The Mentor

Chapter 31

The day of the live finale finally came. A couple days before, each pair of contestants were assigned a master canvas and had to do a 12 hour tattooing marathon. Kyle and I were assigned to a woman who wanted a large back piece of some traditional Asian artwork. She didn't have too many ideas in mind so we settled on doing a koi fish with some water and other little details worked in. The actual process of doing the tattoo and working with this woman was pretty boring, so I won't go into detail about that.

The day of the evening of the live finale came, and I was worried sick. Kyle came to my hotel room at around noon to check on me.

"What're you wearing to this thing?" He asked.

I groaned and buried my face in my hands.

"Ah, shit. I completely forgot to pick out something nice."

"You didn't bring nice clothes?"

"I mean I did, but I don't think they're nice enough..."

I reached into my suitcase and pulled out a simple black dress with brown pinstripes.

Kyle chuckled.

"Yeah...you're not wearing that. Let's go to Bloomingdales and pick out something."

Kyle pulled me up off the floor and we took the bus to Lexington Ave. I had only ever been to Bloomingdales once in Chicago, and I threw up in the middle of Lululemon due to a bad breakfast danish and was promptly asked to leave.

We got off the bus and made our way to the large department store. Bloomingdales was more like a large multi story mall than a department store, but I suppose that's why it was a rich people outlet.

We got a little off track looking at all the options we had, but eventually I was drawn to a little boutique called Nouveau. I wasn't sure if the use of the word was short for the derogatory term for rich people, or if it was being used as its direct definition, "New".

The place looked like a more upscale version of Windsor. A sales associate dressed in an all black pantsuit and red lipstick came up to us and introduced herself as "Cheryl."

Cheryl actually seemed to be pretty friendly, maybe she recognized us from the TV. She pulled out a white tape measure and measured my bust, waist, and hips. She then asked what kind of dress I was looking for, reassuring me that I could get away with almost anything. I explained that we were going to be in a huge live television event and she seemed very excited to be styling me for it once I told her. She picked out a few things that I tried on but we eventually settled on a Navy spaghetti top dress that had red and gold accents. It came down to my ankles with a high slit up my left thigh. We then picked out some black sandals with a low heel and small gold hoop earrings to go in my second holes.

The grand total of everything came out to a whopping $360. I pulled out my wallet but Kyle stopped me by promptly pulling a wad of cash out of his front pocket. Jesus, how long had he been carrying that around for?

We paid and eventually left Bloomingdale's after getting a lavender chai mocha to share.

We got back to the hotel and Kyle offered to help me sort myself out, but I pushed him away.

"Kyle, you know I love you but please, this is something I have to do on my own." I insisted.

It was around 3:00 at this point, and we were being picked up to go to the live venue at 6:00pm.

I quickly dumped out all my toiletries and pulled out a navy blue nail polish and painted my toes, no one was gonna catch me in sandals with my bare toes out and about.