Owning Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 3)

I wanted to cry, and not just from the paranoia at what missing a day of work would mean for my paycheck. Every moment I spent on the bathroom floor was another moment I was beset by wave after wave of intolerable illness. In the moments I wasn’t physically sick, I was almost wishing that I was so that at least I could get it over with.

“Call me back, dammit,” I groaned, looking down at my cell phone’s blank screen. When all of this had started a few days ago, I’d rushed straight into my doctor’s office to get myself checked out. They’d poked and prodded and given me a prescription for some anti-nausea medication that I couldn’t even keep down long enough to let it take effect. I felt like a hot mess, and all I could hope for was that they’d get back to me so that I at least had some idea of just how screwed I was.

I was the kind of person who was convinced that whatever I had, it would be the thing that killed me. I was constantly checking my symptoms online, and with the way most “medical” sites worked, the diagnosis from my computer doctor was almost always something serious like the plague or cancer. This time, however, I thought that maybe I was dying. It certainly felt that way.

Is this some kind of karmic punishment? I wondered.

Oh, how I wished I could blame somebody. I desperately wanted to shift my anger onto something tangible, something more palpable than the nebulous idea of fate or chance.

The grinding buzz of my cell phone nearly made me jump out of my skin, and I scrambled to grab it, hoping it was my doctor. In my rush I didn’t even bother to look at the name or the number. I just answered.

“Doctor Harper?” I rasped.

“Nah, hun. It’s just me,” Jen replied. I loved her, dearly, but right then I wanted nothing more than to throw my phone into the toilet and curse her for getting my hopes up.

I scrubbed my hand over my face, trying to sound even worse so as to get her off the phone. “Oh, hey. I’m waiting for a call from my doctor, actually. Can we talk later?”

“I don’t think it can, babe,” she said, and now I noticed the strange note in her voice. It was like she was just waiting to let something out—to tell me a huge secret like she usually did over lunch at work. Jen was probably the biggest gossip I’d ever met. But this didn’t sound entirely like that. This sounded a little more serious.

“Are you okay?” I asked, frowning as I sat up a little straighter. The nausea was starting to pass, giving way to anxiety and concern. I’d take a tight chest over a rolling stomach any day.

“I’m fine,” she answered, and by the way the words were slightly muffled, I could tell she was chewing her lip. “But you’re going to want to get to a TV and turn on channel seven.”

I let out a sigh and slowly hefted myself up from the bathroom floor. Maybe that slimy, sick sensation had abated, but the effects of it had left my knees weak. I took a moment to steady myself on the counter before making my way out to the living room, using the walls for support. All I wanted was some toast, but in my current state, I was afraid it would do more harm than good.

I let myself half-sit, half-fall onto my couch, grabbing at the remote with an unhappy grunt before I turned on the TV to channel seven—the local garbage heap we called a news network.

“All right, Jen, I’m watching it,” I muttered. “Why did you want me to see a story about pandas at the zoo again?”

“Fuck the pandas,” she said. “Just wait a few minutes and they’ll put it on again.”

I heaved another sigh and stared blankly at the screen, watching as the tiny baby bears rolled around in their enclosure. If nothing else, they served as a decent distraction. They were so cute they almost brought tears to my eyes—which was saying something, since I didn’t even cry during Steel Magnolias.

I chalked it up to stress as another story flashed across the screen, this one about a drunk driving accident that had occurred late the night before. “Is it someone we know?” I asked Jen. She sighed.

“No, that’s not it either. Piece of shit station. Just… be patient. It’ll be worth the wait, I swear.”

“I’m really not in the mood, Jen, whatever it is,” I told her, glancing at my phone to make sure the doctor wasn’t calling on the other line. He wasn’t. Damn him. “I feel like death warmed up.”

“This won’t make you feel any better,” she warned me. “But you do need to see it.”

I was about to argue when one of the news anchors came on the screen, a clown-like grin on her face. I groaned. This was the one I not-so-affectionately referred to as Debby Smiles, the woman who never, ever let that overly cheerful expression drop from her face. It was horrifying, really, the way she talked around it, even when discussing something as serious as a Make-a-Wish sob story. Jen and I had had many a laugh as we theorized about what could possibly have caused this terrible affliction to befall her—my favorite theory was “Botox Gone Wrong,” but Jen’s involved her being a reincarnation of Pennywise.

The red lipstick did her no favors in that arena.

“And in local news,” Debby Smiles began, overly white teeth glistening under the studio lights, “Sorry ladies, but it looks like the most eligible bachelor on the planet is off the market! Julian Bastille is a married man.”

Shame burned my cheeks at the same time that rage scalded my chest. It was bad enough that I’d had

a little fling with him. Now he’s married a few weeks later?

That bastard used me to cheat on someone?

My fists clenched, nails digging into the heels of my palms. I couldn’t believe this. Sure, I’d never imagined he was some sort of upstanding gentleman, but making me complicit in something like this…

“That piece of shit,” I muttered, completely forgetting that Jen was on the other end of the line.

“What’re you talking about?” she asked. I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Nothing. Just… really wish they’d get to whatever story you wanted to show me.”

“How’s that local news, Debby?” Chet Downs, Debby’s co-anchor asked, doing his best not to look completely bored with the subject already.

Debby smiled even wider. That such a feat was possible made my stomach turn all over again. “Well, it involves a woman from our very own town, silly!”

I blinked, wrinkling my nose. “That bastard married someone from here? Why the hell am I watching—”

“Billford Hills native Elizabeth Lawson,” Debbie continued through her teeth, “is the sexy singer’s lucky lady.”

The sound of my own name echoing from the speakers of my television hit me like a punch in the gut. I felt like I was freefalling, spinning out of control and about to hit the ground at a thousand miles an hour.

“Oh, God,” I whispered. I felt sick again, but not because of whatever illness or disease I was fighting off. “Oh, God!”

“There it is,” Jen said. She sounded at least partly amused. It was infuriating. “Liz, this is some kind of joke, right? You didn’t marry Julian Bastille… did you? And if you did, you’d totally have told me and not kept it a secret since I’m your best friend and all! RIGHT?”

Unaware of my distress, Debbie Smiles just kept on rolling. “According to eyewitness accounts—”

“Eyewitness?!” I screamed, nearly dropping my phone into the couch cushions.

“—Lawson and the singer were wed in a ceremony at the Lucky Hearts Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada just a few short weeks ago.”