Page 86 of The Frog Prince
“It’s possible,” I answer primly, and maybe it’s not, but it should be. We shouldn’t have to be good girls. Sugar-sweet girls who follow all the rules. There’s no reason good girls can’t still be good girls even if they’re bad. Who gets to define what’s good and bad anyway?
“So how are you going to wear your hair tonight?” Katie asks, and I’m back to the party and off my Johnny Depp-Orlando Bloom-inspired fantasy.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Go severe,” Katie suggests. “Pull it back, gel it smooth.”
“Thatissevere.”
“And go crazy with your makeup. I’ll do it for you. Super-pale face. Heavy black eyeliner. Dark red lips.” Katie’s carrying her drink and heading for my bedroom, where all the purchases are waiting. “Did you buy the fake eyelashes?”
I follow her into my room. I do feel a little bit unsteady on my feet and reluctantly set my glass down. I definitely don’t need anything more to drink right now. “They’re in the smallest bag.”
Katie dumps everything out on my bed, sorts through the clothes, the stockings, the boots. She nods approvingly. “Let’s get to it.”
*
Thank God formy nice black wool coat, I think as I climb into the back of a yellow cab an hour later, black fishnet stockings peeping from beneath the coat hem.
Even fortified with great tequila, there’s no way I could go out in public without my coat.
The cab drops me off in front of the convention center as the setting sun turns the sky a dark blood red. People are streaming in, and it’s like a circus atmosphere. The energy’s up; everyone’s talking and laughing animatedly, eager to be there.
I give my name at the door, they assign me my dinner table number, and I check my plain wool coat once I’m permitted in. I feel naked, but I’m also distracted by the red chiffon draped everywhere. The entire convention center is a sea of red. And the dinner tables are all swathed in black. Music’s playing, the first of three different live bands, and somewhere a photographer is taking pictures, little white flashes popping in my peripheral vision.
I wander between tables, keeping my eye out for Tessa and City Events staff, but all I see are caterers and wait-persons rushing around. But then someone’s shoving a glass of red something at me, and I look at a masked face, the glimpse of light brown hair, and then the pale bare chest with the pierced nipple. I don’t take the drink. I can’t stop looking at the pierced nipple above tight black leather pants.
“It’s Josh,” the voice says.
I kind of thought it was. But the nipple ring? “Is that fake?” I ask, gingerly pointing to the silver ring protruding from his nipple. “No.”
I can’t believe Josh—quiet, corduroy-wearing Josh from the Beckett School—has a pierced nipple. It’s just too bizarre, too out of character. “Did you do it for the party?”
“No. I’ve had it for years.”
I want to be a pirate, and Josh has body piercings. What is the world coming to?
Josh thrusts the red drink into my hand. “I’m not the nice gay boy you thought I was, am I?” Still smirking, he walks away, fading into the crowd.
I watch him go, and I think,fuck ’em.
Fuck polite society. What did polite society ever do for me? Nothing.
And with that, I sip my red drink—a cosmo, thank God—and decide that no matter what happens tonight, I’m going to have a good time.
*
Dinner’s a relativelystraight affair, considering I’m one of only two women sitting at David Burkheimer’s table. I’m introduced around the table, shake hands with a couple of the men, getting a blur of names and faces, before David suggests I take the empty seat next to Kirk, who looks as if he’d just returned from a Hell’s Angels road trip: black leather motorcycle pants, white T-shirt pulled tight over bulging biceps, black vest, black boots, and a faded bandanna tied around his shaved head.
But Kirk the hell-raiser is still a gentleman, and he rises, holds my chair for me while I sit. “Nice dog collar,” he says, leaning forward to kiss my cheek.
“Katie liked it, too.”
He grins, sits, muscular forearm resting on the table. “Did she also want to put a leash on you, take you for a walk?”
I shoot him a dark glance from beneath my lashes. “I don’t do leashes.”
“You might like it.”