Page 70 of Not You Again
“Shut up.” I cap my concealer and toss it in my bag with a little too much force. The whole clutch teeters on the edge of the counter before tumbling off.
When I bend to scoop it off the ground, Heidi lets out a laugh. “Holy shit.” She scoots around to look at my back. “You two really went for it.”
I turn around and look over my shoulder into the mirror. Fuck. Kit’s fingers left marks on my skin where he held onto me like I was his lifeline. I groan and bury my face in my hands, utterly humiliated. I’m supposed to be here in a professional capacity, and I got lost in Kit—his hands, his mouth, his words.
I’ll keep you safe.
“Relax.” Heidi rests her hands on my shoulders. She turns me back toward the mirror to assess the mess Kit made of my face. “With the way they were eye-fucking during the ceremony, the maid of honor and best man are probably against one of these fairy trees right now. Nobody noticed whatever you were up to.”
She grips my chin and turns my face this way and that in the light. Determining the damage is something she can work with, she pops open her bag and pulls out a travel pack of makeup wipes. I take a deep breath and savor the coolness of the wipe as she works.
“He says he has feelings for me,” I whisper, still terrified of the truth.
“Is that such a bad thing?” Heidi asks the same question Kit did earlier.
I close my eyes when she asks me to, and she begins wiping away my minimal amount of eyeliner and mascara. “It is when I’m supposed to divorce him in two weeks. I don’t want to hurt him.”
Heidi hums in a way that says she understands. “You don’t want to hurt him,” she repeats, switching to my other eye. “Because hurting him would hurt you.”
“Yes, because I—”
Oh no. My eyes pop open to see Heidi’s lips stretch into a smug grin.
“I hate you.” I cross my arms over my chest. She got to the bottom of that too quickly; it’s not fair. Has it been that obvious to everyone but me?
Heidi wipes away the last of my makeup and tosses the wipe into the trash. As she digs through her bag, she says, “Okay, let’s talk this through. He has feelings for you, and you have feelings for him.”
As much as I hate that she’s right, I give her a firm nod.
She squirts some tinted moisturizer onto her fingers, then begins to smooth it over my face. “If you don’t divorce him, what happens?”
“I lose out on the money I need to keep my business afloat until I can find investors,” I repeat mechanically. None of this is new information.
“What about a business loan?”
“No,” I say firmly. I saw what happened to the dry cleaner I worked for when they couldn’t make ends meet. Down went their business and, in turn, their whole lives. “Not an option.”
“What about Fashion Week?” she asks calmly, moving on to a tube of mascara. “I thought that was the whole point of you showing.”
“It’s not a guarantee.” As much as I believe in the dresses I’m making, it doesn’t mean anyone else will find value in them.
“Blink,” Heidi demands. I obey. “Would it be so bad to continue making custom dresses for a while?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “I need room to breathe,” I say. “I don’t have that now. One bad review on a bridal website could ruin me.”
Heidi nods her understanding. She pulls out a tube of petal pink lipstick and smudges some onto my cheeks, keeping her silence.
“He offered to invest in my business,” I say quietly, remembering how earnest Kit sounded that night. Like he would give anything to make my dreams come true.
“Why don’t you take him up on it?” Heidi goes to work on my lips, smoothing the petal pink over them too.
I use it as an excuse to not answer. Kit could up and leave me—just like last time—and take the future of my business with him. More than that, though, it would mean answering to him, letting him in on my decisions. Everything I built on my own wouldn’t be mine anymore. It would be Clover Callaway’s cheating fiancé redux.
But now that Kit is all in, I don’t know if I can pull the trigger on divorce either.
Hurt him, hurt myself, stay stuck. None of my options look great at this point.
“Andie,” Heidi interrupts my spiraling thoughts. “Would it really be so bad to have someone on your side?”