Priyanka Seth was always a girl with a plan, and arriving hungover for a life-changing interview—sans panties!—was not part of it. Jumping into the backseat of a cab already loitering at the curb, Priya slapped a hand on the Plexiglas divider. "I need to get to Sutton Place then straight back to East Fifty-Third and Park before eight."
The driver lifted heavy-lidded eyes from his phone screen to meet hers in the rearview mirror. "You got a pair of wings in that purse?"
Opening her clutch, Priya frantically dug inside. "I have . . . seventy-seven dollars with your name on it if you can figure it out." She handed over the wad of mixed bills and the cab roared like a waking panther and charged—slamming Priya into her seat with an oof. While the car tore down the street, she unlocked her phone and scrolled through her contacts for the one person who could save her in her hour of need.
The line rang twice before Caitlin's bleary face filled the screen, all rumpled violet hair and sleepy dark eyes. "For the love of Vogue—what!"
"Cait! Oh thank God! Get up, get up right now. I'm on my way to your place. Meet me outside in ten minutes. It's an emergency. A Stiletto Sisterhood Code Red Emergency." If citing their code like a preacher would a passage from the Bible made her a touch melodramatic, so be it. Her life was on the line.
"Wait, slow down. I can't follow stupidity this early without coffee." Caitlin vanished in a flash of bedding and the creak of floorboards. "Where's the fire?"
"I'll explain when I see you, but I'm pulling a walk of shame to a last-minute interview, and I need to borrow a suit."
Caitlin's face smushed close to the screen. "You realize there's a height disparity between us? Like six inches? I'm good, but I'm not a wizard."
"No, you're Caitlin Choi-Emerson. Fashion guru. Savant of suits." As a self-taught stylist, Caitlin's brand was menswear made boldly female—with lush fabrics, daring cuts, and all the accessories. "If anyone can save me from this seventh circle of hell, it's you."
"Ah, flattery," she purred. "Well played. I'll see what I can dig up."
"Thank you. And Cait," Priya added with a panicked jolt before disconnecting, "something basic, okay?"
"Boo." Caitlin sighed. "See you in ten."
As the cab sped down the Upper East Side streets, mercifully empty on a Sunday morning, Priya combed through her purse for any other clues to fill in the missing gaps of last night's hazy memory. There was a receipt from the bar for almost three hundred—holy fuzzknuckles!—dollars, some spare change, and her lipstick cap but no lipstick. Of course it had to be her favorite discontinued shade.
No random numbers or drunken texts appeared on her phone, and by some miracle, all social media came up clear of damaging posts, but in her gallery there was a video . . . and given the thumbnail, it was absolutely NSFW.
Priya hugged the phone to her chest and closed her eyes with a fervent prayer before lowering the volume and hitting Play. Her voice slid out first. All heavy panting and hot gasps. The answering accompaniment of a man's laugh was smooth and wicked as he whispered something that got swallowed up in the start of a killer orgasm and ended abruptly with a partial view of his face. Vague and blurry as her memory, but it stirred a fleeting recollection of quick hands, a hot mouth. And something about an elevator . . .
True to her word, Caitlin stood waiting on the curb, dressed in yellow sweats, orange heels, and oversized sunglasses, a white garment bag hung over one arm.
Priya pushed open the passenger door and Caitlin slid in, draping the garment bag between them. "As requested."
"I could kiss you." Priya drew down the zipper and her joyful smile vanished with a horrified gasp. "It's teal."
"And?"
"I said basic."
"It's a solid." Caitlin dipped her chin, sunglasses sliding to the tip of her pixie nose. "No pattern. No texture. No fun. Basic."
"Didn't you have anything in black?" Priya sputtered as the cab pushed back onto the street, careening toward her certain demise. "Or navy? Charcoal?"
"What makes you think any of those exist in my wardrobe?"
"Oh my God."
"It's June, Priya, and with your complexion? This color is confident. Striking. This commands attention."
"Cait, this isn't a fashion editorial spread. It's an interview." Head in her hands, Priya groaned. "You had one job. One!"
"Okey dokey." Shrugging, Caitlin reached for the zipper. "Then don't wear it."
"No! Give me the pants . . . I'll make do."
Caitlin removed the trousers from the garment bag and handed them over. "Are you going to tell me what this is all about?"
Kicking off her heels, Priya slipped her feet into the pant legs and delicately shimmied the trousers on, careful to keep her skirt over top. "I went to the soft opening of that new Manhattan bar everyone's talking about. The one owned by that hot artist from Toronto."
"Pathos?"
"Yeah."
"Bitch!" Caitlin tossed Priya a glare sharp enough to kill a man at three paces. "We were supposed to go together when they officially open next month."
"Yeah, well, I'm sorry, but I got an invite from that guy from Stikemans I went to dinner with last week."
"Greg?"
"No, Matthew."
"Whatever. Stop talking before I shove you out of this cab."
"We'll go there for their brunch event—all-you-can-drink mimosas. My treat, okay?"
Caitlin's scowl softened. Marginally. "Fine."
"Anyway. After inhaling enough tequila to flatline a frat boy, I got an email notifying me that my Monday morning interview was being shifted to Sunday at eight."
"Who sends out emails after midnight? Or requests an interview on a Sunday morning?"
"I'd call her Satan, but that somehow makes her more perfect." Sucking in a breath, Priya grunted. "Oh no. I can't fasten the zipper."
"I tried to warn you."
Twisting in the seat, Priya stretched out as flat as she could manage across Caitlin's lap, but there was nothing. Not even the barest ounce of give. "Why do these pants have no stretch?"
"This isn't off the rack, Priya." Caitlin leveled a baleful glare. "Lycra is tacky, and everything I own is tailored to me, therefore I don't need stretch."
Priya whimpered at the memory of her custom suit, the one that cost an obscene amount of money, pressed and waiting in her mom's apartment clear across town. "What am I going to do?"
"Reschedule?"
"This is Marai Nagao. Her calendar is always packed weeks—months out, even. I can't miss this interview." Especially not when there was a yearlong mentorship on the table. Some of New York's most successful lawyers and judges had been molded like raw clay by her hands. All kinds of doors blown open. "Might as well kiss my entire future good-bye."
Priya had already gone through three separate interview stages just to get this far. First with HR and then two more with senior partners. Nothing—nothing—was going to derail Priya from this moment. Not a brutal hangover or lost panties.
Shucking off the trousers, Priya folded them across her lap. "This is a disaster."
"We can salvage this." Caitlin spun a finger at Priya, taking in the train-wreck ensemble with a narrowed gaze. "The skirt's vintage Valentino, yes?"
A smile pushed at the corners of Priya's lips. Trust Caitlin to sniff out a label. "Yes."
"Classic A-line. Tasteful. Not a deal breaker for an interview of this magnitude." With a giddy wiggle of her shoulders, Caitlin plucked the jacket out of the garment bag and shoved it at her. "Put this on. It was meant to be a bit oversized, so it should fit."
Priya slid on the jacket—definitely a size too big—while Caitlin attacked her mane of thick black hair, twisting it up into a tight chignon, somehow taming it into submission with bobby pins and ChapStick, then added a silk scarf tied in a loose knot around Priya's neck for a final flourish.
"Et voilà!"
Priya frowned despondently at the picture Caitlin snapped on her phone. "I look like a hungover stewardess for a cheap airline."
"Do not insult my masterpiece." She chef-kissed her fingers. "I call it Tequila-Hoe-Chic."
"Hilarious."
"I thought so."
Priya removed the scarf and handed it back to Caitlin. "Less is more, right?"
"In the words of the great Coco Chanel, absolutely. You could use a bit of mascara to brighten those bloodshot eyes, though."
"Fresh out."
"Lipstick?"
"Lost it along with my panties, apparently."
"I'm sorry." Caitlin pushed her face so close to Priya's that she was all eyes and nose. "Repeat that for me but slower."
Priya hung her head. "I lost my panties in some guy's Fifth Avenue apartment."
Caitlin sputtered, blinked, and then doubled over in rib-cracking hysterics. "Stop," she cackled in a rasp that pushed well beyond laughter into out of breath. "Oh, it hurts. It hurts. I can't!"
Priya tucked her tongue into the pocket of her cheek. "Are you finished?"
"Almost." She straightened, eyes glistening with tears. "Oh wow. That's my workout for the week. Did you at least search the place before jumping into the cab?"
"Of course!" After tumbling ass-first out of bed when the alarm went off, Priya had hunted for her clothes like a deranged maniac, starting with the pale-pink pleated skirt by the foot of the bed and black Louboutin heels near the door with her purse on top and all her remaining cash, cards, and ID tucked inside. Everything was accounted for, except her underwear. Hot-pink lace—hard to miss and even harder to lose. Yet she had done just that.
And now she was minutes away from sitting down in front of her literal idol, bare-assed with tequila fumes wafting from her pores like expired perfume.
"It was a studio. Not like there were many places they could've gone. He—whoever I hooked up with last night—must've taken them."
"Ew." Caitlin's nose scrunched with a scowl. "He's a panty thief?"
"Apparently. But he had the decency to pay for a loaded breakfast before ghosting me while I drooled into the pillow." Not that she'd had time for anything more than finger-brushing her teeth. She'd snatched a pancake on the way out and inhaled it in the elevator, nearly choking on the damn thing. "I don't remember his name, and I'd barely even know what he looked like if it wasn't for the video."
"Stop." Caitlin flagged a hand like an officer halting traffic. Or a criminal. "First, you need to lay off the shots—think of the brain cells. Second, you own those pants now." She nodded toward Priya's lap. "Third, you have a video, and you're only just telling me now?" Her chin lowered to match her hushed voice. "Is it good?"
"Good enough that I wish my booze-addled brain had left the memory intact."
"Ah, tequila. She's a cruel bitch to us all, yet you gotta love her style."
"Miss." The driver rapped a hairy knuckle against the partition. "Your stop is up ahead. Where'd you want me to drop you?"
"At the corner would be great."
"All right, skank." Caitlin set her hands on Priya's shoulders as the cab jerked to a halt. "Best advice I can offer you is to keep your head high and pull your shoulders back. You are Priyanka Victory fucking Seth." She punctuated each syllable of her name with a heaving shake. "Founder of the
Stiletto Sisterhood, queen of any room she walks into, a force to reckon with—goddess extraordinaire—even without undies. Shall I continue?"
Now Priya did laugh. "No, that's plenty. Thank you."
"Good. Because if anyone can turn a walk of shame into a stride of pride, it's you."
Caitlin slid out of the backseat first and held the door open as Priya struggled to steer herself across the sticky fake leather, and she felt a lick of sympathy for all those scandalized socialites who'd been caught with a lens up their skirts while exiting a car.
"Careful, Britney. Don't want to give someone a heart attack."
"It's not as easy as it looks." Sighing, Priya smoothed down her skirt, grateful there was no tunneling wind. The last thing she needed right now was an impromptu Marilyn Monroe moment. Torn between a laugh and a groan, she hugged Caitlin tight. "I owe you for this."
"Slay this interview and we'll call it even. Go get 'em,
G.I. Jane. See what I did there?" She smacked a hand to Priya's butt. "Because you're commando." Laughing, Caitlin jumped back into the cab, blew a kiss through the open window, and sped off.
Head swimming, heart racing, Priya took a moment to gather herself. This was it. No turning back now. "Chin up," she whispered. "Game face on."