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She was? That would mean Bridget was day drinking, and I’d never seen her do that. Plus, it looked like we had more in common than even I knew.When I get back home, we can get started on that whole gardening thing. I can’t say that I’ve ever touched a plant. Have you?
I finally made myself look at Justin’s text.Are you just going to ignore me? Fucking answer me. Are you alive? Dead? I mean wtf? Why can’t you answer me? Like you’ve never done something wrong? Why are you such a holier than thou bitch?
Okay. I read it once and then a second time. Justin had never spoken to me like that ever. And he’d left me with no money inthe middle of a place where I couldn’t speak the language. How had I become the holier than thou bitch?
I grabbed a pillow and smacked the bed with it. Once and then again. And then a third fucking time. There were times in life that I just had to beat the shit out of something, and my pillow always served that purpose. Oh, my dad had forgotten to include me on birthday flowers he’d sent to Hope and Bridget because it had been an oversight. No problem. I’d beat the hell out of my pillow. Justin totally screws me over and makes it my fault in exactly one day? Sure. Zeke’s guest room pillow would have to do.
My phone dinged, and I looked down at it expecting Bridget to have answered the gardening question. Only it wasn’t her. Kit had finally responded.
There he was in a picture with two beautiful women, one under each arm, both of them topless. He was in Bali. I recognized the pink and blue roof. Oh wow. He’d gone on our honeymoon. Well, good for him. Someone should be using the room. And the one on the right had really big nipples. Were they real?
But it was the words he’d sent with it that made me feel cold, not the accompanying photo.Drop dead bitch.
Twice in one day I’d been called a bitch. Maybe they were on to something, and I just didn’t know it.
I bit my lip to stop the tears that threatened and went to take a shower. I’d just get busy getting beautiful. If I were a bitch, and Kit had every right to call me that even if Justin didn’t, then I’d be a pretty one.
Halfway to the bathroom, I stopped. This was like a bandage I needed to rip off. I hadn’t checked social media, which had to make me the worst so-called influencer there ever was. I opened up my Instagram and started to take a look. It took almost no time to find myself. There I was, everywhere.
Most of the shots were of me running in my wedding gown. I’d left it in the closet but now I wanted to slash it to pieces. I scanned through fast. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. Was there anything else? Why yes, there I was with Zeke. In the café helping Renee. Talking to Isobel. I hadn’t been wrong, the ants on the back of my neck had told me I was being watched and photographed. And then it went on. Someone had gotten us in Montmartre getting our sketch done. They hadn’t bothered us and there was only one. The final one was us running before we went to eat.
Sure, there were real paparazzi all over, but anyone with a cell phone and an interest could do the same. Every human being was on display to every other human being at all times. It could have been worse. Or at least I thought that, until I found Amanda Hill. Gossip vlogger extraordinaire. She had been really invested in my wedding and even more so in the demise of it. Oh, she had a ton of things to say about me and none of them were kind. Ugly. Not worth Kit’s time. Has been. Of course, that implied I had ever been, and I wasn’t sure that could be exactly. Stupid.
I threw my phone down on the bed. I hoped we could pull off something tonight, because if Zeke wanted our photos to make my dad mad, he was going to have to hope anything could be more interesting than me running like a mad woman through the streets of Paris in a wedding dress that was beautiful and yet the most ugly thing I’d ever seen.
Or maybe it just showed my soul through its white fabric. The darkness of my worthlessness seeping through for the world to see.
That wasn’t helpful. It was a stranger saying that about me, and she was fickle. One second, she loved me, the next, Kit. Hell, I knew how this worked. She loved whoever it got her more views to love.
And Kit was entitled. I’d run out on our wedding.
And Justin…well, that one hurt. We’d never been close, but that was my brother. I put on the water, as hot as I could make it. I was going to scald these thoughts away.
Maybe it wasn’t Justin. Maybe somewhere inside of him was the sweet, quiet boy who drew as well as my mother did, who sang to himself, and who had smiled when he ate his eggs in the morning. Somewhere, that person still had to exist.
I’d thought I saw him for half a second yesterday when he’d offered to help me.
But of course, that had been fake.
I put my head under the water, and I let the hot water run over me. There would come a time when I wouldn’t have to put up with this. I would have a life that didn’t involve one second of what other people thought of me. Somehow.
I blew my hair straight. It was a very severe look for me.
Most of the time, I embraced the waves or curls, depending on the mood my hair was in that day. But I wrangled it straight and stared in the mirror at the look. I thought that Bridget and I looked less like each other than we both resembled Hope. Like this, however, the resemblance between Bridget and me was striking.
Most people would think I was crazy to have those thoughts. We all looked alike, so much so that strangers sometimes couldn’t tell us apart.
I applied my makeup darker than I’d wear on a regular basis.
My underwear and bra matched, a must have for me, and were nude so that no one could see it through the dress I was going to clothe myself in.
I grabbed it off the hanger in the closet. Someone had hung it up while we’d been out. The barely-there staff that Zeke preferred not to see too often.
I’d never wear anything shorter than it, but I’d looked up the club we were going to and sexy was the name of the game at this place. I didn’t want to look like I couldn’t keep up.
The dress was gold, sparkly, and the saleswoman had called it a mini dress. That was a good description. If it hadn’t had thick straps on it, I’d have had to go without a bra. My breasts were just at the mid-way point where sometimes I could get away with it and sometimes I couldn’t. It really depended on the dress, and lately, I only wanted to wear things that I could wear a regular supportive bra with. The bra I had on pushed my cleavage up enough that it poked through the round neckline of the dress, making me look bustier than I actually was.
I strapped on some barely-there gold shoes which were going to hurt, and I had to hope no one looked at my feet too closely. They wrapped around my ankle with the tiniest little heel that would give me a little boost, but not enough to make it so I couldn’t walk in them. As it was, my feet were going to hurt even more later. I might be hobbling tomorrow.
