“Elsie! Elsie, open up the door!”

Travis’s voice rang through the entirety of Elsie’s apartment, making it impossible for her to ignore it the way she would have liked to. And make no mistake, she would have very much liked to ignore it because having Travis show up at her door was just about the last thing she was in the mood for. It wasn’t like he had come unannounced or anything, she doubted he would ever have attempted a thing like that, but knowing he was coming didn’t make her any happier about it. Actually, she was pretty sure it made things worse. The anticipation of this morning’s events had weighed heavily on her mind the night before and she had gotten almost zero sleep. She was willing to bet that she had fallen asleep only an hour or so ago, and now, here was Travis, come to wake her up and lead her to her doom. She let out a groan and buried herself deeper beneath her duvet, relishing the soft, cool feel of the sheet.

“Elsie!” Travis pounded on her door harder, his voice beginning to take on the same harried, pissed off tone she’d heard on the phone. “Elsie, come on! It’s not like you can pretend you aren’t here! You don’t ever go anywhere, and besides, it’s only eight-thirty in the morning!”

Groaning louder, Elsie threw the covers off and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. She was definitely still proud of Travis for starting to step up and stand up for himself, but she was starting to find his use of his newfound power with her to be pretty freaking annoying. In the old days, what she was rapidly starting to think of as the “good old days,” her refusal to answer the door would have led to his turning tail and heading back to the office rather quickly. Hell, in the old days, Travis would never have shown up at her door at all. He was changing into a much more assertive man, and all because Cubed had landed the impressive Caleb Grant account. Caleb Grant, America’s beloved playboy about town, the exact opposite of the kind of man Elsie would choose to spend time around. It wasn’t like she hadn’t ever dated before. She had, and plenty. Her prickly personality didn’t seem to be much of a deterrent in her getting asked out whenever she left her apartment, and she’d had her share of boyfriends. None of them had been anything close to what she imagined Caleb Grant to be. Just the idea of him annoyed her, and the fact that she was being dragged out of bed at such an early hour made her dislike him all the more. By the time she got to her front door, Elsie was well and truly annoyed. She undid her multiple locks with a certain flair of hostility she (rather immaturely) hoped Travis could hear on his side of the door. She flung said door open and stared him down, wincing a little at how bright the sun was.

“Alright, boss man. I’m up. You happy now?”

“Jesus, Elsie! Is this what you look like in the morning? You’re a mess!”

“Awesome. Good to see you, too. Now if you don’t have any other insults to lob at me, I think I'll be going.”

Elsie made to slam the door shut and was only stopped by Travis’s boot-clad foot at the last possible moment. She meanly considered shoving the door harder and trying to force his foot out of her way, but she was not cranky enough for that. So, because shutting the door wasn’t really an option, she opened it back up again, and then she leaned against the doorframe with one hand on her hip. That was when she saw Clara, who was standing a little bit behind Travis and, from the looks of it, trying very hard not to laugh. Seeing her calmed Elsie’s nerves a little, and she allowed herself a small smile. The smile was all Clara needed to start laughing in earnest, and the sound of her laughter made Elsie start laughing as well. Travis just stood in between them, a completely baffled expression on his face as he looked back and forth between the two women.

“Okay, I’m lost here. What the hell is happening? Are you two finally cracking up or something?”

“No,” Clara answered breathlessly, her laughter still threatening to render her incapable of speech. “Not at all. I think we’re just trying to figure out why you would think telling a girl upon first seeing her that she’s a total mess.”

“What? Crap, no, that’s not what I meant.”

“But it’s totally what you said, right? There’s no way you can deny it because we both heard it loud and clear.”

“Right, I just meant that she looks tired, you know? Also, that hair is pretty impressively tangled. You’ve got to give me that, right?”

Elsie raised her hands up to her head, patting her hair to try and get an idea of whether or not Travis was exaggerating. From the feel of it, she thought he was probably dead on, and when she looked at Clara’s face, she saw that the girl was nodding along with a new bout of laughter threatening to break loose from her tightly closed mouth. Come to think of it. Elsie had seen herself the morning after sleepless nights enough to know that Travis’s assessment of her current situation was almost certainly correct, and she almost felt bad for him…and for the way she and Clara were embarrassing him. Almost, but not quite. In order for her to feel truly regretful about it, he would have had to tell her the whole working for Caleb Grant thing had been a hoax. Since it very clearly was nothing of the sort, she had a difficult time feeling completely shitty for making him all uncomfortable and red in the face. As she thought these things to herself, he glanced up at her, cleared his throat, and did his best to get himself back to the place where he represented some semblance of authority. Although Elsie was confident that she could have thrown him right off again, she made the benevolent decision not to. As much fun as she was having toying with him, Travis was here for a reason, and if he had brought Clara along, he must have been feeling fairly anxious about it. There was no amount of diversion that would put her boss off of the subject of his visit for long, and Elsie didn’t feel much like delaying the inevitable. If she was going to have to do this, whatever “this” was really going to turn out to be, she might as well get it over with. Kind of like paying a visit to the dentist, only worse.

“Alright, you two, I suppose you should come inside. Can’t have you standing on my doorstep all day, now can I? People will start to talk.”

“I have a feeling people already talk when it comes to you,” Travis muttered under his breath, as he slid past her and into her dimly lit front hallway. She thought about reminding him to be friendly if he wanted her to play nice, but on second thought decided to keep her mouth shut. Her hallway was quite narrow, and when Travis had moved past her, he was forced to brush by very closely. When he had done that, Elsie had smelled something sour and unpleasant coming off of him. After a moment of utter confusion and a distinct feeling of Deja vu, she had realized what that smell was. It was the scent of fear. She had read about people being able to smell fear on another person in novels and that sort of thing, but she had always thought the idea was utter bullshit until she experienced it for herself. Catching a whiff of that fear pouring out of Travis’s pores was enough to shut her up completely, at least for the time being. Whatever was going on with the Caleb Grant case had Travis genuinely nervous, genuinely afraid, and that was something Elsie hadn’t seen before, not in all of her years of working with him. It made her feel awkward and a little bit unnerved, which threw her right back into her Texas upbringing and brought out the deeply rooted lessons of hospitality.

“Hey, do you guys want any tea? Or I don’t know, something? I’m not sure what I’ve got, I usually just go for takeout.”

“No,” Clara said with a smile, looking at Elsie like she might have gone a little bit crazy. “I think we’re both fine. Besides, we should probably go ahead and get to work, if I’m being honest. This might take some time.”

“Wait, what? I think I’m confused. What might take some time? Aren’t you guys just here to make sure I show up to my meeting?”

“No, not exactly.  I mean, that’s part of why we’re here. The last part, I guess you could say.”

“The last part? What does that even mean? You’re being super-cryptic, Clara. And come to think of it, I’m not even sure why you’re here to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always happy to see you, but I don’t get why it takes two of you to get me to a coffee shop. Especially seeing as you’re like, two and a half hours earlier than you needed to be.”

Clara glanced at Travis with a “you didn’t tell her” kind of expression on her face and then looked back to Elsie quickly. When the two girls locked eyes, Clara’s face went bright red and she had to look away. Suddenly, she appeared to be incredibly busy, studying the floor, and Elsie felt her stomach drop. This whole thing was already bad enough, but she was getting the distinct impression that things were about to get a whole lot worse. She saw Clara’s right arm give a funny little twitch, and when she glanced down, she saw for the first time the two large black bags Clara had carried into the apartment with her.

“Okay you two, someone give.”

“I don’t know what you’re—” Clara began to speak, looking at Travis quickly again before she did so. Elsie took a step forward and held up one hand to stop her before she went any further. The girl was super sweet, but she was also a god-awful liar, and it was sort of painful to watch. She looked like she knew it, too, because she stopped speaking at once and looked right back down at the floor.

“Seriously guys, just tell me what’s going on. You’re going to have to tell me at some point, and right now you’re just wasting time.”

“Alright, but try not to get mad, okay? Seriously, Elsie, just remember it’s for the good of the job.”

“Oh Christ. You’re just making it worse, Travis. Now you have to tell me.”

“It’s no big deal,” Clara said in a soft, even voice, concentrating on keeping her eyes level and trained on Elsie’s. “He just brought me along to help glam you up a bit.”

“Um, what?”

“It’ll be fun! I’ve got some clothes we picked out and a bunch of makeup. I don’t know what’s gotten into Travis to think we need to do this, but I for one am excited about it. He said you might not be, so I hope he was wrong.”

Elsie could feel her face flush a deep, hot red, as she struggled to think of something she could say in response. She felt totally trapped, which was a feeling she absolutely hated having. On the one hand, she wanted to rip Travis’s head off for ambushing her this way. On the other hand, she still had his instructions ringing in her ears, and they were very difficult to ignore. Nobody else was to know. Nobody aside from her, Caleb, and Travis was supposed to know anything about the fact that she was working with Mr. Grant—and that fact had been made perfectly clear. What she was less clear on, and what she was starting to feel pretty uncertain about, was the capacity in which she would be working for Caleb Grant. She hadn’t thought to ask and now, she feared, it was too late.

“But you’re cool with it,” Travis said in a pointed voice, drawing her out of her thoughts and back to the sticky situation she found herself in. “Right? I mean, we sort of talked about you wanting help with this kind of thing, didn’t we?”

Oh, yes, she could have murdered that man for sure, but instead she swallowed her pride and played along. She allowed Clara to lead her into her bathroom, where she whipped out so many bottles and brushes it made Elsie’s head spin. Some of the things she brought out looked to Elsie more like torture devices than makeup tools, but through it all, Elsie kept a pleasant expression plastered on her face. She sat stunned, watching herself in the mirror as Clara transformed her into somebody else. Of course, she wasn’t somebody else, not really, not in the ways that counted, but she looked—in her own eyes—almost unrecognizable. Clara, who Elsie could see standing over her in the mirror, had a huge grin on her face and very wide, very bright eyes. She looked like she would break out into song at any moment, and Elsie knew that if she did that, she would absolutely die.

“Oh. My. God! Oh my God, Elsie! You look so freaking cute! Doesn’t she look cute?” Clara turned to Travis with this last question, who was standing in the doorway, looking very uncomfortable and like he would rather be anywhere else in the world at this point.

“Sure,” he answered stiffly, hardly even able to look at Elsie when he said it. “Sure, she looks great.”

“Not even cute,” Clara continued, apparently oblivious to the fact that she was the only one in Elsie’s small apartment who wasn’t feeling at least a little bit miserable. “That’s not the right word. You look hot, Elsie! You look smoking hot. I always knew you were pretty—”

“Aw, come on, Clara, cut it out. I think we both know you’re exaggerating.”

“I’m not though! Like I said, I always knew you were pretty, even in the sweats and old, stained t-shirts, but I had no clue you were this pretty. You’re beautiful, Elsie. And not just in one of those offhand ways people like to say things when they don’t actually apply. You’re really, genuinely beautiful. A show stopper.”

Elsie opened her mouth again to tell her well-meaning friend to give it a rest already, but she closed it again before she could get a word out. Despite her best efforts, she was becoming sort of entranced by the reflection she saw looking back at her in the mirror. She still felt the strange disconnect that came from not identifying herself with the woman she saw looking back at her in the mirror, but objectively speaking, it was difficult to argue with the things Clara was saying. Never in Elsie’s life could she remember looking quite this...well, quite this perfect, for lack of a better word. Her blonde hair, naturally the shade of platinum that was coveted around the globe, had been taken out of its customary messy bun sitting askew atop her head. Instead, it was falling loose down past her shoulders in soft, subtle curls. Her petite facial features and cat-like blue eyes had been done up so that they popped with color, but not so much that she looked like she belonged on a street corner. She looked like she could be a model or something, minus the fact that she was still wearing the hideous pajamas that were pretty much her signature uniform. She hoped silently to herself that she would be allowed to keep this one comfort, but one quick glance at Clara’s enraptured face told her that said freedom was not in the cards. It very quickly became clear that Clara’s second bag was full to the brim with a whole terrifying host of clothing—unlike anything that had ever been on her body. Everything was tight and short and a hell of a lot more revealing than she was accustomed to. To make things infinitely worse, Clara topped everything off by putting Elsie in a ridiculously tall pair of heels that felt to her more like stilts than shoes. She looked at Clara with complete exasperation, part of her expecting her friend to throw up her hands, start laughing, and tell her the outfit and the whole bag of clothing were all some big joke. Instead, Clara started clapping, clearly delighted by her work.

“Oh my god! I so wish I didn’t have to get to work right now. We should be out celebrating or something!”

“It’s really not that big of a deal.”

“Um, I beg to differ. I think you look amazing! I’m so glad you were open to doing this. Travis was totally right. This is definitely going to help bring more clients in, for sure.”

“Bring more clients in?”

“Well, sure. He said something about that being part of why you were being made over. To help the image of the company or something.”

Elsie’s entire body went hot, and her eyes drifted in the direction of Travis, who looked like he wanted to puke he was so uncomfortable. Elsie had a feeling that at least part of the reason for that was the revelation of his grand lie. She was tempted to rat him out, too, despite knowing full well that she was under the strictest orders to go along with whatever rouse Travis thought up to keep the company’s involvement with Caleb Grant secret. She knew she was supposed to keep things quiet, but it had never occurred to her that he would come up with a story like this. She felt like she was being turned into some kind of a glorified escort, one step above a street walker. It was the first time she had ever been made to feel that way and part of her wanted to make Travis feel bad in retaliation. Luckily, for her job and Travis’s sanity, she had the presence of mind to keep her mouth shut for the time being. She managed to maintain her silence on the subject for the rest of Clara’s time in her apartment and said goodbye to her happily, as if she had not a care in the world and was over-the-moon excited about her new look. It was only after she was out the door and the two of them were alone that Elsie turned on Travis with a look that might have sent a man less used to her moods straight into a dead faint. He held up both hands, almost as if he was trying to ward her off, and started to speak. Or tried to speak may be a more accurate description, because Elsie cut him off before he ever got the chance to utter a word.

“Are you kidding me with this shit? Really? Nobody ever said anything about a makeover, Travis. Not one damn thing.”

“I know, I know. I should have told you, probably.”

“Probably? Really? You should have told me probably? You’re a real piece of work, Travis, you know that?”

“Yeah,” he answered quickly, sounding just miserable enough for Elsie to start feeling a little bit sorry for him again. “I know.”

“So then tell me what for. It’s become painfully clear to me that you didn’t tell me everything before…so tell me what this job is really going to be. Because I can assure you, buddy, I’m not doing another damn thing until you tell me exactly what the deal is.”

“Alright,” Travis said slowly, as he sat down heavily on her dingy old couch, “but let me just preface this by saying I know you’re going to be pissed.”

“Oh. Good. I’m so glad we got that out of the way.”

“Here’s the thing, and just know that this was Mr. Grant’s idea, not mine. Although I think it’s probably a pretty good one.”

“Just tell me, will you? I’m not so much a fan of this beating around the bush crap.”

“You’re going to play his girlfriend.”

“I’m going to what now?”

“You’re going to play his girlfriend. It’s the only way to give you carte blanche in the offices, the only way to give you unlimited access to Caleb Grant and therefore to his files. Anything else would draw attention to the fact that something was up. He believes there’s someone really out to get him, Elsie, and he thinks there’s a very good chance that the someone is a person close to him.”

“First of all, it sounds like this guy is crazy paranoid. Secondly, am I to understand that the whole reason for tricking me out like this, was for him?”

“It was.”

“It was all so that I would look the part?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, only one more question. If the way I presented myself was so completely repulsive, why didn’t you just go with Clara? Or Finnley, for that matter? Both of them are a hell of a lot more girly than I am on a regular basis. Don’t you think it would have been easier for all of us if you had just put one of them on this thing??”

“Believe me, I’m right there with you. It was Caleb who made the choice. I had to show him pictures of you. I had to show him pictures of all of you, and you’re the one he chose. It seems that you’re the one who’s most his type. He was confident that—with a few ‘touchups’—you would fit the bill nicely.”

Because Elsie had nothing nice to say, she didn’t say anything at all. She wanted to rip into Travis, to give him an earful on her thoughts about everything he had just told her. She had no doubt that doing so would make her feel loads better, too, but she also knew she would be putting most of her anger off on the wrong person. It was true that Travis had sort of deceived her in order to get her to do the job, but he hadn’t been the one to demand that she make such dramatic changes to her appearance in order to do it. He hadn’t handled things the best way he could have, but it was Caleb Grant who had picked her out like he was picking something out of a catalogue. It was Caleb who had essentially treated her like a valueless object, and job or no job, she wasn’t going to let him forget about it.

“Elsie?”

“What?”

“You’re not saying anything.”

“What do you want me to say, Travis?”

“Shit, I don’t know, but this not saying anything act is making me super-nervous.”

“Oh, well, that’s too bad. I wouldn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable or anything.”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry about the whole situation. I’m an asshole. This is something I know. But you’re not going to do anything crazy, are you? I mean, you’re not, right?”

“Crazy? Me?”

“Seriously! We’re already running pretty fucking late for this appointment, and I need to know if it’s something we can keep at all. I need to know if you’re going to keep it together through this.”

“Of course, I’m going to keep it together,” she answered him with enough contempt to make a grown man come close to tears. “I’m not a child, am I? Now come on. If we’re going to go, let’s go. I’d like to get this mess over with, if it’s all the same to you.”