Maid for Each Other(9)
“With your potato-shaped face?” Johnny said with a snort. “I would never.”
Potato-shaped face? I smiled like that made sense. “Okay, good.”
“Quick question while he cuts,” Edward said, crossing his arms over his chest. “The dresses I’ve curated for tonight are all black, because when Mr. Powell said you were a redhead, I couldn’t comfortably select a color without knowing your skin tone. Is that okay with you, or should I call for backup? Because now that I see you’re neutral, I can absolutely get some brighter options if you prefer.”
Was this man seriously telling me that if I didn’t like black, he could send for more dresses?
What is this life?
“Black’s my favorite, actually,” I said to Edward. “So no need for backup.”
“Excellent,” he said, looking relieved. “And I’m assuming you’re okay with classic red polish for fingers and toes?”
“You’re doing my fingers and toes?”
“Well, I’m not, but Kat is.”
I glanced at Katarina, who appeared to be unloading all the makeup in the world from the tackle box.
Yes, I know, Kat—I’m quite a project.
“Now, Abi. This is important.” Edward stepped in front of me and rested his backside on the edge of the table, giving me （finally） a friendly smile. “While Johnny and Kat work their magic, you and I will be talking through the basics of what you’ll need to know for this party. Mr. Powell prepared a dossier of information for your ingestion.”
My ingestion.
I felt like laughing at the absurdity of all this, but inhaled through my nose and kept it together.
“Okay,” I said, nodding, surprised that this man seemed to know what Declan and I were up to. We weren’t trying to rob a bank or plot a murder, but I still would’ve assumed that the guy who’d showed up at Benny’s earlier wanted our ruse to be top secret.
He must really trust this glam team.
Which was…a little weird, right?
Did Declan Powell do this often? Why did he even have a team of stylists at the ready? I’d never been wealthy so I had no frame of reference, but a makeover team didn’t seem like something that would be common for wealthy single guys to have on speed dial.
“Don’t overthink it,” Edward said, watching me with a patient smile, almost like he could read my mind. “Just channel your inner Cinderella and have fun with this, okay? It’s just one night of your life.”
Just one night of my life.
He was right. It was just one evening.
“Okay,” I agreed, nodding and feeling a smile settle over me. Because why not? This was a bizarre, once-in-a-lifetime situation I could either stress myself out about, or I could lean into and have a good time that I could use in a story someday.
I almost gasped when that thought hit me, because I could use it in a story now.
School started a few weeks ago, and it was the final year of my MFA. I had three more “packets” of written work to create and submit this semester before the thesis manuscript became my focus, and I’d been racking my brain for solid ideas. I had a notebook full of possibilities, content that could potentially work into my short story collection, but a fish-out-of-water Cinderella tale was something uniquely different from the rest.
Holy shit. This entire experience—meeting Charles and Elaine, Declan’s appearance at my job, the makeover, the party—could become such an interesting little piece of fiction.
Like a switch being flipped, my nervousness was replaced by excitement. I looked around the room and couldn’t wait to capture every ridiculous detail of this ridiculous day.
“I’m going to scooch on over to the wine fridge and fetch a nice little something,” Edward said, pointing toward the kitchen. “Because we definitely need to share a toast before officially launching this transformation, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely I do,” I replied, noticing in the mirror that my smile was obnoxiously huge. “There’s also an unopened bag of Dove caramel squares behind the milk in the refrigerator—that would pair nicely with a Riesling, don’t you think?”
6
The Pickup
Declan
Do I knock?
I stood in front of the door—my door—and wasn’t sure what to do. Obviously I had a key, but was it impolite to the stranger who’d forced her way into my life to use it?
The rules of etiquette were unclear on how to arrive for a date that you’d been forced to arrange.
Screw it, I’m going in.
I unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Abi?”
I said her name, fairly loudly, as I stepped inside.
“Abi, I’m here,” I said, closing the door behind me. “Are you ready to go?”
I’d been away in London for the past couple weeks, so the sight of my couch and TV made me instantly wish I could just change into shorts and play COD all night, or maybe destroy a plate of nachos in front of an old episode of Psych.
Either option sounded fucking amazing.
But the tuxedo on my body said otherwise.
“Abi?”
Just as I thought where the hell is she?, I saw that the balcony door was open. I doubted she was out there, because it was raining, but she didn’t seem to be anywhere else, either, so I crossed the room, tension pounding in my temple as I wondered how the evening was going to play out. Abi seemed like she had the potential to be a real pain in the ass, although Johnny’s texts throughout the afternoon had given me a tiny bit of hope.