gurus.
'Where's he taking you?' Cait responded. I was just in the middle of texting 'don’t know' back to her when I heard from Marianne.
'Jeans and your sparkly purple tank. Black heels, leather jacket,' came Marianne's reply.
'Your new FMPs and a smile,' Crystal replied with a smiley faced icon.
'What's an FMP?' I texted back not realizing I had inadvertently sent it to all three of them.
After two 'LOLs' I finally got the explanation from Marianne, I think because she, more than either Cait or Crys, understood that this was my first walk down Fashion Lane. 'FMP = Fuck Me Pumps aka Heels'.
'OMG, we 4got 2 do makeup!' came from Crys.
'You have more makeup than the gloss, right?' came from Cait.
'Be over in ten,' I read from Marianne.
And she was although she was packing. She came with her whole makeup drawer, no seriously , she had the whole DRAWER in her hand when I opened the door. I couldn't help but laugh as I held the door open for her.
"Wow, you look wonderful," Marianne said coming in and moving straight to the dining room table and off-loaded the drawer. "Turn around, honey, let me see the full effect."
So I did a brief swirl.
"Beautiful! Where'd you get your hair done?"
And we were off, talking about my full day of Beauty yesterday. About halfway through the conversation Marianne had seated me in one of the four chairs around the table and had begun applying stuff to my face. I say 'stuff' because I, honest to God, didn't know what she putting on me.
"Okay, done!" Marianne said. "Go look."
I moved quickly to the small bathroom underneath the stairs and flicked on the light before stepping to the mirror.
"Holy shit," I whispered turning my face from side to side to admire her handiwork. My eyes looked smoky and huge but were balanced by my full, shiny mouth. She had performed a miracle.
"What'd you think, Lei? Too much?" she asked.
"Perfect," I replied quickly. "Will you, at some point, teach me how to do this?"
Her arm went around my waist and I snaked my arm over her shoulders.
"It'd be my pleasure," she said to our reflections in the mirror.
I still had the front door open after watching Marianne leave when I saw Dex pull up. My heart, beneath my purple, sequined tank top, sped up and I shoved my hands the back pockets of my jeans as I watched him make his way from the driveway to my front door.
"Hey, gorgeous. How you doing?" Dex said, stopping to drop a kiss on my cheek before moving further into my house.
"Better than this morning," I said smiling while closing the door.
"You definitely look like you feel better, babe." I saw Dex's eyes when they completed a full body scroll on me.
"And you're wearing a lot more clothes than you were wearing this morning, babe ," I teased moving to slide my feet into my new black heels and grab my leather jacket.
I had already done my own full body assessment on him noticing that he was wearing a olive green lightweight sweater over a white t-shirt that exactly matched the green of his eyes. Topped with a brown leather jacket that matched his boots in both color and suppleness, he looked like something out of a magazine.
"Ready?" he asked as he moved to help me with my coat, slipping his hand beneath my hair and pulling it out of the collar.
"Where're we going?" I asked turning back to lock the deadbolt as he waited for me on the porch stairs.
"Thought we'd start at The Roses and work it out from there."
I paused at the open door of his jeep.
"Start at the most expensive place in town and then work it out from there?" I couldn't help it, I threw back my head as the laughter bubbled up from somewhere around my toes.
I heard him join me in and soon got caught up in the sound of his laughter, the beauty of Dex, as he laughed with me.
As it wound down, I found my hand was planted in the middle of his chest and his hand was holding mine there.
In the quiet moments after our storm of laughter, our eyes caught and
Janwillem van de Wetering