Loving My Best Friend's Dad(3)

“Hey,” she says, popping her head through the door. “Want to order some room service? We’ll need to eat something so we have enough energy to last all night!”

I follow her to the living room and look over the menu. Everything sounds delicious, but I decide to stick with something I know, a penne pasta, while goes for a strip steak. I try not to look at the prices. I know Renee doesn’t care either, but a tiny bit of me is in sticker shock at the idea of a $30 plate. I can hear my mom’s voice saying ‘You can feed twelve if you made that at home!’ a mantra that she says every time we do end up eating out. It’s not that our family is poor, but she grew up in a family of seven and my grandparents grew up in the Depression too, which had a long lasting effect on them. My granddad has a whole garage full of stuff he’s kept just in case he’d need it because back in those days, people saved everything.

Once dinner’s all finished, we decide to get ready. We take a shower, curl our hair, put on our makeup, and of course, we put on our sexiest dresses. Here’s where Renee and I differ again. I put on a black, off the shoulder dress with an A-line hem. It’s light, it’s breezy, and it shows some skin. Good enough, right?

I walk into Renee’s bedroom, and she’s already shaking her head.

“What’s wrong with this?” I ask her. “I wore the same thing last weekend and you said it was hot!”

“It’s good enough for college,” she explains. “But here, there needs to be more ‘oomph’.”

She holds out slippery metallic dress to me.

“I brought this along just in case,” she says. “You’ll look fabulous in it.”

I take the dress from her doubtfully. Renee’s tall and willowy, with the kind of body that no amount of ice cream could make fat. She was a model at one point of course. So I had no clue how it was going to fit over my body. I’m curvier, softer, with just a little bit extra in my breasts and hips. Next to her I get a little insecure sometimes, but I wouldn’t say my body is horrible at all. Just more average. But I know for a fact that our body shapes are different enough that we’ve never shared clothes before.

“Just try it,” she says. “I’ll turn around.”

I pull off my dress and examine the dress, then take off my bra too. The dress has drape, surprisingly, and I think on Renee it would be airy and light, but it clings to my curves. It’s held up by a delicate chain that crisscrosses in the back, and the fabric dips between my cleavage. The metallic fabric is cold, and I shiver a little, my nipples tightening into points, but it also almost feels like water with the way it shimmers and shines in the light. It caresses my curves, the fabric giving me a soft glow that makes me look almost like a goddess. I look sexy, maybe even too sexy? I’m going to get attention, something that I’m not used to.

I look up and Renee’s beaming at me.

“That. Looks. Amazing. That dress is yours,” she declares. “It fits you perfectly! I love it.”

I look at her dress. It’s a beautiful lacy corset looking dress, black and nude, so it almost looks like she’s wearing nothing underneath the lace. We look so different, but I have no doubt we’re going to turn some heads in our clothes.

“I don’t know, Renee,” I begin to say.

She walks over to me and puts her hands on my shoulders.

“Come on. You look good. We’re going to do things my way tonight remember?” she pivots me towards the mirror. “This is the new you for tonight Emilia. Take a good look at her. She’s fabulous and gorgeous and fearless and she’s going to let all of New York know it.”





Nate


New York City. It maybe be loud, it might be a bit dirty, but it’s my home, and there’s nothing quite like returning to it. My family’s been here for generations, the history of the city intertwined with our own. Some would even go so far as to say that we built New York, and they wouldn’t be too far off the mark. The Lowell’s reach extended into everything from industry, to manufacturing, to mining, and of course politics. What else would all that money be good for if not for grabbing power? My grandfather would always say though I found it distasteful. Generations of squabbles and grudges have splintered the family wealth, but not our presence. Our names are plastered all over the city’s streets, buildings, schools and museum wings. Something my daughter has yet to understand, I think as I pick up my ringing phone and see her name.

“Hey dad, did you land safely?” she says chirpily. I’m surprised she’s calling me. These days all she does is text.