BABY DADDY (16 page)

I feel him kiss the top of my head. His arms wrap around me, his fingers lacing with mine. “I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to sound like I’m discounting whatever pain you’ve had in the past.”

“No, it’s alright. I just find you too good to be true. Maybe you really are true. But I’m not like you.”

“I know.”

“Is it always easy for you?”

“What?”

“To apologize? To ask for forgiveness?”

“Yes. I was raised that way.”

“Do you forgive easily?”

“I guess. But nobody has really hurt me to the extent that I’d have difficulty forgiving them. I’d like to think that I can forgive. Easily. Yes.”

“I envy you then.”

His arms squeeze around me. “I’m sorry, baby.”

“What are you sorry about?”

“I’m sorry that you’ve been hurt badly in the past. I wish I can help make you forget, let go, be free of all that.”

I feel my throat constrict.

Shit, I can’t believe this is happening. The door’s opening.

Old wounds reopen inside me. But whereas just a minute and a lifetime ago they resisted discovery by outside forces but gushed with fresh blood to remind me time and again how worthless and hopeless I was before, now they wait to be revealed, to be looked after, to be soothed.

And maybe, just maybe, be healed.

I’m a hardcore cynic. But for once, even just once, tonight, I don’t want to wear my armor and hide behind my fortress.

I want to trust. Even just for a while.

“I used to have very low self-esteem which I perfectly hid under the sophistication of my designs. Success can hide many things, you know, including ugly scars. No, not the physical ones that can easily be erased by a talented plastic surgeon. Scars in the soul. Scars no one’s allowed to see, but they remain there, ugly as can be. I think I’ve healed over the years. Or maybe not. I don’t know. I don’t dwell in the past anymore. I’m too busy now I don’t even have time to think of myself. I do revisit when it’s triggered by situations in the most inopportune times, like now.”

“I’m sorry I’m making you remember.”

“Quit apologizing. It’s not you. Some unpleasant memories are specters that refuse to go away completely no matter how hard you want to move on. They lurk in the dark corners of your soul and usually do a sneak attack on your system when you’re feeling unsure of yourself. These are rare moments for me though. Nowadays, I’m almost shock proof and bulletproof, my shell, impenetrable. But I have rare weak moments. This is one of them.”

In another time and place, I would never be caught dead admitting my weaknesses to anyone. It’s like handing the sword to your enemy to gut you. But I’m laying down my sword tonight. I hope he doesn’t pick it up later and behead me.

I’m Pandora’s Box. My chest is open. My demons are out and they wanna be seen and heard by another soul.

“I had a boyfriend once.”

TEN

___________________________________________________________

25 CONTROVERSIAL QUOTES FROM THE STYLE EMPRESS

On being a workaholic:

“A woman who’s not working is a princess.

A woman who works is a Queen.”

Stella Rhodes

__________________________________________________

I’M NOT SURE I’M READY
TO HEAR
about her old flame, the one who hurt her so bad in the past she’s still carrying a torch for him after all these years. I hope it’s not a first love. How can you measure up to a first love? How can you beat that? How can you surpass it?

I want to extinguish the flames of that torch.

So I’m going to sit here and hold her and listen to her and forget about my own feelings. Her feelings matter more.

“I met him when I already made my first 100 million. He was a supermodel.”

I inwardly groan. Okay, extremely good-looking. Thank God I don’t know shit about the fashion industry. I don’t want to put a face to this motherfucker who figured big in her life before, whose memories are preventing me from entering her heart completely.

“I was twenty-seven.”

“You were a late-bloomer.”

“I know. I wasn’t exactly a ravishing beauty in high school, you know. I was so big, like big and was a constant target of bullies in school. Nobody even invited me to the prom.”

My arms wrap tighter around her. I want to time travel and rain a shitstorm on those bullies and ask her to the prom. I’ve never attended one myself but for her, I would.

“My parents divorced when I was six and my mother ran off with her lover to France and stayed there for years, contacting me only during my birthdays. She eventually married her French boyfriend. My father hated her and would constantly trash talk her I had no good image of my mother while growing up. He remarried shortly and had two kids with his second wife all in two years. Needless to say, I was an excess baggage in his new family unit. His second wife hated my presence and made me feel like an outsider in my father’s house everyday.”

“Am I hearing Cinderella here?” I tease her to lighten the pain she must be feeling in reliving this.

It’s effective. She laughs a little. “Yeah, something like that but circa twenty-first century. So, you’ve read Cinderella?”

“Yeah. Wicked stepmother and stepsisters. Thank God there’s a gallant prince for Ella.” I tickle her ear.

She giggles. “A boy who read fairy tales. I find that kind of…uhmm.”

“What.”

“Sissy.”

“There you go with your double standards again. A girl reads Game of Thrones and she’s smart and badass for digging warfare and politics. A boy reads Cinderella and he’s a sissy. Do you see the injustice there?”

“GOT versus Cinderella is not a good comparison. But I get your point. I don’t know who fucked up gender perception. Do you?”

“Good question but we’ll save that discussion for another time.”

“Cinderella? Really? Why not Joan of Arc?”

“I loved Joan of Arc, too, but to pacify your chauvinistic and may I add, misogynistic perception, Mother used to read fairy tales to me and improvise, adding dragons, anacondas, giant tigers and all kinds of scary monsters to be slain by the prince before he finds Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty or Rapunzel. I enjoyed those stories.”

“Oh. Your mother is really something.”

“That she is. Go on, baby.”

“My stepmother was very beautiful and so were her children. I didn’t know why they hated me because I tried so hard to make them like me, at least. I was obedient, respectful, didn’t talk much, painfully shy.”

“Maybe they actually saw your beauty and resented you for it.”

She snorts. “They all thought I was ugly and told me so in very creative ways. My father was blind to everything they were doing to me, or maybe he knew but chose to ignore it. I guess he didn’t want to displease his wife more than anything.”

“The list of people I dislike in your life is growing. Your father’s topping the chart, so far.”

She sighs. “I guess he was weak. That’s probably why my mother left him in the first place. I developed a bad eating habit out of my depression. At 15, I was over two hundred pounds. I struggled with my weight all through high school, but I didn’t want to show how insecure I was, how bad I felt about myself. I was a straight A student, the team leader of the debate team, the campus paper’s editor-in-chief. I compensated my lack of confidence in my looks with my brains.”

I kiss her shoulder. It seems the only thing I can do right now to make her feel I’m with her, that I empathize with her.

“I’ve always been artistic and was fascinated with clothes and dress-making even when I was a kid. I used to sew dresses for my dolls and even made jackets for our dogs. In grade school, I sewed a lot of bags and purses for my classmates. I even designed gowns for my friends and dresses for my stepsisters. At least my stepsisters recognized my talent and they were happy to wear my clothes while mocking me that I can never wear my own creations because I won’t fit in them.”

“Your stepsisters are worse than Cinderella’s.”

“Each to their own wickedness, I guess. My dad and my stepmother knew my inclinations so I was shocked when I said I wanted to pursue fashion designing at Parsons, my father adamantly refused to support me. He wanted me to be an accountant, like him.”

“Nothing against accountants but I guess your dad was miserable and he wanted company. Counting other people’s debts is boring.”

She laughs a little. “He was making good money and told me I’d never amount to anything as a fashion designer. Maybe he also thought it was an irony I was designing beautiful clothes when I couldn’t even walk properly. I was so fat I waddled—”

I cover her mouth with my hand. “If you say fat one more time, I’m going to spank you.”

She turns her head to kiss my chin. “You’re just being nice, but it was my reality for a long time. Anyway, I had a row with my stepmother after graduation and I couldn’t take all the verbal abuse anymore. I would have preferred it if she just hit me rather than hearing it over and over how disgusted she was with my looks. I harbored bitterness towards my mother for leaving me to suffer on my own but I swallowed my pride and wrote to her. I begged her to bring me to France.”

“I swear if I see your stepmother now, I’m going to drop her ass in a vat of Elmer’s glue.”

She laughs again. “Then you’re meaner than my stepmother.”

“So, you went to France?”

“Uh-huh. I was seventeen and it was a whole new world for me. My mother and I haven’t seen each other for a decade and it was a struggle for both of us to reconnect. I barely remembered her and she already had a daughter of her own too, a popular teen in Paris during that time, a ramp model. She’s actually her stepdaughter, her husband’s child from a previous relationship, but my mother raised her as her own. Yup, I was always competing with my parents’ pretty daughters, but of course, I was never in their beauty zone. But I’m glad for my French stepsister, Sophie. At first I was secretly jealous of her that she got all my mother’s love when she was young and I had nothing from my own mother, but she was so kind to me I couldn’t help but truly love her. She’s still very much in my life right now. I’m closer to her than with my own mother.”

“Then I wanna meet her, too.”

“She’s engaged now,” she quickly adds.

I grin in her hair. “I wasn’t planning on hitting on your half-sister. I dig this particular sister like no other.” I cup her knockers and squeeze gently for emphasis.

I hear her snort. I thumb her nipples. She moans.

“Don’t distract me with sex. I’m spilling my guts here.”

My hands fall back from her luscious breasts and I link our fingers again. “I’ll behave. Go on, baby.”

“Well, Paris is the most exciting place for a young, aspiring designer like me. I tagged along with Sophie during her go-sees.”

“What’s a go-see?”

“It’s a modeling jargon. When designers want to choose models who’d wear their collections in fashion shows, they’d arrange a go-see. Models show up and get checked out. Sophie did a lot of that and landed many gigs. I served as her assistant and stylist, doing her make-up and choosing her clothes.”

“You didn’t go to college?”

“When I left my father’s house, he cut any financial support for me. My mother had a blue collar job and cannot afford to send me to college. Even Sophie started modeling after high school to save up for her college education. I didn’t want to impose on my stepfather. I was just grateful he welcomed me into his family. He’s a good man, soft spoken, simple.”

“Glad you didn’t have Cinderella Volume Two in France.”

“Well, what I had was Bridget Jones Diary, only multiply her ex-BF Daniel’s assholery level to ten.”

“I don’t think I know Bridget’s story.”

“I don’t expect you to. It’s a famous chic book. Made into several movies.”

“Can we skip the Daniel’s-assholery-level-times-ten episode?”

“But that’s where the shit got worse.”

“Okay, make it quick and simple so I won’t have enough reason to plot his excruciating death. But wait, the shit got worse in his episode? I’m going to kill him.”

“I thought you’re a forgiving person.”

“I can forgive transgressions done to me, but done to you…I don’t know, baby.”

I feel her fingers tighten around mine. I know, I feel what it means. She believes I care. It warms me inside that she does. It’s very important to me that she does.

“I met Marcel during one of Sophie’s ramp gigs.”

“Is he the asshole?”

“No. He was my first love.”

“Okay… and?”

“He saw me painting Sophie’s face and he approached us and proposed a collaborative work with us. He was a professional photographer and doing a coffee table book on body art. Of course, we agreed. We shot at his studio in Paris. During that time, Sophie had a BF. Marcel and I had some kind of chemistry. I believed we had one. Our minds met on many levels. Our shared interest in art glued as together. He was my first kiss.”