Maybe I like a little crazy.
I dig though the cabinet, knocking over the tampons to find a package of razors. Just as I grab one, I spot a plastic circle with bubbled capsules. I know what it is. I just don’t fucking understand what it’s doing in Philly and not Paris. I take Daisy’s birth control and inspect the dates. It’s almost all full, except for a couple pills missing. It looks like she stopped taking them weeks ago, which would be fine if she didn’t admit to almost fucking a guy in France.
“Did you find it?” Daisy asks.
“Yeah,” I say with a steel voice. I can’t talk to her about the birth control with Emilia right here.
“What is that?”
I go rigid.
Emilia peeks from behind the shower curtain, water dripping off her arm. She squints as she scrutinizes the pills. “Oh shit,” she says with a laugh.
I pocket them and glower at her as hard as I fucking can. “Here’s your razor.” I throw it at her. She catches it, but instead of finishing her shower, she shuts off the water and steps out, wrapping the towel around her body.
“Let me see that,” she says with a smile.
I hold the phone to my ear and say, “I’ll call you back.”
“What’s going on?” Daisy asks.
“Is that her?” Emilia’s eyes brighten at the phone.
I don’t like that look on her fucking face.
“Hey, Daisy,” Emilia calls loudly so she can hear, “thanks for the shampoo. It smells like teen spirit.”
“She’s fun,” Daisy says to me, a humored smile to her words. She usually doesn’t take digs at her age to heart.
“No she’s not,” I say blankly, staring hard at Emilia. She’s quick. In a swift second, she steals the birth control out of my pocket.
“Oh my God,” she laughs and waves the packet. “Male shampoo and she stopped taking the pill.” She glances at the phone. “Hey Daisy, you need to tell your fuck-buddies to wrap it, honey, or you’re going to be sixteen and pregnant.”
“I’m eighteen,” Daisy says flatly, but only I can still hear her.
I glare hard at Emilia. “You need to fucking go.”
Her smile fades. “I’m just joking around, Ryke.” She tosses the pills back to me. I catch it with one hand. “Daisy knows that.”
“I’m not fucking joking.”
I hear Daisy’s voice go hysterical in my fucking ear. “Stop, Ryke, you can’t kick her out. She may sell that info to the press.”
She probably will anyway. I roll my eyes and shake my head. “I’ll drive you home. Just don’t make a big deal about this.” I raise the pills between two fingers to show her what I’m referring to.
“Yeah, sorry.” Her eyes drift to the counter. “Is that her brush?”
Fucking A. “I’ll wait for you in the bedroom.” I don’t care what she does anymore, as long as she’s on her way out in five minutes or less. I sit on the mattress while Emilia combs her hair. “You there, Dais?” I ask her for what feels like the millionth time.
“Yeah, about the pills…I don’t like taking them around Fashion Week. My mom says I gain too much weight when I’m on them. So…don’t be mad.”
If I didn’t tell her to date other fucking guys, I wouldn’t be so concerned right now. My nose flares, and it takes me a moment to answer. “It’s your body. Just be fucking careful.”
“I will,” she says. Silence stretches over the line. “Hey, Ryke?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t fuck her in my bed.”
I grimace. “I would never do that.”
“Just making sure.”
I let out a deep breath. “I miss you.” Fuck me. Why do I say shit like that to her?
Because it’s the truth.
She says, “It’s only been four days.”
“Feels longer than that.”
“Yeah, it does,” she says softly. “So what was your climbing time?”
I almost smile. She remembered that I said I beat my last record. “Two minutes, seventy-three seconds, eighty feet of ascension.”
“I’m proud of you,” she says. “Did you scream, ‘I am a Golden God’ when you reached the top?”
“Only you do that, sweetheart.”
There’s a long pause again, and I can’t keep my smile from filling my whole face.
When she collects herself, she laughs and says, “I did it once, and it wasn’t even a real mountain.”
It was a gym rock wall. And it took her a week to complete the hardest course. By the end, she pumped her fists in the air in triumph and shouted that quote from Almost Famous. The entire gym clapped.
It was really fucking cute.
“Do you feel better?” I ask her. She doesn’t seem as paranoid or fucking antsy.
“When I talk to you, yeah, I do.”
“Then call me. I told you I wouldn’t fucking mind if you did.”
“I didn’t want to bother you…the time difference…”
“I’ll answer your call if it’s at four in the morning or midnight, Dais. It’s just fucking hard for me to call you because I don’t know when you’re on the runway.”
There’s a long drawn out pause, and I can tell she’s trying to find the right words. She settles on these: “Thanks, Ryke.” She says my name with this genuine, heartfelt affection. “I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
“I have to start heading over for hair and makeup. Call you later?”
“I’ll answer.”
For you, I always fucking will.
< 17 >
DAISY CALLOWAY
Stylists and publicists with walky-talkies and headsets dart around the backstage area with crazed eyeballs. Mine aren’t bugged. I rub them, dry from the lack of sleep.
Models swarm the congested backstage, hurrying into their clothes. I sit in another makeup chair while a stylist twists my long blonde locks into an intricate shape of a humongous ribbon. The more hairspray she uses and bobby pins she pokes, the more weight gathers on my head.
When she finishes, I wander over to the racks of clothes and find my garment. It’s nothing more than black hefty fabric, draped to form an indistinguishable bow. Yes, the dress is a giant bow. I am a bow, really, and my hair is also a bow with a ribbon.
I start undressing in order to put the garment on.
“Ladies in the Havindal collection, hurry up!”
Uh-oh. Finding the armholes has proved troublesome, even if I’ve tried the dress on before. Just discovering where to put my head takes ten solid minutes.
I stand beside Christina, who’s not doing much better. She tries to jump into a pair of gray slacks that accompanies a bow-styled blouse, which is hanging on the rack beside her. As she hops into the right leg, the fabric suddenly tears.
“Oh no,” she says with wide eyes, whipping her head from side to side to see if anyone saw. “What do I do?” Her freckled cheeks redden.
The designer, an eccentric skinny lady, inspects each model with a narrowed, judgmental gaze.
“Step out of them,” I tell Christina before she bursts into tears. I flag down the stylist that just did my hair and show her the rip before the designer notices.
“I have a sewing kit at my station. Stay here,” she tells us.
Christina wears a bra and a nude thong. I’m no more dressed. In fact, I don’t have on a bra because my bow-gown has a bit of side-boob. My breast still hurts from Ian mauling my nipple, but I used some concealer to hide the yellowish hickies. It’s not that noticeable, and no one has said anything about it.