Pizza My Heart 2 by Glenna Sinclair Read Free Book Online Page B

intoned.
    “I’m not faking an accent,” I said. “What if someone found out I was faking it?”
    “True. Fine. You win that one. No accent.”
    I tried to watch my appearance’s progress in the reflection of the cabinets in the kitchen, where we were all working, but my view was blocked most of the time by a beautician or Chaz. I could only track what was going on by the hanks of hair dropping to the floor at my feet. I hadn’t had a professional haircut in my entire life. Nana had always trimmed it up for me until her hands had become too unsteady, and then I’d just gone to budget places to keep it out of my face.
    As soon as my hair was cut and styled, a couple of tall, silent women made a move to strip off my clothes.
    “Whoa, wait a second,” I protested. “What the hell is going on?”
    “Personal stylists,” Chaz said. “They want to see what clothes will work for you.”
    “I can undress myself,” I said. “Can’t we do this somewhere other than the kitchen?”
    “What, are you shy now?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “I’ve seen your everything, June. What else do you have that’s going to surprise me? A tail?”
    I huffed a sigh and began trying on clothes, shivering in the cool air of the kitchen, at the clinical disinterest of the stylists. We finally settled on an outfit that Chaz loathed the least—a pair of skinny jeans, ankle boots, a slouchy tank top and a leather jacket—and it was on to the makeup.
    “You need to do this makeup as close to what they’re doing now every single day,” Chaz said. “You’re prone to dark circles, and in Hollywood, that means you party too much.”
    “I don’t party too much,” I said. “I party hardly at all.”
    “That’s neither here nor there,” he said. “Ask questions. Learn this routine. Or I’m sure we could have a stylist come every day and help you get ready. Plenty of actresses do it. I just thought you’d enjoy your privacy.”
    I tried to keep track of the steps and the brushes and the pots of powder and tubes of liquids as the makeup artist kept a running commentary of what she was doing, but it got hopeless as soon as she broke the airbrush out. There was no way I was going to learn how to airbrush my own face.
    When I was finally primed and powdered and as perfect as they were going to get me, I got to stare at myself in the mirror.
    Only it wasn’t myself.
    It was some imagining of just who Chaz thought I should be—styled to a fault, not a hair out of place.
    “This isn’t me,” I told him, looking at my sleek bob that shined beneath the lights overhead. There wasn’t a square centimeter of my face not covered in makeup. I had eyeshadow all the way up to my brow bones. At least my outfit was a little bit cute, but I was not in love with my face—not one bit.
    “Exactly,” Chaz said easily. “You’ll be great. Though I still think it would be better if you could hold a Texas accent throughout the interview.”
    “That would mean I’d have to hold a Texas accent for the rest of my life, and that’s not happening.”
    “You could lose it in a couple weeks,” he said, returning his attention to his phone. “You’d just tell everyone you took a class for fun to get rid of it.”
    “No way,” I said. “I let you take everything else from me. Let me have this one.”
    “Fine,” Chaz said.
    Devon picked that moment to get home. “Wow!” he exclaimed, coming up behind me. I looked at our shared reflection in the mirror in front of us. For the first time, it looked like we maybe belonged together. That’s how drastically my physical appearance had been altered.
    “What do you think?” I asked uncertainly.
    “It’s a big change,” he said diplomatically.
    “I don’t look like myself.”
    “You’re still beautiful.”
    “I think it’s the hair, mostly,” I said, staring at myself. “It looks like a shiny black helmet. It’s too perfect.”
    “Easy solution.” Devon ruffled my