The Edge of Always(95)

I know she means business. She always means business when she has that look in her eyes: the one brimmed with excitement and determination. It’ll probably be easiest just to go this once and get it over with, or else she’ll never leave me alone about it. Such is a necessary evil when it comes to having a pushy best friend.

I get up and slip my purse strap over my shoulder. “It’s only two o’clock,” I say. I drink down the last of my latte and toss the empty cup away in the same trash can.

“Yeah, but first we’ve got to get you a new outfit.”

“Uh, no.” I say resolutely as she’s walking me out the glass doors and into the breezy summer air. “Going to the Underground with you is more than good deed enough. I refuse to go shopping. I’ve got plenty of clothes.”

Natalie slips her arm around mine as we walk down the sidewalk and past a long line of parking meters. She grins and glances over at me. “Fine. Then you’ll at least let me dress you from something out of my closet.”

“What’s wrong with my own wardrobe?”

She purses her lips at me and draws her chin in as if to quietly argue why I even asked a question so ridiculous. “It’s the Underground,” she says, as if there is no answer more obvious than that.

OK, she has a point. Natalie and me may be best friends, but with us it’s an opposites attract sort of thing. She’s a rocker chick who’s had a crush on Jared Leto since Fight Club. I’m more of a laid-back kind of girl who rarely wears dark-colored clothes unless I’m attending a funeral. Not that Natalie wears all black and has some kind of emo hair thing going on, but she would never be caught dead in anything from my closet because, she says, it’s all just too plain. I beg to differ. I know how to dress, and guys—when I used to pay attention to the way they eyed my ass in my favorite jeans—have never had a problem with the clothes I choose to wear.

But the Underground was made for people like Natalie, and so I guess I’ll have to endure dressing like her for one night just to fit in. I’m not a follower. I never have been. But I’ll definitely become someone I’m not for a few hours if it’ll make me blend in rather than make me a blatant eyesore and draw attention.

*

Natalie’s bedroom is the complete opposite of OCD clean. And this is yet another way she and I are so completely different. I hang my clothes up by color. She leaves hers in the basket at the foot of her bed for weeks before throwing them all back into the laundry to be washed again because of the wrinkles. I dust my room daily. I don’t think she has ever actually dusted her room, unless you count wiping off the two inches of dust from her laptop keyboard, cleaning.

“This will look perfect on you,” Natalie says holding up a thin, half-sleeve tight white shirt with Scars on Broadway written across the front. “It fits tight and your boobs are perfect.” She puts the shirt up against my chest and examines what I might look like in it.

I snarl at her, not satisfied with her first pick.

She rolls her eyes and her shoulders slump over. “Fine,” she says, tossing the shirt on the bed. She slides her hand in the closet and takes down another one, holding it up with a big smile that is at the same time a manipulation tactic of hers. Big toothy smiles equal me not wanting to crush her efforts.

“How about something that doesn’t have some random band plastered across the front?” I say.

“It’s Brandon Boyd,” she says, her eyes bugging out at me. “How can you not like Brandon Boyd?”

“He’s all right,” I say. “I’m just not into advertising him on my chest.”

“I’d like to actually have him on my chest,” she says, admiring the tight-fitting V-neck top made much like the first one she tried to show me.

“Well, then you wear it.”

She looks across at me, nodding as if contemplating the idea. “I think I will.” She takes off the top she’s already wearing and tosses it in the laundry basket next to the closet, then slips Brandon Boyd’s face down over her huge boobs.

“Looks good on you,” I say, watching her adjust herself and admiring what she sees in the mirror at several different angles.

“Damn right he does,” she says.

“How’s Jared Leto going to feel about this?” I joke.

Natalie spats out a laugh and she tosses her long dark hair back and reaches for the hairbrush. “He’ll always be my number one.”

“What about Damon, y’know, the nonimaginary boyfriend?”

“Stop it,” she says, looking at me through the reflection in the mirror. “If you keep raggin’ on me about Damon like you do—” She stops the brush midway in her hair and turns at the waist to face me. “Do you have a thing for Damon, or something?”

My head springs back and I feel my eyebrows knot thickly in my forehead.

“No, Nat! What the hell?”

Natalie laughs and goes back to brushing her hair. “We’re going to find you a guy tonight. That’s what you need. It’ll fix everything.”

My silence immediately tells her that she went too far. I hate it when she does this. Why does everybody have to be with somebody? It’s a stupid delusion and a really pathetic way of thinking.

She places the brush back on the dresser and turns around fully, letting the jest disappear from her face and she sighs heavily. “I know I shouldn’t say that—look I swear I won’t pull any match-making stuff, all right?” She puts both of her hands up in surrender.