Deadly Past Read online

  “Ready to hit the shops? I want to get something nice. We haven’t treated ourselves in a while, now is the time to splurge.” Sabine asks me, she’s awful giddy today, and she’s practically bouncing as she walks.

  “Yeah, I suppose you're right. I can get something for tonight’s date. He won’t tell me where we’re going, other than it’s a restaurant. What do you think I should wear?” I hate being unprepared. I want to make sure that I look nice but not over the top, depending on where we’re going.

  “Ooh, we’re going to Nordstrom, look, they have their anniversary sale on at the moment.” She puts her phone in my face, showing me her Facebook homepage and Claire who works with Sabine is raving about her new purse she just purchased, forty percent of a Michael Kors bag.

  “Come on, we’re close to Union Square, Claire’s handbag is gorgeous, and I need a new purse, and you need a new dress for tonight.” She’s so excited, she loves browsing through Nordstrom, wishing she was there on a sale day.

  We get here and are totally overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people that are here. We spend the next three hours looking at everything they have in-store. By the time we’re finished, we are both dead on our feet. Sabine paid for my stuff, told me that it was a treat. I love her so much. She is so thoughtful.

  Thankfully I found a perfect dress for tonight, it’s Vera Wang, jersey pleated, fit and flare dress. It’s elegant and classy yet understated. It fits like a glove, and I’m in love with it so much, and it was a total steal at fifty percent off. I also had to get new shoes, because Sabine told me that ‘you can’t have a kickass new dress without some kickass new shoes.’ So, we spent almost an hour looking at shoes, I ended up buying Imagine Vince Camuto Dailey Open Toe Pumps, they are to die for. I also spotted a pair of Jeffery Campbells over the knee boots that I couldn’t part with, so I got those too.

  Sabine went crazy, she bought everything she could. She got a pair of Kristin Cavallari Luxembourg Cage Peep Toe Bootie, a pair of Dior sunglasses, a Michael Kors purse and a Givenchy pleated off the shoulder ruffled dress. She was like a kid in a candy store, I had to keep pulling her away from the racks. She even got into an argument with a woman over a scarf. Looking back now it was funny, but at the time, I was mortified, if I could have disowned her I would have. They were playing tug of war with this silk scarf, I couldn’t believe how childish they were, I honestly thought they were going to split it in two the way they were pulling it.

  We decide that after the event and long shopping experience that we need some coffee. We see a small coffee shop and go in there, it’s cozy and cute, I like the quirkiness of it. There are loads of people in here and no seats available, so we both grab a cappuccino to go. The young girl behind the counter looks frazzled and overwhelmed. When she hands us our coffees I give her a huge smile, and she returns it, I leave her a ten dollar tip, and her smile brightens even more. She tells me thanks, and I just nod as we leave the shop.

  “You have such a soft spot. You always tip big when it’s young people working.” Sabine says after the door closes behind us.

  “Where do you want to go next? Sephora or Mac?”

  “You’re a mind reader. I want to go to Sephora; I’m in love with their makeup. Do you want to go to Mac? We can do both.” Sephora make up is the best, I love it so much, but I know that Sabine loves her Mac, always has and always will.

  “Yes please, if you don’t mind. I need a new foundation, I’ll have a look in Sephora too, you never know, I may find something I like.” She has a huge smile on her face, she’s been so happy today. I haven’t seen her this happy in such a long time. Not since she broke up with Liam when we left Detroit.

  “I also need to get some brushes and a brush cleanser from Mac, I love their contour brushes, we’ll go their first as it’s closer.”

  “I don’t know how to do that, I have a hard enough time trying to put the eyeliner on my eyelids. I have to use my eyelash curler to get it looking half decent. I don’t know how you manage to get it looking amazing all the time doing it freehand.” She raises her perfectly arched eyebrow. “Yeah, I know, you’ve told me countless times, that you would teach me. I just don’t have the patience to learn.”

  She grabs hold of my hand as we start walking towards Broadway to the Mac store “You know that I’ll help you anytime you need. But your make up always looks on point, even though you always say you’re clueless. So, are you looking forward to the date tonight? He’s going to be speechless when he sees you. You’re going to look so beautiful.” She squeezes my hand quickly before she lets it go.

  “I am actually, I thought I’d be nervous but I’m actually really looking forward to it. I can’t wait to see where he is taking me. I can’t believe this is my first date since high school. How pathetic is that? Anyway, what are you doing tonight?” I hope that she has got something planned, I’d hate to think of her home alone when I’m on a date.

  “I’m going clubbing, a few of the girls from work are going out, and they have been asking me for ages to go out with them, but I always turn them down. Well, they asked again yesterday, and I finally said yes.”

  Wow, that is a big step for her, she doesn’t usually make new friends, she hates mixing with new people and doesn’t like change. For her to go out with her work colleagues is a big thing, and I’m so proud of her.

  “I was going to ask you if you wanted to come with me, and we could get ready together.” She looks embarrassed for saying it to me.

  “You can still come by and get ready, we can get ready together. We haven’t done that in a while. What are you thinking of wearing?” Her face brightens in an instant, and her big smile comes over her face.

  “Nothing too revealing, I’m thinking my red shift dress, and I was hoping that you’d let me wear your red Jimmy Choo pumps?” I see her crossing her fingers and putting her hands behind her back, she pouts her lips, hoping I’d say yes.

  “Pretty please Moy, can I borrow them?”

  She must think I’m ignoring her because it’s taking me a while to reply, when I’m actually thinking about the red hoop earrings I ordered online that arrived last week, and how amazing they would look with her dress.

  “Of course, you can borrow them. You know that I won’t be wearing them, so they’re yours to use. You don’t have to ask Sim.”

  “I know, but I’m the worst person for losing things. I lost your mother’s necklace, ever since then I haven’t asked to borrow anything, I hate that I lost that, I’ve been looking everywhere to see if someone found it, or if there are any others out there for sale. I’m sorry Moy, you will never know how truly sorry I am.” She looks as though she’s about to cry, this happened almost six months ago.

  “Sim, you don’t have to apologize, it was an accident. I was upset at first, but I realized that you didn’t do it on purpose and my mom loved you, and she would have been so happy that you got to have worn something that belonged to her. I have loads of things that were mom’s. So, it’s not like it was the only thing that I had of hers. Don’t feel bad, okay?” She nods her head, still looking sad, but she has a small smile on her face which is better than nothing.

  ***

  We reach the Mac store and go in, Sabine knows where everything is that she wants, so it doesn’t take us long in here. She gets two personality pallets, the ones she picked out had me giggling, she chose the ‘basic bitch’ and the ‘prissy princess’. They couldn’t have named them more aptly to fit her dual personalities.

  Sabine also gets the foundation she wanted along with her brushes and brush cleanser. She spent over two hundred dollars in there, and I’m lost at all the different brushes she needs. She bought four different contour brushes and an oval brush. I’ve never seen one of them in my life; they remind me of a loofah.

  We go straight to the Sephora store, I get the Urban Decay Naked Flushed, bronzer palate, the Kiehl’s deep pore cleansing mask and the Kiehl’s hair serum. I don’t need very much makeup as I don’t use a l
ot, and I stock up like a hoarder when I do get some.

  “Okay, I think we are done for today, I’m going to need a power nap before tonight. What time is Luke picking you up?” Sabine asks me while yawning. She loves her naps.

  “He said he’s picking me up at half-past eight, would that be too early for you to be getting ready?” I don’t want her to be alone for too long otherwise she’ll be second-guessing herself and maybe even bail out on clubbing.

  “No, it will be perfect. You know Claire, she’s the one who posted about Nordstrom’s sale? She’s coming tonight, and we’re going out for dinner first. I think she wants to make sure I don’t bail on her.” She laughs her nervous laugh, the laugh she has when she’s been caught out.

  “Oh Sim, you’ll be fine. You love Claire, you told me that yourself. You’re going to have the best night, and you’re going to call me in the morning, and we’re swapping details on how our nights go.” Her face lights up at the thought of gossip. I laugh at her, she hasn’t quite grown up, but then again, it’s one of the things I love about her. Her ability to just let go and have fun, whenever she can.

  I look at my phone for the time hoping we can organize when we will start getting ready “Okay so it's two o’clock now, I can’t believe we’ve been shopping for six hours. If we go home now, have a power nap, you shower at your house, and I’ll shower at mine, then you come to mine about six or seven? That’s giving us an hour maybe two to be ready, is that enough time for you?” It won’t take me that long to get ready after my shower, maybe thirty minutes, forty-five at the most.

  “I’ll shower at five-thirty, then I’ll come to your house, I may be a while, I need to shave my legs, I haven’t shaved in a few weeks. I just haven’t been bothered to do them.” I don’t blame her, I do that sometimes, Luke doesn’t seem to mind, he hasn’t mentioned it.

  “I should be ready in an hour. Then we will have thirty minutes to have a drink and make a toast. I’m excited, I really can’t wait. It’ll be like when we were kids again and going to the keg parties while we were underage.”

  “Yeah, I know, we don’t really get out much, we usually spend the night in, watching movies.” I prefer staying in, sometimes you get in the mood to go out, other times, you can’t be bothered, and all you want to do is snuggle up on the sofa in your pajamas and watch a movie.

  “Alright, I’m going home! I need my nap.” She throws her hand into the road and hails a cab, “Want to share?” I shake my head, we live in opposite directions, there is no point in sharing the cab.

  Sabine opens the cab door, blows me a kiss as she gets in the cab. “I’ll see you soon Moy, toodles.”

  I shake my head at her and watch as the cab drives off, I then hail one, and head home. I think Sabine, could be right, a nap sounds good right about now.

  ***

  I overslept; I came home and had a nap, thinking I’d only sleep for an hour, two max. It’s now half-past five, and Sabine will be here soon. I quickly have a shower, I make sure that I take care while shaving. It takes me twenty minutes to fully shower. I moisturize my legs, I find that they can get very dry after shaving so I use Palmer’s Cocoa Butter moisturizer. It smells fantastic and works really well. I use my blow dryer and notice how shiny it looks, that hair serum I bought today really does seem to work.

  As I stand to look in the mirror I’m having an internal debate, is the dress I bought to fancy? I decide that it doesn’t matter if I’m dressed too fancy, I’m going to wear the dress. When I come out of my inner debate, I realize that it’s ten to seven and I start to wonder where Sabine is.

  I don’t have time to wonder too long as she waltzes in not even ten minutes later. I’m sitting at my vanity, applying my makeup. I see her come into the room through the mirror and she looks stunning, her makeup is already applied, her eyes are dark purple, her lips are bright red. I can’t wait to see what she looks like when she’s fully dressed. I take out my eyelash curler and apply liquid eyeliner across the top and curl my eyelashes as I usually would, I am careful in taking the curler away as I don’t want to smudge my eyeliner.

  I notice Sabine is standing, just staring at me as I do the same with the other eye and smile at the results, perfectly applied eyeliner.

  “Where did you learn to do that? It’s amazing, I would never have thought of doing it. Does it work every time?”

  I laugh at her question, “Those quick hack videos that are all over Facebook, I saw it once, and I had to try it, it seemed too good to be true, but it does really work.”

  “I need to start paying attention to those videos. I love finding ways to make my life easier, having said that, I won’t be using the eyelash curler hack. I’d find it time-consuming. Are there any other good ones?”

  “Yeah, they have loads of ones on cleaning, next time I come across them, I’ll send you the link.” I quickly dodge the pillow that she throws at me.

  “Are you insinuating that I can’t clean?” She sounds so indignant; she’s standing with her hands on her hips looking every bit like the princess she is.

  “I’m not insinuating anything, I’m stating the facts. You are a slob, you hate cleaning anything. It’s why we don’t live together.” I watch as she relaxes her stance and giggles, I shake my head at her, she’s so messy.

  “Okay, we have forty minutes to be ready; I haven’t even finished my makeup. So, you start getting dressed, once I finish doing my face I’ll get the shoes for you.” I focus on applying my eyeshadow, I want the smoky eye effect, it takes me ten minutes, and I have it the way I wanted.

  It’s taken me a lot longer than I thought it would getting ready. I usually just apply the makeup without the extra attention and perfection I am applying to it now.

  “Your eyes look hot Moy! I love them. Are you going to wear foundation?” I turn at the sound of her voice, she’s been so quiet for the last ten minutes, and I see she’s in the dress. She looks amazing.

  “Thanks, no I’m just going to add a bit of bronzer. You look absolutely stunning Sim.” Her red shift dress is fitted to her body and shows off her amazing curves. She’s teamed it with a purple fitted suit jacket, it matches her eyes perfectly.

  I turn back around and apply my bronzer, and a bit of lip gloss, I don’t really want to wear lipstick tonight. I love wearing gloss it just enhances my natural lips. I’m finally finished with my makeup and I can start getting dressed, but first I go to my closet and see the red shoes Sabine wanted to wear, I take them out and pass them to her, she smiles at me and snatches them from my hand.

  I put on my beige dress that we bought today and feel so pretty as soon as I wear it. I love it even more now than I did when I tried it on in the shop. I don’t need to wear a bra as it has great support and it keeps the girls in place. I have a test I do to see if I need a bra or not. I do jumping jacks while trying it on. This dress didn’t budge, so it’s secure enough to wear without and not having to worry about any nip slips. I walk over to the bed and sit as I put my shoes on.

  “Morgan, you look stunning. Luke isn’t going to be able to keep his hands off you. Stand up, I want to get a picture.” I do as she asks and I pose for a picture, once she takes it, she comes and stands beside me and starts to take selfies of the two of us. We end up pulling funny faces as she takes the pictures.

  Once she’s finished, I go to my jewelry box and put on my sparkly chandelier earrings, my Tiffany Toggle Heart necklace and bracelet. Agnishika bought both Sabine and I them for our graduations, I cried, it wasn’t because it was Tiffany, it was the fact that they bought me the exact same thing as their daughter, making me feel part of their family.

  I spot the red hoop earrings that I ordered online. “Sabine, come here, will you?”

  She doesn’t hesitate; she’s over by me in an instant. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, would you wear these, I think they will go perfectly with your dress. What do you think?”

  “Definitely! They’re really pretty. Where did you get th
em? Are you sure it’s okay for me to wear them? Were they expensive?” She’s talking a mile a minute, and I’m barely able to keep up. “I love them, Morgan, they’re amazing.”

  “I bought them on Amazon, I was bored one night a few weeks ago, and I saw them while I was browsing, so I added them to my basket and ordered them last week. No, they weren’t expensive, I think they were less than twenty dollars, so I apologize if your ear turns green. I wouldn’t have suggested wearing them if I didn’t want you to wear them. Do you not have a purse?”

  “No, I don’t have a purse, I have pockets in my blazer so I’ll be using them.” Her phone pings with a sound of a message coming through, and she glances down at her phone, and her eyes grow big, and she starts to pout.

  “It’s eight. Luke will be here soon. We haven’t even had a drink yet. I’m going to make them while you finish getting ready.” She has a mischievous grin on her face, and I know that she is up to no good.

  I take the time to compose myself as I’m starting to get nervous, I have butterflies in my stomach, and my hands are shaking. I don’t know why I’m so nervous, I love Luke, and I know that he loves me. It may be because it’s my first real date since high school.

  I stand in front of my full-length mirror and look at myself, I feel like crying as I look at the woman who is looking back at me, she has come a long way from the little girl who lost her mom. She looks confident and sexy. Sometimes I think I haven’t changed at all, that I’m still that insecure girl who doesn’t think much of herself, then there are moments like this, where I realize that I have changed so much because I can push aside my insecurities and I have realized that everyone has them.

  I walk to the closet and grab the smallest clutch purse I have and put the essentials into it: credit card, lip gloss, phone and my keys. That’s it, I’m ready to go. I smooth my dress down and take a final deep breath, the nervousness is still there, but excitement is seeping through now.