Page 8 of The Hot Mess

“How long are you staying this time?” she asked.

There was no way in hell I was going to tell her about Lucas’s offer. I’d never hear the end of it.

“A few months,” I told her. “To help out around Heartstring mostly. I might take a few small trips…just for fun. It’ll be nice for you and me to have the chance to spend more time together.”

“What would be nice is if you were around more all the time,” she suggested. “Especially during the holidays. It gets lonely here when you’re gone.”

“You’re barely ever here. Didn’t you just spend three weeks in the Bahamas?”

Once again, she grew silent and stubborn as ever. If I ended up taking Lucas’s offer, I could be around for Izzy more. Neither of us were in any rush to start families of our own, and maybe we never would be. Maybe investing more time in our relationship, the only family either of us had left, would be good for both of us.

The rest of lunch was less tense. We gossiped about people we knew and all the divorces and drama that had gone down since I was last in town. People with a lot of money always had the most drama. They got bored and had nothing better to do than cause a big stir every few weeks or months. It was an endless revolving door of scandal, like a soap opera. And it always entertained me and Izzy. We got that from our mother too, I guessed.

“It really is good to see you,” I told her again as another wave of our laughter faded.

“You too, big brother. Cheers.” She lifted her glass to mine and we both drank.

4

Jada

Istared down the reflection in my bedroom mirror, frowning at what I saw. My long mousy brown hair was always braided off to the side in a dull flop. My glasses weren’t quite as trendy as what my sister wore. They were simple frames. Everything about my look was simple. The less time I spent on my appearance, the more time I had for reading and daydreaming.

Not anymore, I reminded myself. The goal was to stop living through books and fantasies, and to start making some of those things come true. I couldn’t think of a single book I had read where the heroine’s description matched my current one.

I started digging through my closet for an outfit that didn’t exist. I thought maybe I had bought something at one point on a whim. One of those ‘I don’t know when I’ll ever wear this’ kind of dresses. But I was quickly remembering that whenever I found something like that on a rare shopping trip, I’d talk myself out of buying it.

I needed neweverything. New hair, new clothes. A whole new look and a whole new me. But if it was so easy to do, I would have done it by now. I was going to need some help. I would start interviewing for the new campaign that week, and wanted to come at it as the new me…not the old me.

The only real friends I had were the other members of my book club. I imagined turning to one of them for help. But Jane was more skilled in decorating apartments than she was people. Her own simple attire said as much. Sure, she was chic. But she was also middle-aged and didn’t exactly exude the vibes of the new me I hoped to invent.

Lucy was many wonderful things, but fashionable was not one of them. While Magda was ideal for giving out makeovers, I imagined her forcing me into crazy expensive and ridiculous frocks that only she could pull off.

There was my sister. But the interrogation I imagined getting with such a request made it far from worth it.

I paced my room, thinking about everyone I knew until it finally occurred to me. Victoria! Lucas’s wife specialized in PR, including people’s image and attitude. If there was anyone in my life who could point me in the right direction, it was her.

I reached out to her and set up a lunch for the following day. I was a little nervous going to meet her on my own. When she and Lucas got engaged, Camille and I spent some time with her to help plan the wedding and things. But she and I had never really been close, and I couldn’t think of many occasions where we had been alone together.

Even after getting married and having a baby, Victoria maintained her fit physique and fashionable attire. She showed up in a designer pantsuit as if she was still working in a big office like mine, even though I knew she mostly worked from home now. Of course her home office was nicer than most people’s regular offices—decorated to the nines, looking like something from Vogue or Elle.

“Sorry I’m late,” she offered, sliding into the chair across from mine. I wondered how much her designer handbag cost as she plopped it into the seat next to her.

“It’s fine, really,” I blushed. She made me nervous, but being there with her was better than sitting alone. The restaurant she suggested was so trendy, and it only made me feel more out of touch with anything cool.

“Is everything okay?” she fretted immediately. “Does this have anything to do with Lucas or the company?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. Sorry if I worried you. Everything is fine. This is really more of a…personal matter.”

“Oh!” Her brow furrowed in surprise. I watched her relax with relief, then tense up with curiosity and dread all at once.

“I was hoping to enlist your services,” I explained. “I need….well, I need a makeover. But not just my clothes and stuff. I need the whole deal. I need to be redone from the inside out. And you help your clients with that sort of thing, don’t you? You teach them how to look and talk to fit their image?”

“That’s part of it, yes,” she nodded. “What kind of image is it exactly that you’d like to put out there?”

I fidgeted with my hands in my lap and slumped slightly, not wanting to go through the humiliation of pointing out the obvious. “Come on, Victoria. Look at me. You look like the cover of a magazine on a Tuesday afternoon, and I look like an elementary school librarian.”

“You want to look more like me?” She puzzled.

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