Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 83180 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83180 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Eighteen
Hollie
I only had thirty minutes before I had to leave for Gabriel’s party, but I hadn’t spoken to Autumn for two days. I’d mastered video calling on my Daniels & Co smartphone, far quicker than I’d mastered the design software—though I was improving on that front—so Autumn and I could chat while I got ready to meet Dexter.
“What’s Dexter going as?” Autumn asked as I pulled out my onesie from the pile of clean laundry.
Dexter had blindsided me, telling me Gabriel’s birthday party wasn’t fancy dress as in we had to dress fancy, but the British version of a costume party. I’d had two days and zero dollars to find the perfect outfit.
“Maverick.”
“Top Gun?”
“Yeah. You know what guys are like. They all think they have a Navy fighter pilot on the inside waiting to get out.” Though Dexter was always Mr. Cool and Above It All, I actually thought it was refreshingly human that he had an inner child wanting to be Tom Cruise.
“And you’re not going as Kelly McGillis?”
I groaned. Autumn was usually a little more creative. “I have at least five reasons why that’s a bad idea.”
“I have enough patience for your top three.”
“One, it’s boring. It’s the first time I’m meeting his friends. I don’t want them to think I have zero imagination. Two, why should my costume be dependent on his? Maverick was Maverick. You can’t even remember Kelly McGillis’ character’s name.”
“Okay, so you could have gone as Goose. And anyway, that was only two reasons.”
“No,” I said. “I’m steering away from anything with a Simpson-Bruckheimer vibe.”
“But you want your costumes to interrelate, right?”
“No. Absolutely not,” I confessed.
“I’m totally confused,” she said. “Why not?”
I didn’t want to talk to my sister about something I didn’t want to even think about. But as usual, what I wanted really didn’t matter. “Because, you know, it’s not like we’re engaged.”
“But you’re a couple, right?”
It felt like we were a couple. It had been creeping up on me for a while, but it wasn’t a feeling I was used to, so it was difficult to recognize. Ever since our fight, things had been different. Something had shifted. He’d given his doorman my name so I could go up to his apartment without him in case he got tied up at work. He kissed me differently—his eyes were more searching before his lips touched mine. We were interconnected in a way we weren’t before, but there’d been no discussion or labelling and that was completely fine. “I don’t know what we are,” I confessed. “It’s going to look a little stalkersville if I dress in a complementary costume and he wasn’t expecting it. Anyway, I go back to my previous argument—I should have my own cool costume. My decision about what I wear shouldn’t be dictated by what Dexter’s wearing.”
“Oh my God, Hollie,” Autumn said. “I’ve never heard you so ruffled by a guy.”
“I’m not ruffled,” I said. “I’m saying the opposite—that I don’t want to be dressing a certain way because of his costume.”
“I call ruffled,” she said. “I can count on one hand the number of second dates you’ve ever been on, and with any of those guys, you wouldn’t even consider what they were wearing to a costume party. You’d just wear whatever you wanted.”
She was exasperating and a bad listener. “That’s exactly what I just said I was going to do.”
“Hmmm, maybe. But you’re not picking a complementary costume because you don’t want to freak him out, not because you don’t give a shit. It’s an important distinction.” I could almost hear her grin. “You like this guy, Hollie.”
This wasn’t news to me but hearing it out loud was kind of weird. “Yeah, maybe I do.”
Autumn squealed. “This is amazing. Why didn’t you choose to go as Princess Leia in the gold bikini? Guys love that and your hair would be perfect—”
“Absolutely not. It’s a complete cliché and . . .” I’d like to think Dexter was a little bit above the whole female objectification/Leia fantasy, but of course he wasn’t. He was a guy. With a pulse. “Just absolutely and completely not. My idea is cool. I don’t care what you say.”
“I want to meet this guy,” Autumn said. “He must be special to finally get my sister to fall in love.”
“Autumn! I am not in love with him. He’s a great guy to hang out with in London, but it’s not like it’s going to work out between us.” The soon-to-be five thousand miles between us ensured what we had was a short-term thing. Even if I did end up with a job in New York, we’d still be an ocean apart. “I haven’t even told you about the fight we had. He bought me a gift, and I had a meltdown that led to the world’s biggest argument.”