The A-List by Zoey Dean Read Free Book Online

very gay goatee.
    “Don’t bother.” She was sure that his “now that I see you” remark was a discreet way of saying, “Now that I see your ass is the size of New Jersey.” She’d had enough humiliation for one afternoon. She’d just have to recycle something in her closet, much as she hated to do that. For one thing, some eager-beaver photo editor would find a still of her in the same outfit and publish the two pictures side by side. Plus, even if it was a kick-ass dress, everyone knew that the true magic of any apparel existed only the first time you wore it.
    “Wow!” someone breathed from the vicinity of the bedroom door. Sam recognized the Marilyn Monroe-esque baby-soft voice without looking. It was her other best friend besides Cammie Sheppard, Delia Young.
    “Hi, Dee.” Sam rolled onto her stomach. Her friend, who was wearing teeny jeans and a teenier tee, carried a leather garment bag and a Louis Vuitton overnight case. They had planned to dress together for the wedding.
    Dee had the flaxen hair, upturned nose, and wide blue eyes of a porcelain doll, and a perfect little body. Whenever Sam had to have her picture taken with Dee, she always wedged half of herself behind her diminutive friend.
    “Sorry I’m late—my oxygen facial took forever.” Dee hung the garment bag over Sam’s mirror. “So, did you pick a dress?”
    “Nothing worked.” So much for Sam’s transformed-by-the-perfect-dress
Pretty Woman
fantasy. She turned to the assistants, who were gathered near the window. “Guys, you can go. Thanks for stopping by.”
    The assistants masked their disappointment and efficiently gathered up their clothes, bags, and shoes. Dee watched, a self-satisfied smile on her face, as they straggled out of the room, arms full.
    “Are you smiling at my misery?” Sam asked. “Because I
so
have nothing to wear.”
    “Do you want to know why you love me?” Dee asked gleefully, and then hastily added, “I didn’t mean that in a Georgia Sands way.”
    “That’s
George
Sands,” Sam corrected. Dee was a sweet-natured and loyal friend, but she had a bad habit of internalizing forever the personal quirks of whatever guy she dated, then leavening them with her own very average brainpower. The boyfriend before last had been a poetry major at USC who parked cars at Sunset Plaza by day and was allegedly writing the Great American Novel (“Screenplays are so ephemeral and transitory,” he’d tell her) by night.
    “Well, you know what I mean,” Dee insisted.
    “Okay, Dee. I’ll bite. Why do I love you?”
    “Because
I
brought you the perfect dress. Ta-da!” Dee opened the leather garment bag to reveal two dresses. One was a teensy pale pink confection that obviously belonged to teensy pale pink Dee. The other, though, immediately got Sam’s interest. It was black and strapless, with a fitted black-lace-over-nude-silk bodice that gave way to a chiffon-and-net skirt that flowed to midcalf.
    Sam touched the material and examined the cut. Then she slipped off her robe and pulled the dress over her head. Dee zipped her into it, and Sam regarded herself in the department-store-style mirror in the corner. It fit perfectly. The three-quarter length showed off her smooth shoulders, it was fitted where she was fit, and it hid what needed hiding. “It’s genius,” Sam marveled.
    “I knew it!” Dee chortled. “I saw it hanging in the window at that new boutique on Rodeo next door to—”
    “Who is it?”
    “Donna Karan.”
    Sam clutched her chest. “Donna Karan? Forget it! She designs for women with fat asses.”
    “She does not. Besides, you’re not fat, Sam. You wear a size eight.”
    “So? You’re a zero.”
    Dee blew shaggy bangs out of her enormous blue eyes. “But I’m only five-one.”
    Sam turned her back to the mirror and peered over her shoulder to check out her fat ass. Her shrink, Dr. Fred, had told her that she had borderline body dysmorphic disorder, that she thought she saw fat where