Chapter 7
“I don’t know about this. I don’t know, Camille.” Silas tugged at the tie and I pulled his hand away.
“We just got it right!” It had taken three different videos and a lot of tweaking by me, but it was finally on him and I didn’t want it to move.
“I like it,” Lyra volunteered, and I smiled at her.
“Doesn’t he look handsome?”
“That’s what you say to all the guys,” he told me, but his sister readily agreed with my assessment.
“Silas is very handsome. Not just today,” she stated, and he said thank you and he was going outside to cool off. I thought that he probably wanted to get away from my fussing.
I had to agree that he was handsome all the time, but Silas in this suit was something special.
He cleaned up very nicely—except he still looked like himself.
You could see the tattoos on the backs of his hands that showed past his white cuffs, for example, and his long, thick ponytail still rested between his broad shoulder blades.
You could definitely see how big he was and even when wearing a suit and tie, he still seemed like he could kick anyone’s butt.
I was hoping that wouldn’t happen to anyone at Rashelle’s wedding—yes, he would be there. She had sidled up to me the week before and explained a little problem they were having. “Uh, about Saturday,” she’d mentioned, and I had waited. “Well, you did the RSVP for two people. Is that still right?”
Months before, when I’d still been with Dax, I had replied that I would have a plus-one, but I was now minus that one. “I’m sorry,” I had said. “I didn’t even think to change that.”
“No, it will actually work out perfect. My cousin Darian just broke up with his girlfriend,” she’d told me. “I got the idea to put you two together!”
“Together?”
She had nodded happily. “You’ll hang out, dance…if you end up a couple, it’ll be such a cute story to tell about my wedding. Darian is a male escort so you know he’s good-looking, kind of, and he isn’t interested in settling down but that won’t bother you.”
“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t that bother me?”
Rashelle shrugged a little at my confusion.
“You were with a club promotor and everybody knows how many girls they get. Anyway, you’ll have fun with my cousin.
He’s a little younger than you so he’ll have lots of energy, great for dancing.
He’s nineteen,” she had told me when I hadn’t been able to speak due to my shock.
And as I’d remained mute, she’d taken my silence for assent.
“Perfect! Just ignore the seating chart when you come in and look for the family tables. Oh…” She had suddenly frowned.
“I have an uncle who’s kind of…well, we all call him ‘Uncle Horndog,’ if that gives you a clue.
But you can just sit across from him. Definitely keep your distance.
” She’d left my office and, unfortunately for her, had run right into Octavia.
They’d gotten into a protracted discussion about the sign that Rashelle had recently hung in the employee lunchroom asking us all to please refrain from reheating fish in the microwave.
It had turned into a minor skirmish that expanded beyond the noxious lunches, with Octavia accusing our paralegal of making her miss deadlines on the Four-Squared project and possibly…
she’d bent and looked into Rashelle’s eyes, but had seemed satisfied that our colleague was a human.
By the end of the day and before I’d headed out to the gym, I had talked to Silas, and he thought the whole situation was hilarious.
“Uncle Horndog,” he kept repeating, and then laughing.
But he’d also agreed with the plan I’d come up with, and I had passed it on to Rashelle.
She’d been disappointed but resigned, acknowledging that maybe her cousin was a little young for me, but he really was cute. Kind of, she had added.
My plan was that Silas would accompany me to the wedding instead of that cousin or Uncle Horndog.
The teenager who had babysat for Lyra in the past had already arrived at the house today to watch her, and Silas had apparently told someone at Chateau Moderne that he wasn’t coming, with no excuse and barely any notice.
He didn’t seem to care if they’d get upset by that.
So here we were in the final stages of getting ready.
With him outside (and hopefully not messing with his tie), I went back upstairs to sit in my room at the dressing table, a piece of furniture that I’d never had before and that I loved.
But I wasn’t sure whether I loved my hair.
I had gone back and forth about the style and I did that again now, as Lyra came in and sprawled across my bed.
Up or down? Dax had liked it down because he thought it was sexier.
He’d wrapped it around his fist and made me…
anyway, the things we’d done in bed didn’t matter now, whether I’d liked them or not.
Relationships were about giving and taking, but mostly giving.
“Why do you keep looking at yourself?” Lyra asked me, and I hadn’t realized that she’d been paying attention.
I’d assumed that her eyes were on her book, as they were most of her waking hours outside of school.
That was probably also true about her hours while she was in school, because I’d realized just the day before that she’d been sneaking books into her lunchbox.
“I’m wondering about my hair,” I confessed.
“I thought you said that it doesn’t matter how you look.”
Well, she had me there. “That’s true, but when you go somewhere fancy and put on a nice dress, it’s pretty normal to want to be at your best.”
She seemed to accept this contradiction. “I like it in the twisty thing you did. Silas will, too.”
I looked at her image in the mirror instead of at my own slightly worried expression. “Why do you think that Silas will like it?” Had he noticed my hair and said something about it to her?
“I know he will because he likes the same things I do,” she answered.
Oh. “Ok, I’ll put it up,” I agreed, and swept it into a low bun with a few dark waves framing my face.
“Could I do that to my hair?”
“Sure,” I said, and I tried to keep the eagerness out of my voice. I always reacted that way when she offered an opportunity for us to connect, but it was better to be casual. “Sure, we could practice it tomorrow.”
“Did your mom teach you how?”
“Yes, and she used to do hair as her job so she’s very good at it,” I explained. “She’s really talented at updos and she did amazing braids for the girls on my softball teams, too. She gave me and my dad all of our haircuts.”
“I never get mine cut. Neither does Silas.”
I was aware of that. Both of them had a whole lot of thick hair, too, and in my opinion?
They both could have used a trim. But my opinion didn’t matter, I reminded myself again.
I was doing my best to keep my thoughts to myself about most things.
Lately, I would only intervene when I believed that something was very wrong (I’d said that Silas couldn’t add cayenne pepper to oatmeal because maybe the color would be pretty, but the taste wouldn’t have been) or when I was afraid of harm (flipflops to school were a no, because Lyra could have tripped so easily—and I found out by checking the school website that they weren’t even allowed).
“Are we supposed to leave now? I thought you had us on a schedule,” Silas called from downstairs.
I stood up from the little velveteen stool. “What do you think?” I asked Lyra, smoothing my hands over my dress.
“I think you’re the prettiest girl I ever saw,” she told me, and I felt my jaw drop. “But you always say that looks don’t matter.”
Again, she had me. “They don’t, but thank you,” I answered. She was already reading as I walked down the stairs carrying my shoes. Then I paused at the bottom to get them on.
“Are those too small or something?” Silas asked as he watched me struggle. “Why is it so hard?”
“I’m trying to fasten the little buckles without wrinkling my dress or messing up my nails. I can’t pull on the straps because they’re delicate and I can’t find the hole for the pokey part…darn it!”
“Such language,” he chided. “Let me do it.” He knelt in front of me and put my foot up on his knee. “Hold still.”
“You almost tipped me over backwards!” I said as I grabbed the banister.
Also, was he able to see up my dress? His attention was focused on my slingback, though.
“I guess you’d be good at tiny buckles with all your origami,” I mentioned as his big hands carefully worked.
I had several of his creations on my desk, because I found them soothing to look at.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “In fact, for my next job, I’m looking to move into professional shoe buckling.” He patted the top of my foot, very gently for someone so strong. “You’re good.”
I was a little shivery, actually, probably due to the excitement of a night out.
It had been a while since I’d gotten dressed up in a fancy outfit that I liked and that I had chosen for myself.
Club nights had been all about Dax…but I had already decided that I wasn’t going to think about him.
We said goodbye to Lyra and her babysitter, and I put my ex out of my head and focused on Silas instead.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he mentioned as I reversed into the street, and he certainly didn’t mean Dax either. “I’ve been thinking about my next job.”
“Do you want to change careers?”
“Three part-time gigs don’t add up to a career,” he said. “I’d rather be like you.”
“Me?”
“Your voice goes so high when you’re surprised,” he noted, and he switched into an upper register to repeat something I’d said recently. “’Silas, were you really going to put soy sauce and cheese onto that?’”
“You would have thrown up,” I informed him.
“I happen to like both soy sauce and cheese. Who’s to say that they wouldn’t go well with chocolate cake?”
“I say.”