Chapter 11 Sara
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sara
This is a scam.
I know it’s not. Technically. But it’s unreal. Any second now, I half-expect Ashton Kutcher to pop out from behind a rhinestone clutch and announce I’ve been punked by capitalism.
I’m standing in the middle of Little Black Book, this absurdly bougie boutique in SoHo that smells of vanilla, power, and generational wealth. Everything is silk. Everything is shiny. Everything costs more than my car insurance.
I do not belong here.
I feel like an unpaid intern on a makeover reality show. You know, the before girl. The one who cries into a scarf while a team of well-moisturized experts debates her eyebrows.
And over in the corner? Nick. Of course. Final boss energy, posted up against a velvet chair with the quiet confidence of a man who’s never had to try twice.
His jaw could cut glass. His suit looks impeccable. And he’s just there, completely unfazed. Typing on his phone as if dragging a woman off the street and into a luxury boutique is just another Tuesday between boardroom takeovers and leaving emotional wreckage in his wake.
Meanwhile, a sales associate dressed in head-to-toe black watches me with cool detachment. She introduces herself as Bianca, her voice even and edged with the kind of calm that comes from surviving wealth, chaos, and more than one celebrity breakdown over couture.
She moves toward me with practiced grace, judgment in her eyes, the scent of Chanel No. 5 trailing behind her. Her clipboard rests in one hand, her mouth set in a smirk that doesn’t waver.
“I can just tell you’re going to be fun,” she says in that syrupy smooth voice reserved for cashmere clients and insecure women trying not to choke on the price tags. “You have such… potential.”
Potential.
Great. I’ve been here ninety seconds and I’m already a pity project.
Bianca gives me a once-over, her expression calculating, then gestures toward a rack of glimmering gowns that I know I could never afford on my own.
“Let’s start with this,” she says, pulling out a silver strapless number that somehow manages to look both aggressive and flimsy. “This silhouette is very forgiving, especially with a fuller bust. And silver is so… fresh on someone with your complexion.”
My complexion?
Bianca says it with all the warmth of a weather report. I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m nodding, stiff and awkward, barely holding it together.
She hands off the dress and I vanish into the dressing room, a velvet-draped box where the walls seem to press in, heavy with silence and scrutiny.
I peel myself out of my hoodie and jeans, pull on the dress… and immediately regret every life decision that’s led me to this moment.
It’s crunchy.
Weirdly loud.
Like if tinfoil and rejection had a baby.
I step out, trying not to trip over the hem. The bodice is doing something alarming to my chest, and not in the sexy, confidence-boosting way. In the “shoved a cantaloupe into a Ziploc” way.
Bianca’s eyes light up with fake enthusiasm. “Ooooh… now that is something.”
Something.
The ultimate non-compliment.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the triple mirror and… yeah. No. I might as well be a futuristic baked potato. A haunted disco ball. One of those birthday balloons you find under the couch a week later, sad and half deflated and inexplicably sticky.
Nick glances up from his phone just long enough to blink, once, slowly. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.
I retreat, tense and twitchy, every step a scramble to reclaim whatever dignity I have left.
Inside the dressing room, I stare at myself in the mirror and feel like shit. Not in the superficial “ugh, bad outfit” way. In the bone-deep “you don’t belong here and everyone knows it” way.
This boutique isn’t for me. It’s for heiresses and influencers and women who own garment steamers. Not broke twenty-six-year-olds who live off ramen and have to Google what “dry clean only” actually means.
I try not to cry. Or sweat. Or puke. Possibly all three.
Bianca taps on the door with what I assume is dress number two.
“Let’s try something a bit more elevated, darling,” she coos, sugar-slick and coaxing, the verbal equivalent of a gloved pat on the head. “We’re just getting warmed up.”
Warm’s not the word I’d use. I’m overheating under the crushing weight of self doubt and very expensive lining.
But I take the next dress anyway. Because apparently, I hate myself.
The second one’s worse.
Somehow.
It’s red. Bright red. “Emergency exit” red. “This will stain your soul” red. Slippery satin clings to every inch of my body with the insistence of a bad ex. The kind who shows up at your apartment at midnight “just to talk.”
I tug at the fabric, trying to ease it down my hips, but it grips my skin, desperate to stay.
The front slit cuts high, more a threat than an invitation.
The neckline plunges deep and drapes low—a style made for superheroes and fearless women, neither of which I am as I stumble through my own shadow.
But no. I look like a bloodstained shower curtain.
Still, Bianca knocks expectantly, and I panic.
So I step out.
Nick glances up from his phone again, and I catch it, just a twitch. A tiny, almost imperceptible lift of his left eyebrow. Barely there. Most people wouldn’t even notice.
But I notice.
Because it’s the universal male sign for “What in the actual hell is she wearing?”
I freeze, every nerve prickling with sharp embarrassment. Heat rushes through me, raw and unwelcome. It’s just a look, I tell myself, but in this red dress, I become the unwanted spotlight, bright, glaring, impossible to ignore.
I clear my throat. “Nope.”
Then I spin on my heel so fast I almost face plant into the dressing room wall.
Back inside, I slap both hands over my face and groan. Loudly. Dramatically. As if I’m auditioning for a telenovela titled She Died As She Lived: Humiliated in Retail Lighting.
I press a shaky hand to my lower belly.
It’s not pain. Not exactly. Just this weird, low, twisty pressure that’s been tagging along for a few days now, an uninvited guest. A clingy, suspiciously quiet ex who shows up at your favorite brunch spot and just lingers.
Maybe it’s stress.
Or bad sushi.
Or a cursed cheese stick from the back of my fridge.
Ugh, I need a distraction. I grab my phone and start furiously texting.
Sara: I’m stuck in a silk sausage casing and Nick just gave me an eyebrow.
Laura: What kind of eyebrow?
Sara: THE eyebrow.
Laura: OMG do you need to fake a fainting spell?
Tempting.
But I can’t even pretend to faint in this thing. If I fall down, I might not get back up. I’ll be trapped in a puddle of red satin and crushed dignity until Bianca and her clipboard gently poke me with a hanger.
There’s a rustling outside. Probably Bianca coming to check on me with another designer death trap. I whisper a prayer to the gods of elastic and body tape and prepare to be emotionally steamrolled by whatever’s next.
Dress number three is… a situation.
There’s a neck ruffle.
A big one.
Elizabethan-court-drama-meets-high-fashion neck ruffle. The dress is black and sharply structured, the kind that probably once strode a runway to polite applause and lofty compliments about its “architectural” design.
I look vampiresque, refined and dark.
Brooding on a windswept castle balcony, reciting poetry to the moon, sipping blood from a vintage crystal coupe.
Halfway through struggling with the zipper, I black out. Between twisting my shoulder into unnatural positions and smelling my own panic sweat, I catch a glimpse of my soul slipping away, hovering near the ceiling light.
I stagger out anyway, dizzy and breathless and fully dead inside.
Bianca lets out a sound. It might be approval. Or concern. Hard to tell with her. She says, “It’s very editorial,” and I want to crawl into the coat rack and live there.
Nick’s glance lasts only a blink. No raised eyebrow. He leans against the velvet chair, the picture of effortless control. Calm, detached, absorbed in his phone while I spiral through a fashion meltdown in real time.
I drag myself back into the fitting room and peel off the Vampire’s Revenge, muttering curses in three languages, two of which I made up.
Then comes dress number four.
By the time I force the dress over my hips, my deodorant has given up, my bangs plaster against my forehead, and sweat beads beneath a suffocating mix of Chanel No. 5 and shame.
I step out, but even Bianca looks hesitant this time. That’s when you know it’s bad.
I turn. Look in the mirror.
And lose it.
Not a loud, frantic breakdown. More the silent kind, the kind where my spirit slips away and quietly weeps into a forgotten heap of tulle and regret.
I retreat to the dressing room and collapse onto the tiny velvet ottoman, every inch of me drained, swallowed by the weight of a private defeat no one else sees.
I sit there in my underwear, surrounded by sequins, silk, and moral decay, and question every life choice that led me here.
This was supposed to be fun.
This was supposed to be sexy.
Instead, I’m having a full-blown identity crisis in a luxury boutique that smells of money and intimidation. I’m shiny, sticky, and vaguely glittery in places I shouldn’t be.
Meatball wouldn’t have let this happen. He would’ve barked at Bianca, peed on one of the overpriced ottomans, and dragged me out the front door with the kind of conviction only a stubby little dog with anger issues can muster.
I sigh and flop backward dramatically.
“I’m dying,” I whisper to the ceiling. “Tell my hoodie I loved it.”
There’s a knock at the door. Bianca again. I brace myself.
“Darling,” she says gently, “I think we’ve found the one.”
And then.
Then…
She hands me gown number five.
The dress is deep emerald green, satin smooth and unforgiving. Its sharp cut commands attention, the slit running high enough to spark whispers and cause chaos. This is the kind of dress a femme fatale wears to a black-tie gala, ready to seduce, steal, and strike with precision.
I don’t even know why I try it on.
I’m delirious. Desperate. Lightheaded from hunger and crushed self-esteem. Probably still emotionally compromised from the vampire dress. I slip into it expecting more pain, more shame, more fashion induced trauma.
But then… it fits.
Really fits.
As if it was made for me in a secret European atelier by blind couture monks who specialize in miracles.
The fabric glides over my skin with effortless luxury. The neckline is understated yet striking, framing me in a way that demands attention. The color sharpens my eyes, setting my imposter syndrome ablaze. I hesitate, afraid to face my reflection.
And when I do? I startle.
Because I don’t look like me.
I look like the woman I’m pretending to be.
The one who commands a room the moment she steps inside. The one who seduces a billionaire in an elevator without losing her nerve, and without breaking down over pad Thai three days later.
The one who’s not afraid of how badly she wants things she’s not supposed to have.
I blink and step out.
Nick looks up.
Mid-scroll.
And stops.
His phone stills in his hand.
His eyes move slowly, tracing every inch of me with quiet intensity. I’m not just a woman in a dress to him, I’m something rare, something he never expected to find again. Something he’s determined to hold onto without blinking.
The air shifts.
My heart skips a beat. My knees weaken, barely holding me upright. I clutch the doorframe, desperate for something steady.
He doesn’t say a word.
Just stares.
His gaze starts at my heels and climbs upward, every inch measured with fierce restraint. When our eyes lock, hunger flashes there, raw and silent. He wants to speak, but the words catch somewhere between wanting and needing.
The sales associate, Bianca, bless her immortal vampire soul, lets out the most delicate little cough. The kind rich people probably train for. It’s the sound of someone politely excusing themselves from the blast radius of whatever this is.
He lifts a brow. “That’s the one.”
“I don’t need a dress this expensive,” I blurt, too fast. “I need socks. And a therapist. And maybe a Costco membership.”
Bianca chooses that moment to reappear, breezing in with a tablet and a terrifyingly efficient smile. “Shall I wrap it up?”
Nick doesn’t look at her.
His eyes are still locked on mine. Quiet. Steady. Intense enough to short-circuit logic.
He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a sleek black card, never looking away from me as he hands it over.
“Wrap it up, please.”
Oh god.
This gala is going to be… interesting.