Page 68 of The Accidental Beauty Queen
Fellowcontestants?Oh, so now you’re actually one of them?
The exquisite dress I’m wearing is going to my head. I’m just a temporary substitute. None of this is real. Why can’t I seem to remember that?
“You look amazing,” Lisa Ng says to me while we’re in the wings. “You’re a shoo-in for finals.”
“Thank you.” I beam. “So are you.”
She gives me a hug. Everywhere I turn, girls are embracing one another, and even though everything I’m wearing right now is borrowed—the sash, the gown, the shoes, and in a way, even the face—this moment is mine. It belongs to me and it feels as real as the pounding of my heart does when I slip out of the ballroom and push through the resort’s glass double doors, onto the veranda.
Back in our hotel room, my twin is waiting for me to return and give her the play-by-play of the evening-gown competition. Dad and Susan are probably there too. They want to take us out for dinner tonight someplace festive. I haven’t bothered to make another excuse why Ginny and I can’t be seen together, because I’m going to be a no-show.
I have no idea how I’ll explain my absence. I can’t think about that right now. My twin and our misguided charade is the furthest thing from my mind while I tiptoe through the moonlight toward the swan boats. I am a Brontë heroine, caught in a moment of weakness, stumbling toward a hopeless mistake.
A sultry breeze rustles the palm trees and whips my diaphanous gown so that the skirt floats behind me like a dandelion puff.
Make a wish.
I do. And when I reach the faraway dock, my wish is there, waiting for me with a smile on his lips and a look in his eyes I know I’ll never forget. It’s a look of reverence. Of pure, unabashed longing. It’s the way that Heathcliff probably looked at Catherine on the windswept moors, minus all the brooding and tragic revenge.
“You came,” he says quietly.
“I did.”
He comes closer to cup my face in his warm hands and rest his forehead against mine. My pulse is racing, and when Gray brushes the pad of his thumb along my lower lip, my breath catches.
“What are we doing, Hermione?” he whispers.
If he’d called me Miss Texas, I might have been capable of walking away. But he didn’t. He called me the name that can only belong to me, and so I stay. I stay, and I don’t wait for him to take the lead. I’m tired of waiting, tired of holding back, tired of hiding all the time.
“We’re making magic,” I say, and then my mouth is on his and his hands are in my hair and he’s kissing me with a passion I’ve never known before.
It’s raw, aching, and honest. And even though this man doesn’t even know my name, I’ve never been more myself, more genuine. I’m still not Meg March or Jane Bennet. I’ll always be a Jo or a Lizzie, no matter what kind of dress I wear or how I style my hair. But that’s okay, because for once, I feel like the heroine of my own story.
It’s taken pretending to be someone else to make me realize who I actually am. And when I give myself to him, I’m no longer trapped in that blurry place where I’m never sure where Ginny stops and I begin.
It’s only me.
I am myself.
And for tonight, I am his.
17
By the time I return to our hotel room, the resort is no longer bathed in moonlight. The sun is rising over the misty pink horizon, making the swan boats in the lake look as if they’re floating on flames rather than water.
I have no idea what time it is. My phone is back in the room, along with the rest of my possessions. But the hotel staff is already setting up for breakfast on the outdoor patio where I had brunch with my parents yesterday, and the emerald lawn that lies beyond the palm trees is dotted with golfers.
I’ve been out all night.
How is that possible? It feels as though I just walked out of the ballroom and into Gray’s arms.
A lot has happened since then, and the memory of the majority of it makes me blush pinker than the train of the chiffon dress that trails behind me on the lush green grass. There were sweet moments too. Hours, actually... hours in which Gray held me close and we talked about anything and everything and I laughed until my cheeks hurt.
Gray still doesn’t know the truth about who I am. But he knows all about my mom, and he knows that I was engaged a year ago and I called off the wedding after my fiancé admitted he had feelings for my sister. He knows the names of all my favorite books, and I know his. He loves John Steinbeck and Ursula Le Guin, and when he was in sixth-grade English class, he broke down in tears readingWhere the Red Fern Grows. I know that he drove his sister to all her chemotherapy appointments and he was there, holding her hand, when she died. I know little things too, like howhe hates avocados and that if he were on death row and had to choose his final meal, it would be a bowl of ramen from a little place in Tokyo where he always goes when he’s in Japan for the World Science and Technology Conference.
We’ve exchanged more than kisses, and after I left him, I’m holding on tight to everything he’s told me, every kiss, every quickened breath. I’m brimming with memories, and I don’t need to catch a glimpse of my reflection in the hotel’s glass double doors to know that I look like a woman who’s been thoroughly ravished.
But I do, and what I see gives me pause. Yes, I’m clearly a pageant girl on a walk of shame. My fancy updo is nothing but a memory, my eyeliner is smudged into dark half-moons beneath my eyes and my silver shoes dangle from my fingertips while I tiptoe on bare feet. But beyond the obvious, I see something else. There’s fire in my eyes and my lips are bee-stung, swollen with kisses. I look like a poem—something penned by Wordsworth, all dancing daffodils and smokeless air.
