“Hold up! I’m going to need to breathe at some point, right?”
Emily waved a hand. “Eh, that’s what nighttime is for.”
Stacey giggled. “You say that now.” She caught my eye and shook her head. “You should have heard her complain the first time I put her in her outfit.”
I remembered those days, and I laughed at the memory. “Oh, she complained plenty at home too.”
“It just takes some getting used to, that’s all.” Emily tugged at the neckline of my underdress, making it fall in a pretty, ruffled line across my suddenly enhanced cleavage. Wow. This was not a Monday–Friday look.
“Am I done yet?” I was already weeping internally on behalf of my credit card, but screw it. It had been a long, long time since I’d indulged myself, and I was due. Part of being not mundane, I decided, was spending an irresponsible amount of money and enjoying every second of it. And, lack of breathing and slight squashing of internal organs aside, I was enjoying the hell out of this. I turned back to the mirror; from the neck down I didn’t recognize myself. My body wasn’t shaped like this. My breasts were pushed together and up, mounding nicely over the white ruffle of my underdress. My waist was nipped in, and hadn’t looked this small since I’d given birth. With the red skirts pulled up and the plaid sash around my waist, the stoplight effect had been muted nicely. The blue in the plaid had made me look a lot less like Christmas and a lot more like . . .
“Wait a second.” I narrowed my eyes in the mirror, my focus on the two behind me. “Why are you trying to make me match?”
“Match what?” Emily’s eyes were wide blue innocence, but when I shook the plaid sash at her she melted into a grin. “Okay, look, that was a complete accident. I was trying to tone down the red some and punch up the green. And it looks good, so hush up.”
Stacey nodded. “She did a good job, so I agree.”
“You agree with what? That I need to hush up?”
Now Stacey’s smile matched Emily’s, and if I didn’t love them both so much I’d hate them. “Pretty much.”
“Fine.” I dropped the sash and looked in the mirror again. They were right; I did look good. “What about my hair, though? This ponytail kind of spoils the look.” I pulled my hair tie out and ran my hands through my hair as it tumbled down. The daily frizzing had already begun, and if I left it down it was going to just get worse. Not to mention all this hair was already getting hot on the back of my neck.
But they had a solution for that too. It didn’t take long for them to drag me down the lane to where some women were set up, braiding hair for patrons.
“What is this, the grown-up equivalent of face painting?” It seemed like an extravagance to have my hair all done up for the last three hours of the day.
“We could do that too,” Stacey said. “The face painters are over by the jousting ring. We could put a little unicorn on your—”
“No thank you.” I cut her off because I didn’t need a unicorn anywhere on my body. But I let them push me down onto a stool—sitting was out of the question in this outfit, as my body didn’t bend the way it should. But I could perch just fine, so I balanced myself on the edge of the stool, my torso perfectly upright as the woman behind me took my hair in her hands.
Stacey and Emily perched on adjacent stools, watching me get my hair braided like it was the best show in town.
“Mitch is going to flip his shit.” Emily wasn’t even trying to use a Faire accent anymore.
Stacey nodded vigorously. “I can’t wait to see his face. He’s gonna—”
“This isn’t . . .” I narrowed my eyes at them, and they didn’t even try to look guilty. “I’m not doing this for him.” Okay, maybe a very little part of me was, but the hell if I was going to admit that out loud. “I’m not,” I insisted.
Emily put up defensive hands. “I’m not saying you are. Nothing wrong with dressing up for yourself. I was just making an observation.”
I tried to shake my head, but the hair-braiding lady had too tight a grip, so I had about an inch and a half of space to move. “Well, your observation sucks. I told you, there’s nothing going on between us.”
Emily gave a singsong hum. “So you keep saying. And yet I keep seeing you two together.”
“And you’re super cute,” Stacey chimed in, not helping in the least.
I huffed, which was about all I could do under the circumstances. “First of all, I’m sure that’s not true. I’m like a decade older than he is, so I’m sure it looks ridiculous. Second—” I held up a hand, cutting off Emily, who was about to interrupt. “Secondly, I don’t need to be one in that long line of women he dates. That won’t do a thing for my self-esteem.”
“I don’t know about that.” Stacey shook her head. “The long line, I mean.”
I clucked my tongue at her. “You’ve seen him at Jackson’s. You know his modus operandi. He’s always on the prowl.” I didn’t tell them about the list of women in his phone calendar. That wasn’t my business, and it sure as hell wasn’t theirs.
“No. I mean, yeah, I know that. But . . .” Stacey’s face scrunched up as she thought. “Daniel and I went out with Mitch last weekend after Faire, and it wasn’t like that. Like, you know how he’ll hang out with you, but wander off every so often when someone catches his eye? He stayed at the table with us the whole time. I don’t think he even looked around.” She shook her head hard, dismissing the memory. “I didn’t think anything of it till just now. Huh.”
“Huh,” I echoed. She was right: that was weird. But then again, he’d been trawling Jackson’s for years now, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he said something lately about running out of people to date in this small town? That probably had something to do with it.
Meanwhile, the hair braider finished her work and offered me a hand mirror.
“Oh my God.” I couldn’t say anything more than that. I looked . . . well, I didn’t look like myself. My hair was pulled back from my face in small, intricate twists that fed to the back of my head. I put up one hand, tentatively patting at where it had all been braided in a spiral. It felt like I was wearing a crown made by my own hair. My fingertips skidded over little plastic pearls that had been tucked in here and there. This wasn’t a hasty updo. This was a work of art. How long could I go before I’d have to take this down? A week? Two? Dry shampoo could work wonders, after all.
As I handed over my credit card to pay for my hair makeover, a familiar voice came from behind us. “Tired of me so soon, my good lady?”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Simon—no, I couldn’t think of him as my brother-in-law right now. Because my mild-mannered, buttoned-down brother-in-law would never saunter around in leather pants, a half-open shirt under a black leather vest, a ridiculously feathered hat, and a wide smile. No, this wasn’t Simon. This was his Renaissance Faire alter ego, Captain Blackthorne the pirate.
While the hair braider and I shared a conspiratorial smile, Emily turned to her husband with a bob of a curtsy. “Not at all, my good sir. I pray you, why would you say such a thing?”