Break Me by Evelyn Glass

as he bent his head down to her cleavage. “Fair enough.”

 
    CHAPTER TWELVE
     
    Friday night, Zoey stood in Alex ’s penthouse, staring at her reflection in the mirror. The dress fit like it had been designed precisely for her, and the rich wine red, which she’d worried would set off the ruddiness on her cheeks, instead brought out bright auburn highlights in her hair. Claire had directed her to bring her own eyeliner and mascara, BB cream if she wanted it, but otherwise had delighted in bringing out her own suitcase of makeup. Their coloring was different enough that Zoey had worried that Claire wouldn’t have shades that would look right on her, but it was a needless worry; it turned out that Claire had all the shades.
     
    “My god,” Zoey had said, pawing happily through the eye shadow palettes and lip stains.
     
    “It’s pretty fun, what people send to your house when they know that if you get photographed, you’ll tell people you were wearing their stuff.” Claire’s expression, however, didn’t look like she actually thought it was much fun. More like she thought she should say that it was. Zoey couldn’t help but reach out and twine her fingers through the younger girl’s. Claire gave her a grateful smile. “So everything’s okay with you and Alex now?”
     
    Zoey smiled, thinking of the last few days. They’d spent them mostly at her apartment, and she’d been pleasantly surprised with, well, how handy he was. He’d done dishes for her, cooked for her, repaired the dripping faucet after he looked up the instructions on the Internet, and if she hadn’t stopped him, he would have gone out for Spackle and paint to repair the cracks in the plaster. “Things are good,” she said. “It’s—relationships aren’t guarantees, Claire. But I promise. I won’t walk out of your life unless you want me to, no matter what happens with him.”
     
    The girl stared at her a moment, and then turned away quickly, digging into her suitcase. “I’m thinking a light layer of this gold shadow,” she said, in an obvious attempt to hide her emotions, “swiped over with some of this pink glitter. I know it sounds extreme, but it’ll be light and pretty. Okay?”
     
    Zoey worried that she’d said something completely wrong until she saw Claire blot carefully at her lower lashes, clearly cognizant of her mascara. “Sounds awesome,” Zoey said.
     
    Her makeup was amazing. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what Claire had done differently. For the most part, her products were the same, or less expensive than what Zoey usually saved up for. She followed the same general path of foundation, eyes, lips, and made similar choices in color. Maybe it was like cooking, where the meal someone made for you was always just a little more delicious than the one you made for yourself.
     
    “You’re a wizard,” she said to Claire. The girl looked up from the deep, vivid lip stain she was spreading over her own lush lips, and smiled.
     
    “The canvas is halfway decent,” she said, raising just one eyebrow. “It helps.”
     
    The party itself was the exact opposite of that. She hadn’t caught more than offhand mentions from Claire and Alex as to why the party was here, not at Olivia’s home, but why she’d still made it her event. It was incredibly clear from the first moment that everything happening was about Olivia Blankenship showing off her daughter. The fact that her daughter had just turned 18 was nothing but a convenient excuse for her. Zoey didn’t see a single person Claire’s age at the party. Most of them were older than she and Alex by a couple of decades.
     
    But Claire functioned like a movie star, walking from one group to another of her mother’s friends. She introduced Zoey to people, laughed at really bad, usually misogynist, jokes that made Zoey cringe. She never gave a single hint that this was anything other than what she would have chosen for herself.
     
    And maybe it was exactly