If the Shoe Fits

by Julie Murphy

  I love you.

  xoS

  PS: I definitely added “My BFF is Cindy on Before Midnight” to my Twitter bio.

  The roller-coaster ride my stomach has been on all afternoon settles as I hear her voice in my head. You’re there for a reason… That’s not something I can easily wrap my head around, and yet it does feel like there is some sort of unknown purpose for me being here. Whether it’s Henry or getting my name out there or maybe even getting back into some kind of creative groove. I don’t know….

  Trust yourself. I can practically hear Sierra’s voice in my head. I look into the mirror and find my face totally made up and my hair swept into a bun with soft tendrils hanging down and a thin black choker adding just a touch of edge to the look. Let’s do this.

  After getting fully undressed and putting on a strapless bra and an undergarment to save my thighs from chub rub, I slip the dress over my head. So far so good.

  “Irina? Beck? Someone?” I call. “Zip me up?”

  Beck lets herself into the bathroom, and I hold my arm up so she can access the side zip. “Irina’s coming to help too. I’m sort of scared to even touch the thing, if I’m being honest.”

  I laugh. “Try wearing it.”

  Irina shoulders her way past Beck and goes right for the zipper.

  I nearly hold my breath, but you wanna know what? Screw it. If I have to literally stop breathing to get into this Dolce & Gabbana dress, then D&G doesn’t have the good fortune of gracing my body. I have no intention of suffocating all night.

  “These damn zippers,” Irina grunts. She mutters something in Russian that I’m pretty sure equates to some kind of curse, but either I block it out, or the sound of the zipper sliding up distracts me.

  “Am I in?” I ask. “Does it fit?”

  Irina lets out a low whistle. “Like it was made for you.”

  I take a quick look in the mirror. This fat girl looks like a damn princess.

  “One final touch,” says Irina as she rushes back to the bedroom and returns with a white shoe box, JIMMY CHOO embossed across the top in gold. She opens the box to reveal the most decadent shoes I’ve ever seen. “On. Loan,” she says emphatically.

  The pointy-toe stilettos are encrusted with Swarovski crystals that cluster together at the toe to create an incredible burst of crystals. They are glass slippers in the truest sense. These are the shoes of my dreams, and if I can only wear them for one night, I better make it count.

  Well, I’ve never been on a date with three hair/makeup/wardrobe people, a sound engineer, and a few producers, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.

  While we’re waiting outside the hotel for the car, it’s pouring.

  “I need an ETA on the car!” Beck barks into the phone. “I don’t care about the rain or how gridlocked Forty-Fifth Street is. I need our—You know what? Never mind.”

  “Uh, we’re not walking in this, are we?”

  “Taxi!” Beck shouts. “I need a taxi!”

  The valet dutifully runs out to the curb and calls over the next cab waiting in line for hotel guests. A bright orange minivan with an ad for Olive Garden on the roof pulls up.

  “Your chariot, ladies!” the valet says as he escorts us to the car under the protection of his umbrella.

  “Is that orange?” asks Beck. “Sorry about the lack of luxury, kid,” she says to me. “We’ll get you in the fancy black car on the way home, but for now it’s this.”

  “Why does it matter?”

  Beck shakes her head. “It’s all about the shot. Black car service dropping you off for your fairy-tale date is romantic. A yellow cab is iconic to the location. A neon-orange minivan…is a neon-orange minivan.”

  I shrug. “It’s better than walking twenty-plus blocks in these heels.”

  When we pull up to Z Café in our neon-orange minivan, it’s still pouring—a short and sudden summer shower that fills me with nostalgia. Humid steam rises from the grates on the sidewalk, and commuters dash into the subway entrance on the corner with newspapers held over their heads and the occasional umbrella.

  I turn to Beck. “This is a lunch place.”

  “Exactly,” she says. “Perfect for nighttime filming.”

  Zeke holds an umbrella out for me as I step out of the orange cab. “But what about all those people and the waitstaff?” I ask as I peer in through the window to find the restaurant bustling.

  “Actors,” Beck says simply. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you reality television isn’t real?”

  While we’re standing under the canopy, a sound tech checks my mic, and I get a glimpse of Henry sitting at a table in the middle of the restaurant. His dark brows pull together as he pops his knuckles and takes a deep breath. He’s the kind of good-looking that doesn’t even feel real.

  “He looks nervous,” Beck says to Wes just far enough away that I’m pretty sure she thinks I can’t hear.

  “He’s been wound up since this afternoon. Mommy issues. You know how it goes with these guys. Seeing family stirs shit up.”

  When I walk in, Henry stands to greet me with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He grips my elbow before I can pull away and whispers, “You look stunning.”

  The cameras are close on us, and I can’t help but look up every time a crew member moves.

  “Is this how you do all your dates?” I ask.

  He chuckles. “Yeah, first my date meets my mom and then the camera crew acts as our chaperone for the night.”

  My mouth splits into a grin. “Your mom was…”

  He reaches under the table and takes my hand. “Intimidating.”

  “You said it. Not me.” I smile, my brows raising. “She’s an icon.”

  “To me, she’s just Mom. Your turn,” he says, quick to change the subject. “Tell me what your dad was like. And I want to hear about your mom too.”

  My face falls at the mention of them. Instinctively, my hand sweeps over the locket around my neck, but I keep forgetting that I swapped it for a black choker. Just for one night.

  “You don’t have to,” he adds quickly.

  I shake my head. “No, no, it’s—people don’t usually just ask like that. They’re usually scared to bring it up…or that I might cry.” I laugh, but it sounds more nervous than I mean it to. “You just caught me off guard is all. My mom—well, my stepmom is great. She’s driven and career-focused…Actually, she reminds me a lot of Lucy—your mom, I mean. My mom was a little wild. Dad would always say he didn’t know where she got it from, because her parents were, like, die-hard country club people. She grew up going to all-girls schools. She and my dad met in high school when she was trying to steal a tape from the Blockbuster where he worked.”

  Henry gasps through a laugh. “No! What movie? Did she get away with it?”

  I smile, and I know that it is scientifically impossible, but I wish I could have been there. I’ve heard the story so many times, but I’ll never know what the store looked like or if Mom was wearing cherry lip balm or if Dad’s uniform shirt was tucked in. I want to know every small, little detail. The meaningless ones that died with them. I swallow back the tears I can feel building. “Pretty Woman, and sort of,” I say. “He bought her a copy and wrote his number on the back of the receipt.”

  “Whoa. Your dad had some moves.”

  “He did,” I say. “He really did. He, uh, died when I was a senior in high school.”

  He bites down on his lip, like there’s more he might say if it weren’t for the cameras. “Again, I’m—Do you hate when people say they’re sorry? I’m sorry.”

  I shake my head. “I feel bad for people mostly. No one ever knows what to say or how to talk to me. It’s like dropping a bomb on any conversation. The ultimate mood killer.” I laugh a little. “I wonder if my dad would just love to know that even though I’m twenty-two years old, he’s still crashing my dates from the grave.” I dated very rarely in high school, and Dad was never the type to be overbearing, but he did always ask for the license and
registration of every car I got in whether it be friend or a date.

  At that, he laughs and I can feel the tension deflating a little. “Well, if he’s anything like you, I’m sure he was great.”

  My throat closes a little at the memory of him. “He was so kind. Always stopping to help people on the side of the road even though he didn’t know anything about cars. And he loved building stuff, but he was awful at it. He spent, like, ten years making me a tree house in the backyard, and even then, it was only a shoddy platform that couldn’t support both our weights at once. He always let me order pizza from his least favorite place because he knew I had a crush on the delivery driver, even though I couldn’t bear to say so out loud. But he was a great cook too, and he loved his job—managing a small chain of bargain basement stores. He loved the people he worked with, and he always told me that he was just thankful to have a job that could provide for us and—” I take a breath. “I…He was my favorite person.” It’s all I can manage to say without letting myself cry, which I have no intention of doing.

  “He sounds like the kind of guy I’d like to know,” Henry says softly.

  Beside me, a crew member moves, and I’m reminded that this is no normal date. I feel myself clamming up a little as I say, “You would have loved him. He would have been unsure about you and all your fancy suits, but he’d see past all that soon enough.”

  “To be honest, the fancy suits aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.” He leans toward me. “Now, tell me more about this pizza delivery driver. Should I be worried?”

  My lips spread into a toothy grin. “Very.”

  The mood lightens some, and we talk for a while longer. Wes asks us for a few specific shots, including a Lady and the Tramp spaghetti moment over a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs while Irina has an absolute fit over the possibility of marinara sauce in a ten-foot radius of this dress on loan. And just like that I can feel our night slowly slipping away from us, like it was never ours to begin with.

  “What’s next?” I ask.

  “Well, I thought we could take a stroll and maybe catch a show,” Henry says.

  As we stand to leave, Beck says, “We just want some B-roll of you two walking around the city, so we’ll follow at a distance, but your mics won’t pick anything up. We’ll come grab you after a few blocks and then drive over to the theater.”

  I nearly tell her thank you for the brief privacy but think better of it.

  Outside, the two of us crowd under an umbrella and step out into the drizzling rain.

  “New York smells the most like New York after a fresh rain,” Henry says.

  I can’t help but laugh. “You say that like it’s a good thing. What kind of New Yorker are you? Do you even take the subway?”

  He scoffs. “I’ve been known to take a subway or two.”

  “How cultured of you,” I tell him. “Do you think they really can’t hear us?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t really care either.” He holds his hand outside the protection of the umbrella. “Rain stopped.” He closes the umbrella and drops it in a souvenir store umbrella stand for someone else to find. “Besides, I’ve been waiting to do this.” In one swift motion, he takes my hand and holds it to his mouth, inhaling deeply before kissing my open palm.

  My breath hitches at the touch of his warm lips against my skin and the unexpectedness of it. My brain feels foggy at first, but if he’s going to catch me off guard, I’m going to do the same to him. “Is this real for you?”

  He glances over his shoulder. “Coming in with the big-gun questions, eh?” He thinks for a moment before saying in a very matter-of-fact way, “It wasn’t, but now it is. At first it was a joke, sort of. I was newly single when the producers approached me. What better way to rebound?”

  “Newly single?” I ask. I only have vague memories of him in a few local gossip mags with a thin model on his arm.

  “Sabrina,” he says, his voice low.

  “Sabrina Allen?” I ask. “You were dating Sabrina Allen? She’s, like…huge now. She’s a household name.”

  “Not when I first met her.” He takes a deep breath. “We met at a Labor Day party.” He laughs. “It was a white party and she showed up in red. Mom loved her immediately. It got serious fast. She closed out Mom’s next show. Featured in print ads. And I loved her…or at least I loved that my mom loved her.” He shakes his head. “Wow, that sounds awful. I promise I only have the normally allotted amount of mommy issues.”

  I snort at that, wishing I could tell him about my own real-life stepmommy issues.

  “My mom and…We don’t share a lot in common. Sabrina was something we could share. God, just saying it now, I see how messed up it was.” He sighs. “I proposed. In Paris. She said no, and the next day she’d signed a one-year exclusive contract with Victoria’s Secret. When I told my mom that Sabrina didn’t say yes, I quickly realized she was more upset about losing her ingénue and muse than she was about my heart being broken. So I took a step back from the business. From Mom.”

  “If you took a step back, how did you end up on a dating show trying to drum up excitement about the brand?” I ask, trying to fill in the gaps.

  “I was bumbling around out in LA for a few months when I met Beck. She tried getting me to meet with her boss, and I kept saying no, but she was relentless. Then one day, my dad called, and he basically said, ‘Your mother’s arthritis is debilitating and the only thing she can do to slow it down is to step back from LuMac. Either you come home and run it, or we sell it for parts.’ When I got back to the city and teamed up with Jay, I found out that the brand was in bigger trouble than I thought. We were past the normal measures you could take for a failing business. We needed something wild. Something viral. I called Beck, and next thing I knew, I was the next suitor on Before Midnight.”

  We briefly stop at a crosswalk like good New Yorkers, and I look up to him. “But what about when we first met? You said you had missed your first flight because you couldn’t decide if you wanted to go to LA?”

  His jaw twitches. “I didn’t say this whole thing didn’t freak me out. I’ve seen dozens of people I grew up with open themselves up to fame. It doesn’t usually end well. The internet has a way of digging up your past or—”

  “Are there things to dig up?” I ask. “In your past?”

  “Oh, you know,” he says. “Just the standard skeletons. Family drama. A few questionable drunk pictures, but…I never wanted to be a public person. I wasn’t some child star or something, but to a degree, our lives were always public property anyway. Going on this show sort of feels like giving up what privacy I had left.”

  “You could have always gone on Shark Tank,” I say.

  The crosswalk signal turns white, and he tugs my hand, pulling me through the throng of people. “Yeah, Mark Cuban would be all over an aging formerly relevant fashion brand. I guess you could have always gone on Project Runway.”

  “Make it work,” I say, mimicking Tim Gunn. I glance over my shoulder. “I can’t see the crew behind us anymore. Do you think we should wait for them?”

  “Definitely not,” he says, his voice giddy. “You think you can run in those things?”

  I glance down at my sparkling shoes. They’re art, but run in them? I’m not so sure. “I’m not much of a runner to begin with, but I’m willing to attempt a light jog,” I tell him, the thrill of losing the crew sending adrenaline rushing through my body.

  “Let’s go.”

  There’s a wild expression on Henry’s face. It’s the most carefree I’ve seen him since…ever.

  We take off down the street, our feet slapping against the pavement as we turn the corner. My dress ripples behind me, and it feels like we’re playing a wild game of tag. With Henry by my side, what would the crew even do to us if they caught us? Send us both home? I think not.

  I shriek as I trip forward, my heel catching in a missing chunk of sidewalk. As I stumble out of my shoe, my fingers slip from Henry’s.

&nbs
p; “Shit,” I mutter, catching myself with one hand on the pavement.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, doubling back to pull me up and steady me.

  “I’m fine.” I hold my bare foot up, balancing on one heel now. “It’s the shoes. They’re on loan. They’re worth more money than I have to my name.”

  He grabs a glittering stiletto, inspecting it closely. “Not a scratch.” He quickly pops down to one knee as he guides my foot back into the shoe, his fingers wrapped around my ankle as I balance myself on his shoulder.

  He looks up at me, his eyes heavy-lidded as the city spins around us, streetlights flickering on as the sky turns to a misty dusk. “You sure you’re okay?” he asks.

  I nod wordlessly at the sight of him on his knees before me as a simmering heat spreads through my abdomen.

  He stands and takes my hand again as he pulls me off the ground into Bryant Park.

  “Are you trying to woo me?” I ask.

  His eyes search mine.

  “Bryant Park,” I say. “The Cathedral of Fashion.”

  “I should lie and say this was totally on purpose, but I’m just trying really hard to lose our wardens.” Clear from view of the street, we slow to a stroll.

  Sierra and I spent the last four years lurking around Bryant Park like it was some hallowed space. It might not be the home of Fashion Week any longer, but we couldn’t help but feel like we might catch a glimpse of one of our idols just strolling around, reliving their Bryant Park glory days. But today the park is just a park full of normal people doing normal things.

  Constantly looking over our shoulders for signs of the crew, we walk right into a ballroom class for senior citizens.

  “Come on,” says Henry, pulling me farther into the class run by a petite middle-aged couple using nothing but their iPhone and a plastic cup to amplify the music.