a work of art

chapter 23: baby, let's drive

A/N: Happy weekend, enjoy an extra chapter, love you bye 🥲

———————————————————————

Eventually we picked ourselves up off the floor. Still a little tearful, still feeling silly, and mushy, and gross. But so unbelievably happy to be together again. Billie wrapped her gift back up in the tissue, lovingly, and tucked it away until we could get it framed properly.

It was already late. After being given the briefest of tours of her home, Billie told me we were leaving again. I was sitting on the floor, being licked to death by Shark, when she came out of her bedroom looking like a goddamn music star.

Which... I mean, she was.

"Excuse me?" I said, rubbing her dogs soft underbelly. "I'm hanging with Shark. And Sharky is a good boy, aren't you Sharky?"

"Listen, as turned on as I am by you loving my dog, we have reservations."

I looked up at her. "Uhhhh, what kind of reservations?"

"Don't worry about it. Go put on something sexy for me."

She was checking herself out in a big mirror hanging by her front door. She was wearing a zip up hoodie and massively oversized jeans. The shirt under her hoodie was black lace, with a black bra under that. She pouted in the mirror, and I stared.

She caught my eye in the reflection and smirked at me. "Baby, go get dressed."

I nodded, and ran off to her bedroom to dig through my suitcase. Once again, I'd packed an absurd mish-mash of clothing options in a haze of panic. I'd only brought one suitcase total, though, as Billie had pleaded with me to go through "the closet" with her, and take as much stuff from it as I could.

The closet was a room at the end of the hall where all the clothes people sent her went to die. There were some amazing pieces in there (she swore), but she never had enough time or energy to go through it. Every now and then someone like Zoe or Laura would come and dig through it and distribute it to various places (even if it meant they took a bunch of it home themselves). But it still always seemed to be full. I'd stuck my head in there when I'd first arrived and almost had a panic attack.

"Hurry up!" Billie hollered from the living room, as if she hadn't just sprung an evening outing on another woman. I rolled my eyes and kept sifting through my suitcase.

Finally, I gave. I didn't feel like wearing any of this shit.

I padded down the hall to the closet, and let myself in. There were boxes, clothing racks, gigantic paper bags, a folding table absolutely spilling over with makeup, and another with jewelry. It was... a lot.

I pushed down the panic and started digging through one of the racks. Billie looked sexy as fuck, but she also looked pretty casual, so I found a pair of baggy cargo pants and pulled them on quickly.

I kept digging for a moment, then dove at a slinky white fitted crop top with a collar. It was stretchy, and slid over my curves like a dream. I looked in a standing mirror shoved in the corner and felt good about my choices — so far.

We wore the same size shoe and that felt like a miracle in that moment. I sat on the floor and dug through a wall of shoeboxes on one side of the room. TONS of Gucci, some Prada —

I screamed, pulling out a box of Off-White Burwood loafers, still in the box.

Billie came running in at my exclamation. "Oh god, you can't be in here alone, this room needs a disclaimer."

"They're still in the box!" I yelled at her. "They're just sitting here! What's wrong with you!"

She laughed and pointed at them. "Never got around to those ones, baby."