CLEAN || Taylor Swift Adoption

EIGHT

"This is getting good now..."

~EVERLEIGH~

August 4, 2019

"Good morning!" Etta sang obnoxiously, her voice filling the otherwise silent hotel room. I had no idea how long we'd been asleep for, but my guess was that if Etta was alert and awake, then there had to be a chance that we had slept a lot later than I was used to doing.

It didn't surprise me, though. We'd gone to bed at three in the morning, after we'd stayed in the pool until a janitor came in and told us that we had to go back up to our rooms. Of course, that was the moment when everyone had crammed into the Hawthornes' suite with their snack of choice, and we'd watched, sang, and re-enacted the Reputation stadium tour. After that, we'd played Truth or Dare, which ended up with us having a truth circle and confessing everything to each other. It had been a perfect sleepover, and now, we were all waking up to the most perfect day.

I groaned, moving my pillow over my head. "Shut up. I'm going back to bed."

"No you're not," Etta said, coming over and bouncing on the bed. "It's twelve-thirty in the afternoon. We need to get ready."

"It's twelve-thirty?" I repeated, sitting up as the pillow went flying across the room. "How did we sleep in so late?"

"Maybe because we took forever to go to bed last night," Ava said, searching intently in her suitcase for something. "Does anyone know where my curling iron went? I can't find it."

"No idea," I said as I climbed out of bed and reached for my dress to change into. "I call the bathroom first. I'm changing."

"Don't take too long!" Ava called after me.

"I won't!" I yelled back, slipping the smooth material of my dress over my head. "I'm almost done, anyway."

When Ava, Etta, and I had originally gone shopping for our Secret Sessions outfits, I had known that I wanted to wear the best piece of clothing that I could find, without looking too dressed up. I ended up deciding on a pale pink dress with ruffled sleeves and a flowing skirt that cut off right above my knees. I figured it was the perfect outfit to wear; it matched the aesthetic of the album, and it was frilly and girly, a nice change from the normally dreary clothing that I was accustomed to wearing after years of having to wear the same clothes. Living in foster care had made shopping a luxury, and now that I had an occasion to do it, I decided to live it up.

"Oh my god, Everleigh," Ava said as I stepped out of the bathroom. "You look gorgeous!"

"You do," Etta agreed. "That dress is absolutely perfect on you."

"Thanks," I said, blushing as I smoothed the skirt of the dress. "I'm not used to looking so... pretty, I guess."

"Well, it definitely suits you," Etta said.

"Thanks," I replied again, fixating my gaze on myself in the mirror. "Now I have to figure out how to do my hair."

"You should curl it," Etta said, leaning over my shoulder. "It'll look nice. Plus, it's a little bit different from what you normally do to it."

"Wait, I have an idea," I said, running my hairbrush through my long wavy hair and spraying some of Ava's leave-in conditioner to make it look more under control. I picked up a small section of hair, towards the middle of my head and on one side of my part, and started to do a tight waterfall braid. Once I got to the middle, I clipped it in place and then did the exact same thing to the other side. I secured them together with a clear rubber band first, and then added in a pink and gold hairpin that I had gotten at the jewelry store we went to the day before. I finished off by curling the rest of my hair, and then using half of a bottle of hairspray to keep my hair from falling out of the curls. It was going to be a long night, and I needed to look perfect by the time that I got to meet Taylor.