“Which one?” Grace prompted. “The left or the right?”
“The left.”
“There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
You have no idea, Dakota thought as Grace pressed the tape against the inside of her left leg. While Grace got the measurements she needed, Dakota’s clit throbbed so insistently she could feel the pounding in her temples. She and Grace hadn’t discussed the final price yet, but whatever the suit wound up costing, it had better be worth the torture she had to endure to get it made.
She mentally recited the alphabet backward to distract herself from the sensation of Grace’s hands sliding down her thighs and circling her hips. The first few letters came easily, but when Grace’s fingers fluttered against her overheated flesh, the only ones she could come up with were O, M, and G.
Lillie chuckled. “I don’t know about you, child, but I could use a cigarette.”
“So could I,” Dakota said. “And I don’t even smoke.”
* * *
Grace could tell Dakota was turned on. Hell, she would have to be blind not to. All the classic signs were there. From the color in Dakota’s cheeks to her rapid breathing to her hard nipples to—Well, the less she thought about the rest, the better.
Dakota wasn’t the first client who had gotten stirred up while their measurements were being taken, but she was the first whose excitement had seeped into Grace as well. It had taken every ounce of her concentration for her to remain professional as she gathered the information she needed.
While Dakota and Lillie made jokes about Dakota’s condition, Grace had been fighting a battle of her own. When she had inhaled the musky scent of Dakota’s arousal, she had wanted to immerse herself in it like she was bathing in a river.
“And we’re done,” Lillie said after she recorded the final set of measurements. She gathered her belongings and headed for the door. “I’ll let you two take it from here.”
“It was nice meeting you,” Dakota said.
“You, too, honey. Good luck. I think you’re gonna need it.”
Grace used Lillie’s departure as an opportunity to pull herself together. When she went over the final details with Dakota, she wanted to make sure her voice wasn’t husky with desire.
“What’s next?” Dakota asked, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. Grace knew the feeling.
“Let me run the numbers.” Grace factored in labor and the cost of materials to arrive at an estimate for the final price for the suit and dress shirt Dakota had commissioned. She wrote the number on a cost sheet and turned the paper around so Dakota could see both her calculations and the expected price for the completed outfit. “Does that work for you?”
“It looks perfect.”
“Let me print you a copy of the cost sheet, and you can be on your way. I’ll draft a design and contact you for final approval. After that, the work begins in earnest.”
“When do you think you’ll be done?”
“I’ll start working on the design right away and email you for approval when I’m done, but construction won’t begin right away. There’s a backlog ahead of you.”
“How much of a backlog?”
Grace consulted the list of outstanding orders. It was only April, so she felt certain she would be able to meet Dakota’s June deadline, but if adjustments needed to be made to the preliminary version of the suit, they might be cutting it close. May meant NBA playoffs and June meant draft night. During that two-month span, their clients who were already in the league and the ones who hoped to join them would be lined up outside the door. Her sisters would be right behind them, everyone hoping to score in one way or another.
“We should be done in six weeks at the outside,” she said, “but I’ll try to shoot for five. I’ll contact you when construction is complete so you can come in and try your suit on for size. If you’re not happy with the fit, we can make changes and have the final version ready for you about a week after that.”
“Sounds good.”
“Do you have any other questions?”
“Just one.” Dakota placed the customer copy of the cost sheet in her messenger bag. “May I take you to dinner tonight? I’d like to make it up to you for being late.”
“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. Plus I’ve already made plans for the evening.”
“Oh.” Dakota’s expressive face fell. “I didn’t mean to overstep. Are you seeing someone?”
“No, tonight’s a first date.” Grace folded her hands on her desk to stop them from shaking. Adrenaline was coursing through her and she couldn’t keep still. She was now free to start focusing on the date Lynette had set up for her and she didn’t know whether she should be excited or terrified.
“I know I’m supposed to say I hope everything works out between you, but I’m not going to.”
“Because?”
“I would love a chance to make a good second impression on you since I blew the first in rather spectacular fashion.”
Grace pressed her lips together to keep from saying the wrong thing. Dakota’s confidence bordered on cockiness, a trait Grace usually considered a turnoff. Usually. On Dakota, confidence looked good. It looked really good.
“I make it a rule to keep my business and personal relationships separate,” she said diplomatically. Seeing the disappointment etched on Dakota’s face, however, she was almost tempted to muddy the waters. Almost.
“No worries. Thanks for letting me know.” Dakota’s smile seemed half-hearted as she reached across the desk to shake her hand. “I look forward to hearing from you.”
Grace began to second-guess herself the second Dakota closed the door behind her. Was her excitement due to the woman she had yet to meet, or the one who had just walked out the door?
Chapter Three
Dakota had been told no before, but she couldn’t figure out why Grace’s refusal of her dinner invitation stuck in her craw. She didn’t have time to worry about it now, though. She had things to do and places to be.
Her friend Josefina “Joey” Palallos owned a bike shop slash dive bar a few blocks away from Grace’s office building. The bike shop closed at eight and the bar at ten. Dakota had only a few minutes to get over there before the shop shut down and the drinks started flowing in earnest.
She had a feeling her bike was beyond repair, but Joey had worked miracles before. Perhaps she had another one up her tattooed sleeves. If not, Dakota would have to fork over the money for a new set of wheels before she reported to work on Monday. She had been wanting to upgrade her cheap aluminum frame for a more expensive carbon fiber one for a few years now but hadn’t been able to convince herself to pull the trigger on the extra expense. Perhaps now was finally the time she dipped into some of the money she had been saving instead of hoarding it for a rainy day.
She held on to her day job because she was well aware her shelf life as a model was limited. Styles changed every season, and the roster of people showing them off for the buying public often turned over just as quickly. She needed to make as much money as she could while she could before agents, designers, and bookers turned their attention to the next hot new face waiting to be discovered.
The best-paid female supermodels routinely raked in tens of millions each year. Only a select few male models were lucky to crack seven figures. Because she was a woman who modeled menswear, she was paid more like Tyson Beckford at his peak than Heidi Klum at hers. Even though the money wasn’t as good as it could have been if she modeled bikinis and wedding dresses instead of board shorts and tuxedoes, she wasn’t willing to compromise her identity in order to pad her bank account. She didn’t like attaching labels to herself or anyone else. As a result, she had been blurring the lines between male and female for as long as she could remember. Getting paid to do so was an added bonus.
When Grace had asked her to describe her design aesthetic, she hadn’t known what to say. Just because she worked in the fashion industry didn’t mean she kept up with the latest trends. She just
knew what she liked.
When she was doing print ads or walking the runway, designers dressed her in a wide variety of suits from traditional to contemporary to avant-garde. Once the cameras were off, however, she felt most comfortable in jeans, tennis shoes, a hoodie, and a backward baseball cap. Joey called her a frat boy in training, but Joey was a fine one to talk, considering they had the same taste in clothes. And more often than not, in women as well.
People had been confusing her for a boy since she was a six-year-old girl running around in her brother’s hand-me-down jeans and faded R.E.M. T-shirts instead of the closetful of floral-print dresses and pastel ruffled skirts her mother kept trying to force on her. Now she was able to make a living being who she had always tried to be: herself. If her family could accept her as she was instead of stubbornly trying to change her into someone else, everything would be right with the world.
She wasn’t holding out hope, but perhaps a change was in the air. Her sister Brooke had invited her to her wedding and, surprisingly, had even suggested she should bring a date. Dakota didn’t plan on subjecting anyone to the stresses of a Lane family get-together, but it was good to know the option was open if she decided to change her mind.
When Dakota had come out to her parents and siblings, Brooke had taken the news the hardest. The baby of the family, Brooke was thirteen at the time. She was just becoming interested in the opposite sex and was worried about how Dakota’s revelation might change her schoolmates’ perception of her. She had locked herself in her room, complaining she would not only be friendless but dateless as well. Dakota’s brother, on the other hand, hadn’t batted an eye. Probably because the two of them had been competing for the same girls’ attention since Townsend was fourteen and she was twelve.
Their parents, on the other hand, had had plenty to say. None of it positive.
Dakota’s hometown was twenty-five minutes from Savannah and half an hour from Fort Stewart, the army base in Hinesville. Growing up so close to a military installation had its good points and its bad ones. Being surrounded by hundreds of women in uniform was very good. Being bombarded by conservative ideas about gender roles? Not so much.
In her father’s eyes, girls were girls and boys were boys. There was no in-between. No matter how many times—or how loudly—he tried to make his point, Dakota couldn’t be swayed to accept his line of thinking.
Her mother had opted to take a quieter approach. She started by reciting the usual tired quotes from the Bible and ended by resorting to her favorite criticism: “Would it kill you to put on a dress and wear a little makeup from time to time?”
Dakota wore makeup for every fashion show and photo shoot, but she hadn’t donned anything close to a dress since she had reluctantly sported a kilt for one of Marc Jacobs’s shows.
She was tempted to ask Richmond Hill, her roommate and best friend, to accompany her to the wedding in full drag, but he had a scheduling conflict. Even if his calendar was clear, she doubted he would agree to the idea. She went home every Thanksgiving out of guilt, family loyalty, or both, but Rich hadn’t returned to the small Savannah suburb he had co-opted as his drag name since they moved to New York six years ago. She couldn’t blame him. His parents had been even less accepting than hers. Why put up with the drama when you didn’t have to?
“Like the old saying goes,” she said as she waited for a traffic light to change from red to green, “you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.”
And her family of friends was one she wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. They kept her ego in check when her head threatened to get too big, and they were there for her whenever she needed them. Day or night. What more could she ask for?
Having Grace Henderson tell her yes instead of no would be a good place to start.
“Dude, what the fuck happened to you?” Joey said when Dakota walked into the Broken Spoke.
Joey’s family had emigrated from Manila twelve years ago when Joey was fifteen. Her mother made the best chicken adobo Dakota had ever eaten. Mrs. Palallos’s generous portion sizes were probably one of the main contributing factors to the recent expansion in Dakota’s waistline.
“I had a close encounter with a cab driver on Fifth Avenue. I had right of way, but he didn’t seem to agree because he tried to run over me instead of waiting for me to cross the street.”
Joey nodded in solidarity. “Been there, done that.”
“Do you think the bike can be saved?”
Joey frowned. “I don’t know, bro. Let me see.” She came around the counter to take a closer look.
The Broken Spoke was one of many specialty establishments that had popped up in Williamsburg over the past few years. Instead of selling homemade artisan ice cream or vintage clothing, Joey repaired bikes on one side of the building while her girlfriend Whitney hawked imported beer and upscale bar food on the other.
Dakota lived in Greenwich Village, but she made the trek to Brooklyn to visit the Broken Spoke every few weeks or so. She did it because she liked supporting a friend. But even more than that, the venue was an awesome place to hang out. The theme was cool, the vibe was chill, and although the food and drink selections were limited, the quality of both was out of this world.
“Would you like your usual?” Whitney asked as she poured a couple of PBRs for a pair of bearded hipsters in skinny jeans and nearly identical plaid flannel shirts.
Dakota’s favorite beer was a French brand she had discovered while waiting for a flight at Charles de Gaulle Airport several years ago. Whitney always made sure to keep it in stock so Dakota could have one when she dropped by.
“Give her something stronger than Kronenbourg,” Joey said. “She’s going to need it.”
Whitney reached for a squat bottle on the top shelf behind the bar. “One tequila shot coming up.”
“Is it really that bad?” Dakota asked.
Joey wiped her hands on a grease-stained towel. “Let me put it this way. I could fix it, but between the parts and the labor, it would cost you just as much as buying a new one.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“So what do you want to do?” Joey removed the cycling cap she wore to keep sweat out of her eyes and ran a hand over her close-cropped hair. “Do you want me to fix it, do you want to replace it with a similar model, or are you finally ready to buy the one you drool over every time you walk through the door?”
Dakota looked at the two-thousand-dollar cycle hanging on the wall like a fine piece of art. Then she downed the tequila shot in one swallow to numb the pain before she reached for her credit card. Even though she could afford the expense, that didn’t mean she liked taking it on. “Let’s do it.”
“Cha-ching!” Joey pumped her fist and began to ring up the sale. “Are you hanging out tonight, or do you have someplace to be?”
Dakota sat on a stationary bike hooked to a simulator projecting images from a past leg of the Tour de France. “The first thing I need to do is go home and take a shower, but I haven’t decided what I’m going to do afterward. Rich is having a going-away party at the Stonewall Inn tomorrow night. I’ll attend that, for sure.”
Joey handed Dakota the receipt so she could sign it and finalize the sale. “How long is he going to be on the road?”
“From May to September.”
“Four months?” Joey placed the signed receipt in the register and closed the drawer. “Damn, that’s a long time.”
“I know, but I’m happy for him. He’s been dreaming about this since we were kids.”
Rich had been working as a professional drag queen since he was nineteen. Using a fake ID card, he had honed his skills five nights a week at several gay clubs in and around Savannah for two years before he decided to take on a larger market. He and Dakota had moved to New York when they were twenty-one so he could pursue his dreams. For the first few years, both had struggled to make ends meet. Then she had signed her first modeling contract, lifting the burden of
deciding which bills to pay and which ones to let roll over for another month.
Rich was understandably frustrated back then, but he never got down on himself or gave up hope. Now things were finally going his way. After he sent in an audition tape for the most recent season of a popular televised drag competition, he made the cut, flew to California to film the episodes, and wound up finishing third in the contest. In a few weeks, he and a dozen other former contestants from the show would embark on a sixty-city international tour. When they finally returned to the States, Rich was supposed to record an album of dance music. Dakota hoped the producers had invested in Auto-Tune because although Rich was a world-class lip syncer, singing was definitely not one of his strengths.
“The party’s not until tomorrow,” Joey said. “What are your plans for tonight?”
Dakota ran her hands through her hair in a useless attempt to clear her head. She had been in a fog for the past few hours, and visibility wasn’t getting any better. “I think I’ll stay in tonight. It’s been a long day.”
Joey removed Dakota’s new bike from the wall mount, checked the tires to see if they needed air, and adjusted the seat to Dakota’s preferred height. “Do you have a photo shoot coming up or something?”
“Not for a couple of weeks.”
Joey locked the bike’s seat in place and turned her attention to the handlebars, making sure they were set at the proper angle. “Then why are you staying home on a Friday night?”
“Because I don’t have a reason not to.”
Joey tucked her wrench in the back pocket of her jeans and pressed the back of her hand against Dakota’s forehead.
“What are you doing?” Dakota asked.
“Checking your temperature. I thought I heard you say you aren’t going out tonight. I wanted to see if you’ve finally gotten over your wicked case of FOMO.”
Tailor-Made Page 3
