Flower(35)

“All done, Charlotte,” she finally says, and I open my eyes. The reflection staring back at me belongs to someone else.

Seeing the new hair was like putting on a wig at Halloween—it looked cool, but somehow temporary—but seeing my face like this, so transformed, is like waking up from some strange dream.

“Do you like it?” Marielle asks. She drops her hands from her waist, still holding a makeup brush in her right fingertips.

I can’t take my eyes off the mirror. My lips are glossy and somehow plumper, a pink that matches my cheekbones, like I’ve just finished a quick jog in cold weather. My eyes are lined with a sultry charcoal gray, and my entire face seems brushed in creamy porcelain. I look...incredible. And yet, I still look like me.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” She smiles and unclips a cape that had been draped around my neck. I look down and am reminded of the sad shorts and T-shirt I’m still wearing.

“I think there’s something waiting for you in the bathroom,” Marielle says. She takes me down a short hallway and opens a door on the left. Inside is a restroom with white chaise lounges and ornate mirrors painted gold with ribbons hanging along the edges.

And then I see it. Draped against a wall, hanging from a hook, is a long red dress. It’s flowy, with a high neck and bare shoulders and one long slit up the leg. I had noticed it at Barneys but didn’t try it on—I knew it would be too expensive, I could tell just by glancing at it. But here it is.

This feels like too much, more than I can accept. But when I run my hands down the soft fabric, I know I have to try it on.

I strip out of my old clothes and pull the dress over my head. It settles perfectly against my body—like liquid poured over skin, like it was constructed just for me. I touch my stomach, feeling the smooth fabric, then eye myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. I look...stunning. I can’t say no to this dress. Just like I seem incapable of saying no to Tate.

Then I spot a pair of strappy black heels waiting on the floor—for me, I assume. I step into them, standing up and marveling at my height. Will I even be able to walk in these?

I fold up my old clothes, then stuff them into a plastic bag hanging from the back of the door, with Q printed on the front—clearly usually used to tote hair products.

Sucking in a deep breath, I leave the bathroom and walk out into the lobby.

Tate is standing beside the front door, staring out the window.

As if sensing me, he turns—and stops, frozen.

His expression is arrested, and for several breathless moments he’s silent, his gaze washing over me. Then his eyes meet mine. “You,” he says slowly, “are incredible.”

The heat in his eyes unsettles me and I have to force myself to exhale, to breathe, to not crumble in the wake of his gaze. “Thank you for the dress,” I say, touching the fabric along my waist. “It’s beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful,” he says, and he takes the plastic bag from me. Already it feels like a lifetime ago that I wore the clothes inside—a different Charlotte, in a different reality.

But I’m getting used to this one.

*

Il Cielo is not a restaurant—it is another world. Enchanted and magical and dripping in vines that crawl up the redbrick walls and chandeliers that hang from a sea of lights that turn everything a smoldering golden-white.

I feel like I’m in a fairy tale: some lost scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A world imagined by Shakespeare, where fairies and unrequited lovers dance and make love and confess their obsessions for one another.

Tate sits across from me in the outdoor garden, nestled into a far corner. Our waitress is a tiny, bouncy thing with a pixie haircut and rosy cheeks, which only further inspires the feeling that we’ve been transported to some romantic otherworld.

Tate watches me as we eat and it sends threads of heat across my skin. I wonder again how just a look can make me forget everything I promised myself, forget my mom’s mistakes, and Mia’s.

“Tell me about your family,” Tate says, almost as if he’s reading my mind.

I sigh. “Well, my mom had me when she was really young, and she died when I was twelve. I never knew my dad. I have an older sister, too, and she has a son named Leo. He’s almost nine months old. And we all live with my grandmother. There’s not that much else to tell.”

He levels a look at me, like he knows there’s more. “I’m sorry about your mom,” he says. “You must miss her.”

The memory of the night she died seeps into my mind, even though I try to keep it at bay. Mom and her boyfriend at the time, Ray, drove their brown Chevy straight into a concrete barrier on I-5 just south of San Clemente. They had been drinking, and were so pumped full of drugs that the police said if the car crash hadn’t killed them, they might have OD’d later that night anyway. Which is not exactly a comforting thing for a twelve-year-old to hear. But I had been eavesdropping from my bedroom doorway when the two policemen stood in my grandmother’s living room, telling her the news. Mia and I had been living with Grandma for three years at that point, only seeing my mom sporadically every couple months when she’d show up, needing a place to crash for the night.

“I do,” I say. “But it’s sort of complicated. My mom left us when we were pretty young, so I don’t know...” I shrug. “I’ve spent most of my life trying not to be like her, to be honest. That’s why I didn’t want to go out with you in the first place. She couldn’t tell a good guy from a bad one, and...” I trail off.