It would be unfair to suggest Vera was trying to get fired.
Sure, this was the second day in a row she had stumbled into her shift at the bridal salon half an hour late, but it wasn't her fault that the driver's wife had called him halfway through the route yesterday to say she was leaving him. He only paused long enough to dump his passengers on the sidewalk before yanking the bus around to dash home. And it certainly wasn't Vera's fault that today's replacement bus driver had turned a corner right into a parked car, leaving her stranded again.
So Vera had to wait for the next bus. It wasn't a big deal. It was only twenty minutes, and clients were rarely on time for their appointments anyway. Mona couldn't have expected Vera to walk the rest of the way. It was raining, and her boots had three-inch heels.
Vera didn't mind the delay, even if she didn't love huddling close between other grumpy passengers in the steaming bus shelter, rain hissing against the glass overhead. She did love having twenty extra minutes to scroll through the photos from the latest runway show by Fatima Bhatia, a waterfall of willowy models stalking across her phone screen in bold colours and non-traditional silhouettes. A glittering inspiration. Someday those would be Vera's designs making jaws drop at Fashion Week.
Thumbing through the shots, Vera could already see her celebrity crush Carmen Juarez wearing the exquisite gown constructed of draping sunset-pink folds and brown leather panels with gold wire accents. The dress was dramatic, a statement, and so much better than the boring princess-prom dresses Carmen so often wore to swan down a red carpet.
The next bus lurched up to the stop with a groan. Sheets of rain followed the delayed passengers in through the creaky door, thickening the clammy air inside the bus until it stank of wet wool and helpless anger. Vera squeezed between a sweaty man who coughed like he was trying to bring up a lung and a woman chattering nonstop into the phone held close to her ear. Pushing onto her toes to hook her fingertips through a strap, Vera banged the phone-call woman with her purse. The woman cut a glare as filthy as if Vera had insulted her dog. Vera pretended not to notice, just opened her notes app to start drafting the fashion week posts for her blog one-handed.
Chilly sweat oozed down the back of her neck. It was a good thing she had taken her outfit of the day selfies before she left her apartment, instead of waiting to get an atmospheric shot in the rain.
When the bus finally puttered up to her stop, Vera escaped the steamy, sweaty cage with a sigh of relief. Clutching her umbrella close, she clicked up the stairs into the bridal salon as fast as her heels would allow.
Inside the airy loft, Mona was still getting the blonde bride and her giggling entourage settled on the white leather chairs. She hadn't even brought out the champagne yet, but that was probably because the champagne was Vera's job. While she hurried to unravel her scarf and unbutton her coat, Mona threw her a brief, pinched look that said, I am not happy with you. Vera couldn't bring herself to care.
Turning back to the customers, a brilliant smile curved Mona's thin pink lips like someone had flipped a switch and reset her to factory default. "And this is my assistant, Vera. She'll help us figure out what shapes are most flattering on you. She knows a little bit about style."
Vera snorted softly as she retrieved the bubbly from the fridge and counted out six deceptively cheap champagne flutes onto a tray. A year and a half of design school and a fashion blog with thirty thousand followers wasn't a little, but Mona had never been impressed by Vera's credentials. "If you're such a big deal then why do you want a job here?" she had asked at the interview. Vera had made up some bullshit excuse about wanting to learn instead of admitting that no one else was impressed by her credentials, either. An unfinished degree was worth nothing, and thirty thousand followers wasn't impressive next to influencers who had millions.
Mona went on to the clients in that syrupy sweet tone she reserved for the brides she expected to drop the most money, "We're going to make sure you look absolutely gorgeous on your big day. But before we start, let's set the mood, shall we?"
Setting the tray on the spindly glass table, Vera put on the best smile she could manage. "Bubbly, anyone?"
She started working at the cork with both thumbs. The bride was nattering at an older, equally blonde woman who was probably her mother. Mona glanced at Vera, looked away, then turned back slowly in a very obvious, very fake double take, her eyebrows arching dramatically. Vera resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
Yes, on top of being late she had shown up today with all her hair chopped off in a ragged bob, but that was only because she wasn't getting over Alex as fast as she had expected to. Yesterday he had posted a photo with his new girlfriend. They were at the zoo, arms wrapped aggressively around each other, smiling with all their teeth in front of the tiger cage. Vera hadn't expected that to make her cry.
Sometimes a bad breakup required a tearful hair hack, even if the dress code called for tidy curls that fell past the shoulder. Vera was only sorry that her hair had emerged looking more like she had been mauled by that tiger than the cute bob she had been going for, and she hadn't been able to get an appointment with her hairstylist until after her shift today.
The dress code was stupid anyway. It wasn't like the bride cared what Vera looked like. She was here to put on pretty white dresses that cost more than three months of Vera's rent and make her friends tell her how beautiful she was.
The cork burst free with an inexplicably satisfying pop. The bride giggled. Mona finally ended her practiced patter with a shimmering fake laugh. Vera tipped fizzy golden wine into the tall clear glasses and passed them out.
Rain sliced grey and cold against the huge windows, and Vera turned on the last bank of lights to compensate.
The bride hated the first sixteen gowns Mona suggested, and then the next ten Vera recommended. Vera pushed out rack after rack of samples, only to have them all rejected in turn. Behind a lush velvet curtain, the bride grunted and wriggled her curves into dresses several sizes too small for her. Vera did her best to pin the gaping seams together. The bridesmaids went ooh and gorg like good little minions. The mother said hopefully, "It can be altered."
The problem wasn't that the bride was exceptionally picky. The problem was, she was a big girl, and the dresses Mona stocked didn't provide samples bigger than a size fourteen. Vera hated it, just like she had come to loathe everything about this job, but she grit her teeth and brought out her favourite gown, the one with all the tiny seed pearls hand-sewn in patterns like lilies.
The bride's eyes lit up. The dress was a generous fourteen, and flattering to a curvy figure. With high hopes, Vera helped her step into it, and they began again the delicate dance of attempting to fasten it. Wriggle, twist, check that all the buttons are indeed unfastened.
And then it happened.
The bride grabbed the sides to hoist the delicate fabric up over her bigger-than-average chest, and with an ugly sound, the dress split. All the way down the side of the fragile bodice, pearls popping off and raining to the floor.
Vera should have kept her mouth shut. It wasn't the first dress that had torn in the three months she had worked there. It was a cost of the business. Normally Vera could keep her perspective. But today her feet were damp inside her boots and her hair looked ridiculous and Mona kept glaring at her and the bride was refusing to admit she was bigger than a fourteen and Alex had only posted that picture yesterday with his new girlfriend in front of the tigers to make Vera jealous, she was sure of it. He had taken Vera to the zoo on their first date. They'd had their first kiss in front of the tiger cage.
So maybe Vera was a little upset because none of that was her fault. And she was upset because it wasn't fair that this stuff always happened to her, like she kept inviting in bad luck despite always carrying the little red luck charm her mom had made her, clipped onto her cross-body Gucci purse.
But she shouldn't have burst out, "Can't you just admit you're too fat for these dresses?" and made all the bridesmaids gasp in horror.
That part was her fault.
After quitting before Mona could fire her because that bride wanted to spend ten thousand dollars, after a burst of angry tears in the lobby bathroom, after fixing her tear-streaked face and re-applying her ruined makeup, Vera went to the one place she could count on to cheer her up: the salon. She was early for her appointment and her stylist was with another customer, but Vera shook the water off her umbrella and sat down to wait anyway. She inhaled the steamy air, mingled scents of sweet shampoo and tangy chemicals a familiar stinging comfort in her throat.
She probably should have used the time to work on her fashion week posts, but she was in a vindictive mood so instead she made a side-by-side of the model in the exquisite pink-and-brown Bhatia dress and a shot of Carmen Juarez in a wrinkly pink satin nightmare at the premiere of Never Enough Smiles the month before. She posted it with a simple statement: Battle goddess > happily-ever-after reject. It would be polarizing, but that's why her followers loved her. Everyone liked arguing on the internet.
Before she could exult in the chaos of the comments, though, her phone lit up with a call from her sister.
"Mona texted me," Ivy said on the other end of the line.
Vera sank lower in the small plush chair. "Wow. Awesome. That was super nice of her. She's really the best."
"It sounds like you were trying to get fired."
"I was not trying to get fired."
"Mona said you made the poor girl cry."
"I just said what everyone was thinking," Vera said petulantly. "Fat is just a descriptor, not a value judgement, okay?"
"Uh huh," Ivy said, her tone so dry it cracked in Vera's ears.
The salon was noisy, top forty hits on the speakers, the clank of scissors and hiss of blow dryers, stylists chattering cheerfully with clients as they lathered luxurious bubbles into long hair. Thumbing up the volume on her headphones, Vera said, "It's not my fault Mona's dresses don't come in larger sizes. There's a really nice plus-size bridal store a few blocks away the girl could've gone to."
"Vera." Ivy's loud sigh whooshed through the headphones. "I don't care about the girl. This's the third job you've quit this year."
"You don't need to remind me," Vera muttered, glancing up at the screen above the counter. The name flashing there was not hers.
Beside her, a haggard middle-aged woman with a deeply unflattering can I speak to the manager haircut and a toothy smile popped to her feet to hurry over to the waiting stylist. A frown tugging at her lips, Vera twisted the ragged ends of her own hair between two fingers.
"The burger place I totally understood," Ivy was saying. "No one likes hairnets and grease stains and being yelled at over a four dollar burger. But the seamstress job seemed like the perfect fit for you. You love all that sewing stuff. I can't believe you only lasted six months there. And now the bridal salon? I had to bribe Mona to give you that job, you know."
"You bribed her?" The blue-haired teenager next to her squinted up from her phone. Vera lowered her voice. "You bitch. You didn't tell me that. I thought it was just like a regular referral."
"Come on, Vee," Ivy said. "You're not exactly employee material. I had to promise Mona I'd refer all my friends to her before she'd even consider it."
"Why'd you bother if I'm not employee material?" Vera crossed her right leg over her left and moved her phone to her other hand.
"Because you promised you'd get your shit together this time, remember? I know you think you can turn that influencer stuff into a fashion career, but it's been four years. Maybe it's time you accept it's not gonna happen. You need a real job that pays the rent."
"Well yeah, you've got it all figured out," Vera muttered. "All I need to do is marry a rich asshole, right?"
"Marry a rich asshole and have your own private gynecology practice," Ivy said, and Vera could almost see her smug look, the same smug look Ivy had worn every time report cards came home during school and mom heaped praise on her and spared only scraps for Vera, the look Ivy had worn the day of her graduation from medical school, the look she wore the day she came home with a white fiance and still Ivy had been the favourite. Always the favourite.
"I like pussies, too," Vera said sweetly. "Maybe you should give me a job."
"Don't be obscene," Ivy sighed. "You just need to focus on yourself. You're twenty-three. It's time to figure out what you're doing with your life."
"I know what I'm doing with my life." Vera rolled her eyes even though Ivy couldn't see it. "I'm getting Saoirse to fix this disaster I made of my hair--"
"Can you get her to help you fix this mess you've made of your life?"
"--and then I'm gonna buy some red bean buns and a bottle of wine and write several posts about the terrible fashion senses of famous people who could afford to dress a thousand times better than they do."
Ivy pursed her lips. Vera could hear her doing it, or maybe she was just imagining the faces Ivy made the first hundred times they'd had this argument. She flicked her eyes up at the screen above the counter. Still not her name, but she was done with this conversation either way.
"Thanks for calling," Vera said. "You know I love listening to my perfect sister tell me how to live my life. I'll be jealous when you're touching those pussies."
She hung up before Ivy could respond.
Uncrossing her knees and crossing them again with her left leg on top, Vera bounced her foot impatiently and flicked through her notifications. There were already hundreds of comments on her Bhatia/Carmen Juarez post and several DMs that were probably full of hate from Carmen stans. People on the internet had unreasonably strong opinions about clothes they could never afford and a washed-up child star who was astonishingly beautiful but hadn't acted in anything good for six years.
Vera started blocking the haters without opening the messages. One, two, three, four Carmen fan profiles. Then she looked at the fifth and her thumb flinched back.
There was a verified symbol beside the photo of Carmen in gold lingerie. Vera almost stopped breathing.
Somehow her numb fingers managed to open the profile. She found herself staring disbelievingly at the official account of her celebrity crush, the most beautiful woman to ever exist, about whom Vera had just posted a most unflattering comparison, and who had just sent her a fucking DM like she was someone that important people noticed rather than a second-rate influencer who was so awful her ex-boyfriend had cheated on her.
"Oh, shit," Vera muttered.
She couldn't open the message fast enough. It took her a second to understand what she was reading.
You spend a lot of effort on hating what I wear, Carmen fucking Juarez had written. You think you can do any better?
Vera read that three times. Then she started screaming.
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Cover by the amazing AnnaofthePond.
Copyright © 2019 by CC Starfield. Do not reproduce in any form without permission from the author. This book is solely available for free on Wattpad. If you are reading it somewhere else, it has been stolen.