Beauty in the Ashes

“I showered last night!”

Eyeing the ball of hair on my head, she chuckled, “I’m not working with that.”

“Fine, but I’m going home to shower,” I raised my chin defiantly.

She agreed, and I headed home to get clean and, in her words, “do something with that monstrosity.”

My hair wasn’t even a mess—she should have seen me when I woke up. Then she’d having something to complain about.

Once I was showered, shaved, and buffed until I shined, I figured it was safe to return to Daphne’s apartment.

“Took you long enough,” she muttered when I knocked on the door.

She dragged me into the bathroom, where she blew my hair dry so that it hung straight with a slight curl on the end. “Simple, but sexy,” she told my reflection.

When my hair was done, I was escorted to her room once more where I became her canvas.

“What are you doing to me?” I growled after ten minutes of her rubbing stuff on my face. I was terrified I’d end up looking like a clown, and clowns were not hot.

She stopped what she was doing, leveling me with a glare. “Patience.”

With that, she went back to work.

“I have on so much makeup it feels like my face weighs ten pounds,” I complained as she added another layer of foundation.

“Shush,” she scolded. “It’s not as much as you think. It’s buildable, so I keep going over your face in light layers,” she spoke slowly like I was too dumb to understand her words.

She finally laid the bottle aside and assessed me. Nodding, she went back to work, adding bronzer and blush to my face. Because of the dress, she added a shimmery gold color to the tops of my eyelids and heavy black eyeliner. After about fifty strokes of mascara over my lashes, she decided they were perfect. Last were my lips. She grabbed several tubes, twisting them out to assess the color. “No, not that one,” she muttered to herself. “Where is it? Ah! There it is!” She picked a magenta color. Holding my chin, she swiped the lipstick over my plump lips and then motioned for me to rub them together.

I mimicked her motion. “Now can I please see myself?” I begged.

“No,” she shook her head. “Dress first. You have to see the completed look.”

“I wonder why I’m friends with you,” I grumbled good-naturedly as I stood and swiped the dress off her bed.

I locked myself in the single bathroom and changed into the clingy dress. Thank God it fit, despite the fact that I was good six or more inches shorter than Daphne. The girl was a giant, and I was a shrimp.

I turned, assessing the dress and myself from all angles.

“Dang, I clean up good,” I chuckled.

I spent so much of my time in jeans and a t-shirt that I didn’t quite know what to make of the vixen reflected back at me. I was glad I had wanted to dress up this evening. It was nice to see yourself in different ways. The real me might have been a couch potato that lived in leggings and old shirts, but this me…she was capable of anything. And tonight was going to be all about having fun and being wild.

???

“This is the best night of my life!” Okay, it was safe to say that this was not, indeed, the best night of my life and it was just the alcohol talking, but I was willing to roll with it.

I stood on Cyrus’ coffee table that was pushed against one of the far walls to clear the area in the middle, shaking my ass to the beat of the song, and screaming the lyrics at the top of my lungs whenever there was actually a line that I knew.

The party had been raging for a good hour now, and more people were arriving all the time.

When the door opened and in walked a familiar figure, I let out a cry of joy. “Memphis! I love you!”

Memphis turned at the sound of my voice, sweeping his copper colored hair from his eyes. He smiled widely, and I crooked my finger in a come-hither gesture. Yes, I had basically lost all rational thought.

“Come dance with me!”

He stopped in front of me, our eyes level from where I stood on the coffee table.