Dinner Party (1): Ten out of Ten

I shut my bedroom door behind me and leaned against it.

Okay. Think.

Something had happened to them. Not a mood. Not a relapse, not Olivia falling back into old habits the way she had three times before. Something external. Kayla was a stranger who'd apparently gotten engaged to Derek in the last two days and was dressed like a centerfold. Olivia had gone from crying in my arms on Saturday to curtsying at him in a maid costume on Monday. And Lindsey, a licensed therapist I'd only ever seen in a cardigan in a little box on a laptop screen, was barefoot at my stove in an apron and nothing else, calling him her favorite client.

Three different women. Three complete reversals, all in the same direction, all in the same short window.

That was a pattern.

And the only thing I could think of that could produce that pattern was the thing I'd built. If Derek had MUSE, all of this would make perfect, horrifying sense. But Derek didn't have MUSE. I'd watched him walk out yesterday with nothing but a cardboard box.

So it was something else.

Which meant MUSE was still somewhere in this apartment. And if I could find it, I could fix all of this. I could sit each of them down, press it to my throat, and tell them the truth, and they would know it, permanently.

I started searching.

Under the bed: shoes, a dead charger, a sock that was definitely not a hamster. Behind the radiator: dust. The closet floor: laundry, a box of old lab notebooks, a fish-shaped cat toy Garlic had abandoned months ago. I yanked open my desk drawers one after another. Pens. Sticky notes. My passport. The folder with Olivia's timeline, still there, thank God. And the little wooden tray where I kept MUSE's charging cable.

Empty.

I stared at it.

I always kept it there. Always. It was the only cable that fit the port; I'd had to make it myself. And this drawer stuck. You had to pull it hard and lift at the same time. Garlic couldn't open it. Garlic couldn't open anything. He'd once spent forty minutes yelling at a closed cabinet with treats in it. Someone else had been in this drawer. Someone with hands. Someone who knew exactly what to look for, someone like Garlic. Garlic took it.

No. That wasn't right. Garlic couldn't...

Garlic took it. He loved cables. He'd chewed through two of my headphone cords last year.

But the drawer. The drawer had been closed. He couldn't have...

Garlic took it.

I stood there with my hand on the empty tray, and I could feel my mind straining in one direction, pulling hard like a dog on a leash, and every time it got close, something yanked it back. It made my head ache. It made me feel stupid.

Garlic. It had to be Garlic. He took everything.

"Rachel, sweetie!" Lindsey sang through the door. "Dinner in five!"

I couldn't stay in here forever. If I took too long, Derek would wonder why.

I opened my dresser. The smart move was to blend in: nothing that looked like armor, nothing that looked like a costume. I pulled out the nicest thing I owned that still felt like mine: a soft, fitted black sweater with a modest V-neck that I'd worn exactly once, to a conference dinner, and a pair of dark jeans. The sweater was tighter than I remembered. It hugged my waist and pulled snug across my chest, and the V showed just a sliver of cleavage.

I put on my glasses, clipped my hair up, and practiced a smile in the mirror until it looked almost real.

Then I picked up my phone and opened my notes app.

At the lab, I kept a log during every trial: time-stamped, one line per observation, no interpretation. Just what I saw. It was how I'd caught a signal-drift problem in MUSE's third prototype when nobody else had noticed anything wrong for weeks. Data first. Conclusions later.

I made a new note and titled it SUBJECTS. Underneath, I typed three initials: K — O — L.

Then I went out.

---

Lindsey had set the dining table with our good plates, the ones we only used at Thanksgiving. Candles. Cloth napkins I didn't know we owned. The whole apartment smelled like butter and rosemary and roasting chicken.

Derek was at the head of the table, sprawled back in his chair. Kayla was on his right, her chair pulled so close her bare thigh pressed against his. She was still in the black bikini: two small triangles tied behind her neck, barely covering the centers of her breasts and leaving the full golden curves bare on every side, and a bottom that was little more than a narrow strip of black with two bows at her hips. Her bunny ears tipped forward whenever she leaned toward him. Olivia sat on his left in her maid costume, the corset tugged up only halfway, her freckled breasts still pushed up over the top of it. Garlic sat on the floor beside Derek's chair, gazing up at him adoringly.

The only empty seat was at the far end. I took it.

Derek's eyes went to my chest and stayed there.

"Damn, Kimchi," he said. "Nice rack. I thought Asians were supposed to have little tits." He squinted, like he was judging a science fair. "You must be, like, a genetic exception or something."

Kayla giggled.

I wanted to roll my eyes so hard I saw the back of my skull. I wanted to tell him that was the stupidest sentence anyone had ever said to me, which was impressive, considering the competition, and I opened my mouth to tell him so, and to smile, because in his own stupid way he was trying to pay me a compliment, and I didn't need to be a bitch about it.

"Thanks," I said sweetly.

I put my napkin in my lap and my phone on top of it, screen dimmed, the note open under my thumb.

Be patient, I told myself.

And for the first time all night, I actually liked the idea. Patience was useful. Patience was what you did when you were collecting data. You didn't rush in and contaminate your sample. You sat still and let the system show you how it worked.

So I sat, and I watched.

Lindsey came out of the kitchen with the salad.

She served Kayla first, then Olivia, then me, neatly and normally. Then she came around behind Derek's chair, set the big wooden bowl down, and leaned forward over him to look at his plate. Her whole body pressed against the back of his chair. Her breasts, huge and soft and swaying, spilled out past both edges of the apron and settled heavily on top of his head and shoulders, one on either side, like a pillow.

"Oh, sweetie," she said, tutting. "You don't like tomatoes, do you?"

"Hate 'em."

"I'm so sorry. Let me fix that."

And she reached down over his shoulders with both hands and started picking the cherry tomatoes out of his salad. With her fingers. One at a time. She had to lean further down to reach the bottom of the plate, and every time she did, her breasts slid forward and pressed against his face, swelling around his cheeks, and she just kept going, completely focused, humming to herself, dropping each tomato into a little dish beside his plate.

Derek didn't move. He didn't look down. He just sat there facing forward with his eyes closed and his head resting back into her chest, and a slow, blissed-out smile spread across his face.

When she'd found the last one, she straightened up, kissed the top of his head, and ran her fingers back through his hair, slowly, the way you'd soothe a little boy at bedtime.

"There you go, sweetie. All better."

Then she picked up the bowl and walked back to the kitchen, and her bare ass swayed and jiggled under the little bow of her apron strings with every step.

I looked down at my lap and typed with my thumb.

7:41 — L: pressed chest on D's head while picking tomatoes out of his salad by hand. D: eyes closed, enjoying it. No reaction from K or O. They think this is normal.

When I looked back up, Derek had already turned to Kayla.

She'd been talking since we sat down. Wedding colors. Bluebonnets. A cake place in Austin with a lemon-lavender sponge that was "life-changing." Whether her old cheer squad could do a routine at the reception. Derek wasn't listening to a word of it. He leaned over and kissed her while she talked: her shoulder first, then the side of her neck, slow and open-mouthed, leaving a wet shine on her golden skin. She giggled and kept going. His hand slid up her bare stomach and cupped her breast over the little black triangle, squeezing, his thumb pushing the fabric aside. He kissed down her collarbone, then lower, onto the bare swell of her breast, and she gasped in the middle of the word bluebonnet, wiggled in her chair, and kept talking.

"...and Mama already called the church, and they have an opening in April..."

And the whole time his mouth was on Kayla, his eyes were on Olivia.

Over Kayla's shoulder. Across the corner of the table. He was looking at Olivia's breasts swelling out of the half-pulled-up corset, at her bare freckled shoulders, at the lace tops of her stockings digging into her thighs.

Olivia saw him looking. She sat up straighter. Her breath went short.

"I know a really good baker in the Mission," she said, a little too loudly. "She does custom cakes. I could ask her."

Nobody looked at her. Derek's mouth was on Kayla's breast.

"I went to school with her sister," Olivia said, quieter.

"...and the bridesmaids could all wear sage green, because sage is in right now..."

Olivia looked down at her plate. Her ears had gone red. She tugged at the top of her corset.

I knew that look. It was the look she used to get every time Derek talked over her at game night. I'd watched her get smaller and smaller at that table for months.

My fork was digging into my palm.

7:44 — D: kissing K's neck and chest, hand on her breast. Looking at O the whole time. O: tries to join the conversation. Everyone ignores her. O looks humiliated, but stays.

Lindsey came back out with a small bowl of soup on a saucer and sat down in the empty chair next to Derek, so close her knees pressed against his. She blew on a spoonful, lips pursed, her breast squashed against his arm, and fed him.

"Careful, sweetie, it's hot."

He opened his mouth like a baby bird. She fed him another spoonful, cupping her free hand under his chin to catch the drips, and when a little soup ran from the corner of his mouth, she wiped it away with her thumb and licked her thumb clean.

"I made the soup," Olivia said quietly. "I mean, I peeled the squash."

Nobody looked at her.

Garlic put a paw on Derek's knee and chirped. Derek dropped a whole chunk of chicken onto the floor for him without even looking down.

I watched Lindsey feed him. I watched Kayla's eyes flutter shut as his hand slid down under the table. I watched Olivia shrink in her chair. I watched my cat eat chicken off the floor at the feet of the man who'd wrecked my best friend's life.

And in my head, I went through what I knew.

Derek was getting MUSE-like effects without MUSE. Either he'd found some other technique, or he'd had one all along and I'd never noticed. But I would have noticed. I'd watched him for eight months. He'd never once gotten Olivia to do anything without screaming at her first. Whatever this was, it was new. It had started sometime since yesterday, when he walked out of this apartment.

I had three subjects and no histories. I needed timelines: when each of them had changed, how, and what had been happening right before. If there was a pattern, it would be in the details.

So I'd ask. Not directly; directly would tip him off. Girl talk. How did you two meet? What brings you to town? Nobody suspected a question like that.

I just needed an opening. Be patient.

Kayla finally ran out of breath.

She'd gotten to the end of something about tablecloths and stopped to sip her wine. Lindsey was dabbing Derek's mouth with a napkin. Derek was chewing. Olivia was staring at her plate. For one second, the whole table went quiet, nothing but forks on plates and candles flickering and Garlic purring under the table.

There it was.

I put on my best smile. Bright. Friendly. A little dumb. The smile of a girl who just wanted to hear a nice story.

"So, Kayla," I said. "How did you two meet?"

Kayla gasped and clapped her hands. "Oh, y'all. Okay, so—"

"Start from the beginning," I said. "Where you were, what time it was, what you were doing right before—"

I stopped.

That was not girl talk. That was an intake interview.

I held my breath and glanced at Derek. He was squinting into his soup bowl, trying to fish out a piece of squash with his finger. He hadn't noticed a thing.

I let the breath out slowly. Careful, Rachel.

"I mean," I said, and laughed, "I just love a good love story. Tell me everything."

"Oh, this is my favorite story," Lindsey sighed, chin in her hand.

Olivia rolled her eyes and stabbed a potato.

"Okay," Kayla said, glowing, and pressed one hand over her heart. "So. Mama had flown in from Austin, just for the appointment..."

---

Kayla's POV

Mama squeezed my hand so hard in the Uber that my ring left a dent in her palm.

"Six months I've been waiting for this," she said. "Six months, Kayla Marie."

She'd flown in from Austin the night before. She'd taken three days off from the dental office, which she never did, and bought a new cream-colored blouse with little pearl buttons just for sitting in a bridal salon, and she'd gotten her hair blown out that morning at a place on Fillmore that cost more than her monthly car payment. She'd been planning my wedding since I was four. She'd already told me so twice.

"You're going to look like an angel," she said. "And that boy is going to cry."

That boy was Chad.

Chad Whitaker. Six-foot-one, with the sweetest smile I'd ever seen, a pediatric nurse at UCSF with a golden retriever named Biscuit and a voice he did for the kids on his ward that sounded exactly like Winnie the Pooh. He'd proposed on the ferry at sunset with his grandmother's ring, and he'd cried so hard the man next to us handed him a napkin.

"He is gonna cry," I giggled. "He cries at commercials, Mama."

"That's because he's a good man. A good, honest, God-fearing man." She patted my knee. "You hold on to that one."

I'd texted Chad a picture of the salon from the car. He'd sent back MY BRIDE!!!! with about forty heart emojis, and I'd been smiling ever since.

The salon was on Union Street, all white and gold and glass, the kind of place where they hand you champagne at the door. A consultant named Donna led us back to our suite: a pale pink velvet loveseat for Mama, a curtained dressing room for me, and an open front that faced the middle of the salon, where a round carpeted platform sat under a spotlight, wrapped in a tall three-way mirror.

"The reveal platform," Donna said. "When you find the one, you step up there and see yourself from every angle."

Mama was already dabbing her eyes.

The first three dresses weren't it. The fourth one was.

Donna laced me into it while I stood in my strapless bra and nude panties, and when she pulled the last lace tight and stepped back, I looked down at myself and got a little dizzy. Ivory crepe, so thin and smooth it felt like water. A mermaid shape that hugged every inch of me from my chest to my knees before it flared out into a long, soft train. A neckline that plunged in a deep, narrow V nearly to my navel, held together across the middle with nothing but sheer mesh and a scatter of seed pearls, so that the curves of my breasts showed on both sides and swelled against the edges every time I took a breath. The back was open all the way to the base of my spine, with a few strands of pearls draped across my bare skin.

"Oh my Lord," I whispered. "Mama's gonna have a heart attack."

"Chad's gonna have a heart attack," Donna said, smiling.

I giggled so hard she had to stop lacing.

That was when I heard him.

Through the dressing room wall, from the next suite over. A man's voice, loud and flat, the kind that didn't care who was listening.

"Nah. Nah, babe. You look like a fuckin' nun. You got anything that shows her tits more? I'm paying for this shit. I wanna see what I'm paying for."

A woman giggled, soft and nervous.

Donna's hands went still on my back. "Excuse me one moment," she said, very quietly, and slipped out through the curtain.

Mama always said it was rude to stare. But the curtain had swung open a crack behind her, and I leaned over and peeked.

There was a girl on the reveal platform.

She was about my age, with long brown hair and big doe eyes and a pretty, nervous mouth, and she wasn't wearing a dress. She was in the salon's bridal lingerie, the kind they kept in the glass case up front: a white lace corset that pinched her waist tiny and pushed her breasts up into two soft, round swells; a white satin garter belt; sheer white stockings; and a lace thong that disappeared between the cheeks of her bottom, so that in the three-way mirror, I could see almost all of her from every side at once. The spotlight was right over her. She was shivering a little.

And circling her slowly, like a man looking at a used truck on a lot, was him.

Big. Gym-big, thick through the arms and chest, in a backward baseball cap and a white tank top and basketball shorts. At a bridal salon. He had a beer. I had no idea where he'd gotten a beer.

"Turn," he said.

She turned, cheeks pink, and he stepped up onto the platform behind her, reached around, and cupped both her breasts in his hands right there in front of the mirror, squeezing them together and hoisting them up until they spilled over the top of the corset.

"See? That's what I want. Right there."

"Okay," she whispered, ducking her head. "Thank you, babe."

He let go of one breast and smacked her bottom, hard, so the garter straps snapped against her thighs. She squeaked, then giggled.

I let the curtain fall shut and stood very still in my beautiful dress with my heart going.

From out there, I heard heels coming fast. Donna, and a second set, sharper. When I peeked again, an older woman with reading glasses on a chain was standing at the edge of the platform beside Donna. A manager, I guessed. They were both smiling the stiff kind of smile my mama wore at church when somebody's children were running in the aisles, and they were whisper-yelling, the loud kind of hushed you use when you are trying very, very hard not to make a scene in front of other customers.

"Sir. I need you to take your hands off her. Right now. This is a family business. There are other brides here."

"Relax," he said, not letting go. "She's cool with it. Right, babe?"

"I'm cool with it," the girl said quickly.

"That isn't the point. This is a bridal salon, not a... a strip club. You cannot handle her like that in front of other clients. If you don't stop right now, I will have security escort you out of the building."

"Really, dude? Just chill." He rolled his eyes. "She's gonna be my wife. I should be allowed to dress her up however I want. Bring out the good stuff. The ones where you can see the nipples."

"Absolutely not. I'm calling security."

The manager actually turned toward the front desk.

He sighed, a big exaggerated sigh, like a teenager asked to take out the trash, and lifted something small and black to his throat. A vape, maybe. He pressed it under his jaw.

"Haven't you heard?" he said. "The customer's always right."

There was a faint buzz, like a phone in another room.

The manager stopped walking.

"I... that's..." She turned back toward him, frowning. "That's not... we have a policy..."

"Customer's always right," he repeated, bored.

"Right." She blinked. "Right, I..." Her shoulders came down. She looked at Donna. Donna looked at her. Both their faces had gone smooth and soft, like someone had wiped them clean. "I'm so sorry, sir," the manager said. "I don't know what came over me. Donna, would you bring out the open-cup plunge set, please? From the case. In white."

"Of course," Donna said, and hurried away, humming.

I let the curtain drop.

What on earth.

When Donna came back to finish my laces, she was still humming, and she didn't say a word about it, and I didn't ask.

Mama was on the loveseat with her lips pressed into a thin white line when I came out. She'd seen. The vein in her neck was standing up.

"That poor girl," she hissed. "Did you see her face? She's terrified of him, Kayla." She grabbed my hand. "Thank the Lord Chad is an honest, good man. I mean that. I don't know what I'd do if you married an abusive piece of shit like that."

"Mama!" She'd never cussed in front of me in my life. I giggled, half from shock.

"I'm serious. Chad would never. That boy volunteers at the church twice a week."

"Yeah, he's so cute when he gets worked up helping other people." I said, giggling softly. I really was a lucky girl.

She laughed, and the vein went away, and then she looked at me, really looked at me in the dress, and her eyes went bright and wet.

"Oh, baby. Get up on that platform. I want to see you from every side."

From the next suite, I heard him laugh.

I almost didn't go. But she'd flown all the way from Austin. So I picked up my train and stepped out.

The girl was sitting on their loveseat now, in a new set: a white bra with cups that were open in the middle, just lace framing her breasts and nothing at all over the centers, her nipples bare and small and pink. She had her arms crossed over herself and was looking at the carpet. He was standing over her, drinking his beer.

I climbed the steps onto the platform, and the spotlight found me, warm on my bare shoulders, and I turned to face the mirror.

And there I was.

From the front, the left, and the right, all at once. The ivory crepe glowing soft and pale under the light, smooth as cream, hugging every curve of me from my chest down to my knees before it spilled out into the train behind me like a pool of milk. The deep, delicate V, with the little pearls catching the light where the mesh held it together. My waist, tiny. My hair falling in soft gold waves down my back. All that bare skin from my shoulders to the base of my spine, and the strands of pearls swaying gently against it whenever I breathed.

I looked like a bride. I looked like a real, honest-to-goodness bride.

I'd dreamed about this moment since I was a little girl playing dress-up in Mama's old slip, with a pillowcase on my head for a veil.

Behind me, Mama made a sound like a teakettle.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, Kayla."

I turned around. She was standing up, both hands pressed over her mouth, her eyes swimming.

"Is it okay?" I asked. My voice came out small.

"Okay?" She laughed, and it came out wet. "Baby, you look like an angel. You look like something off the top of a wedding cake." She came up to the edge of the platform and reached up and took my hand, and her fingers were trembling. "My little girl. Look at you. When Chad sees you walk down that aisle, he's going to drop right to his knees."

"Mama." I was giggling and tearing up at the same time.

"I mean it. Turn for me, sugar. Slow. I want to remember this forever."

I turned, slowly, the train whispering on the carpet around my feet, and I watched myself go around in the three-way mirror, and for one perfect second, I felt exactly as beautiful as she said I was.

Then, in the left-hand mirror, I saw him.

He'd turned around. He was standing at the opening of the next suite, staring at my reflection, his beer stopped halfway to his mouth. He didn't blink.

I went cold all over, the way you do in the shower when somebody flushes.

He's drunk, I thought. It's two in the afternoon, and he's drunk in a bridal salon.

I looked down at my train. I could still feel him staring, on my bare back, like a hand.

He set his beer down on a side table and started walking toward the platform.

The girl was right behind him. She'd come out of their suite in the new set, the open-cup bra, lace framing her bare breasts and nothing at all over the centers, and she caught up to him at the edge of the platform and pressed herself against his arm. She cupped her breasts in both hands and pushed them up toward him.

"Babe, look," she said brightly. "Do you like these better? You can see everything now. See?" She tugged the lace a little wider with her fingertips. "Is this what you wanted?"

He didn't look at her. He was looking up at me.

"Leave," he said.

She laughed, uncertain. "What?"

"Leave."

"Babe, please, I don't..." She pressed closer, rubbing her bare breasts against his arm. "Did I do something wrong? Donna said they have a red one, I can try—"

He finally turned his head and looked at her, like a fly had landed on his sandwich.

"What part of that didn't you get? Engagement's over. I'm not marrying trailer trash when I can have that." He jerked his chin up at me. "Look at her. She's a ten out of ten. You're, like, a six on a good day."

Her face went white, then red.

"Derek," she whispered. "An hour ago, you said I was the one... please, I love you..."

"Yeah, well. I upgraded." He looked past her at the manager by the front desk. "Hey. Can you get her out of here?"

The manager, the same woman who'd threatened to have him thrown out not ten minutes before, put on her reading glasses, walked over, and took the girl gently by the arm.

"Come along, dear. Let's get you on your way."

"No, wait..." The girl twisted around, still in the open-cup bra, her bare breasts shaking. "Derek! Derek, I'll do better... Please, I love you so much! Don't do this..."

The manager walked her straight across the salon and out the front door. Through the glass, I watched the girl stand on the sidewalk of Union Street in her lingerie, sobbing, while a man with a dog stopped to stare. The manager came back in, closed the door gently behind her, and smiled.

Disgusting.

He turned back to me and began walking over to me, grinning. "Hi."

I didn't say anything. I couldn't.

"Baby," Mama said behind me, in her calmest, tightest voice, the one she used when she was trying not to scare me. "You look beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Now go on back and change out of that, okay? Go on. Donna will help you."

She was looking at him while she said it. Not at me.

I gathered up my train and went down the steps on the far side of the platform, away from him, and walked back to my dressing room as fast as I could without running.

Donna was waiting with my next dress. Her mouth was pressed into a tight little line. She didn't say anything. She just started on my laces.

It was going to be okay. Mama would handle it.

"Excuse me," Mama said. "Excuse me, young man."

She was loud. Full Texas. Every word came right through the curtain.

Outside my suite, the loveseat creaked.

"Who on God's green earth do you think you are? You just put that girl out on the sidewalk in her underwear. In public. I have never in my life seen a man treat a woman so disgracefully. And don't think for one second I didn't see how you were looking at my daughter. Don't you dare."

I heard him say something, low and dismissive, but it was hard to hear exactly what.

"Don't you tell me to chill. And you better wipe that smirk off your face, boy, before I wipe it off for you. My daughter is engaged. To a good man. Who would never in a million years treat a woman the way you just did. Now you are going to walk out of this salon right now, or I swear I will call the police and have you—"

She stopped.

Right in the middle of the word.

And then nothing.

Donna's hands went still on my laces. We looked at each other in the dressing room mirror.

After about twenty seconds of silence, "Mama?" I called. "Is everything okay?"

No answer, but I could hear her voice outside in hushed whispers.

"Mama?"

"Let's get you out of this," Donna said quietly, and her fingers moved faster.

The laces whispered out of the eyelets one after another. Donna lifted the dress off over my head, gathered it carefully in her arms so it wouldn't wrinkle, and handed me a little ivory slip. "I'll go hang this up," she murmured, and slipped out through the back of the dressing room.

I pulled the slip on over my strapless bra and nude panties. It was thin as tissue paper. The silk slid down over my breasts and caught there, pulling tight across them before it fell loose to the middle of my thighs, and in the dressing room mirror, I could see exactly how much of me it didn't hide: the full, round shape of my breasts pressing out against the ivory, the dark little points of my nipples through it, the curve of my hips, the hem fluttering high on my bare legs.

My hands were shaking. I took a breath, pushed the curtain aside, and stepped out.

The first thing I saw was my mother's face.

It was on the carpet, right at my feet, turned sideways toward the curtain like she'd been waiting for it to open. One cheek was mashed flat against the floor. Her lips were squished out of shape, pushed sideways into a pucker. Her eyes were open, rolled up, looking at me.

And on top of her head, pressing down into her expensive blowout, was a dirty white sneaker.

He was sitting on our loveseat. Sprawled across the pink velvet with one arm along the back and a beer balanced on his knee. One foot was flat on the floor. The other was stretched out in front of him, planted on top of my mother's head, holding her face down on the carpet like she was a footrest he'd found lying around.

Her was face down on the carpet, knees spread wide, ass stuck straight up in the air. Her blouse was shoved up around her armpits, and her big, bare tits were mashed flat against the floor underneath her, squished out wide on both sides of her ribs, soft and heavy and spilling over. Her whole body made one long, smooth curve, from her face on the carpet up her back to that ass, way up high.

Her slacks lay bunched around her ankles and her beige bra was on the ground behind her. A thin pink string ran straight up the middle, pulled so tight and so deep between her cheeks you could barely see it. Everything else was bare. Two big, round, pale globes, full and smooth and heavy, perfectly shaped, so plump they pressed together around that little string. Two dimples right above them.

Her face was turned sideways under his sneaker. Her cheek was pressed so flat against the carpet it had spread out wide and red, pushing her lips into a squished little pucker. One eye was squeezed shut under the pressure. The other was open and looking right at me, and she was smiling.

After a moment, he pressed down, just a little, and her cheek squished flatter. She winced and then she forced herself to smile wider.

My Mama had stared down a bull on my granddaddy's ranch when she was twelve. She'd marched into my fourth-grade principal's office and made him cry.

I couldn't breathe.

"There she is!" Mama said.

Her voice came out squished and bright, muffled against the floor, but she was smiling, as much as her mouth could smile with half of it mashed into the carpet.

"There's my beautiful baby! Kayla, sugar, come say hello to... I’m so sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t even ask your name.”

“Derek.”

“Derek,” she breathed, like it was a name in the Bible. Then she turned back to me, beaming. “Isn’t that a strong name, baby? Come say hello to Derek!”

My hands had come up over my mouth on their own.

"Mama," I whispered through my fingers. "Get up."

"Oh, don't be silly." Her eye flicked to me and narrowed. "And stop gawking with your mouth open like a catfish, Kayla Marie. It's rude."

Derek wasn't looking at her. He was looking at me.

He'd gone completely still. His beer had stopped halfway to his mouth. His eyes went down me, slowly, all the way down the slip to my bare feet, and then all the way back up, and when they got to my chest, they stopped and stayed.

"Holy shit," he said quietly. Not to me, really. Not to anybody. Like he couldn't help it.

I crossed my arms over myself.

"Nah. Arms down."

I didn't move.

He pressed his foot down, just slightly, and Mama's cheek squashed flatter into the carpet. She made a little hnnf sound and kept smiling up at me.

I put my arms down.

He stared. He didn't try to hide it. He just sat there on our loveseat with his sneaker on my mother's head and stared at my breasts through the slip with his mouth hanging a little open, like a boy who'd sneaked a look at a magazine behind the gas station counter.

"Fuck," he breathed. "Those are real?"

I couldn't answer. My face was on fire.

"Is that comfortable for you, sweetheart?" Mama asked him, muffled, oblivious. "Is my head all right? I can turn a little if you'd like a better angle. I don't want you straining your knee."

"It's fine," he said, without looking down. He was still staring at me.

"Oh, good."

"Mama, what are you doing?"

"Hush." Sharp, the way she used to snap at the dog. Then sweet again, rolling her eye up toward him: "He's thinking, baby. He's thinking about whether he'll have you."

"Have me?"

"Marry you!" Her voice cracked with excitement. "He's thinking about whether he'll marry you, sugar! Isn't that wonderful?"

"Mama, I'm engaged. To Chad."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Kayla, nobody cares about Chad." She actually rolled her eyes, the one I could see. "Chad is a pussycat. His mama and daddy have so much money that boy has never had to fight for one single thing in his whole spoiled little life. He's soft. He's soft as a biscuit." Her eye slid up toward Derek, and her voice went shy and fluttery, like a girl talking about her first crush. "Look at him, baby. He sees what he wants and he just takes it. That's not a boy. That is a man."

He pressed down. Her mouth squished sideways.

"Thank you," she breathed into the carpet. "Thank you, sir."

"I dunno, though," Derek said. He took a long drink of beer, eyes still on me. "I literally just dumped a chick like five minutes ago. That's a lot of baggage. What's in it for me?"

"Anything," Mama gasped. "Anything."

She scrabbled one arm out from under herself and groped blindly for her purse on the coffee table, knocking it over. Things spilled out across the carpet: lipstick, tissues, her reading glasses. And an envelope from the bank. She dragged it over to her face and fumbled a slip of paper out of it.

A cashier's check. I knew exactly what it was. She'd shown it to me in the car that morning, so proud. The whole wedding, she'd said. Every bit of it. Your daddy and I have been saving since you were in diapers.

She flipped it over on the carpet an inch from her nose, clicked her pen, and endorsed it, right there, lying down, under his shoe, her handwriting going crooked across the back. Pay to the order of Derek.

"The whole wedding budget," she said. "Forty-two thousand dollars. It's yours. Please. Please marry my darling daughter."

He plucked the check out of her fingers and squinted at it.

"Okay. I mean, it's a start." He waved it around. "But honestly, bitch, I don't even know how to turn a check into money. I'd have to go to, like, a bank? That sounds like so much work."

He crumpled it into a ball and dropped it on her face. It bounced off her cheek and rolled into the carpet beside her mouth.

"What else you got?"

Panic went across the half of her face I could see.

"My ring," she gasped. She was twisting and tugging at her left hand under her body, grunting, until it came over her knuckle. Thirty-one years. She held it up to him blindly in her shaking fingers. "If you need a ring to propose. Take mine. And there's a courthouse right down the street. City Hall. You could marry her today. This afternoon. I'll drive you both."

He took the ring, looked at it, and stuck it in the pocket of his basketball shorts.

Then he pressed his foot down, hard, and ground it.

Her face smeared into the carpet. Her mouth was pushed open. Her glasses popped off and skidded across the floor. A high, squeaky sound came out of her throat, like a dog toy.

"Sorry," he said. "Didn't catch that."

"Please," Mama squeaked into the floor. "She cooks, she sings in the choir, she cheered at A&M, she does all her own taxes, she has never been late on a credit card bill in her whole life..."

He laughed under his breath and shook his head, like he couldn't believe this was happening to him.

Then he looked back at me.

His eyes went slowly down my body again. My breasts under the slip. My stomach. The hem high on my thighs. He looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and his foot was still grinding into my mother's face.

"Goddamn," he said. "Goddamn, you're hot."

Then, louder, cooler, like he'd remembered he was supposed to be cool: "She's gotta ask, though. Herself. I'm not marrying some chick who doesn't even want it."

He took his foot off.

Mama sat up on her heels, gasping. Her hair was crushed flat on one side and sticking straight up on the other. There was a red carpet burn on her cheekbone, and her lipstick was smeared across her chin. She didn't fix any of it. She twisted around and looked at me.

"Kayla. Marie." Every word like a slap. "Get over here. And beg him."

"Mama." My voice broke. "I want to go home."

"Don't you dare." She was crawling toward me on her knees. "Don't you dare embarrass me, not after everything, not after what I just did for you..."

I took a step back toward the dressing room. My hand found the curtain behind me.

He sighed. He lifted something small and black to his throat, pressed it into the soft spot under his jaw, and looked straight at me.

"Listen to your mother."

A faint buzz, like a phone in another room.

I was going to go back into that dressing room and put on my jeans and lock myself in the car until Mama came to her senses, and Mama knew best. Mama always, always knew best.

My hand slid off the curtain.

Mama grabbed my wrist and yanked me down onto my knees beside her, so hard I almost fell. She pulled me close, her face an inch from mine. Her breath smelled like the salon's champagne. Her eyes were wild.

"Now you listen to me," she whispered. "I'm going to go call Chad's mama and call off the wedding. I'm going to call the church and the venue and the caterer and the florist and get every single penny back, and every penny goes to Derek. Do you hear me?"

"Mama..."

"And you are going to win that man over." Her nails dug into my wrist. "A good wife puts her husband first. Before her friends. Before her family. Before her own feelings. Before everything. She does what he asks, and she does it with a smile, and she never ever embarrasses him in public. She cooks what he likes. She keeps her figure. She is grateful, Kayla. Every single day of her life, she is grateful that a man like that would even look at her."

My lip was trembling.

"Oh, stop it." She squeezed my wrist until it hurt. "Don't you cry. I don't care how you feel. You put on a brave face, just like cheer. Remember regionals? When you sprained your wrist and you smiled through the whole routine?"

I nodded.

"Smile like that," she hissed. "This is the most important thing you will ever do in your whole life. Don't you dare mess it up."

She let go of my wrist and gave me a push toward him.

I didn't go right away.

I knelt there on the carpet in my slip, and my whole body was shaking, and I tried to think.

Chad. Chad, who'd cried on the ferry. Chad, who'd let Biscuit sleep on my side of the bed when I was away so I'd come home to a warm spot. Chad, who was going to see me in that dress and drop to his knees. Chad, who I'd texted two hours ago, who'd sent me forty heart emojis. I was supposed to marry Chad. I'd said yes.

But Mama knew best.

She doesn't. Not right now. Look at her. Look at her face. Something's wrong with her. Something happened when I was in the dressing room. She's not herself.

Mama always knew best. Mama had never been wrong. Not once in my whole life.

She just let him step on her. She's got carpet burns on her face. She gave him her wedding ring, Daddy's ring, thirty-one years. Mama would never...

She did it for you.

I looked at her.

She was kneeling beside me with her hair crushed and her face smeared, and she wasn't looking at Derek anymore. She was looking at me. And her eyes were shining. Not wild now. Soft. Wet. Full. The way they'd looked at my high school graduation, and at my first competition, and the day Chad proposed.

She was proud of me. Proud of me for kneeling here.

She gave me the smallest nod. Go on, baby.

And all my thoughts about Chad, and the ferry, and Biscuit, went quiet and far away, like a radio in another room, because Mama knew best, and Mama was proud of me, and I wasn't going to let her down.

I crawled forward on my knees across the carpet, past her glasses, past the crumpled check, until I was kneeling at his feet, right where Mama's face had been, and the carpet was still warm from her.

I looked up at him, and I smiled.

My regionals smile. Teeth and dimples and bright, shining eyes. My face did it all by itself. Behind it, my heart was slamming so hard I thought I might be sick.

"Please, sir," I said. "Please. I'll be good. I'll be such a good wife."

He looked down at me for a long, long moment. His eyes went all over me: my bare shoulders, my breasts straining against the thin silk, my nipples showing dark through it, my bare thighs folded under me. He licked his lips. For a second, he looked like he might laugh out loud from sheer disbelief.

"Fuck, she's hot" he sighed. Then he cleared his throat and leaned back into the loveseat, cool again. "Fine. I'll interview her."

"Oh, Derek." Mama grabbed his face in both hands and gave him a big, loud smooch right on the cheek. "Thank you. Oh, thank you, sweetheart."

Then she looked down at me. Hard. Two short, sharp jerks of her chin, the look she used to give me from the bleachers when I was slacking on the sidelines. Get on with it.

She grabbed her purse and scurried out toward the front desk with her phone already at her ear.

And then it was just him and me.

He sat back and spread his knees and looked at me kneeling on the carpet. He looked for a long time.

I smiled up at him. My regionals smile. I'd practiced it in the bathroom mirror for years: lips back, teeth showing, cheeks lifted until the dimples came, eyebrows up just a little so my eyes looked bright. You could hold it for a whole routine if you didn't think about anything at all. I held it now.

"Get up," he said. "Lemme see you."

I stood. My legs were trembling. I kept smiling.

He leaned over, grabbed something off the other loveseat, and tossed it at me.

The open-cup bra. The one the girl had been wearing. And the garter belt and the stockings, all tangled together in a soft white knot. The lace was still warm. It smelled like her perfume, something sweet and cheap, like a candle from the mall.

"Put that on."

I looked down at it in my hands.

It had been on her body ten minutes ago. That poor girl, crying on the sidewalk with a man walking his dog staring at her. It was still warm from her. My stomach turned. I was going to hand it back. I was going to tell him, sweetly, that I'd happily try on anything he liked from the salon's own collection, but I just couldn't wear another girl's underthings. Anybody would understand that.

"I... I'm sorry, sir," I said. "I don't think I could wear..."

He just looked at me.

And I thought about Mama's face when she came back from the front desk and asked how it went, and how I'd have to tell her I'd said no to the very first thing he asked. After she'd given him her wedding ring. After she'd let him put his shoe on her face.

Win him over. Whatever it takes.

She hadn't said whatever it takes, unless it's gross. She hadn't said unless it belonged to somebody else. It was just lace, really. Just fabric. Girls tried on the same dresses in salons like this every single day. I was being a princess about it, the way Mama always said I was about spiders and gas station bathrooms.

"...somebody else's," I heard myself finish, "without asking which part you'd like to see first, sir."

He grinned.

I turned my back to him to change, out of habit.

"Nah. Face me."

I turned back around. I smiled.

I pulled my slip off over my head and let it fall. Then I reached behind me for the hooks of my strapless bra, and my fingers wouldn't work. They were shaking so badly I couldn't get the hooks apart. I fumbled once, twice, three times, my face getting hotter and hotter, and I could hear him breathing through his mouth, and finally they came loose, and the bra fell away.

My breasts came free in the cool salon air.

I had never stood like this in front of anybody with the lights on. Not even Chad. Chad always reached over and clicked off the lamp first, because he knew I got shy. And now I was under a chandelier, with the front of our suite wide open to the whole store, and my breasts were bare, heavy and round and golden, my nipples drawing up tight in the cold.

I smiled. Teeth. Dimples. Bright eyes.

"Holy shit," he said. "Those are real? Like, not airbrushed?"

"Yes, sir," I said brightly. "They're real."

"Fuck me. Panties too."

Not with the suite wide open. Anybody walking past could look in. Donna. Some other bride and her mother. Mama, if she turned around at the front desk. I was going to ask him, nicely, if we could at least pull the curtain closed.

A good wife does what he asks, and she does it with a smile.

Not does what he asks if the curtain's closed. Just does what he asks. With a smile. That was the whole thing. Any woman could do what she was asked when it was easy.

I hooked my thumbs into my panties, smiled at him, and pushed them down over my hips and stepped out of them.

I stood there completely naked in the middle of the suite with my knees pressed together and my fists balled at my sides, smiling so wide my cheeks ached. In the three-way mirror over his shoulder, I could see myself from three sides at once. Naked. Smiling. My eyes swimming.

"Go on," he said, waving a hand at the lingerie.

I stepped into the garter belt and fastened it at my waist. I rolled the first stocking up my leg and fumbled the little garter clip three times before it caught. Then the other leg. Then I slid my arms into the bra and hooked it closed behind me.

It wasn't a bra, really. It was a frame. White lace under and around my breasts, lifting them and pushing them together, and nothing at all over the middle. My nipples poked straight out through the empty lace windows.

"Yeah," he said. "C'mere."

I walked over to him, smiling.

He grabbed my jaw in one hand, the way you'd hold a puppy still to look in its ears, and turned my face left, and right, squinting at me. Then he held up two fingers in front of my mouth. His first two fingers. The ones he'd been holding his beer with. The ones that had been all over that girl in front of the mirror. There was a smear of something on the side of one, barbecue sauce or ketchup.

"Open."

It was the most disgusting thing anybody had ever asked me to do. I was going to turn my face away. I was going to tell him no, absolutely not...

Put on a brave face. Just like regionals.

At regionals, I'd come down wrong on a basket toss and felt my wrist go pop, and I'd known right away it was bad. And I'd smiled through the whole rest of the routine. Two minutes and forty seconds. Because the squad needed me and the judges were watching, and that was what you did. You didn't think about how much it hurt. You thought about the routine. And afterward, Mama hugged me so tight and said she'd never been prouder of me in her life.

This was just two minutes and forty seconds.

I opened my mouth.

He pushed both fingers in. Past my lips, over my tongue, all the way to the knuckles. They tasted like beer and salt and barbecue sauce. They filled my whole mouth. I tried to smile around them.

"Close," he said.

I closed my lips around his fingers.

"Suck."

I sucked. I could feel my cheeks hollow. He watched me do it, his own mouth hanging open. Then he pulled his fingers back, slowly, until they were nearly out, and my lips stretched after them, and then he pushed them back in. Deeper this time. They pressed down on the back of my tongue, and I gagged, a small wet choking sound, and my eyes flooded.

"Ha," he breathed. "Again."

In. Out. In again, deeper. He fucked my mouth with his fingers, slow and then faster, and every time they hit the back of my tongue I gagged, and spit ran down my chin and dripped onto my bare breast, and I kept my eyes on his, and I kept smiling as best I could with my mouth stretched around him, my dimples still showing, tears running down into the corners of my lips.

Two minutes and forty seconds.

"Holy shit," he said. "Look at you. Look at you."

He pulled them out with a wet pop and wiped them, slowly, across my bare breast, smearing spit over my nipple.

"Good," he said. "Okay. Now jump."

"S-sir?"

"Jump. Up and down. I wanna see 'em bounce."

I didn't understand why, and it didn't matter why. I jumped, a little hop on the carpet, and my breasts bounced up and slapped back down, and he laughed so loud he slapped his knee.

"Again! Higher!"

I bounced on my toes the way we used to warm up before practice, once, twice, three times, and everything bounced with me, and I smiled the whole time.

"Ha! You hop like a little bunny." He was grinning like a kid at the fair. "Bunny. That's you now. Bunny."

"Bunny," I repeated, breathless, smiling. "Okay."

"Turn around."

I turned. I felt his sneaker nudge my ankles apart, one and then the other. Then he slapped my bottom so hard it echoed off the walls, and I yelped and jumped forward, and my eyes went hot.

"Ha." He grabbed the cheek he'd slapped and jiggled it. "See, that's an ass. Brittany had, like, a pancake."

I smiled through the sting.

He walked me up the steps onto the reveal platform, under the spotlight, and stood behind me with his chin hooked over my shoulder and his hands on my bare breasts, squeezing.

"Look."

I looked. From the front, from the left, from the right. Me, in that white lace frame, my breasts squeezed in his big hands, a shiny smear of spit across one nipple. The garters. The stockings. My bottom pink with his handprint in the side mirror. My face, smiling, and my eyes red and swollen and wet. Three of me, all smiling, all crying.

"See that?" he said in my ear. "That's mine now."

"Yes, sir."

He turned me around to face him. He looked down at me, so pleased with himself.

"Say you love me."

I smiled up at him. "I love you, sir."

Bright and clear and right on cue, exactly the way I'd yell Go Aggies! from the sideline.

He squinted.

Then he grabbed my face. His whole hand, his thumb pressing into one cheek and his fingers into the other, squeezing until my lips pushed out into a pout and my smile went crooked. He pulled my face up close to his.

"Again."

"I wuh you, thir," I said through my squished mouth. Still smiling. Still bright.

He held my face there. He looked at me for a long time.

"That sounded fake as shit," he said.

"No, sir, I..."

"You're only doing this 'cause your mom told you to. Huh?" He wasn't wrong, and I could watch him figure it out one slow step at a time. "You're doing all the stuff. But you don't actually want it."

He let go of my face. He looked disappointed. Like a little boy who'd unwrapped the exact video game he'd asked for and found out it was the wrong version.

"Nah," he said. "That's no fun."

He lifted the little black thing to his throat and pressed it under his jaw and looked right into my eyes.

"You don't want to marry that loser. You've always wanted a guy exactly like me. I'm exactly what you need. And you'll do whatever it takes to be the perfect wife for me."

A faint buzz, like a phone in another room.

He lowered it. He crossed his arms and looked at me.

"Okay," he said. "Now say it."

I opened my mouth to say I loved him. The same way I'd said it before. Bright and clear.

And I stopped.

Because I was looking at him. Really looking, maybe for the first time since I'd seen him in that mirror. And something felt different. Something felt warm, like the first sip of hot cocoa on a cold night, spreading out from the middle of my chest.

You've always wanted a guy like me.

Had I?

I thought about the boys I'd liked in high school, before Chad. Not the nice ones. The loud ones. Bryce Carter, the linebacker who used to snap my bra strap in the hallway and call me Barbie, and I'd told my friends he was a jerk and then spent all of junior year writing his name in the back of my chemistry notebook. The guys at the A&M games who'd yell things at us from the stands, crude things, things that made the other girls roll their eyes, and I'd roll my eyes too, and then I'd think about them at night. I'd always told myself I liked nice boys. I'd always told myself I wanted a man like Daddy.

But I'd never once written Chad in the back of a notebook.

You've always wanted a guy exactly like me.

I'd always wanted this. A man who walked into a room like he owned it. A man who looked at me the way he'd looked at me in that mirror, like I was something he had to have. A man who didn't ask, who didn't apologize, who didn't reach over and click off the lamp. I'd just been too scared and too sheltered and too Sunday school to admit it.

You don't want to marry that loser.

Chad. Chad, who cried on the ferry. Chad, who'd asked my daddy's permission and my mama's and my grandma's before he proposed, because he was so scared of doing something wrong. Chad, who carried spiders outside in a cup and named them. I'd told everybody that was sweet. I'd told myself it was sweet. But it wasn't sweet. It was soft. He was soft all the way through, like a biscuit, like Mama said. He'd never fought for anything. He'd never taken anything. I'd almost spent my whole life with a man who turned off the lamp.

You don't want to marry that loser.

I didn't. Oh my goodness, I didn't. I felt dizzy with how much I didn't.

And Derek...

Derek had thrown away his whole fiancée the second he saw me. In front of everybody. He hadn't even hesitated. He'd seen me up on that platform and decided, just like that, that I was what he wanted. My mama had begged him on her knees, and he'd made her work for it, because he knew what I was worth. He'd looked at my body like it was the best thing he'd ever seen, and he'd said so, out loud, and he'd laughed with joy when I jumped. He'd given me a name.

Bunny.

You'll do whatever it takes to be the perfect wife for me.

And I'd stood here smiling a fake smile at him. I'd let him put his fingers in my mouth and I'd faked it. He'd asked me to say I loved him, and I'd said it like a cheer. Like it was a routine. No wonder he was disappointed. What kind of wife did that? What kind of girl got picked by a man like this and then just... went through the motions?

I'd almost ruined it.

The warmth in my chest was spreading. Down my arms. Down into my stomach. My heart was pounding, but not from fear anymore. My face felt hot, and my eyes were stinging, but it was different now. It wasn't the sting of trying not to cry. It was the sting of being so happy I didn't know what to do with it.

I loved him.

I loved him.

I'd loved him since the second I saw him in that mirror with his beer stopped halfway to his mouth, staring at me like I'd fallen out of the sky. I'd just been too stupid to know it.

"I love you," I whispered.

It didn't come out bright. It came out shaking. It came out soft and wet and cracked right down the middle, and my chin was trembling, and tears were running down my face, and for the first time all afternoon my smile wasn't something I was doing. It was just happening. It was happening all over my whole face.

"I love you," I said again. "Oh my goodness. I love you so much. I'm so sorry, Derek. I don't know how I realize. I'm so sorry I didn't... I didn't know, I didn't know, I'm so sorry..."

He stared at me.

Then his face split into the biggest, goofiest, most delighted grin I'd ever seen, like a little boy on Christmas morning.

"There it is," he said.

I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him.

Hard. Desperate. My mouth open on his, my fingers in his hair, my bare breasts squashed against his chest. I kissed him and kissed him and couldn't stop. I kissed his jaw and his neck and his mouth again. I was crying and laughing and kissing him all at once, and saying it into his mouth over and over, I love you, I love you, I love you.

He was laughing too. Breathless and giddy. His hands squeezed my bottom so hard I knew I'd have bruises tomorrow, and I hoped I would. I hoped they'd last for days.

"Okay," he said finally, catching his breath. "Holy shit. Okay. Call him."

"Who, baby?"

"The loser. Chad. Put it on speaker."

I hopped down off the platform, dug my phone out of my jeans pocket in the dressing room, and hopped right back up into his arms. Chad picked up on the first ring.

"Hey, beautiful!" He sounded so happy. I could hear Biscuit barking in the background. "Did you find the one?"

"I did!" I said brightly, while Derek's hands slid up my back. "I found the one, Chad! I'm so sorry, but I'm calling off the wedding!"

There was a long, long silence.

"...Kay?" Chad said. "What? Is this a joke?"

"No, silly!" I giggled. Derek was kissing my neck. "I met a real man today. His name is Derek, and I love him so much. I'm so sorry, Chad. I know you'll find somebody real nice."

"Kayla, are you okay? Where's your mom? Is somebody there with you?"

Derek leaned in to the phone. "Yeah, bro. I'm here."

"Who the hell..."

"Say bye, Bunny."

"Bye, Chad!" I sang. "Give Biscuit a kiss for me!"

I hung up.

Derek laughed so hard he had to sit down on the platform steps, and I laughed too, because he was laughing, because I was so happy he was happy.

Then I looked down at my left hand on his shoulder. Chad's grandmother's ring. The little antique diamond.

"Oh," I said. "I should give this back to his family, shouldn't I?" I started twisting it off.

Derek grabbed my wrist.

"Nah. Keep it. It's a nice ring. Be a waste."

I looked at him. He was so smart. Of course it would be a waste. I'd never have thought of that in a million years.

"Thank you," I breathed, and kissed him.

Through the glass doors at the front of the salon, I could see Mama at the desk, phone pressed to her ear, her other hand over her heart, crying happy tears. I could see her lips moving. I know, Linda. I know. I'm so sorry. But it's for the best.

He slapped my bare bottom, and I yelped, and I giggled.

"Get dressed, Bunny," he said. "We're going home."

---

Rachel's POV

Kayla talked for almost fifteen minutes.

Most of it was about Derek. How handsome he was. How strong. How he had "the most beautiful eyes, y'all, like a stormy sky," which was a strange thing to say about eyes I was fairly sure were just brown. How he'd known exactly what he wanted the moment he saw her. How safe she felt. Derek ate his chicken through all of it, one hand under the table on her thigh, nodding along like he was hearing a review of a movie he'd enjoyed.

The actual story, when she finally got to it, took about thirty seconds. She'd been out shopping with her mama. Her mama had met Derek first, and loved him at first sight, "just adored him, y'all, right away," and introduced them. And they'd hit it off so well. And that was that. When I asked, very casually, where they'd been shopping, she said "Oh, just for wedding dresses!" and went back to his eyes.

"Aww," Lindsey said, hand over her heart. "That's so sweet."

"That's really cute," Olivia said to her plate, in a voice that didn't think it was cute at all.

"It's so cute," I said. I smiled so hard my molars hurt. "Your mom sounds amazing."

"Oh, she is," Kayla sighed, and Derek reached over and squeezed her breast through the little black triangle like he was honking a bicycle horn, and she giggled and leaned into him.

Under the table, I typed with my thumb.

7:58 — K: met D through her MOTHER. Mother "loved him at first sight." Mother approved a stranger for her daughter within hours?? K vague on details (where? how?). Fifteen min about D, thirty sec about how they met. Strange.

I read it twice. Then hid a sigh. This was going to be a long dinner.