Audrey Hepburn's Pearls: Part I

Chapter 42.1: 1995, Ruiz

Chapter 42.1: 1995, Ruiz

"Hand me that carnation pink pencil. Hmm...is that the right color? Do you think? Maybe more a cherry blossom? What about..."

As Ambrose shifted on the bed, a mountain of pink color pencils rolled forward towards him, trying to go under his thigh. 

"Oh shoot. I'm making a mess." His long, salmon pink finger nails went to shift the pencils back up the newspaper on the bed, but to no avail.

"Here," I said, placing them one by one into my hand to put back on the flatter part of the bed near me. 

"Oh, thank you." He giggled a little bit, so pleased with his dress design that he didn't even notice the expression on my face. "Did you want tulle or more of an organza? I think the organza..." He didn't finish the thought as his pencil hit paper again and his hand glided up in a long stroke, truly feeling the material it professed.

Staring at the carnation pink gown on his paper, the skirt looking like an inverted carnation itself, I felt nothing. Or if not nothing, an unsureness causing my feeling to be muted. All of the magic I had about him, it was gone. And it was causing me to feel like I was free-falling, right here on the bed. It was like I was in space instead, not in Ambrose's impromtu design studio.

He bit his lips, squeezing them together in concentration. I felt shivery, knowing this pose would have caused me to have a pinch in my heart for him even a week ago. But now. It felt so foreign to be so cold.

"Baby, do you want a more structured look to the top? The sort of thing that moves on its own when you walk, do you know what I mean? A really stiff corset...shoot, can I make a corset like that in a month? How about something we can get in a store and we convert it...but can we find what we want? Hmm..."

I didn't respond. He didn't seem to notice or care, just kept drawing. His hand wandered towards me, never looking away from his paper. I shifted slightly to avoid his hand, not really wanting it to touch me. It found its mark, taking up a bunch of different pink pencils. These floated to him, and he inspected them. A slight smile came to his face and evidently he'd found the right color. Without a word he began shading in the drawing with this. 

As I watched, he looked down. His lower lip poked out in his search as he found his most favorite pencil pressed between the bed and his thigh. He'd put it there earlier because he knew he'd use it.

"Ruiz pencil time," he said cheerfully. Involuntarily, I let out a little snort of laugh. I couldn't help it. The 'Ruiz pencil' was one he'd specially bought from the Utrecht store after taking me in there years ago and holding tan colored pencils up to my skin to find my perfect skin tone for his drawings. He'd said this was the most important thing in the world because he could then judge the best colors to compliment my skin tone on paper when he designed for me.

Very carefully, he began shading my skin tone into the outline drawing he'd made of me. I had been uncomfortable with the way he'd drawn my body, but that wasn't my problem. I knew he had to draw my body as close as possible to how it was in order to get the dress to design properly on my frame. What really made me uncomfortable, my true problem, was how casual he was being when he was keeping so much from me. Such big things. 

Such big lies.

"I knew it, the cherry blossom was right. This light pink makes your skin tone look like milk tea. When you blush it will look amazing with this color. Oh, blush! I bet we could match your make-up with this!"

"Yeah."

"Look at it, Ruiz. Isn't it like a Quinceañera dress? You'll be the prettiest girl at the Pink! event, you'll see. Nobody will be able to take their eyes off of you. It will be like your party. Your Quinceañera!"