Joe Goldberg is beginning to wonder if there's any more decent people in the world. With both Candace and Beck out of the picture, he's feeling lonely and starting to give up on love. That is, until Leila comes sobbing into Mooney's. Fragile and vul...
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1 | N E W Y O R K
leila
" L e i l a , you ready?" Evan's tiny little pixie voice punctures my thoughts. I blink at her reflection in the mirror finally realizing that I'd gone into auto pilot the second she walked out of the room. "Leila?" She drags out my name impatiently and leans into the door frame, asking me with her entire body, "What are you doing?"
An excellent question. I suppose I started out working on my makeup, but never quite mastered the art and wound up staring at my own sorry-looking face for I don't even know how long. I mean, I can definitely feel my grip on the sponge thing-y, but I'm not quite sure what to do with it no matter how many YouTube videos I attempted to follow. Something to do with foundation? Maybe soaking up the extra oils or-?
"Come on, babe. We're late meeting Casey, and you know how she gets." The nerves in Evan's words are thick, and she tries to hide it by peering around my shoulder to get a better look at herself. A low groan rattles around the back of her throat as she frantically starts raking her fingers through the fringe of her bangs. "Damn. I look like shit."
"Oh, stop! You look beautiful!" I don't hesitate throwing out the compliment for two reason. One, Evan has the type of body most women would kill for. She's tall, slender, and curvy. Annoyingly perfect in every sense of the word. And, two, she is utterly and completely blind to it, which is I feel the need to constantly remind her of her perfection and wind up grabbing her face and squishing it between my hands. "Look at that! So stinkin' cute!" I coo.
Naturally, she pulls out of my grip letting the insecurity that once riddled her body melt into a bashful smile. "Leila, stop! We don't have time for this."
"Come on, Evan. Own your inner Queen!" I chirp turning back to the pathetic looking display of cheap cosmetics littering the outer rim of the sink. I set the sponge thing-y aside, promising to better understand it when I return and force a smile as I turn back to my dear old friend.
"My inner Queen is hungry and we're late." She harps leading us away from the much-too-small bathroom.
"So you've said like, a hundred times. Message received." Casey has her whipped for damn sure, but to each their own. Their relationship's none of my business. And if Evan's Amazonian Princess wants to invite me out for lunch at the Sushi Sake joint for the first time ever, I can play nice.
It's literally the very least I could do.
Evan waits for me a few paces ahead, still fidgeting with her hair as we approach the front door. "I hope she's not too pissed," she murmurs mostly to herself, "if we get there after the lunch lull she'll have our asses."
"You mean she'll have your ass," I correct, "I'm just the lovable sidekick."
"Sidekick or not, we're in this together." In one swift move, the lovely redhead manages to lock the door and give me the most judgmental side eye the world has ever seen reminding me, once again, New York's a different beast than the small southern town we'd grown up in. It's faster here. Nothing stops.
