Under the Table(23)
Zoey took big handfuls of water and repeatedly rinsed her mouth out. It lessened the icky taste in her mouth but did nothing to weaken the brightness of all that white. She tried to brush her teeth, but the mistreated gums were sensitive, and she was afraid they would bleed. She was already envisioning the gums sloughing off and leaving her with nothing but exposed bone.
She tried to talk herself down. It was going to be dark. She would adjust her smile a bit. She tried a few subdued, controlled grins in the mirror. The ones that didn’t look faked and pained resembled lecherous grins. Maybe every time someone said something witty, she could put her glass up to her mouth and take a drink. Suddenly heavy drinking sounded like a good idea.
“You okay in there?” Ruth gave a quick knock.
“Fine,” Zoey sang. After all the arguing, the last thing she needed was her sister suspecting she was going to any special lengths for going out tonight. It was bad enough she suspected Zoey was harboring secret feelings for Tristan. She closed her mouth and opened the door.
“You took off like a bat out of hell there.” Ruth leaned against the doorway and crossed her arms. “Is your toe all right?”
“Yeah.” Zoey gave a quick glance to the slight bruise that was starting to form at the tip of her pinky toe. She put the toilet lid down, set the foot with the injured toe on top of it, and bent down to examine it, moving it around so she’d appear to be checking if it was broken. It was the perfect excuse to keep her sister from getting a look into her mouth. “I guess no dancing for me tonight. I told Tristan I would meet him at his place around seven.”
But Ruth wasn’t paying Zoey much mind. In fact, it looked like she had stopped listening. Her attention was focused on the box of tooth-whitening strips that Zoey had left on the counter. She was studying it, with a perplexed look on her face. Then Ruth shrugged and plucked the box off the counter, then tossed it in the trash.
“I meant to throw these out. There is something wrong with them. They didn’t do a damn thing for my teeth.”
Zoey didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh, cry, or scream but she refrained from making a choice because all of them would involve opening her mouth.
Chapter 9
Zoey decided to wear one of the two dresses she’d brought with her when she fled Ohio. It was nothing like Ruth’s cocktail dress, black, form fitting, thigh high, and complete with the dreaded bared arms and matching four-inch heels. Zoey’s was a more reserved royal blue with three-quarter sleeves and a flared skirt that fell just above her knees. She accessorized with black tights, ballet flats, and a half sweater jacket. She had much bigger things to worry about, namely her blinding white gums. Zoey blow-dried her hair and left it down, applied a little blush, shadow, mascara, and lip gloss, then made for the door. Not wanting to break a sweat from either exertion or anxiety, she left, telling Ruth they would meet up with her at the bar, and skipped the walking, taking a cab uptown. The entire ride she practiced ways she could be sparkly and talkative without having to fully open her mouth.
She forgot about her dilemma entirely when Tristan answered the door upon her arrival. It’s easy to keep your teeth covered when your mouth drops open.
He was wearing his skinny jeans, with a button-down white-and-black-striped shirt and a gray two-button slim-fit jacket with lapels. A jacket she didn’t remember from their trip to Barneys. He must have taken the initiative and ventured out on his own. He had used the pomade, but she still detected the scent of Old Spice, so he hadn’t gone hog wild. Ruth was going to lose her mind when she got a gander, and that was problematic, for a multitude of reasons.
“Wow.” Zoey nodded approvingly. “You do clean up nice.”
“Lady, you are on fleet!” Tristan said in appreciation, stepping back for her to enter.
“Thank you. I think.”
“Maybe that’s not it.” He shook his head before trying again. “You are on FREAK!”
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.”
“That you look perfect,” he replied before pausing, then saying softly, “Beautiful. In every way.”
He was so open. Honest. It was so refreshing not to have to fend off all the machismo, the posturing. Zoey resisted the urge to wrap her arms around his neck and go in with both lips. Although on fleet may have applied last Memorial Day weekend, she mused, when Ruth had more sailors floating through their apartment than the USS Independence. “I think the word you are looking for is fleek. You are on fleek.”
And he was.
“On fleek?” Tristan repeated, adding a chuckle. “I think I’m going to have to start paying more attention. But either way, you are it.”
Zoey felt her cheeks start to heat up under his gaze. “Thanks. And don’t worry, you shouldn’t be talking like that anyway, unless you just graduated from high school.”
When she got to the living room, another surprise was waiting for her. Mounted above the fireplace was a seventy-inch television. To her horror, it was on the E! channel, where the programming was almost exclusively about the rich, beautiful, and famous.
“I see you got a new toy.”
“I did. Did you know this thing has over three hundred channels? Mind boggling.”
“Have you christened it with an extensive channel surf?”