Such a Pretty Face by Annabelle Costa

Chapter 9

I’m excited, okay? As fun as my little internet relationships could be sometimes, they weren’t the real thing. Not by a long shot. I mean, those were all based on lies. Those guys didn’t like me. They just liked the girl that I was pretending to be. They certainly weren’t attracted to me. And I never got to kiss them or touch them or… well, anything.

But Brody likes me. He wants to go out on a date with me. Me! He wants to maybe even… Christ, maybe he wants to kiss me…

Okay, now I’m getting myself nervous. Especially since we didn’t even make it clear whether or not it was a date. But he seemed like he wanted to go out with me. I mean, he asked me to dinner. Just me. Not me and my more attractive friend.

I’m so excited about it that the next time I take a shower, I belt out Whitney Houston at the top of my lungs, and I don’t care who hears it.

But the next day, I am seriously anxious. I am woefully inexperienced for a twenty-seven-year-old going out on a date. I don’t know how to dress, and I’ve never put on makeup in my entire life. The average high schooler knows more than I do. Hell, most middle schoolers know more than me.

That’s why in the afternoon, I catch Abby when she’s coming home from her step aerobics class. Her cheeks are bright pink and she’s got her hair in a ponytail high on her head that swings back and forth when she walks. She immediately goes to the fridge, pulls out a bottle of water, and drains nearly the whole thing as I watch her.

You know what I don’t get? Water. I hate drinking water. It has no flavor whatsoever. I mean, I drink it for hydration and because it fills you up to have a lot of water before a meal, but I don’t understand how Abby guzzles it the way she does. Like it’s delicious.

“Abby?” I finally say.

Abby lowers the water bottle and gasps to catch her breath. She wipes her lips with the back of her hand.

“Emily!” Her face lights up like me talking to her is the best thing that’s happened to her all day. I don’t know how she manages to be so perky all the time. Maybe it’s the endorphins. “What’s going on?”

I take a deep breath. “I need your help.”

Abby pauses for a moment, then unexpectedly throws her arms around me. She squeezes me to her chest with astonishing strength. “Oh, Emily,” she sighs. “Of course I’ll help you! I’ve been telling you that since you moved in. We’re going to get rid of that weight together, I promise you.”

I grit my teeth. We haven’t even started and I already seriously regret my decision to ask Abby to help me prepare for my date.

“I don’t want to lose weight,” I say, pulling away from her stifling hug.

Abby’s face falls. “You don’t?”

“No,” I say tightly.

“Oh.” Abby frowns. “Well, what do you need help with?”

“I have…” I pick at a loose thread on my shirt. “A date. Tonight.”

Abby’s eyes get huge like saucers. “That’s wonderful!”

She could not possibly look more astonished and excited if I told her I was taking a rocket to the moon tonight.

“I’m so thrilled!” She clasps her hands together. “This is going to be so much fun! Luckily, I don’t have any plans tonight.”

No surprise there. Between you and me, Abby’s social life is not exactly jumping. I know when she goes on dates, and they’re extremely rare. I’m not sure why, because she’s pretty cute. And whenever she and I go out together, men hit on her left and right. (It’s part of why I hate going out with her.)

“So, um…” Abby flashes a wicked smile. “Is it anyone I know?”

“No,” I say, not wanting to go into any details.

“What’s his name?”

I figure it’s safe to tell her. “Brody.”

She nods. “Did Camille set you up with him?”

The assumption is insulting, but not unreasonable. “No… I met him in my computer science class.”

“And he asked you out?” She still sounds like she’s trying to wrap her head around it.

“Right.”

She winks at me. “Is he cute?”

“Definitely,” I say honestly.

Abby claps her hands together. “That’s so great, Emily. Really. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” I mumble. Because what the hell else am I supposed to say to that? “Anyway, I thought maybe you could help me figure out what to wear. And maybe I could borrow some makeup?”

“Oh my gosh, yes!” Abby exclaims. “I’m going to give you a complete makeover! You won’t even recognize yourself!”

That’s highly unlikely. She can do what she wants to my face and my hair, but she can’t change the most important part of me.

_____

Remember that scene in Pretty Woman, where Julia Roberts goes on a fashion spree and tries on a zillion different outfits, evolving from being a skanky hooker to a gorgeous model during the course of a single song?

Well, Abby giving me a makeover for my date is nothing like that. Nothing. It’s definitely not any kind of fashion montage. It’s more like slight tweaking here and there. Abby breaks out her tote bag of makeup (Abby has literally ten million tote bags) and successfully applies a bit of smokiness to my eyes. She chooses a shade of lipstick that isn’t too whorish. She even does my hair with a curling iron, and for the first time in my entire life, my hair isn’t frizzy. I still look like me, but a better version of me.

“You have such a pretty face,” Abby sighs as she examines her handiwork.

I swear to God, I don’t.

The outfit is more of a challenge. Without even checking, we know there’s nothing in Abby’s closet that would even come close to fitting me. Abby stares into my closet for like twenty minutes, moaning, “Why is everything you own black?”

That’s not fair. I own plenty of clothes that are dark brown or navy blue.

Even though it’s getting dangerously close to when I have to leave, Abby talks me into going to the Urban Outfitters that’s two blocks from our apartment, which is the closest clothing store. I’d never set foot inside an Urban Outfitters before, and I quickly discover why—nothing in this store is even remotely my size.

I’m not even kidding. The only sizes I can see are zero through eight. They don’t even have size ten, even though I’m pretty sure I read the average size for an American woman is twelve. Who the hell shops at places like this? Certainly no grown woman.

Not that it would help me if they had size twelve. I couldn’t even zip up a size twelve. I probably couldn’t even get it over my head.

“We should go,” I say to Abby. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything here that fits me.”

“Don’t be silly,” Abby says. “I’m sure they must have plus sizes here. I think it’s, like, the law.”

It’s not the law, Abby. Trust me.

Abby flags down a salesgirl, who seems like she could easily fit into any size zero pair of jeans in the store. The girl is in her early twenties and is popping a piece of bubble gum as Abby talks to her. When Abby explains to the girl that we’re looking for an outfit for me to wear on a date tonight, I want to hide under a pile of size two jeans. (Except I don’t think they have enough tiny jeans to effectively hide me.)

“So where should we look?” Abby asks.

The girl looks me over and practically starts snickering. “Walmart. There’s one on Second Avenue.”

Abby blinks, shocked by the girl’s response. I’m far less shocked. If this were actually Pretty Woman, I would leave this store, and come back a few hours later, looking gorgeous and skinny, loaded up with bags of expensive clothing, and say to Size Zero over here, “You work on commission, don’t you? Big mistake!”

But this isn’t an eighties movie. So I tug on Abby’s shirt sleeve. “Come on,” I say to her. “I don’t have time for this.”

In the end, I wind up in a somewhat flattering pair of boot-cut dark green dress pants and yet another black blouse from Walmart. Abby is grudgingly satisfied. “You only slightly look like you’re going to a funeral,” she says.

I take the bus to the restaurant where Brody and I agreed to meet, even though I’m sure it’s going to wreck the magic Abby did to my hair. As I sit on the bus, trying to keep my distance from the open window, I wonder to myself if Brody is thinking about this as a date or not. I close my eyes and try to remember his face when he asked me. He was so embarrassed. But maybe he was embarrassed because he thought I took it as a date and he didn’t intend it to be. Maybe he was mortified by my assumption that it could be a date.

Maybe I just spent all this time getting ready for nothing. Maybe he’s going to look at my outfit and think I’m overdressed. Maybe he won’t show up at all.

And now I’ve driven myself completely crazy.