The Love of My Afterlife(52)
I head into the blood pressure booth and pull open the cupboard door that has one of those wiggly Ikea mirrors glued onto the back of it. It genuinely takes me a moment of staring before I realise that the person in the mirror is me. Delphie Bookham. I look…fucking incredible. The dress hugs my body like it was custom-made for me. The silver fringing swishes when I swing from the left and then to the right. Leanne has glued the golden-tipped angel wing feathers onto the cap sleeves of the dress, making it look dramatic and glamourous. My hair has uniform waves the whole long length of it. It’s tucked behind my ears and is draped over one shoulder, showing off Em’s incredible vintage earrings.
“I didn’t have time to do actual finger waves, but I watched a YouTube tutorial on how to get the effect with tongs,” Jan says, holding up her phone and snapping pictures of my hair. “It’s come out pretty stonking! I might have a go on meself. That’ll get Dan at the deli to give me a second glance, I bet.”
I lean in to get a closer look at my face. My skin looks clear and glowy, the depth of the freckles on my nose offsetting the severity of the eye makeup. My lips are painted in a glossy burgundy colour, the tone mirrored by the pale plum blush on my cheekbones.
“How did you make my eyes look so big?” I gasp. “I look like my mum.”
“Just tricks,” Leanne says modestly. “Your eyes are already massive to begin with.”
Tears well in my massive eyes.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Leanne hisses, jumping in front of me and flapping my face with her hands.
“I…I…” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Thank you.” I look at them each in turn. “You didn’t have to do this and…you just did? Without any conditions.”
“Well, let’s say first and second round are on you.”
If this works and I get my life back, every drink Leanne and Jan ever want is on me. Forever. I’ll go to the pub with them every single week.
I say this to them. Jan pretends to faint.
“Go on. Get gone, or else you’ll be late.” Leanne grins, shooing me out the door. I give them one more round of grateful thank-yous before leaving the pharmacy.
As I walk across the road back home my face stretches into a huge smile. There is no way that Jonah won’t want to kiss me when he sees me looking like this. Absolutely no way.
I think about what kissing him might feel like. Soft, I expect. And sweet. Like chocolate mousse. Then it occurs to me that I’ve only ever kissed one person before. And that went terribly. Shit, what if it was my fault that it went badly? What if Jonny Terry was actually a great kisser and it was me who made it awkward and sloppy? My stomach lurches at the thought.
What if, after all this, I don’t know how to kiss? What if, when the time is right, I make a move towards Jonah and he can immediately spot that I have zero clue what I’m doing? And it scares him off?
I push the thought out of my head and try to focus on the way Jonah looked at me in Evermore. On the feeling of certainty I experienced in his presence.
I can do this. Merritt didn’t say it had to be the world’s most perfect kiss. Just that he had to kiss me.
It will be fine.
It has to be.
26
I wait for Cooper by his car, pulling my phone out and googling “gala etiquette” in the hopes of gleaning some tips.
“Delphie.”
I look up to see Cooper in front of me. He’s dressed in a perfectly cut black tuxedo, his usually messy hair neat and shiny. He now looks like if Timothée Chalamet had an extremely tall, extremely brooding, extremely easy-on-the-eye asshole of a brother. His eyes widen and flicker across my dress and then slowly over my face. He licks his lips slightly. I think he’s about to pay me a compliment, but instead he runs a hand over his jaw and says, “I thought in the nineteen twenties the feathers were worn in the headdress, not on the shoulders?”
“Alright, Miranda Priestly.”
“Who’s Miranda Priestly?”
I roll my eyes.
“Nice tuxedo,” I say, ignoring his question. “I’m surprised and impressed you managed to hire one to fit you at such late notice.” We climb into the car, and I see that the pens and bottles that littered the interior the other night have now disappeared. There’s a brand-new air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. The scent is called Clean Tuscan Leather. I lean forward to sniff it. Not bad. Rather pleasant, in fact.
Cooper pulls a face. “I already had a tux,” he says, as if of course every man has a tuxedo on hand for any occasion.
“Oh, sorry. Forgot you’re a fancy writer who probably goes to loads of fancy author events where they all blow smoke up your bum and give you awards.”
“Your entire view of the life of an author is madly skewed. Mostly it was sitting alone in front of a computer, worrying and occasionally stopping to answer the door or make another hot drink that I didn’t really want.”
“So pretty much the life you have now? But without any book to show for it?”
“You have a way of cutting right to the meanest comment you could possibly make in any given situation.”
I shrug, adjusting my shoulder sleeves because one of the feathers is poking into my skin. “You know how when someone says something horrid to you and at the time you never have the appropriate comeback prepared? Like, you think of something withering in the middle of the night and then fixate on it, getting more and more annoyed at yourself for not saying it in the moment?”