She was off the bed before I finished the sentence.
Sable attacked the closet like a woman on a mission from God.
I sat on the bed and watched her work, which was less “browsing” and more “conducting a hostile audit of every garment I owned.” Dresses flew past her hands like pages in a flip book – too long, too short, too safe, too much, wrong color, wrong fabric, wrong statement. She held each one up for approximately half a second, rendered judgment with a facial expression, and moved on.
“What about the green one?” I offered from the bed, trying to be helpful.
“The green one makes you look like you’re attending a garden party in 1987. Absolutely not.”
“The silver?”
“Too bridal. We’re going on a date, not a second wedding.”
“We haven’t had a first wedding.”
“Exactly. Silver sends the wrong message.”
I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling – a habit I seemed to be developing in this apartment; every room had a ceiling worth staring at – and let Sable do her thing. My mind drifted to the evening ahead. A date. A real date, with a man I’d slapped, kissed, argued with, and reluctantly admitted to having feelings for, all within the span of a single afternoon. My romantic resume was developing a structure that even the most experimental novelist would find implausible.
What would we talk about? I realized, with a jolt of something between excitement and dread, that I barely knew Caelum. Not the real him. I knew the surface – the suits, the money, the power, the way he knelt and held roses like a man who’d read about romance in a manual. But underneath? The things that made him laugh. The food he loved. The music he listened to when no one was watching. Whether he was afraid of anything, and if so, what. I wanted to know all of it, and the wanting surprised me.
“Found it.”
Sable emerged from the closet holding a dress like a knight holding a sword she’d pulled from a stone. It was black – not the flat, safe black of a work dress, but a rich, deep black that seemed to absorb light and turn it into something warmer. Sleeveless. Fitted through the bodice, with a neckline that walked the precise line between elegant and dangerous. The skirt flared just slightly at the hem, hitting above the knee.
“This,” Sable said, “is the dress.”
I took it from her. The fabric was smooth against my fingers, weighted in a way that suggested quality I couldn’t afford and hadn’t purchased. Someone – Caelum, presumably, or whoever stocked this closet – had taste that I grudgingly respected.
“Bathroom,” Sable ordered, pointing. “Go. Shower. I’ll lay everything out.”
I went.
Under the shower, with the water running hot enough to turn the glass to fog, I let myself feel the full weight of what was about to happen. I was going on a date with Caelum. Not because a document compelled me. Not because my brother’s lungs demanded it. But because I’d looked at a man and said: I want to know you. And he’d looked back and said: Let me show you.
The thought was exhilarating. The thought was terrifying. These two things, I was learning, were often the same thing.
I stepped out, toweled off, and slipped into the black dress. It fit the way a sentence fits when every word is exactly right – no excess, no gaps, just the clean, confident line of something that was meant to be. I stood in front of the mirror, and the girl looking back at me was someone I almost didn’t recognize. Not because she was beautiful – though she was, and I say that not out of vanity but out of honest surprise – but because she looked ready. For what, I wasn’t sure. But ready.
Sable appeared behind me with a brush and a mission. She worked on my hair with the focused intensity of a sculptor – pulling, pinning, releasing – until my brownish-gold curls fell in loose waves that framed my face and cascaded just past my shoulders. Then came the lipstick – red, always red, my armor and my signature – applied with a steady hand that belied the hummingbird in my chest.
“Necklace,” Sable said, holding up a delicate chain with a single pendant that caught the light like a trapped star. I lifted my hair and she clasped it around my neck. The metal was cool against my collarbone.
“Earrings.” She produced a matching pair – small, elegant, the kind of jewelry that whispers instead of shouts.
I put them on and looked in the mirror one final time. The full picture: black dress, red lips, gold curls, silver jewelry, the faintest hint of something in my eyes that hadn’t been there three days ago.
“Well?” I asked.
Sable stood back, folded her arms, and conducted a visual inspection so thorough she might have been checking a spacecraft before launch.
“Marlowe,” she said, and her voice had that trembling quality that meant the K-drama tears were approximately thirty seconds away. “You look like a woman who’s about to ruin a very powerful man’s ability to form complete sentences.”
“That’s the goal.”
“I know.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.