informed me, lifting his hips off the bed and snaking his boxers up.

  “The view’s nice,” I remembered saying softly.

  “Yeah, well.” He tossed my blouse and skirt from the mingled pile of our clothes at the foot of the hotel bed. “You can’t conquer a view.”

  I didn’t know what hurt worse: the fact that he had turned on me or the fact that he was right. Allen had spent the last five years conquering his dreams and earning the view. What the hell had I been doing?

  “You changed the goddamn plan, Laney. You went with your mother’s master plan instead of ours.”

  Noah’s gaze was lost to the inside of his glass as he swished the liquid around. “La verità è nel vino. Ever hear that?”

  I shook my head, unable to really speak. “Latin?” I managed.

  “Italian. It means ‘In wine there is truth.’”

  “Yeah, well.” I drained the rest of my glass with a hard swallow. In whiskey there are ghosts. “You don’t want to hear my sob stories.”

  He looked up from beneath those impossible eyelashes. “Try me.” The stare he fixed on me dug under my psyche for secrets I had forgotten I’d even placed there.

  No way. Not all of us had apps and spreadsheets to navigate us neatly through the “multiple travel platforms” of our lives.

  “Just forget it,” I muttered, and vaulted myself toward the sanctuary of the bathroom.

  • • •

  How many minutes of my life have been spent in bated breath behind a closed door?

  I looked around the pristine, impersonal hotel bathroom, as if it held the answer somewhere in its polished faucets or cool tiled floor. Nope, just the last seven years of my guilt, bouncing off the gilded hotel mirror and back into my memories. It made me want to smash the glass with my fist, but the last thing I needed was seven years of bad luck to add to my lot.

  • • •

  “Danica! What a lovely surprise, dear. Laney’s home but she’s not feeling well.”

  “I know, but I brought her some magazines and candy to cheer her up. I love your sweater! That color looks great on you, Mrs. Hudson.”

  “Well, aren’t you sweet?”

  I listened to the murmured pleasantries from behind my closed bedroom door and slowly counted seconds. Dani was always good at handling my mother. Her patience and knack for dealing with the crazy must’ve come from her father, a professor of psychology at Hofstra, and her mother, a noted animal behaviorist. I knew from experience that she was usually able to extricate herself from my mother’s interrogations in less than a minute.

  “Hey.” I heard Dani’s breathy greeting and a quick knock as I got to thirty-three.

  I cracked the door and she slipped in. “Did you get one?”

  “Yeah.” She shoved the drugstore bag into my hand. “Two, actually. Your mother really shouldn’t wear florals.”

  “I know, she looks like the bastard child of Lilly Pulitzer and Vera Bradley down there.” I hopped on one foot, and then the other. “I must’ve drunk a gallon of water while I was waiting for you. Were you coming from the Walgreens on Mars?”

  “Go, go.” She had shooed me into the adjoining bathroom and kept up a running commentary from the other side of the closed door. “I got caught up reading all the headlines in the checkout lane. Hey, remember when we were in ninth grade, and I was out sick with mono? You brought me Sassy magazines and Bubble Yum to make me feel better. I’ll never forget that.”

  I peeked into the bag and smiled. Dani had brought me the latest issue of People, a big bag of peanut butter M&M’s, and two pregnancy test kits.

  “Um, why are they already opened?”

  “I forgot my book on the train, so I read the instruction pamphlets. Besides . . . I figured you’d want to have an educated second opinion.”

  I made quick business before joining her on the edge of the bed with the magazine and offered her an M&M. “Two minutes on the one with the pink plus or minus sign. Three minutes on the one with the purple lines.”

  “I hope you washed your hands,” she joked, jostling my shoulder as she popped a fat blue candy into her mouth.

  After two surreally slow minutes,
I abandoned the magazine and went to peek.

  “Second opinion, please?” I managed to get out.

  Dani trotted into the bathroom. Her long ringlets brushed my cheek as she tilted her head to examine the first stick.

  “It’s still a minus, right?”

  Dani made a face. “A minus sign with arms? That’s a plus, honey.”

  We each held our breath and focused on the backup stick, sitting shotgun on the side of the tub.

  “Two lines doesn’t mean twins, does it?” My brain had gone numb and I had already forgotten what the directions said to look for.

  Dani hadn’t. “It doesn’t predict quantity. But it confirms you have the grade-A, quality pee of a pregnant woman.”

  The years dropped out from beneath me, causing the floor to tilt. Allen and I had had a pregnancy scare back when we were fifteen. We both got As in biology that semester, fervently studying reproduction and fertility while we played the waiting game, too broke and scared to buy a test kit back then. It had turned out to be “almost an oops,” much to our relief, and we had been fastidious about protection after that.

  Until that night at the Lake Shore Hotel.

  I gripped the cold, hard edge of the tub and brought my brain back to the present.

  “I need more M&M’s.”

  We went back into my bedroom. I paced, inhaling my favorite candy without even tasting it, and Dani sat and stared at the magazine for a while.

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “You mean interrupt the Australian tour and ruin his life? Um, no.”

  I had done the walk of shame out of Allen’s hotel room five and a half weeks prior and had punished myself by stalking Three on a Match’s tour page ever since. I had imagined he’d had sex with girls in Denver, Salt Lake, Portland, and Seattle before winging his wang across the Pacific to do assorted girls Down Under. Maybe he had a girl in every port, and I was just his safe harbor on Long Island.

  But I hoped not. If the road had to be his bride, I wanted to be his sole mistress.