🥊 Hate or Fate 💕 {Enemies to Lovers}

.61.

"You look amazing, Isla!" Rebecca sucked in a breath when I finally emerged from the bathroom wearing the scuba-suit Cat Woman costume she bought me. "We are going to look so good we might even win the costume contest!"

It felt as though the material had been vacuum-sealed to my skin and I was ninety percent certain it was going to be impossible to go to the bathroom. Underneath the restrictive latex jumpsuit, my boobs were pushed up to about my chin and the crotch area had settled in crevasses that I wasn't comfortable with.

"How come you get to wear a leafy leotard with snazzy tights, and I have to wear the indecent pleather compression sock?" I wined, squatting to try and dislodge my alarmingly deep camel toe. "Ugh, I need a cooter cup for my front-bump."

"You said you wanted to be-"

"A cat lady, I got it," I rolled my eyes while inwardly marveling at the transformation Rebecca had performed to become the Poison Ivy to my Cat Woman.

Rebecca was swathed in a collection of hand-sewn silk leaves in varying shades and sizes, all of them following the generous curve of her hips and breasts to highlight her goddess-like figure. She had finished off the outfit with a massive bouffant wig of shiny red hair and adorable matching booties (with flawless emerald makeup, of course).   

"I mean it, really, chica," Rebecca said, arching her brow at me. "You look awesome. So, maybe tell your face that."

"Yeah, I'll try," I muttered, unable to think of a better comeback. "You look pretty amazing yourself."

Objectively, I did look good. Even without shapewear, the shiny suit and boots made me look like a powerful dominatrix with a feline fetish. 

The only downside to my sexy AF costume was the sound the latex made when I did anything other than stand perfectly still. Seriously, It sounded like I was trying to slowly murder a beachball whenever I tried to sit down. The stretchy thigh-high boots I borrowed from Rebecca helped to dampen the unfortunate queefing effect a little (but not enough).

"I know. Let's go! Bart's pulling up out front," Rebecca urged, teetering off to grab her coat out of the closet. "Go, go, go!"

Bart's clawed facial mask matched his swollen muscles and the popped sheepskin collar of his Bane costume. Together we were a trio of baddies, even though I kind of felt like a third wheel.

He hopped out of the car to hold the door for both of us, but Bart only had eyes for his luscious girlfriend. 

They were ridiculously adorable, with their front-seat make-out sessions at every red light on the way, but I was too distracted to gag.

Gray was about to call, and for the first time in a week, I was going to answer.

It was a plan I'd been working on for precisely twenty seconds. 

Ever since I'd caught a glimpse of myself in the Cat Woman costume. I've never really considered myself a true beauty, but in that black rubber bodysuit (held together by string and staples), I felt like an unstoppable badass. I looked like the kind of woman who threw caution to the wind and didn't wait for permission. 

The only problem? My plan fell apart after step one, answer the phone.

My hands were shaking, so I shoved them into the pockets of my puffy jacket and watched the rain-slicked streets speed by. 

Certain businesses had already started to replace their spooky decorations with wholesome cornucopias and turkeys, which made my stomach turn.

Soon, it would be Thanksgiving. Which was a whole other part of my life that I wasn't really prepared to deal with. Every year I  would come down with Seasonal Depression thinking about all of the holidays I had missed with my dad. 

You would think the pain would get easier as the years go by, but in my experience, it got worse. The emptiness left by my dad's death widened as I started to notice all the things that he wasn't around to see.

He would have loved watching me graduate from college with honors, and he would have been proud as hell that I managed to do it almost debt-free from the (many) jobs I worked and federal grants I secured. 

My dad would never get the chance to congratulate me for my first big creative award or any of the others that came after that. 

If I was lucky enough to become a mother, he would never meet (or hold) his grandchild. 

The missed memories and moments became so overwhelming that I found it easier to ignore them altogether. I figured, like shoulder pads, they weren't really hurting anyone if you couldn't see them.

The seconds ticked by. Gray was going to call in less than a minute and I was a little nervous about having an audience.

Rebecca and Bart were slopping over each other in the front of his car, listening to John Legend songs so loud that I hoped she wouldn't overhear me talking to Gray. 

Then again, Rebecca was an eagle-eyed panther with the heart of a lioness and the ears of a meerkat. She missed nothing.

According to Bart's GPS, we were about six blocks from the Kimpton, and the way traffic was moving, we were at least twenty minutes from our destination.

When my phone buzzed, the vibration ran up my tendons to shock my brain and make me jump like a spaz. 

I could feel Rebecca's big brown eyes watching me in the rearview mirror as I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket.

It was a text from Gray, 'In traffic, will call in about an hour.' 

"Who's that?" Rebecca asked over the music, her tone clashing with the velvety pipes of John Legend.

"It's the male escort I hired for the night," I joked with a flat smile. "I'm telling him to meet us out front."

She rolled her eyes and went back to playing with the nape of Bart's neck while I texted Gray, 'Big plans for the night?'

'Well, it is Halloween,' he followed that up with a ghost and a jack-o-lantern emoji.

Disappointment filled my stomach, pooling until it felt as if I was going to drown in self-pity.

He was on his way to a party, which he was free to do as a single man, but that threw a wrench into my plans. 

I didn't want to text him and admit what a flaming moron I'd been, I wanted to look him in the eyes and apologize for pushing him away.

'What are you up to this evening?' Gray sent the question when I didn't answer his last text.

'Same.' I kept my reply intentionally vague. 'Big plans.'

'???????' Gray's response was an urgent string of punctuation.

I took a quick selfie, making sure to keep the phone low so Rebecca didn't see me. 

The resulting image was a little sexy and a little blurry, with the car window framing the silhouette of a feminine head wearing pointy cat ears.

I sent the pic to Gray along with a black heart emoji. 

"We're here!" Rebecca squealed as Bart slowed the car to meet the valets lined up at the curb.