Living In The Shallows (UK Crush #1)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

"Actually, I do," I admitted. Like many women, I had a weakness for shoes, and I'd never had the means to indulge it. My shoes were all second hand, but I had beautiful high heels, courtesy of the dozens of thrift stores in Hollywood, and I'd brought three pairs to Japan, one pair dark blue, with sparkles on the toes and heels. I put them on and showed her.

"Wow! Where'd you get those? They're amazing! They don't make shoes like these anymore. Are they vintage?" She looked at me.

I nodded. "It's one of the perks of living near all those movie studios. You just have to know where to look."

"Okay, shoes, done! And way ahead of schedule, too. Now we can focus on your face. And with all the purples and pinks in your dress, we can use the same palette on your eyes. You're going to look amazing, you are, just you wait!" And she clamped some extremely bright lights on to the edge of the dresser and went to work on my face. I kept Gethin's words in my mind and just let her do her thing. I forced myself to relax, breathe deeply, and remind myself that, no matter how difficult the next few hours were, they would end eventually, and I'd be on a plane back to LA in eighteen hours.

"Finished," she announced forty-five minutes later, with a final brush stroke to my eyebrow. "Want to see?" She turned me around so I could see myself in the large mirror.

I was facing a stranger. I looked like myself, but I could also see my mother. I could even suddenly remember an old picture of my father in the shape of my eyes. Like when the Japanese women had made me up, she had deepened the shape of my eyes, made them look more Asian and more Caucasian at the same time, lengthened the look of my eyelashes, made the sweep of my eyebrows more dramatic. But I didn't look overly made up. My face just looked more defined, somehow, more me.

And I didn't look chubby, just curvy. Wow.

I turned to Melanie. I opened my mouth, but I didn't even know where to begin. "Thank you" seemed insufficient for such a transformation.

She opened her arms. "Ah, lovey, your face says it all, come here."

I stepped into her arms and hugged her. "I'll say it anyway: Thank you, Melanie, thank you, thank you. I look amazing. You are amazing!"

"Yeah, I am," she stepped back to admire me, laughing. "You going to turn your phone back on now?"

"Do I dare?" The boys had pestered me so mercilessly for updates and selfies in the first fifteen minutes that I had finally just turned my phone off. Who knew what would be waiting for me when I turned it back on? There had also been periodic knocking on and calling through the interconnecting door between mine and Matty's room.

I turned my phone on and it lit up like a Christmas tree. Text after text from the boys, photos of them half dressed, in funny poses, fully dressed, looking smooth, looking goofy, looking like James Bond, looking gorgeous, looking desperate, with the caption, "Hurry the fuck up!"

I looked at Melanie. "Shall I let them in? Or should we clean up in here first?" She looked at me like I was crazy.

"I'm going to call people to clean this up while we're at the party, love, you're not going to touch this! By all means, let them in, I want to see the looks on their faces!

"In fact," she went to the door, "I'll let them in myself." She opened the door. "Come in, you monsters, and don't muss her up, or I'll kill the lot of you!"

They came spilling in like marbles, stopping at the sight of me. They looked fantastic, like a really slick, edgy ad for an English car or something.

They stared at me, with Ronan literally slack jawed; Teddy reached out and pushed his mouth closed for him.

"Tink," Ronan breathed. "Whoa. You literally took my breath away. Oh my lord, you look amazing." He held out his hand. "Come here, you."