be there to drive him home after.”
Bugger. Shite. Crap.
“But surely I could still reach her by phone?”
Laura takes another prolonged sip of that latte before shaking her head. “I’m afraid not. She’s asked me to hold her calls today. Doesn’t want to be disturbed, just in case.”
It’s dental work, not open-heart surgery. For the love of—
“Okay, I see.”
I have half a mind to yank that half-empty latte right out of her hand. Some help she was!
This is worse than I was expecting. I thought I’d have a quick word with Mrs. Halliday and know one way or the other whether I’d be allowed to date Logan. Sure, yes, it’s laughable that I would date him even if it weren’t against the rules. I’m sort of putting the cart before the horse here, but it’s in the realm of possibility at least!
Now, I have no way of knowing.
Now, I’ll have to go into the weekend and be on my best behavior.
No snogging his face off. No doing a little striptease and showing him just how not cute I can be.
Could my life get any worse?
“OH MY GOD. UNZIP IT!”
“I can’t! It’s stuck!”
“Okay, hilarious. You two have had your fun, but seriously, get me out of this thing.”
It’s suddenly hard to breathe in this posh dressing room, like maybe they’ve done something to the air so we’ll get a little lightheaded and forget we can’t afford a single item of clothing in this store, not even a sock.
I twist away from Yasmine and try to get a good look of my back in the mirror. The zipper she had trouble getting up a few minutes ago is the culprit. It’s what’s keeping me in this dress that we saw in the window as we were passing by on our way to cheaper shops down the road, the ones that sell panties five to a pack.
It’s a short red frock with thin crisscross straps in the back and a flirty hemline. A real showstopper.
“Oh my god, imagine if I wore that tonight?” is what I said, and Yasmine and Kat were all, “Oh, you’d knock Logan’s socks off for sure,” and then we sort of laughed and watched as this full-on glamazon walked out of the store with three bags in tow, a whiff of gentle perfume assaulting me as she passed by. I had a moment of absolute rage that I’d have to go to the party in a brown paper sack instead of this amazing red dress, so I whisked open the shop’s door and strolled right in to find a sales associate.
“I’d like to try on that red dress in the window.”
“Of course, but it’s couture—” and this is where she said the designer’s name, but it was all French and hard to understand, so I nodded along like I knew all about Pastrami Organza (or whatever his name was) and said, “Yes, that’s the point. I only wear custom couture.”
Oh, it was ace.
Yasmine and Kat kept high-fiving me while we waited in the dressing room for the woman to bring me the dress in my size. It was meant to be a bit of fun. Try it on, snap a photo of what I could look like if I had a few gazillion dollars to spare on clothes, and then immediately dash out of here.
That was before the zipper got stuck.
Before Yasmine and Kat both tried to pry me out of this thing.
I’m growing desperate. If the A/C weren’t cranked down to arctic temperatures, I’d be sweating bullets.
“How are you girls doing in there?” the sales associate asks in her chipper tone from the other side of the door.
“FINE!”
“GREAT!”
“GOOD!”
We all shout over each other in a wave of panic, and she laughs like we’re adorable before telling me to let her know if I have any issues with the dress.
Once she’s gone, I do a good bit of pacing, which is relatively hard in the confines of the dressing room. Yasmine and Kat have to dart out of my way every few seconds.
“Okay, tell me again what this dress costs,” I insist.
“$2,200.”
“Right. But converted to British pounds, it’s less, right?”
Kat looks like she’s about to cry. “What does that matter?”
“I’m trying to find some silver lining! Now, Kat, you try the zipper again.”
“I can’t! My fingers have got blisters from the last time I tried!”
“Yasmine?”
She’s the calmest out of all of us, sitting down on the bench and scrolling through her mobile now. “That zipper isn’t budging. I’ve tried