Chapter 40 #2
I sucked in a shaky breath, and his eyes followed the movement. “Are you more nervous about the cover, or because I’m standing here?” His voice was soft, but there was a challenge behind it, a dare.
“Honestly?” I tried to sound nonchalant, but it came out as a squeak. “Not sure.”
He grinned, crooked and slow. “Good. Same for me.”
He leaned in, just enough that I caught a whiff of his cologne, amber, cedar, something that felt like exhale and home. His lips were almost brushing my ear when he practically growled, “This dress.”
The theme of the cover was Something Borrowed Something Blue so I’d chosen a more adult version of the blue dress that I’d worn to Adam’s dad’s wedding the night of our first kiss.
It was a backless, low V-neck that showed quite a bit of cleavage with spaghetti straps, form fitting and tea length hitting me mid-calf.
The material was stretchy and clung to my curves.
“Remind you of anything?” I asked coyly.
He exhaled what sounded like a groan as his knuckles brushed down my outer arms. “Are you trying to torture me?”
A full-body shiver zipped up my spine, and I willed myself not to blush.
“You look so fucking beautiful tonight.”
I felt like I was a teenager again, when the whole world pinpointed down to the crush standing next to me?
It was even the same crush. I was supposed to be a grown-up, impervious to this kind of hormonal nonsense.
Yet here I was, in a room full of magazine editors and industry powerbrokers, melting because Adam Knight had complimented me.
I needed to say something, anything, to prove I could still form words in his presence. “How are the girls?” I asked.
“They miss you.”
His words shot straight to my heart. “I miss them, too. How are you? How are you feeling?”
“I miss you.”
Somewhere in the background, the band switched from smooth jazz to a halfhearted pop cover, and the energy in the room shifted. People began gathering in loose semicircles around the stage at the front, where the event coordinator was tapping the mic, prepping for the event to begin.
The stage lights dimmed to a whitewash, casting dramatic shadows over the crowd.
The managing editor took the stage, her sequined dress reflecting every beam of light.
“Good evening, everyone! Thank you for coming to our Something Borrowed Something Blue Edition launch party…” She lifted her arms and suddenly, the entire warehouse filled with twenty foot tall images of the photo shoot.
The next few minutes were a blur because I hadn’t expected the entire venue to be covered in my face. Mine and Adam’s with some of the kids.
Adam moved a little closer, keeping his back to the crowd so I could hide behind him if I wanted. He’d always been good at this sort of wordless protection.
I was still trying to absorb all the enormous projection of our faces when Adam leaned down again, this time so close I could feel the brush of his cheek against my hair.
“Holy shit, look up,” Adam whispered in my ear.
“What?” I blinked up, half-fearing, half-knowing, and there it was—projected on the ceiling in cinematic, impossible scale, the “You may now kiss the bride” shot.
Our shot. I gasped as I tried to process the reality of three hundred partygoers staring at our probably hundred foot faces, mouths a millimeter apart, looking deeply, madly in love, like we’d been in our very own version of The Notebook “it still isn’t over” wedding edition.
The crowd’s cheering came in waves, but it was all white noise, hazy at the edges by my own body’s internal alarm system.
I heard the roar of my pulse above everything else, like a conch shell pressed to my ear.
There was an electric current running beneath my skin, a low-voltage hum made of embarrassment for myself and pride for my sister.
I wasn’t prepared for the sound of Birdie’s voice on the mic.
As soon as she began to speak, I knew something was off.
There was a quiver, a hush, like someone had gently set a hand over her mouth and then let go.
She started, “My sister Billie Bliss…” and the words cracked, Birdie’s measured, fearless cadence breaking as though she’d hit an emotional pothole she hadn’t seen coming.
Oh no, Birdie was crying.
My eyes shot to the stage. Birdie, my fierce, fearless, flawless baby sister, with tears trailing down her cheeks and a hand pressing to her chest like she was holding her own heart in place. She was looking towards me, her lips moved around my name like a lifeline.
“Why is she crying?” I spoke without moving my lips, a skill I was oddly good at. I could have killed it as ventriloquist in vaudevillian times.
Adam’s voice was low, close to my ear. “She just won Designer of the Year.”
“She did?!” I couldn’t believe I missed it because I was so fucking panicked because of the photos. Hopefully someone got it on camera.
His fingertips squeezed my hips, firm and grounding. “She did. It’s okay. They’re happy tears. She’s thanking you.”
My entire body relaxed.
On stage, Birdie squared her shoulders, the tears refusing to stop but her voice finding a strange, beautiful strength.
“You probably can’t tell from these pictures,” she started, gesturing upward and outward at the glowing shots of me and Adam, “but my sister absolutely hates getting her photo taken. Not in a false modesty way, she actually breaks out in hives if she has to be in front of a camera. But the shoot was almost cancelled and she did this…” Her voice snagged on a sob, but she smiled through it.
“She did this for me, because that’s what she does.
It’s what she’s always done, since she was four years old when our mom died and our dad left us. ”
There was a wave of gasps and awes, and although I appreciated my sister’s words, I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole. Right now.
Birdie took in a shaky breath. “Billie stepped up. She raised us, even though she was barely older than we were. She gave up her childhood, her teen years, her twenties, and even her early thirties for us, and never once complained. No one asked her to do it, and I don’t think we could ever thank her enough.
So, I’m telling you now, Sissy, thank you.
” She sniffed and turned back to the crowd.
“People say I’m brave, fearless, strong, and independent.
I would be none of those things without my sister’s sacrifices.
I never had to worry about anything, ever.
I knew I could fail, and fall and have a soft place to land because of Billie.
But she never had that. She had to succeed, be the strong one, the steady one, the safe place.
” Birdie’s voice broke again as she looked back at me.
“Every single thing I am, every award I win, every dress I design and bride who feels the most beautiful, the most confident, the most herself on her wedding day, it’s all because of you.
I am only me, because I had you. I love you. ”
The room was silent at first, perhaps stunned by a rare moment of raw emotional sincerity. Then the applause hit, a rolling thunder across the warehouse, punctuated by the sound of glasses clinking and more than a few sniffles.
Birdie rushed down from the stage and headed straight at me, her heels not slowing down. She threw her arms around my neck. I hugged her back, my eyes misty with emotion.
Bailey popped up beside us, out of nowhere, clutching a glass of champagne in one hand and a crumpled tissue in the other.
“I want in on this,” she said, and the next second she was squeezing herself into our embrace, all three of us a single, united mass of siblingness.
I could feel Bailey’s tears soak the side of my neck, and Birdie’s hand gripping mine, and for a minute I remembered what it felt like to be a kid again, in a world where the three of us were all we had, and yet, somehow, it was enough.
Knowing this could go on forever if I didn’t stop it, I said, “If either of you get snot on my dress, I’m sending you the dry cleaning bill.”
Both girls started laughing as the editor tapped Birdie on the shoulder and asked her for photos and quotes about her win. She pulled Bailey to tag along with her and I watched them go with more gratitude, pride, and love in my body than I knew what to do with.
I pressed my hands to my stomach and turned to catch my breath and was met with a flood of people, party goers, different industry professionals, stylists, all offering congratulations and compliments.
Someone told me I was “an absolute icon of functional trauma” and another person said the photos were “the emotional heart of the campaign.” Agents gave me cards and recommended me hypnotherapists to get over my fear of being in front of a camera because I had a “face for fashion.” I smiled and nodded and made the right noises, letting all of it roll over me.
Each one making me feel more and more claustrophobic.
Just when I thought I actually couldn’t breathe, Adam was right there, his arm snaked around waist.
“Do you need to get some air?” he asked, so quietly only I could hear.
No, I needed to throw up, cry, and nap for a week, but air sounded like a good starting point.
Without waiting for me to answer, Adam expertly extracted me from the three marketing execs pitching me a reality show with my sisters and gently steered me out of the party, down a back hallway lined with linen-draped serving tables and crates of unused glassware.
He found a door at the end, looked inside, and guided me into what turned out to be a storage closet the size of a generous walk-in pantry.
It smelled like lemon cleaner and faintly, inexplicably, of rosemary.
He closed the door and pressed me up against it, shutting out the hum of the party. He was standing only a foot in front of me and started to lean down, but then he moved back, all the way to the other side of the room. He leaned against the shelves.
“Better?”
No. It was better when you had me pressed up against the door.