Page 74 of I Hate You More

“I’ve got to say, Ruby, I didn’t think the dress would look as good as it did when you were seventeen, but I was wrong. Now that your breasts have dropped a few inches, the neckline looks quite nice.”

Ruby choked. At her feet, Wheezy made a similar sound, but that was because he’d inhaled far more of the hair spray than was good for him.

“If you think your boobs have started losing the fight against gravity now, wait until you get to be my age.” Mrs. Orson, who sat well out of hair-spray range on a velvet settee on the opposite end of the dressing room, heaved a despairing sigh. “These days, they look like a pair of deflated balloons filled with cottage cheese.”

Ruby choked again, the sound bordering on a laugh. It was a daring move in more ways than one. Not only was laughter forbidden in the sacred dressing room—a small bedroom that her mother had converted to her own personal closet—but her mother hadn’t yet Vaselined her teeth. Her smile needed to be picture perfect before she was allowed to roll it out.

But her mom, giddy with all the sequins and sparkles that surrounded them, gave up and joined in.

“Oh dear. They really do, don’t they?” Laurel placed her hands underneath her breasts and hoisted them to unearthly heights. “I’ve been thinking about having mine done while there’s still enough elasticity in my skin to hold them up.”

“I think you should do it,” Mrs. Orson agreed. “My friend Darla had hers done about a decade ago. The rest of her is like wet crepe paper, but her décolletage looks fantastic.”

If Ruby wasn’t standing in the middle of her mother’s dressing room, a pair of towering silver heels on her feet and her hair so tall it practically brushed the ceiling, she’d have supposed she was dreaming. Never, in her wildest imaginings, could she have pictured her mother and Mrs. Orson casually discussing aging female bodies. Especially not while she was wearing a long, sweeping, off-the-shoulder ballgown that weighed almost as much as Wheezy did.

It was one of the last gowns she’d ever worn, a spangled teal monstrosity that cost more than her car. The sweeping hem had to be carried by hand—or by an attendant—but her mother was right about the neckline. The dress fit her woman’s body much better than it ever had her teenage one.

A lot of things about this moment felt that way. As a teenager, she hadn’t been able to appreciate how nice it was to spend this time with her mother. So many other parents were dedicated to their jobs and their hobbies and their travels—but not Laurel. Every ounce of energy she’d possessed had been channeled into her offspring.

It had been infuriating and exhausting, yes, but she’d been there. Just like she was now.

Ruby stepped down from the literal pedestal she’d been placed upon and pulled her mother into a hug. She could hear the muffled sounds of Laurel’s protests and admonitions, but she didn’t care. Her dress might wrinkle and sag, and her makeup might smear, but she wasn’t planning on winning a beauty pageant today.

She wasn’t planning on winning a dog show either, but anyone standing in the room with them right now would be able to tell that. Sometime in the past week, Wheezy had enjoyed an altercation with a raccoon. A large chunk of fur was missing from underneath his ear, and Mrs. Orson’s attempts to cut the rest of his hair to match hadn’t gone well. He’d never looked worse.

Since he hadn’t seen Spencer in over a week, he’d also never acted worse. Even the recording of Spencer’s voice seemed to be losing its hold over him.

He missed having the real man around. So did Ruby.

“Well, this is it, then. Showtime.” Mrs. Orson struggled to get to her feet. Ruby made a motion to help her, but her mom was on alert and beat her to it.

Although she’d been hesitant to introduce the two women to each other, there’d been no need. They got along in ways that both delighted and terrified her. Half of her was pretty sure her mom was going to try the old woo-the-elderly-to-get-put-in-the-will routine, but the other half thought they might actually become friends. They’d both been burned by love and enjoyed nothing more than telling Ruby what to do. Relationships had been founded on less.

“I think you look very nice, dear. A bit tarty, but that’s how I like it.” Mrs. Orson glanced at Ruby’s mom. “You’ve worked a miracle on her skin, by the way. I had no idea glitter was so concealing. I barely notice the rash anymore.”

“I wanted to send her through a fake tan spray, but she wouldn’t go.” Laurel clucked her tongue. “She won’t win any awards looking like that, but I’ve done the best I could. The rest is up to her.”

“Technically, the rest is up to Wheezy.” Ruby nudged the golden retriever with the tip of one delicately shod foot. When that didn’t do more than cause him to grumble, she nudged harder. “Come on, slug-abed. It’s now or never. All the other dogs have been getting ready since sunrise.”

Wheezy rolled his eyes at her, looking exactly like Ruby had felt for the majority of her teenage life. Nothing was worse than slapping on a pair of heels and trotting around for a bunch of judges when all you wanted was to curl in a ball and cry, but that was the point. When you wanted something—trulywanted it—you had to suck it up and do it anyway.

That was the one thing Ruby had forgotten, the one thing she should have held on to as she ventured out into the real world for the first time.Naivewasn’t a word she’d have used to describe the hard-edged eighteen-year-old she’d once been, but that was the word that fit. Gowns were just sequin-covered fabric and trophies were only plated gold, but the drive it took to succeed in the world of pageantry—the determination, grit, and fierce, unyielding passion—was something special.

And she’d turned her back on it. She’d let it go.

“Not anymore,” she said aloud. The words were more for herself than for Wheezy, but he recognized the tone and heaved a sigh. He also heaved himself to his feet. He looked worse standing up than he had lying down, but that was okay.

Wheezy wasn’t going to win the West Coast Canine Classic. He wasn’t even going to come close. But he’d put in the effort and she’d promised Mrs. Orson to give him this opportunity, so they were going anyway.

And if Spencer so much as hinted that he’d slip Wheezy a few extra points when Eva’s and Lawson’s backs were turned, she was going to tell him exactly what he could do with them. His pity could go in the garbage and his charity up his ass.

She had her pageant face on and her dress zipped tight. She was ready.

“The doors don’t open to the public until three o’clock, so you two will have to find something to amuse yourselves until then.” She cast a stern look at the two women, who were already making plans for a liquid lunch at a nearby bar. “Please don’t embarrass me. Or Wheezy. We’ve both worked really hard for this.”

She expected at least one of them to reply with something sarcastic and scathing, but the two women shared a look before pulling her into their arms.

“I’m so proud of you, Ruby,” one of them said. Ruby thought it might have been her mom, but she couldn’t be sure. And to be perfectly honest, she didn’t care. Both of these women meant so much to her—the one because she’d raised her to be a warrior, and the other because she’d reminded her what it meant to fight.