by Whitley Gray
Shoulders back and arms wide, I said, “How do I look?”
“We’ll take it,” he whispered in Deborah’s direction. The man was actually breathing heavily, which made my heart race.
“Really?”
Even Deborah nodded. “I have to admit, that’s you. Well done.” She gave a little golf clap, then turned for a nearby rack, handing Aaron something on a hanger, draped in a plastic. “I believe you’ll be needing this.”
It took Aaron a few seconds to tear his gaze from me. My nipples went so hard I was surprised they didn’t slice the dress open. Finally, he took the hanger and stepped behind a curtain.
“Excuse me, ladies.”
I pointed in the direction he disappeared. “Where is he going?”
Deborah grinned. “I’m not allowed to divulge the secret, but trust me, you’re going to love this.”
Like I’d loved her previous dress choices? Oh, God.
In the online Oxford dictionary under “awkward silence,” there was a video of Deborah and me standing in the staging area while waiting for Aaron to get dressed. When I was on the verge of counting ceiling tiles, I noticed my feet getting cold and waved one foot in front of me.
“Doesn’t Cinderella need shoes for the ball?”
Deborah looked surprised at first, but then she huffed. Her expression clearly said any similarity between me and Cinderella was purely coincidental. “I suppose you do. Follow me.”
She led me into a closet bigger than the garage I worked in. Just when I thought the floor-to-ceiling file cabinets of shoes were more than enough, she turned one of them on a pivot, and a whole new rack of shoes appeared.
“What size?”
“Nine, please.” I wasn’t Imelda Marcos by any stretch of the imagination. My favorite pair of shoes was the five-year-old Timberlands I’d rescued from an outlet store for a fraction of their original price. They’d never let me down, and for all my injuries on the job, my feet remained unscathed.
Deborah turned in a circle, her gaze taking in every pair as if seeing them for the first time. Finally she reached over her head for a pair on a high shelf. “Since you put the Cinderella idea in my head and that color won’t be easy to match, maybe we should go with something color neutral.” She held out a pair of glass slippers.
I gasped and took a step back, officially standing on the train of the dress. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“They’re surprisingly comfortable. Believe me. And they’re not glass. It’s a clear material akin to plexiglass. We have a pair in every size because I never know who’ll be playing Cinderella next.” I saw the most genuine smile on Deborah, ever. “And to be honest, I have a pair at home. What grownup little girl could resist?”
I took them from her like Julia Roberts taking the jewel-encrusted necklace Richard Gere offered. She didn’t snap them away. To the contrary, the reverence in her eyes told me she respected the shoes. I had to too. They were any little girl’s dream. Even mine. And until that moment, I hadn’t known I had that dream stuck away in the back of my subconscious.
“Do I have to return them at midnight?”
Deborah cracked a smile. “No. Aaron will return the dress and the shoes for you whenever you’re ready. If I need them before, then I’ll let him know, but as of right now there’s no rush. Do try them on.”
I took them from her like they were actual crystal. In fact there were crystal bows fixed to the insole.
“Now I really need a pedicure.”
The shoes were weighty in my hands, but after years in my Timberlands, I had pretty strong legs. Never in a million years would I have thought of my work boots as good practice shoes for anything like this.
Deborah waved me off. “Actually, you’re better off with the natural look, but I do have some cream to even out your skin tone. Wearing a standout color under these will distract the eye, and if the color of the polish didn’t work with your dress, we’d have to start all over again.”
I placed them on the floor and slipped my feet into the shoes. “They fit.”
“Of course they do, dear. Walk around a bit.”
I thought I’d feel like a baby giraffe on stilts. There was nothing so incongruous to an auto mechanic as high-heeled glass shoes, but there I was. After a few yards I hadn’t tripped on myself, and my legs did look fantastic in them. I held up the hemline for a better look.
“Wow.” I had no other words for it.
“Indeed. You’ll look perfect together.”
Aaron called out from the dressing room. “Where’d everybody go? Deb, I hope you didn’t let her anywhere near a mirror.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said. “We’re in here.”
Lost in admiring the shoes, I’d almost forgotten Aaron was part of this. I didn’t have long to wonder what he’d be wearing.
“Oh, great. How deep into the vault are you? Ready or not, here I come.”
Deborah looked mildly amused, but I shivered at the way he said that.
I turned to the doorway as he filled it, resplendent in a perfectly tailored tuxedo. Hair combed, shoes shining, and jacket and shirt as crisp as a clear winter dawn. He looked as blown away as I felt when his gaze swept over me.
“You are absolutely amazing.”
My first instinct was to curtsy. My second was to ask if I really looked that bad otherwise. My third was to cry because this couldn’t be real. He looked so beautiful, he could not be real. And he could not be looking that way at me. “Wow.”
“What, this old thing?” He stroked the lapels. Had I been back in my sneakers, I’d have taken a few steps toward him and checked the feel of the suit myself, but my legs suddenly felt awkward in the glass slippers. At that moment he looked down at my feet and whistled.
“Deb, you outdid yourself. Thank you.” He pointed to my feet. “How do they feel? Can you walk in them?”
“They’re fine, but my knees might be a problem. Just looking at you…wow.” I felt an odd pressure in my chest. It was a pleasant feeling. As much as I enjoyed the view, I knew full well what he looked like without it. It tempted me to peel back the layers and find the real him again. But damn, it wasn’t fair. He looked as good in clothes as he did out of them.
He took my hand, raising the knuckles to his lips. “If I’ve rendered you speechless, I’d say I might look pretty good. You, on the other hand…” He took my hand and raised it above my head, motioning for me to turn around. I felt like a ballerina turning gracefully in a music box.
“When do I get to see what I look like?” Not that I cared so much anymore what I looked like. I saw what I really wanted.
Deborah clucked her tongue. “Not until the picture is complete.” Aaron stepped away. She fiddled with my hair on the sides, twisting and tucking, but not so tight that it gave me a headache. “Cindi can do a better job on this for you than I can, but it’ll give you a general idea.” Flipping a few strands to my shoulders, she pushed something into my hair, then stepped back, giving me one final flourish. “There. Finis.”
Behind her, Aaron adjusted himself, his knowing gaze on me. “Milady, are you ready for the ball?”
“Now can I see?”
“But of course.” The slide of his palm against mine felt like a lifeline to the real world while I was drowning in unreality. He led me back into the changing area, turning over an antique full-length mirror that might have belonged to Alice. At first I kept my focus on him because, sweet Jesus on a pony, he was so beautiful, I couldn’t stop staring. If he’d worn shining armor, it wouldn’t have looked as good on him. The man’s body was made for tailored suits.
Then I looked at myself, and a nauseating pain shot through me, like the sound of a skull hitting concrete. It wasn’t me. That person, that woman in the mirror standing beside Aaron Elias? That wasn’t me. She moved when I moved and breathed when I breathed, but I had no idea who that was.
Aaron gave my arm a gentle nudge. “You okay?”
“I look…different
.”
“You look incredible.”
That was a good word for it: incredible. A synonym for unbelievable. Unrecognizable. Unreal. Not me.
Aaron squeezed my hand as Deborah said, “Look this way. Let me get your picture.” Before I could do anything, Aaron slid up beside me, his arm around my waist tugging me against him. She raised her cell phone, and I heard a click. I don’t know if I was smiling or not. I couldn’t feel anything.
Chapter Eleven
What am I doing here?
I repeatedly asked myself that question as I looked around the restaurant, tastefully decorated in red velvet carpeting, wood-paneled walls, and lighting dim enough for privacy yet bright enough to satisfy the need to see and be seen. On the surface, it didn’t look any different from any upscale restaurant in Philadelphia. Chances were good that every person in the place had played a key role making a movie I loved, but I was afraid to look too hard for them.
I didn’t fit in here. Aaron did, but I didn’t.
He smiled and nodded at people who waved at him. I followed where his gaze went, and found people looking back at us. One man outright stared. I had no idea who he was, but his bearing and his piercing gaze told me he felt he could get away with that kind of behavior. I didn’t like him, though I had to ask myself: did I not like him because he stared or because he could see through my facade to the fraud I truly was?
A reed-like man in a tailcoat plucked two leather-bound menus from a slot. “If you’ll follow me?”
Aaron had wanted us to be noticed. He sure as hell got his wish. As we walked between the tables, conversations stopped, forks hit plates, and heads shot up. I tried to smile and look like I was comfortable, but with each step, my stomach made me doubt the wisdom of putting anything in it. Especially in a place like this, where escargot was probably the cheapest thing on the menu.
I don’t belong here.
Aaron stood behind a chair while the maître d’ stood behind another one. It took me a second to realize that chair was meant for me. I stepped in front of it and prayed he didn’t pull the chair back instead of pushing it beneath me. Enough people were staring at me. I didn’t need them laughing at me too.
In seconds, Aaron settled into his seat and was in his element. I could only hope to settle in by dessert. No wonder all the women in Hollywood were so skinny if they felt even a fraction of the way I did. Who could eat under all this pressure?
I asked, “So, what do you think?”
He beamed. “I love it. Everybody here in the same room, dressed to the nines? I feel like I’m back at the last awards show. I can only guess the food is either spectacularly good, or it’s really bad and no one has the nerve to tell the chef.”
He looked so excited. I didn’t have the nerve to tell him I was one funny look away from shrinking into a fetal position under the table.
I opened the menu to hide, praying to find something simple like a burger and fries. Unfortunately my high school didn’t offer Greek as a language choice, and that seemed to be how the menu was written.
“Do you see any prices listed?”
“No. That’s the gimmick to this place. It’s all about the pure enjoyment of food. No worrying about affording something. You order whatever looks good to you. The bill is for later. Kind of seductively hedonistic, don’t you think?”
“That’s one word for it.” Great, I was a 99 percent girl eating dinner with the 1 percent.
“You don’t like it? Personally I think it’s kind of a thrill. I could order something with gold flecks in it because I wanted it.”
I pursed my lips shut before I told him that one gold-flecked appetizer could probably cover my month’s rent. “What looks good to you?”
He scanned the list of meals. Looking at him reading, I missed him. I felt like I was sitting at the table alone. It made my heart hurt.
“I don’t know. I’m feeling like as long as I’m here, I should have something special, you know? Lobster and Kobe beef or maybe an endangered species.” He looked up, smiling and waving to someone he saw a few tables away. I tried to smile too, but the idea of eating a nearly extinct animal made me consider going vegan.
The sommelier approached the table. Aaron put the menu aside. “Perfect timing. We’d like a bottle of your best champagne.” With a nod, the sommelier whooshed away before I could ask for a lager or even a glass of water. Not that sparkly stuff Abigail drank. A plain old glass of tap water with some ice cubes would be fine. In a place like this, they probably washed the dishes in Pellegrino. The idea made me curious about the bathrooms.
“I’ve never had Cristal before,” I said.
“It’s champagne. You’re going to love it,” he said before opening the menu again. “I really don’t know what to have. What do you think?”
“I’m thinking whatever says ‘butter’ on it could be what I go with.”
He reached across the table and took my hand, stroking it with his thumb. The contact was oddly irritating. “Are you okay?”
“I’m not exactly comfortable here.”
“Would it make you feel any better if I said every man in the room wants you?” When he winked, I realized what bothered me about the place: he was enjoying this entirely too much. He wasn’t just in his element, he was basking in the ambiance. Meanwhile, I despised it.
“Which one of them do I have to screw to get out of here?”
His grin flickered but fell back in place as he released my hand. “Just me but c’mon, relax. You’re the most gorgeous woman in the room. Enjoy it.”
I hadn’t sat that stiff in my seat since I was called into the principal’s office in grade school. Oddly enough, it seemed I was under just as much scrutiny. When the champagne arrived, I debated gulping it, but that, too, was being watched. Instead I took a sip. The bubbles filled my mouth because I had a hard time swallowing. I willed myself to relax and check out the rest of the room.
He was right. People were looking right at me, men and women alike. Some averted their eyes when I saw them, but others kept watching.
“What the hell are they looking at?”
“You saw yourself in the mirror, right? Do I need to ask someone to bring us another one?”
I shook my head before looking at my hands in my lap, my fingers knotting around themselves. “I’m no big deal. They’re probably looking at you.”
“I don’t think so. They’ve all seen me before but you? You’re incredible. The way you look right now, anyone with a pair of testicles understands why men went to war over Helen of Troy. Tonight you are the next big thing to brighten their days.” He lifted his glass to me. “And I am the luckiest man in the room.”
Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe what he said was sinking in. I willed myself to unclench by a millimeter. I raised the glass and then held it out to tap my rim to his. “To us.”
His expression changed, and his hand didn’t move. “Oh. We didn’t get you a manicure.”
I looked at my free hand. Sure enough, no color, a couple of bruises under a few nails, and a smidge of grease were still there too. I immediately relaxed because it looked like home to me. “I don’t get manicures. I couldn’t get anything done at work if I had long nails.”
A deep crease formed between his brows. “But you’re not at work. You’re here. I wish we’d—”
I took my hand back and waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. I’m fine. I’d actually rather not.”
“That’s not the point. This is supposed to be all about you being special and getting the princess treatment. Don’t you want that?”
A certain heat simmered under my surface, and it had nothing to do with the champagne. “I don’t remember asking for it. A couple of beers and some steaks on the grill out on your deck would’ve been perfectly fine with me.”
He looked like I’d slapped him. Shaking his head, he recovered quickly. “Okay, maybe that didn’t come out right. What I meant was, I wanted to give you a day to feel special. Doesn’t a
woman like to be pampered maybe once in a while?”
I glanced around the room again, hoping to see an answer. People were still looking at me. I didn’t get why. Maybe they saw something I couldn’t. “I guess I’m not used to it.” I reached for the champagne and took a lot more than a sip this time.
His smile was back. The one I liked to see. The one that warmed me from the inside better than the champagne did. “Well, get used to it because this is who you are.”
Who I am? How could anyone see the real me under all this lotion, makeup, and whatever? I sipped some more and then decided “the hell with it” and knocked the rest of the drink back. Big mistake because the bubbles went right up my nose.
Aaron looked at me like he might need to call AA. “So, what did you think of the read-through?” His tone didn’t prompt me toward one opinion or another. That unnerved me because I knew what my answer was, but he wasn’t going to like it.
“It was interesting. It was like having a couple dozen people read me a story.”
“How about Frank? What do you think of the character? I think they wrote him a little differently this time. He’s not such an arrogant ass. He shows more emotion this time around. He’s growing. Well, he’s growing compared to Two. You haven’t seen it yet. I’ll see if I can get us a private screening. I’ll admit, he was a bit of an asshole there.”
I looked at the champagne bottle, willing it rise into the air and refill my glass. “He’s, uh, interesting.”
I felt Aaron watching me. His gaze didn’t feel the same as when the rest of the room did it. With Aaron, it was more intense. “Do you think I can pull off the changes?”
A fifth grader on Pixy Stix could pull them off. I was about to give up on formalities and reach for the bottle when a server hurried to the table and poured more champagne into my glass. Unfortunately the flute wasn’t big enough to hide behind, and when the guy disappeared, he took my convenient distraction with him.
“Are you, uh, going to base it on someone you knew?” My face ached from the strain of trying to look happy. I wished the restaurant provided people who could do that for me.
