Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
A fter work, I scour every store that won’t completely bankrupt me and pick out three dresses that vaguely resemble what I described to Jay, even though there isn’t one that’s totally right—and only after being reassured by the salespeople at each store, more than once, that they will honor the return policy as long as the dress hasn’t been worn and I have a copy of the receipt. (This might be my dramatic meltdown, but there’s still no way I’m paying for three dresses at full price!)
I need that moment, the one that’s in every cheesy movie, the scene I always mercilessly mock but deep down, in my secret heart of hearts, I want for myself: I need to walk in the room and have everyone stop and stare at me. Not because I’ve fallen down the stairs or said something awkward, but because I look irresistible.
And if one particular person happens to see it when that happens, that would be...tolerable.
I only need one dress to make it happen, but which dress? None of them feels exactly right. So I send out an SOS to Helen and Nina, calling in a best friend emergency, code red, this is not a drill.
Whatever else Nina and Helen might have had going on on a random Monday night, they drop it to meet me at home. I realize I’ve been calling on them to do that an awful lot lately—what with being kidnapped, then stood up, and now this—and they keep showing up. I’ve spent so long expecting people to let me down that maybe I haven’t been so good at recognizing when people don’t. Maybe men have proven themselves to be as untrustworthy as I always believed, but my friends? They have my back. I see that now. They’ve taken Kimo standing me up as personally as I would have if it had happened to one of them, and for that, I truly love them.
I might not show it, though, in the way I immediately start barking out orders once they arrive. “Which dress?” I demand in a tone I know is too harsh for the occasion, despite my best attempts to modulate it. “I need to be drop-dead gorgeous. I need his heart to shrivel up like a raisin when he sees me.”
“Got it,” Helen says, nodding briskly. “Try them each on.”
So I do. I like the shade of the first one—a midnight blue that makes my eye color pop—but the cut is too tasteful. I look like I’m going to the opera or...well, a gala, but not the kind of gala where I may or may not be wearing underwear.
The second option is flame red, and I have the perfect shade of lipstick to pair with it, but the silhouette doesn’t show off my assets the way I want it to—it’s low-cut and high-slitted, but the fabric hangs too loose, so it’s just giving a subtle peek, and I don’t want subtle. I want va-va-voom.
The last dress is hot pink and is basically a glorified tube sock, so my assets are fully on display, but I’m afraid I’ve veered from sexy Barbie into cheap dollar-store knockoff doll.
“You look great in all of them,” Helen reassures me. “Kimo—” She stops at the look I give her, immediately correcting, “He Who Shall Not Be Named will lose his mind at the sight of you in any of them.”
I shake my head, frustrated. “That isn’t enough, though. I need to be a showstopper. I need to be...Julia Roberts in the red dress in Pretty Woman , but sluttier.”
Nina, who has been quietly and thoughtfully observing me in each dress, finally speaks up: “I can do that.”
Helen and I exchange a surprised glance. Luckily, Nina is too busy examining the fabric of the dresses to notice. No offense to Nina, but the word sexy is not exactly what comes to mind when I look at her. She’s a petite fairy angel, who is delicately and devastatingly beautiful, but I’ve seen nuns who show off more skin. Literally.
“I’m talking sex bomb,” I explain to her. “I want to show off lots of skin—like more than just my clavicle.”
Nina looks up from the red dress and fixes me with a surprisingly steely gaze. “I can do that,” she repeats firmly, nodding a little at her own proclamation. I’m not sure if it’s to drive home the point to me or herself. “I’ll need to work on it here, though. My uncle won’t let me take this out of the house if he catches me with it.”
Helen and I exchange another glance. This isn’t the first time Nina’s said something about her uncle that’s set off alarms, and Helen and I have had lots of discussions about when and if we should say something about it. Well, mostly Helen has discussed while I’ve raged about what a controlling creep he is, but for now I’ve agreed to hold the peace unless Nina tells us something too distressing for me to keep it to myself?—
“Stop making faces over my head,” Nina tells us calmly, still examining the fabric. After a moment, she holds up the midnight-blue dress. “This one, I think. The silhouette will be the easiest to fix, and the color looks amazing on you.”
Nina makes me put the dress back on so she can measure and pin it how she likes. I’m beyond grateful for everything she’s doing, but I know we only have a few days until the gala, and I’m still a little worried that Nina doesn’t fully understand the “knock his socks off” memo. “You know I mean Hollywood sexy and not Utah sexy,” I pester her.
“I know,” Nina reassures me. “It’s going to be perfect. Trust me.”
* * *
The next night after work, Thad helps Nina bring over her sewing machine, and after that, she’s busily working away whenever she can. I even give her a spare key so she can come and go on her own schedule. Hour after hour, Nina toils away, confidently cutting and pinning and sewing. She’s made me swear, on pain of death, not to touch the dress when she isn’t there, and she so rarely gets so stern with me that I have no choice but to comply.
Luckily work keeps me busy enough that I’m not spending every waking moment thinking about the gala, or... him —only, like, sixty-two percent of my waking moments—and time passes quickly. Saturday morning, I wake up to find that Nina has let herself in early and is putting the finishing touches on the dress.
Even though it’s early, we call Helen over to see me try it on, because she also made me swear on pain of death to let her be there when the dress makes its debut. Still in her pajamas, Helen arrives with coffee, and sits next to Nina, handing her one of the cups, though she slaps away my hand when I try to take one too. “Not until we see the dress,” she orders.
I know the second I put the dress on that all my worrying has been for nothing.
When I walk out, Helen gasps theatrically and Nina sighs, her body sagging into the couch as she nods to herself.
Nina has reshaped the midnight-blue fabric so the silhouette is very similar to the red Pretty Woman dress, with the same off-the-shoulder sleeves and scooping sweetheart neckline. This neckline scoops even the tiniest bit lower and drapes in such a way that it looks like it could slip off at any moment, though it’s actually tightly fastened to my bodice and fully supporting the girls. The material hugs my torso and hips, but flares out with a full skirt sweeping to the floor—that part looks a lot like the original dress, but with a daring cut on both sides, almost all the way up to my hips. You can’t really see it when I’m standing still, but when I’m walking, those cuts will titillatingly showcase my legs—my number one asset, or so I’ve been told.
“It’s perfect,” I say.
“It’s perfect,” they agree.
Forget a revenge dress. This is a war dress, and I’m out to take no prisoners tonight.