Page 30 of Best Woman

“Wake up, we’re going to the mall!”

“Five more minutes,” I mumble out.

It takes me a long moment to realize I am not, in fact, sixteen years old.

Yes, I’m in my old room at my mother’s house and that very same mother is shouting at me through the door.

Yes, I fell asleep thinking about Kim Cameron.

Yes, I’ve somehow managed to displace the duvet, sheets, and pillows while sleeping and am lying in a bare bed with sunlight pouring in the window like a personal attack.

But I also have a throbbing headache from all the wine I drank last night, and I detested wine as a teenager, much more likely to get a buzz from a few Smirnoff Ices.

Also, I’m wearing a set of silky pajamas pilfered from a pop star’s PR pile that I would never have allowed myself to covet when I lived here.

And most important, Kim Cameron kissed me last night.

Not in a fantasy, but in real life. In a smelly, muggy parking lot behind a novelty pottery studio while my future sister-in-law and her clones got drunk on rosé and made commemorative vases.

“Julia, are you up?” my mother asks through the closed door, despite knowing from years of experience that I’m still horizontal, if not unconscious.

Thank god I locked the door when I came home last night, otherwise, she’d be dragging me out of bed by my feet.

That’s not an exaggeration: it’s how she woke me up through most of middle school.

“Yes, Mother.” She hates when I call her that. “Give me half an hour.”

“Twenty minutes,” she shouts back, voice fading. “I need a Diet Coke ASAP.”

Groaning, I roll out of bed and into the bathroom, wincing at my reflection.

Despite how often my mother has drilled into me over the past few years that you should never go to bed without washing your makeup off, I look like I’ve just come out of the pool at the end of Rocky Horror .

I switch on the shower, thankful for the giant suburban water heater downstairs when it instantly turns scorching hot.

As I rinse off my makeup and, hopefully, some of the hangover, I puzzle out the rest of last night.

After our still-shocking encounter behind Kiln Me Softly, Kim and I rejoined the group to knowing looks from Rachels 1–5 and an apology from a chastised Rachel 6.

I never managed to transform my lump of clay into anything more than, well, a lump of clay, but everyone else was so wasted by the time the eponymous kiln was fired up that it didn’t matter.

The midnight movie screening was torturous, both because I had to listen as a group of drunk women talked about how bad they wanted to fuck Adam Sandler and because Kim kept her leg pressed tightly against mine in the dark theater for the entire movie, occasionally tracing her fingers along my leather-clad thigh.

We’d both been sloppy and exhausted by the time the movie ended, but had made plans to “hang out” this evening after the rehearsal dinner.

The dinner was at a restaurant conveniently located in the very hotel where Kim was staying, and she’d suggested we get a drink at the bar afterward.

“Or just hang out in my room,” she’d said, uncharacteristically bashful.

I’m cautiously optimistic that means what I think it means, and hope the dress I’m wearing tonight is easy to get quickly in and out of.

An hour and a quick stop at the McDonald’s drive-thru later, Mom and I are marching through Bloomingdale’s toward the shoe department because she’s decided she simply must have a new pair of shoes for tonight despite owning a collection that would rival Carrie Bradshaw’s—if Carrie Bradshaw were really into Tory Burch.

I think she’s also realized that we haven’t had much mother-daughter time this week.

“You could use something like this,” she says, pointing at a pair of hideous Michael Kors wedges. “A nice, feminine, everyday shoe. Those”—she looks toward my beat-up black boots (the only pair of my own shoes River let me pack), nose scrunched in disdain—“have got to go.”

“As I have no plans to visit a yacht club or a white nationalist rally anytime soon, I’ll pass.”

“I have them in beige.”

“Of course you do.”

Thankfully, a smiling sales associate interrupts us. “Can I help you?” She’s an older woman, around my mom’s age, and already looks tired at 11 a.m. I can relate.

“Yes,” says my mother, “my daughter and I are looking for shoes for an event tonight. My son’s rehearsal dinner. He’s getting married tomorrow.”

She does this a lot when we’re out together, emphasizing the daughter, and telling nail technicians we’re having a girl’s day . I’m sure she does it unconsciously, but a small, nasty part of me worries it’s because she’s sure something about me—my low voice or my wide shoulders—will give me away.

And if that’s true, if she believes that’s how other people will see me…is that how she sees me?

I squash the doubt down, and make it as small as possible. I’ve always wanted a daughter, I remind myself. That’s what she said when you told her. That is what matters. That’s real.

“Congratulations,” the sales associate says, managing a smile that looks roughly forty percent sincere. “Were you looking for anything in particular?”

“Something strappy,” says Mom. “And beige. And she’ll”—she points at me—“probably want something in black.”

“You know me so well,” I say, “but I don’t need shoes. I’m all set for tonight.”

Mom gives me a look. “Sweetie, it’s my treat. And while I’m sure what you brought is…nice, this is your brother’s rehearsal dinner. Let’s get you something elegant .” She turns back to the sales associate. “Do you carry larger sizes?”

The headache that’s been rumbling around on a low simmer all morning starts to throb. “Seriously, Mom, I’m good. Remember, River lent me some shoes.”

“I’m sure whatever they let you borrow is lovely,” she says, making sure to emphasize the pronoun, “but wouldn’t you like a nice pair of heels you don’t have to give back?

Every woman should have a good pair of black pumps.

Right?” she asks the associate, who nods, clearly wanting to be involved in this conversation as little as possible. That makes two of us.

“I’m more of a combat boot girl,” I tell the associate, trying to make the whole thing funny rather than awkward. The pained look on her face says I’m not succeeding.

“You’ve been wearing the same pair of boots since you were fourteen,” says Mom, clearly exasperated.

The when you were a boy goes unsaid, but I hear it all the same.

It’s like she’s asking me what’s the point, why did I transition if I’m going to leave the house with chipped black nail polish and no bra?

How am I a woman if I don’t get a blowout every week and own a pair of pumps?

So I give in. “OK, yeah, fine.” I smile at the sales associate. “I wear an eleven.” Mom’s smile is victorious.

It doesn’t stop at the pumps. I let her buy me a pair of ballet flats I’ll never wear, a bra I can’t fill out, some perfume that has no hope of making it on the flight back to New York with me.

I let myself be dragged out of Bloomingdale’s and around the mall, becoming more sullen with every new store we visit.

I feel ten years old again, forced into a Sears changing room to try on a suit for my cousin’s bat mitzvah.

When I ask if we can stop at the bookstore so I can grab something to read on the flight home, she insists we don’t have time, then steers us into Sephora where we spend thirty minutes finding me the perfect shade of concealer.

I think it makes me look jaundiced, but whatever, she’s paying.

“It’s just for touch-ups, of course,” she says. “I booked someone to come do our hair and makeup tomorrow.”

“Oh.” I’m pleasantly surprised. “That’s nice.”

“Hopefully she can do something about this, ” she says, tugging at the hasty bun I’d managed to wrangle my hair into that morning, ruffling my messy bangs. Aaaaand we’re back.

I do manage to sneak in a few things I want, like a cherry red lip gloss that I hope will look sophisticated with my cocktail dress tonight—and I get a little thrill when I imagine it smeared on Kim’s mouth or leaving a sticky trail up her thighs.

Mom spends ages plucking new variations of the same products she already owns off the shelves, talking to every employee she sees, and asking my opinion only to immediately disagree with it.

Finally, we’re done, and all I want to do is go home and crash for another few hours, maybe spend some time daydreaming about what might happen with Kim tonight.

But Mom decrees that we’re getting lunch, and so I find myself once again wedged into a booth at a mall chain restaurant that is just barely a nicer version of the Cheesecake Factory.

“I’m starving,” Mom says as she peruses the menu. “But I didn’t eat breakfast.”

“You don’t need to justify being hungry.” Thanks to Grandma, who spent a year of my childhood eating rice pudding for every meal, Mom has always had a complicated relationship with food. “You can just, you know, be hungry .”

“I know that,” she says, acid in her voice, brows lifted high at the criticism.

She can dish it out but has never been able to take it.

This is the woman who still ends our arguments by insisting, “I’m right because I’m your mother.

” I sigh, and when the waiter comes to take our order, I try to ignore the look in her eyes when I ask for a cheeseburger.

As we wait for our food, I look out the windows next to our booth and let my mind drift, staring at the tall palm trees ubiquitous to Floridian landscaping swaying gently in the breeze.

Even though it’s a weekday, the mall is packed, little knots of shoppers hurrying through the parking lot to reach the air-conditioning and escape the muggy heat.

A mother and daughter walk past the window, talking animatedly with their shoulders brushing, hair swinging in identical ponytails.

Would days like this be easier if I’d had them growing up? Mother-daughter shopping trips where I was carefully instructed in the ways of womanhood, welcome to it as my birthright rather than something I’d claimed and conquered for myself? I always wanted a daughter…

Or would our relationship be just as thorny and complicated, just as comfortable and combative as it is now? Would raising a girl have softened my mother in some fundamental way, made her feel like she had an ally in a house full of boys?

I wish we had the kind of relationship where I could ask these questions and, more important, get honest answers.

My phone buzzes with a text from Everett, and I feel a shock of panic realizing I haven’t checked any of his emails for days. I’m about to open it when Mom says my name, with an emphasis that makes me realize it isn’t the first time.

“Sorry, what?”

“Have you written your speech yet?”

“Kind of.” I snag a breadstick from the basket between us, snapping it in half and chewing with my mouth open just to annoy her. “It’s a work in progress.”

“The wedding is tomorrow, Julia. You’re always leaving everything to the last minute.”

“Is your speech ready?” I ask.

“I’m going to speak from the heart,” she says, tossing golden hair over one shoulder. I guess one of us should.