That was easy for him to say. When we’d gotten together, he’d been in pretty good shape. Then, he’d gone through cancer and chemotherapy, a horrible transplant, and a year of being kind of squishy. Since he’d retired, he’d gone on a stupid workout kick, and now, he looked even better than he had when we’d first gotten together. All I’d done was watch my metabolism slowly circle the drain as I got closer and closer to thirty.
“Well, I’m sorry, but all your celebrity friends are going to be there with their Swedish supermodel girlfriends,” I complained. “And I’ve gained—”
“Six pounds since Christmas,” Neil recited along with me. “Does it help at all if I tell you it’s all in your breasts?”
I plucked the top of my dress. Trish, my stylist, had been mortified when I’d said I wanted to wear the Fadwa Baalbaki gown, because it was from last season. But it was so pretty, and I’d never gotten a chance to wear it, then. Still, I’d liked the look of the high-neck and capped sleeves on the model more than on myself; I felt like I was just a pair of green-lace covered breasts bouncing around the room.
I turned and looked over my shoulder to admire the fall of teal organza ruffles, like a mermaid’s tail attached to the back of the dress. Someone might step on it and trip me, and I would break my neck, but it would be worth it. As long as I was the only person to die tonight, and it was as a martyr to fashion, I would consider the evening a resounding success.
“Now, let’s stop worrying about how you look and focus on me,” Neil said, gesturing to his tux as he walked toward me.
“If I didn’t know you better, I would think you were gunning for my position as most vain person in the family.” I tilted my head and pretended to consider, but there was nothing that needed considering. Neil looked amazing in a tux, no matter the occasion, or the cut. Tonight, he wore a sleek black modern fit. I couldn’t resist running my hands over his broad shoulders.
“You already can’t keep your hands off me.” He grinned. “I’d say this is a success.”
“Not quite.” I reached up and adjusted his bow tie, which hadn’t been skewed in the first place. “Now it’s a success.”
He kissed my forehead—a very light kiss, so as not to disturb my foundation—and said, “I’ll meet you in the foyer.”
I turned to the mirror for one last check. Trish had done my makeup flawlessly. I was good, but for something like this, having a professional touch was a must. I could never get my eyebrows to look so spot-on defined. There was a little shimmer to my blush and glossy, rose petal pink lipstick, and my face was contoured as perfectly as if I’d been Photoshopped. My hair fell in loose curls around my shoulders. I looked like I could have been going to the Oscars in the 1940’s.
But my arms still really bothered me.
Maybe Neil was right. Maybe I was being overly critical of my body. But something about my last birthday had really bugged me. I’d turned twenty-seven, so I couldn’t explain why it had been that particular birthday that set me off; I’d thought I wouldn’t start freaking out over aging until I hit thirty.
Living so close to my mother again wasn’t helping. I knew all of her comments, from suggesting we start working out together, to sending me Pinterest links for low-fat recipes, were meant in the best possible way. She wasn’t happy about her weight, and she worried that I would hit thirty and gain weight, too. Her insecurity was messing with my head.
The really fucked up part was, before she came to live with us? I couldn’t have cared less about my weight and my body. I owned one of the few mainstream fashion magazines in the market that employed a wide range of body types and ethnicities. But, somehow, I felt more self-conscious about my body than when I’d been subjected to an endless parade of traditionally slender fashion models. Now, I was obsessed, in a way that was beginning to feel really unhealthy.
I wasn’t going to think about that tonight. This evening wasn’t about my arms, or my dress, or me, in general. It was all about Neil and his amazing accomplishment. I wasn’t going to let myself bring both of us down.
Mom and our driver, Tony, were away on a romantic ski trip to the Berkshires. Tony had a timeshare at a resort, and his week had overlapped this reception. I think Neil was kind of relieved. He and Mom clashed on a lot of things, and many of them were, unfortunately, related to differences in their upbringing. While I had learned to adapt to a lot of what I thought of as “rich people life”, Mom was living in our seven-million-dollar guest house but doing her shopping off QVC. It wasn’t that Neil was a snob, but he had no experience with people who weren’t born with silver spoons jammed in every possible orifice. My mom made him extremely nervous.
Since we didn’t have a chauffer tonight, Neil decided to drive us. He grumbled about how he shouldn’t have brought the flashy supercar, because high performance tires apparently weren’t that “high performance” in snow. And it was really coming down. We rode the short distance to the center in the… I couldn’t remember the name. Keurig? Something with a K, slipping around the corners a little.
“I hope no one runs over a valet,” I said as we pulled up, and I was only half-joking. My phone peeped from within my purse.
As I scrambled to answer, Neil echoed, “And I hope you don’t plan on answering your phone all evening.”
Ugh, he had such an attitude about how I was allegedly “tethered” to technology. I ignored him. “It’s Emma.”
“Tell her to give me an early birthday present and show up on time,” he said, only half-serious.
I answered the call as we stepped out of the car. “Emma?”
“Don’t be mad,” she said. I heard Olivia fussing close to the phone. “We’re on our way, right now.”
“It’s a party. You can be fashionably late.” I shot Neil a recriminating look when he made an impatient noise. “I have to get off the phone, because your father doesn’t want me to have any communication with the outside world.”
“You answered my call at the party?” Emma asked, her tone withering. Almost as withering as her father’s could sometimes be.
“Look, you both need to get off my back. I can’t help it if I’m in constant demand.” But they were both right. Guests were already arriving; I couldn’t walk through the front doors on my phone, like I was running in to shop at Barney’s. “Okay, going now.”
I hung up and slipped my phone into my clutch.
We weren’t early, but we weren’t the last to arrive. Neil didn’t like the idea of “making an entrance” and diverting the attention from the center to himself, which was pretty stupid, in my opinion. His name was on the side of the freaking building.
A black awning stretched across the sidewalk for arriving guests. Reporters and photographers crowded behind velvet ropes. Enough of Neil’s celebrity acquaintances had RSVPed that we’d expected this. As soon as we stepped out of the car, a few flashes popped, but nothing compared to whoever had gone in ahead of us. I thought it might have been Khloe Kardashian.