Page 86 of Oz
He shoves me. “Okay there, Shakespeare. I’ll take your very fatalistic words to heart.” He shakes his head. “Just be careful. Shakespeare didn’t know Mother. If he had, his plays would have been a mega fuckton darker. Keep her away from Oz because I think she could hurt your chances.”
Oz
Richard Ashcroft’sA Song for the Loversis playing on my iPod, the moody song seeming to twine itself around the shadows of twilight in the room. I stare at myself in the huge old mirror on Silas’s bedroom wall and wrinkle my nose. I twistaround and check the back. Then I face forwards and sigh again before shrugging.
I look down at Chewwy, who’s watching me with a fairly jaundiced air. “It’ll have to do,” I say to him, and he sighs heavily before jumping onto the sofa and settling down as if he’s been walking for hours rather than sitting in the visitor’s centre with a bone.
The door opens with a click and Silas appears. “You alright?” he asks.
“I am now,” I sigh. “Look at you.”
Silas is built for a dinner suit. His wide shoulders stretch the black material perfectly and the trousers show off the long length of his legs. His hair glows dark in the low light. His face is tanned and his eyes a clear sparkling green.
He strikes a model pose, sucking in his cheeks and looking sulky, and I laugh. “No. Just no. You look pissed.”
He grins and reverts back to normal until a strange look comes over his face.
“What’s the matter?” I ask alarmed as he comes towards me and grabs my shoulders gently to hold me at arm’s length. He sends an intense look down my body and I squirm. “What is it? Do I look wrong? It’s the first time I’ve worn a dinner suit.”
He flicks me a searing look. “You look amazing but you’re missing something.”
“Oh my God, have I got to wear a sash or something?”
He smiles but it fades quickly. “Where’s your nail varnish and eyeliner?”
I shrug. “It’s not appropriate for this. I’ll embarrass you.”
“What thefuck?” he breathes. “Where has that come from?”
“Well, your mother said–”
He breathes in deeply and flashes his teeth in a very dark smile. “What did she say?”
“Oh, she didn’t say anything horrible,” I interject quickly. I don’t need him roaring off and falling out with her. “She just spoke about all the important people coming tonight.”
I’m telling the truth. She’s never said a horrible word to me, but all day I’ve felt her eyes on me. Judging and weighing me up and finding me wanting in everything I did. The staff weren’t being managed properly and poor dear Silas needed his peace of mind. Was I really considering using candles in the gift shop from a woman on a council estate when there was a very posh candlemaker down the road she’d been at school with?
On and on. Little jibes and digs that have left me feeling … unsure. Yes. I admit it. For the first time in my life I don’t know if I’m doing right. I’ve always been so sure, so focused on myself. But now I have Silas and he means more than … I stop that chain of thought immediately.
I sigh. “I just don’t want to humiliate you and make you a laughing stock.”
For a long second there’s silence in the room and then he moves over to the table and rummages through the drawer. “Okay, come here,” he says sharply.
“What?”
He gestures. “Come here, darling.”
“I don’t know why you’re calling me–”
“I want you to come and sit down here,” he interrupts, and I huff slightly before drifting over and settling on the chair he indicates.
“What are you going to do?” I ask and then grin as he lowers himself to his knees in front of me. “Oh, okay, I am fully on board with that,” I murmur and start to unzip my fly.
I stop when he puts his hand over mine. “Lovely as that idea is, I have something else in mind.” He opens his hand to show me the small bottle in his large palm.
I swallow hard and look up. “What are you doing?”
“I am going to paint your nails,” he says in a voice that has outrage and fierceness running through it. “Because I will not have you fuckingever muting even a millimetre of your personality to suit anyone.” He glares at me. “Then you are going to outline those pretty eyes and you are going to put your fucking combat boots on with this dinner suit and be my Oz again, because that Oz is utterly perfect to me the way he is.” He takes a breath. “Now hold out your hand. I can’t claim to be an expert at this and you’ll probably look a tit, but at least you’ll look yourself again.”
