Page 1 of The Top of Admiration
Chapter 1: Miranda — Dead horses
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings.
Richard III, William Shakespeare
“Oh Lucy, you’re a magician! Seriously, you’ve made me look so good!” I twirled in front of the mirror, thanking my lucky stars that Lucy had been so desperate to move in. Our former housemate Skye had accepted an amazing job opportunity on the other side of the country, and Lucy texted to claim her room the moment she found out.
“Well, I have the perfect canvas!” Lucy grinned at me, pulling out her phone to take an “after” shot for her Insta. She was a very talented stylist. Trained in hair and make-up, she was also a wizard at choosing the perfect clothes to match body types.
Tonight was important. Cam and I had been together four years, and it was our anniversary dinner. I met him when we were both 22. Like me, he had spent his life in this town, but we’d gone to different schools and didn’t meet until we attended the 21stbirthday party of a mutual friend.
“You look stunning in red, Randa.” Cordelia appeared in the doorway holding a glass of wine. She was spending tonight at Damon’s but wanted to hang around, ostensibly for pre-drinks, but really to temper my expectations of tonight. She thought she was subtle, but I saw straight through her. She sprinkled her disapproval gently and in controlled time releases, but having known this woman since she was born, I knew damn well she wanted me to break up with Cam.
At first, they got along well, and to the unknowing eye, they still did, but the longer I was with Cam and the more he became emotionally unavailable, the colder Cordelia grew toward him. My older sister Juliet was less obvious, but she too had thrown in a few less-than-tactful comments lately about “flogging a dead horse.”
“Thanks, dear sis.” I twisted to check out the back of my dress. The tight-fitting red dress did wonders for my non-existent ass and highlighted my very existent boobs. Lucy truly did have some kind of magic. She had curled my hair and pinned the dark curls on top of my head in a way that looked haphazard but had taken 40 minutes to achieve.
“You’re so gorgeous that I feel like dropping to a knee and proposing,” Lucy mused, snapping a shot of the back of my head.
“I’m hopeful, Lucy, not stupid. The man nearly shit himself when I asked him to move in when Skye left. I know he won’t propose, but maybe he’s ready to get a place together.”
Lucy fiddled with her phone, blastingPerfect Dayby Hoku. She was as subtle as a sledgehammer.
“I am not Elle Woods waiting for Warner Huntington the Second to propose,” I snapped.
Peacemaker Cordelia stepped into the room, her expression gentler now. “You look beautiful, Miranda. Just remember that you deserve to be with someone who shows up for you. Not just someone who professes love and then hits you with the ‘let’s talk later’ line.”
“You should know about that, Cordy. You hit Damon with that all the time,” I snapped
Cordy winced and I immediately felt bad and wished I could take it back. Damon and Cordy had been together for a year, and hewas more than ready to take the next step with her, but she’d been badly burned by her cheating asshole of an ex, Harrison, and was determined to keep her heart whole.
“Sorry, that was shitty of me. I just mean that Cam is a person who likes to feel safe. He’s a slow mover.”
“He’s a fucking glacier,” Lucy retorted, packing away the curling iron. “He moves slowly and is as cold as ice.” Lucy hated Cam and was quite open about it. Cordy was like the peacemaker in the room when we were all together, soothing over Lucy’s words and distracting Cam from her stony glares. My sister had a theory that Lucy held some ridiculous hope of setting me up with her brother, ironically also named Cameron.
Cameron Whittaker, Lucy’s brother and Damon’s best friend, was very unlike my Cameron Reid. Cam W was stable and goal oriented. He was an app developer and invested in property on the side. Sure, he was reliable and safe, but there were no sparks there. Love wasn’t logical, or Cordy would never have ended up with Harrison. Embarrison was a walking red flag from the moment he appeared in our lives.
Plus, it was unfair to pin all the blame on my Cam. I was an artist, “free spirited,” as Mom frequently put it. I had been happy with my casual but monogamous relationship with Cam until recently. I was getting older, and I wanted some stability. I saw Cordy and Damon together and my heart yearned for a connection like that. A reliable bond that I could count on unconditionally. Cam loved me; he said that frequently. But we lived very independently of each other. He had his friends, and I had mine. He had aspirations to move on from the phone shop to a career in music, and I worked a low-wage job at an art gallery in the hope that I could make it one day as a commercial artist. We both had our dreams. We were both creative and ambitious.
I’ve always been easily bored. Mom said it wasn’t a bad quality to have, but it did mean that I never really gravitated toward traditional pathways. Juliet had married young and had a beautiful relationship with her husband Seamus, but to me, their lives looked a little boring. They were always saving money, always working, and were putting off children until they were sensibly placed in life. I completely understood the need to plan, but what fun was life without some spontaneity?
“Nah, it was fair,” Cordy conceded about Lucy’s ‘glacier’ comment. “I’m just looking out for you, Randa, the way you look out for everyone else except yourself. I don’t have the imagination or humor you do, so if Cam breaks your heart, I can’t wage one of your prank wars to punish him. I deliver a hell of a good lecture, but I can’t force him to listen to it.”
“I can,” Lucy promised. “I have handcuffs that don’t have a safety latch.”
We both looked at her with individual expressions of confusion and repulsion. We didn’t need to know that.
“Or you could just call Skye and ask her to send him an info package,” Cordy suggested. Skye was in human resources and always had a PDF handy to send on any type of personal interaction. “The man obviously needs directions.”
I slipped on a pair of Lucy’s red high-heeled shoes and did a “ta da” motion to Cordy.
“Stunning! Go claim your future, Randa!”
I smoothed down my already-smooth dress. I was rarely nervous, but tonight, I felt like a sculpture still in a kiln—hot, fragile, and a wrong move away from cracking.
Chapter 2: Miranda — Digesting bad news
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
