Beautiful Mistakes

"Hello, lovely," said Leigh, giggling a little as she escorted Julie into the house. "That is such a cute dress."

"Thanks, I like yours too," Julie responded.

True to her female self, Julie then instinctively assessed how Leigh looked. Julie knew

Leigh was thin, but she didn't realize how attractive Leigh could be. Granted, she had never seen her with her hair down (or even outside of work), but Leigh looked really pretty in a black strapless dress that Julie personally would have thought was way too short to be seen in public in. Her hair wasn't in its usual pony tail, it was flowing down around her shoulders and it had some curl in it, so she must have actually styled it. She was also wearing eyeliner and eye shadow, and it made her blue eyes stand out dramatically. As if she needed the height—she was already taller than Julie—she was also wearing a cute pair of black heels and no tights, leaving a lot of leg showing.

Leigh looked really pretty, Julie realized.

Suddenly, even Nanette Lapore didn't make her feel very attractive.

Why in the hell did every woman in Chicago have to have model potential?

Well, okay, maybe she was exaggerating, but Leigh had always just looked "cute" before, with her bouncy pony tail and her glasses. For some reason, it never crossed Julie's mind that outside of work she could let her hair down, put on a really short dress and look sexy and sophisticated.

Julie, on the other hand, just felt pregnant.

"So, I know you can't drink anything alcoholic, and…most of this is alcoholic, but I have bottled water in the fridge if you want some, and if you follow the line of male people trying to hog it all, I have a vegetable tray and some cheese and crackers, and the mozzarella sticks are about to come out of the oven in like two minutes, so you might want to grab some before anyone else finds out."

Julie smiled and thanked Leigh, then she let Leigh go mingle and Julie took the opportunity to explore the living area of the apartment.

It was cute. Not extremely big— or maybe it just seemed small because there were so many people—but really nice. Standard white walls, but Leigh had given them life with black and white framed pictures on every wall. A couple of the pictures were really abstract, and some other ones were of typical landmarks, but they were all really good photographs.

Aaron hadn't spotted her yet and he had followed Leigh into the kitchen for something, so she took the opportunity to slide by where Aaron had been to peek and see what else was there.

One bathroom, she found, and two bedrooms. Did Leigh have a roommate?

Before Aaron came back and spotted her, she promptly returned to the opposite corner so that he might miss seeing her when he came out of the kitchen.

She heard a little noise from within her bag, and she frowned, pulling her cell phone out.

She had a new text message from Jack.

"Hey! We are drunk and playing monopoly, come over," it read.

Rolling her eyes with a tolerant smile, she said, "I can't, I'm already at a party and I don't know where you are anyway."

She didn't bother to return her phone to her purse since she knew he would text back, and sure enough she got another chime in under a minute.

"Are you drinking?"

"Nope," she texted back, hoping he wouldn't ask why.

Julie figured he would probably eventually find out she was pregnant, but she really wasn't in the mood to tell him on New Year's Eve, and since he was drunk he would probably be especially mean if she did—because he was fully capable of being a really mean drunk.

It took a little longer, but she finally got a reply. "Good, come over. We're at Cody's place and when we get done with this game the party will really start. Come over."

"I can't, I'm at a co-worker's party and I just got here."

"I don't care. I miss you, get your lame ass here asap," he texted back in response.

Sighing, she decided just to slide her phone back into her purse.

Although she wasn't sure how it was possible, Aaron seemed to have still missed her. There weren't that many people there—maybe 12 to 15, she couldn't get an accurate count because people kept moving around and she didn't know most of them, so they kept running together.

There was one really obnoxious blonde girl in a jean mini skirt and a red sequined top that seemed to already be drunk, because she kept sitting in everybody's lap and hitting on random guys.

They didn't seem to mind, since she was clearly trashed and quite attractive, but Julie found it just a little annoying.