So…yes.
I told her all of it.
I finished with, “And now, I’m in that short Badgely Mischka mini-shift-dress I have. You know, the one with the tropical print, three-D sequined flowers and the same print sheer balloon sleeves.”
“I know it,” Mika confirmed.
“It’s too short.”
“You have great legs.”
“It’s too young.”
“You’re as young as you feel, and you look fantastic in that dress. Please tell me you’re wearing the silver sandals with the four-inch stiletto heel.”
“I’m wearing the silver stilettos,” I whispered. “It’s a fuck-me outfit, Mika.”
“It’s a fuck-me outfit, sister,” Mika crowed.
“He’s not ready to go there,” I reminded her.
“That dress is gonna make him ready.”
“He said ‘as I’ll allow myself to have you,’ which means he won’t allow himself to have me,” I stressed.
“I think after he gets a look at you in that dress, he’s going to allow himself to have a lot more of you,” she returned.
“Oh God,” I moaned, then executed a graceful fall to seated at the end of the bed I wished someone (though, not Jamie, he’d tease me relentlessly about it) was there to witness, because it was perfection.
“Just…ride it out,” Mika advised.
“How?” I snapped. “Like I said, my dearest, he’s not going there.”
“Okay, allow me to let you in on something,” she began.
“Do it fast, because I don’t have a lot of time. Jamie is waiting, and I still need to talk to Teddy.”
“Right, then. This whole yacht thing was not about you. We know you’re there. It’s about Jamie getting his shit sharp.”
Oh.
That made sense.
“If I were ever to diet, which I’d never,” she kept on.
“Never,” I agreed on a faint shiver at the very thought.
“But if I were, put me in a room with a brownie, I’m good. For a while. But not for very long. Then that brownie is in my belly.”
Completely made sense.
Chloe was genius.
And…
Oh dear God.
I was a brownie, and Jamie had been on a very long diet.