Chapter 2: Gunne Sax and Groping: A Lace-Trimmed Awakening
The country club had been dead for a decade, but its corpse was stubbornly beautiful. They’d gotten in through a splintered board in the fence, the same way they had as kids daring each other to run across the cracked tennis courts. Back then, it was just a spook house. Tonight, it was a palace.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Ethan whispered, his voice swallowed by the vast, dark emptiness of the main hall. Their flashlight beams cut through dust motes thick as snow.
“It gives us privacy,” Danny said, his tone practical, final. He led the way, his confidence a tangible force. He carried a bulging duffel bag that hadn’t been there before. “And ambiance. Can’t you feel it? This is where people came to be perfect.”
They found the ladies’ lounge. The door sighed open on heavy hinges. Danny swept his flashlight across the room. Art deco sconces, their glass frosted and grimy, flanked a long mirror veined with black. The stalls were tombs. The floor was a checkerboard of black and white marble, gritty underfoot.
“Perfect,” Danny breathed. He set the duffel on a wide, low sink counter of chipped porphyry. “The lighting in here will be insane at sunrise.”
“Sunrise?” Ethan’s stomach flipped. “Danny, we can’t stay that long. What if—”
“What if nothing. The security guy drives by at six. We’ll be ghosts long before.” He unzipped the bag with a sound like a grin. “I went to that vintage place on Cedar. The one that smells like grandma. Hit the motherlode.”
He began pulling out treasures, each one wrapped in tissue paper. Ethan watched, his heart a frantic bird against his ribs. The fear was still there, a cold stone in his gut. But beneath it, something else had taken root since the night of the lip tint—a hungry, fluttering thing that woke up whenever Danny looked at him with that specific, plotting light in his eyes.
First, the shoes. White patent leather pumps with a heel that wasn’t a joke. They looked brand new, terrifying.
“Try these on. Get the feel while I set up.”
Ethan sat on a dusty velvet pouf. He peeled off his Converse and socks. The leather was cool and unyielding. Slipping his foot into the arch was an act of commitment. He stood, wobbled, the sharp click of the heel on marble echoing like a gunshot in the silence. He took a step. Another. The sound was authoritative, a declaration.
“Walk to the mirror,” Danny said, not looking up. He was unwrapping another bundle.
Ethan walked. Click-click-click. Each step settled his nerves into a strange, focused calm. The shoes forced a posture, a sway in the hips he didn’t have to think about. He caught his reflection in the dirty mirror—a boy in a band t-shirt and jeans, standing awkwardly in women’s heels. The disconnect was absurd. He almost laughed.
Then Danny said, “Okay. Now the main event.”
He held it up. The dress.
It was a waterfall of turquoise, a Gunne Sax prairie dress from some other decade. The neckline was off-the-shoulder, with puffed, sheer sleeves that gathered tight at the wrists. The bodice was a confection of lace and tiny, mother-of-pearl buttons. The skirt was a cascade of ruffles and embroidery, a garden frozen in thread.
Ethan’s breath left him. “I can’t wear that.”
“It’s your size. I checked the tag.” Danny’s voice was matter-of-fact, as if discussing the weather. “It’s not ‘can’t.’ It’s ‘how.’ Turn around.”
The transformation was a silent ballet. Danny helped him out of his boy-clothes, the familiar jeans and shirt puddling on the filthy floor like a shed skin. The air in the room was cool on his bare legs, his back. Then the dress descended, a weight of cool satin and lace. Danny’s fingers were quick, efficient, doing up the endless line of tiny buttons up the back. Each button was a click, a lock engaging. Ethan felt the bodice tighten, defining a waist he didn’t know he had. The off-the-shoulder neckline settled, baring his collarbones, the tops of his shoulders. He felt incredibly exposed, yet somehow armored.
“Look down,” Danny instructed.
Ethan looked. The turquoise expanse of the skirt billowed out from his cinched waist, the ruffles trembling with his every slight movement. He was a walking piece of confectionery.
“Now look up.”
He lifted his head and met his own eyes in the mirror.
The person in the glass was a stranger, a beautiful, haunted ghost from a 1970s yearbook. The dress transformed everything. It softened his angles, created curves where there were none, turned his lean frame into something elegant and wistful. The boy in the heels was gone. Someone else stood there.
“Wow,” Ethan breathed. The word was a puff of air, devoid of meaning.
Danny appeared behind him in the reflection, his hands coming to rest on Ethan’s newly-defined waist. His chin hooked over Ethan’s bare shoulder. His eyes in the mirror were dark, intense with satisfaction.
“See?” Danny murmured. “I told you. It’s about the whole picture.”
From his pocket, Danny produced a velvet hair bow, a deep emerald green. He gathered a section of Ethan’s hair—too short, really, for a proper style—and fastened the bow at the side with a bobby pin. It was a gesture so tender, so absurdly specific, that Ethan’s throat tightened.
Then came the makeup. Danny had a small, sleek kit. He worked with a surgeon’s concentration. Brown pencil to subtly shape and extend Ethan’s brows. A dusting of warm shadow to bring out the gold in his hazel eyes. Mascara that made his lashes seem to sweep his cheeks when he blinked. Each step was a lesson, Danny’s quiet voice in his ear explaining pressure, blending, purpose.
Finally, the lipstick. Not the dark stain from before. This was Bonnie Bell Lip Smacker in Dr. Pepper, plucked from the duffel. It smelled like candy and childhood.
“For the final touch,” Danny said, uncapping it. “The girl-next-door special.”
He applied it himself, his thumb tracing the curve of Ethan’s lower lip to smooth the color. It was a shocking intimacy, more than the buttons, more than the hair. Ethan’s lips tingled.
Danny stepped back. He looked from Ethan to the mirror and back again, his gaze sweeping, consuming. A slow, triumphant smile spread across his face.
“Ethan’s gone,” Danny said, his voice low and sure. “I don’t see him anywhere. Who are you?”
Ethan stared at the vision in the glass. The boy who’d shivered in a silk slip was buried under layers of tulle and lace and intention. The person looking back was scared, yes, but also… relieved. The disconnect that had hummed in his bones for eighteen years softened, quieted, replaced by a terrifying alignment. This was closer. This was right.
“Evie,” he whispered to the ghost in the mirror. The name was one he’d turned over in his mind for years, a secret so deep he’d never dared speak it. “I… I think I’m Evie.”
Danny’s smile deepened. He didn’t look surprised. “Evie,” he repeated, tasting the name. “It fits. Hi, Evie.”
He offered his arm. Evie took it, her hand slipping through the crook of his elbow. The fabric of his jacket was rough under her fingertips. He led her from the lounge, back into the cavernous main hall.
“Let’s see how it moves.”
He guided her onto the empty ballroom floor. The only light was the pale, pre-dawn glow beginning to seep through the grimy floor-to-ceiling windows. It cast the room in monochrome blues and greys. Their reflections were smudges in the dark glass.
Danny started to hum, something old and vaguely familiar, and began to lead her in a slow, simple box step. Click-click-swish went her heels on the parquet. The skirt of the gown whispered and swirled, a turquoise cloud in the dimness. He was a good lead, strong and sure. Evie stumbled once, but his grip tightened, holding her up.
“You’re a natural,” he said, his voice close to her ear.
“You’re making me one,” she whispered back.
They danced in the silent tomb of the ballroom for minutes that felt both eternal and fleeting. With each turn, Evie felt the persona settling, the name knitting itself to the face in the mirror. The fear was still there, a background hum, but it was being drowned out by a giddy, rising joy. This was real. She was real.
The song in Danny’s head faded. He stopped moving, but he didn’t let go. He just looked down at her, his expression unreadable in the half-light. The playful glint was gone, replaced by something raw and focused.
He backed her up, slowly, one deliberate step at a time. Click-swish. Click-swish. The marble of the bathroom hallway was cold under her heels. He didn’t stop until the edge of the porphyry sink counter pressed into the small of her back.
“Danny—” she started, but his mouth was on hers before the second syllable.
It wasn’t like the careful, painterly touch of the lip tint brush. This was hungry, possessive. He kissed her like he was claiming the creation, the entire dizzying project of her. The bow in her hair crumpled against the mirror. His hands came up to cradle her face, his thumbs smearing the carefully applied Dr. Pepper lipstick across her cheek.
Evie froze for a second, shocked by the salt taste of his skin, the pressure of his lips. Then a dam broke inside her—a flood of gratitude, of wonder, of a longing so profound it had no name. Her hands, which had been hovering awkwardly, came up to clutch at the front of his jacket. She kissed him back.
It was messy, desperate. The flavor of the lip smacker mixed with something uniquely Danny. He broke the kiss, breathing hard, his forehead resting against hers. His thumbs were still stroking her cheeks, spreading the ruined makeup.
“Look,” he whispered, his voice ragged.
He turned her gently to face the mirror again.
The vision was shattered. Her hair was disheveled, the bow askew. Her lipstick was a blurred, crimson bruise around her mouth, staining Danny’s thumbs where he still held her face. Mascara smudged the corners of her eyes. The pristine Gunne Sax goddess was gone. In her place was someone who’d been kissed, hard, in an abandoned building at dawn. Someone real.
The beautiful, perfect ghost was gone. In the smeared, breathless reflection, Evie saw herself for the first time. Not a fantasy, not a project. A person. A girl, well and truly kissed.
Danny met her eyes in the glass, his own darkened with a triumph that bordered on violence. He looked at her ruined mouth, her wild hair, and he smiled.
“Now you’re perfect,” he said.
His words hung in the dusty air, a verdict. Evie’s breath hitched, caught between the fading thrill of the kiss and the sharp, new glint in his eye. She watched his hands in the mirror, still stained with her lip color.
They slid from her cheeks, down her neck, over the lace of the bodice, coming to rest on her hips. His touch was proprietorial. “You feel that?” Danny murmured into her hair, his voice a low vibration against her ear. “That’s the real thing.”
Then his right hand slipped from her hip, fingertips trailing down the cascade of embroidered ruffles. He gathered a handful of the turquoise fabric. Evie’s muscles locked, a cold spike of pure adrenaline shooting through her veins. The pre-dawn silence of the club became a roaring in her ears.
He lifted her skirt. The satin lining whispered against the back of her thighs. The sudden, shocking exposure to the cool, dank air of the bathroom was a breach she hadn’t braced for. Her mind flashed to the boy in the jeans, to Ethan, a ghost now utterly banished by this act.
“Danny, don’t,” she gasped, the words automatic, thin as paper. She clutched at his wrist through the fabric.
He stilled, but didn’t lower the material. His eyes found hers in the mirror, holding her captive in their reflection. “Don’t what?” he asked, his tone dangerously light, almost conversational. “I’m just looking at my handiwork.”
His other hand remained firm on her hip, anchoring her in place. The contradiction was paralyzing—the exquisite dress, the ruined makeup, and now this crude, intimate uplift of silk and satin. The fantasy he’d built felt suddenly, terribly fragile, balanced on the edge of a knife.
“You’re perfect,” he said again, but it sounded different now. “All of it. Every part.”
The silence stretched, taut as the lace across her bodice. His gaze, reflected and intent, didn’t waver from the territory his hands had claimed. "Every part," he repeated, the words a soft decree in the dusty hush.
Then his grip shifted, solid and undeniable. One arm hooked behind her knees, the other cinched around her back, the fabric of her dress whispering in frantic protest.
He lifts her onto the sink.
The chipped porphyry was shockingly cold through the thin satin lining. Her heels scraped against the cabinet door below with a sound like a gasp. Danny stepped into the space her legs had occupied, his hands landing on the counter to cage her hips.
"See?" he said, his voice strangely gentle again. "Better view." The pre-dawn light from the high window bleached the color from his face, making him look both older and ghostly. Evie's heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs, a trapped thing.
She could feel the chill of the marble seeping into her skin. "Danny," she whispered, her voice barely there. He leaned in, close enough for her to smell the spearmint gum on his breath.
"I just want to look," he said, but it wasn't a request. His eyes traveled over her, from the smudged lipstick to the bunched turquoise fabric pooling around her on the cold stone. It was a different kind of exposure than the mirror—this was an inspection.
The fingers of his right hand absently traced the embroidered flowers on her skirt. "You built this," she breathed out, the realization trembling in the air between them. "You.”
He nodded, a slow acknowledgment without a hint of apology. "And she's incredible." His thumb brushed the inside of her knee, a casual, devastating point of contact. The gesture was as proprietary as the kiss had been.
Outside, a car engine coughed to life in the distant street. The real world was waking up. Here, in this forgotten room, Evie felt the last of Ethan dissolve, leaving only the raw, shaped clay of who she was becoming in Danny's hands.