TWO HOURS LATER I was sitting in front of a mirror staring at someone that I didn’t know. It was me, I was in there somewhere, but I’d never worn this much makeup in my entire life. My eyes looked huge and dark. I had good skin, luck of the genetic draw, but the makeup artist had smoothed me out even more, so that my skin was flawless. Once they’d made me uniformly pale, then they’d done things with blush to give back some of the color they’d covered up, and then they’d used two kinds of powder. One to contour and one to cover over everything else. I suddenly had higher cheekbones than I’d ever had before. I couldn’t decide if they’d changed the bone structure of my face, or just carved out what was already there so I could see it?
My curly hair was both curlier and neater than it had ever been, because the hairdresser had used a curling iron to turn my mass of curls into perfect ringlets. I didn’t even know my hair could look this good. Jean-Claude had to be using a curling iron some nights when he was going onstage. Who knew?
“It doesn’t look like me,” I said, voice soft. I wasn’t really talking to anyone else.
“It does, you know,” Ru said as he stepped out of the shadows formed by the bright lights around the makeup mirror.
I used the mirror to look at him behind me. “This so isn’t me.”
“Now you look like our dark, slutty queen,” Rodina said, spilling from the shadows on the other side.
I turned to look at her, frowning. “Thanks for the ‘slutty’ comment.”
“You’re wearing fuck-me shoes and a dress that’s barely there.”
“She’s wearing it for the man she loves,” Ethan said, coming to stand behind me. “That’s romantic, not slutty.” He offered me a hand to stand. Normally I wouldn’t have taken it, but I was wearing five-and-a-half-inch stilettos. They were the highest heels I’d ever attempted and some of the narrowest, spikiest heels I’d ever tried to stand up in, let alone be expected to walk in, so I not only took Ethan’s hand, but I leaned into it.
I’d stood up on the heels before I sat back down for the last few touches of makeup and hair, and it was just as hard to stand up in them the second time. Two steps and I was clinging to Ethan’s hand. “How am I ever going to walk even the few yards to Guilty Pleasures without falling on my face?”
“We’ll help you,” Ethan said.
Ru came to take my other hand, smiling. “We will happily guard your steps as we guard your body.”
“They’re high heels, not an enemy to defend against,” Rodina said, in a voice that dripped with disdain.
“You want to try walking in heels this high?” I asked.
She looked at the shoes, then her gaze rose from them up the line of my mostly bare legs, to the shimmering, dangly edge of the beaded dress. The dress was so sparkly that every movement caught the light differently so that I felt like a blue disco ball. It had spaghetti straps, which I normally can’t wear, because I’m too well-endowed not to wear a bra with a dress like this, but they’d been prepared with the best pushup bra I’d ever worn. I didn’t even know that pushup bras could lift and separate like this.
“Come see yourself in the mirrors,” Felix, the vampire half of the couple that owned Until Death and Beyond Bridal, said as he swept the curtains to one side so the half circle of mirrors where Edward had stood earlier was revealed. I wasn’t in a dressing room, I was in the curtained area where brides would usually be getting ready, where I would be getting ready in a few months for the real deal.
“I don’t want to see, just take me to Guilty Pleasures and let Jean-Claude see. This is all for him anyway.”
Felix tsked at me, sighing heavily. He’d already made it clear that I was taking most of the fun out of the wedding prep. He supervised hair and makeup, so he hadn’t gotten the full brunt of my disdain for all things girly and bridal, but he’d seen enough. “Barnabas has gotten to clothe you all, but this is the first time I have been able to work on your hair and makeup. I want you to see yourself in it, in front of the mirrors so that we will have a place to start when we talk about how you will want your hair and makeup for the wedding.”
It was my turn to sigh. “Fine, let’s get this over with, then get me to Jean-Claude. I know the shoes are revenge for me wanting to wear comfy sweats on our last in-home movie date. I swear I will never make him dress down on date night again.”
“I’m surprised our king owned a pair of sweats,” Rodina said.
“He didn’t. He bought a designer pair just for the date,” I said, as Ethan and Ru led me through the curtain that Felix was holding. I was doing pretty well until we hit the carpet around the raised mirror, and then I held desperately to their hands, because without the support I would have gone down. I leaned into their hands like they were crutches to take the step up on the little raised platform. When Ethan put his other hand on my elbow to steady me even more, I didn’t protest. I thought Jean-Claude had finally taught me how to walk in heels until now; apparently I had a height limit for heels and I was past it.
I was so busy watching my feet to get up on the dais that I didn’t look in the mirrors until I was standing on firm ground. Ethan let go of my elbow and when I didn’t protest he let go of my hand. I didn’t fall down so Ru started to let go; I held on to him for a second, then realized if I couldn’t even stand in the shoes, date night was over unless one of them carried me everywhere. I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and let go of his hand. He hovered nearby in case I needed the help, but I was finally standing on my own.
I stared down at the strappy sandals, realizing that the shiny blue nail polish on my toes matched or at least complemented the bejeweled sandals. Nathaniel had talked me into the blue polish, a color I’d never worn before, which meant he’d known exactly what color everything would be tonight. I felt suddenly ganged up on by the men in my life. At least my fingers and toes matched, which wasn’t always the case.
“They are lovely sandals, but please look at yourself in the mirrors, Ms. Blake,” Felix said. He was trying for neutral, but I could hear the excitement in his voice; as a vampire he could have hidden it, or maybe not, maybe he just couldn’t wait for me to admire the beautification he’d done.
I looked up. There was a stranger in the mirror looking back at me. The heels made me look tall, hell I was only a half inch shorter than Nathaniel now. My hair fell in perfect black ringlets nearly to my waist. They’d done something to it so that it framed my face but didn’t spill forward like it usually did. It looked soft, touchable, but it stayed put at the same time. It was like hair magic.
The dress was made up of beads and crystals in shades of blue from navy to royal to sky to baby blue with a few black beads and shining clear crystals that winked and sparkled in the lights. The hem of the dress barely touched the bottom of my ass with a shimmering line of jewels, so it was like a necklace at the opposite end of the body. It really was a work of art, too bad it was on me.
“You are exquisite, Ms. Blake,” Felix said.
“You are always beautiful,” Ethan said, “but this is . . . you’re breathtaking.”
I finally looked at my body, my face, me and not just the hair and the clothes. The heels gave length to my legs that I hadn’t seen before. The exercise that I did to be able to save my life and the lives of others made my legs strong and the fringe of the dress hugged my curves like a sparkling caress. There was more room around my waist, because that was always smaller than the curves on either side. I was built like an old-fashioned hourglass with more muscle on my bare arms, but no matter how hard I lifted I could never muscle up past a certain point. The body was strong, firm, and feminine. There was nothing I could do to not look like a girl. I’d spent the early part of my life dressing like I was hiding everything the dress revealed. I’d even reverted back to the old way of dressing as the wedding got closer. I loved Jean-Claude, but I still didn’t see what he saw in me physically. He’d been the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, and he’d flirted with me from the beginning. I’d never understood why. Staring into the mirrors, now my face finally matched him. Admittedly he rolled out of bed looking this good and it had taken two hours of professionals to get me here, but for the first time I couldn’t argue that I was beautiful. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.
I remembered my grandmother telling me I was ugly, that no man would ever want me, and I better have a career and be able to take care of myself, but I’d held on to the thought that I looked like a paler version of my mother, and my father called her the most beautiful woman in the world. Then after two years of mourning her, he’d married Judith, who was everything my mother wasn’t. If my short, curvy, curly-haired, Hispanic mother had been the most beautiful woman in the world like he said to her constantly until the day she died, then why was his second wife tall, thin, blond, blue-eyed, and pale like him?
My brown eyes looked almost black, large, and shining in my face, framed by the dramatic eye makeup. The red lipstick had been drawn slightly wider than my lower lip so that my mouth looked pouting and full, and . . . Rodina was right, I looked like a high-end call girl.
“I take it back,” she said, and came to stand behind and to one side of me. She looked short compared to me now. She was three inches taller if we were both in flats.
“No, you were right, it’s slutty, but then I’m supposed to match Jean-Claude’s outfit and he’ll be stripping tonight.”
“Jean-Claude’s outfit will be elegant, because he’s always elegant,” Ru said.
I smiled then, and conceded that much, but I still stared at myself and didn’t know how to feel; not good was the closest I could come. I didn’t feel good about what I saw in the mirror, and even knowing the reasons why, the damage done to me, the lessons I’d taken from my childhood, none of that fixed anything. I had entered therapy thinking it would “fix” me, heal me, make me whole. I’d been right only about the healing; therapy didn’t fix you as if you’d never been broken, it couldn’t do that, but as you accepted all your broken pieces, even the ones you hated most, you gradually realized you were whole. Not because you’d never been broken, but because as you discovered your pain, all the places that hurt, scared you, made you hate others, hate yourself, all the dark stuff, you needed it. You needed the scary stuff inside you as much as the happy parts, because only by accepting all of it, warts and all, could you be whole. I was working on being whole, and as I stared at this beautiful stranger in the mirror I tried to believe it was me and to be okay with the fact that not only had my grandmother been a lying bitch, but the way my family had treated me was wrong. The man I called Dad, the man I wanted to give me away at my wedding, had told me I looked just like my mother, but never that I was beautiful in my own right, and always on his arm had been Judith, whom he called beautiful, and who was everything that my mother and I would never be.
My eyes sparkled in the mirrors, shining like the jewels on the dress and sandals. I kept my eyes wide and didn’t blink, because I didn’t know if the mascara was waterproof. I would not cry and ruin it. I felt more myself with weapons, but I needed at least a day of practice getting the gun out of the purse before I’d been happy with my timing and body memory. I’d be better off throwing the purse at them and stabbing them with the stilettos. I felt like a fucking victim in this outfit. I widened my eyes and thought the weak thought, I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry.