Hello! This feels like a huge undertaking- the last time I tried a multi-chap story it was on the kink meme about two years ago and I never finished it, which doesn't bode well for the future of this story, but it was fun to write. I hope you enjoy!

There was a good one. She was a natural olive tone, well-browned and sumptuous in her scarlet presentation. The dress was backless- a bold choice, but wise in this dreadful heat wave. Her dark hair was arranged in a loose bun, renegade curls springing all over and an ostentatious clip jammed artlessly in the side.

She was delectable. She was alone. Francis Bonnefoy, pickup artiste supreme and getting drunker by the minute, was ready.

He was grotesque. Every article hanging off that lanky body just screamed "Poor Man's GQ", from the open pink shirt revealing enough chest hair to stuff a pillow and the shoes so tacky they had to cost a fortune. Anita Fernandez-Carriedo, distant cousin of the bride and stone-cold exhausted, would never be drunk enough for this.

"Madame." He purred on approach, a simultaneous smirk and wink in punctuation. He thought it sexy. She wondered if he was having a stroke, and reflected briefly on why that didn't worry her as much as it perhaps should.

"Guy." She replied. Anita wasn't one for a good "fuck off", though she was quite capable of a polite "do leave me be to my chaste sensibilities, kind sir" in trying moments, but this was not the night for that. These shoes were murder on her feet; her distant cousin's new(est) husband had mistaken her for the mother of the bride; the wine was shit; there had been, thus far, four ABBA songs requested and the last one was the goddamn "Dancing Queen". "Why aren't you dancing?!" cried her dearest friend Gilbert, clapping his hands to the beat. Anita's response has been listed above, but that was not enough to keep dearest friend Gilbert from tearing her from her seat and leading her into the fray of swinging, hip jiggling bodies.

"I couldn't help but notice you're unaccompanied." He leaned slightly closer, and Anita's stomach churned in response. "That's not right. Nobody at a wedding should stand alone. Are you familiar with the bride or groom, dear?"

"Both. I pleasure them simultaneously in exchange for living in their horse stable. It's no living, but I say, what the hay." This is what Anita thought three hours later. She was never very clever off the cuff. Instead, she had replied. "I'm on my period."

Anita Fernandez-Carriedo was not actually on her period. Yet. She fired off a rapidfire prayer that that wasn't next on the wedding circuit. Plugging up her vag with crappy hotel tampons as "Mamma Mia" played? First floor on the Hell-evator.

Francis did not respond to this with disgust, as she had anticipated. Rather, he responded with a twirl of his ponytail (ugh!) and a salacious smirk. "Well, you do look quite lovely in red."

Oh sweet Catherine Breillat. Anita worked herself free with some careful maneuvering and a wave to an imaginary relative, but the damage was done. She would not sleep well, she thought, plucking a few shrimp from one of four rings.

Gilbert Beilschmidt was pinching a little pink dot between his slender fingers, his brow furrowed in concentration. "Hey, Annie, did you see this? The candy talks."

"Yeah, it says "Man + Is. Manuel and Isabella."

"Seriously? I thought it said Mantis."

"Why would the candy say Mantis?"

"Why would it say anything?!" Gilbert cried. His raspy exclamation elicited glares from nearby guests, and Anita flashed them an apologetic smile. "It's a fucking M&M."

"Gilbert, come on." But she was smirking. Her friend was proving a very entertaining plus one. "I was just hit on by a guy saying on how hot I am on my period."

"How very Prince Charles." Gilbert popped the chocolate in his mouth, taking in the dancing hall. "You can exhale now. Looks like it's winding down."

Anita ran her fingers through her hair for what seemed the hundredth time, but was more the sixth. Either way, it succeeded in knocking her favourite clip to the carpet. "'Bout time. These shoes are a nightmare."

"Baby."

"You wear them!" She gathered up her clutch. "I'm getting something not terrible to drink. Any requests?"

"Beer. If they're closing down the booze, tell them to go fuck themselves."

"Whatever."

They had closed down booze requests, and Anita would not tell anyone to go fuck themselves. She was digging around for change to purchase two Cokes when another individual sidled up beside her, her clip in their hand.

"You dropped this." The stranger stated. Her voice was beautiful, low, tinged with an implacable accent.

"Oh my goodness!" Anita exclaimed. "I had no idea I dropped it. Thank you!"

The woman hummed vaguely in response, and Anita took a moment to glance her over. Beautiful face- rounded, gentle slope of a nose, green eyes fringed by a whisk of mascara. Dark hair tumbling in waves over narrow shoulders. Body concealed by an oversized shrug and a skirt that hung well past her knees. Nonetheless, Anita could tell she had fabulous legs.

Gilbert often commented on Anita's tendency to muse over the beauty of the women she encountered. Be it the way a client's greyed hair was gathered in such a careful braid, almost like the border of a tapestry, or the laughter in dark eyes or the dimples in one's grin, Anita saw beauty in the natural woman. None of that plucked, poked, prodded junk. No candy coloured shirts torn open to reveal a mass of chest hair going on there. His assessment of this amounted to "you're such a les!" and she usually replied "I'm really not". That was a whole other matter. She wanted to admire the beauty, not slide her tongue through it. How intrusive. It was, however, the perfect outlook for her job, even though she would occasionally cringe at ripping some lovely young thing's spry little curls away from her pubic zone. They were coming in younger and younger.

This beautiful woman now raised her gaze to meet Anita's, though the latter was little taller. The woman pursed her lips in pause, and not wanting to frighten her off, Anita continued.

"You have a good eye. Seriously, with all of this happening, it's amazing anybody find their own seats. I don't mean butts by the way, though I guess that could apply to."

"Ma'am, your drinks."

"What's that? Oh, those. Haha, silly me."

"Excuse me."

This was the woman again. Anita turned to her, rapt. "Yes?"

The woman paused before speaking again, her lowered voice barely audible over the hollers of the line dancing guests. "Who are you?"

How Anita should have responded was "Anita Fernandez-Carriedo, cousin of the bride. Doesn't she look lovely?" The true answered that scraped at her tongue was more of a ramble, this one even more terrifying than her previous outing into soliloquy. It was a meditation on her current condition. She was a single woman of twenty four, once meandering through college at the behest of her wealthy parents, no true love or passion to drive her to major, vacillating between career paths like a drunken weeble. Once deciding that having read none of the books on her English syllabus and finding the poli-sci major she'd pursued a complete bore, she'd dropped out halfway through first year and signed up for beauty school. Now proudly employed at the fourth finest salon in the city, she'd handled the smug reprobation of these relatives who now whispered about her over their rosés and fought a constant uphill battle to pay her rent and avoid the dreadful "crawling back" conversation her parents had so blithely promised. Of course, this was not to deny any form of parental affections. Her parents were off somewhere extolling her virtues, she had no doubt, but they had confessed that some of their words were exaggeration, a few other outright invention, and the lines had blurred to the point that Anita no longer recognized any truths about herself. It made the question all the more difficult to answer.

What she said was just her name, so it was an anti-climactic statement for all involved.

"And yourself?"

"Chiara." She replied. "Vargas. Are you a friend of Isabella's?"

"Oh yeah, she's great." Anita was actually not that familiar with Isabella. She was a philanthropist, she knew that much, and a class president here and valedictorian there, but you would almost forget that in the wake of running off with some meditation guru to the sands of Sri Lanka. After he'd been arrested for some kind of fraud and there had been this whole en-pointe tango of a divorce, the family had slid their collective reproving eye onto the young divorcee with the sang-froid of a monitor lizard. Now that she'd set herself up with a promising young lawyer, a partner at a big-shot firm, no less, she was once again folded snugly into their good graces. "The wayward child always returns" said Nana Maria with an imperious smirk.

"I don't know her well." Chiara replied. "I don't know her at all, actually. I only know of this wedding because Manuel works for my grandfather."

"Right, right, right! Yes, I knew I'd heard your last name somewhere. God!" Anita hit herself gently on the side of her head with the ball of her hand. "Oh, man. I was thinking I'd met you somewhere- I almost never forget a face. You haven't been to Lavande, have you?"

"No." A flush was beginning to creep up the sides of Chiara's slender neck.

"It's the spa where I work, on the west side. It's between a burger place and a Nordstrom's, so I'm not exactly sure how posh our locale is, but it's pretty nice."

"Sorry, not familiar."

"You're definitely not the first. People don't usually get what Lavande means, anyway." Anita had, throughout this last little stretch of conversation, been trying to plug her clip back into her hair, but had since given up the ghost and merely jabbed the spike riddled edge into an overflowing basket of posies propped precariously on the side of the bar. She'd seen waiters and guests alike doing a sideways limbo around it all evening and frankly wished it a swift collapse to the ground. "It means lavender, but most people first think lavatory or something."

Chiara's mouth was beginning to curl, and a smart dimple stood to attention on the moon of her right cheek. God, she was pretty. "I was going to say."

"Lavender is our theme, you see. Lavender scented foot wash, lavender robes, lavender wax, lavender bleeding rags for your wax mishaps…"

"Lavender blemishes as souvenirs?" Chiara added with a soft chuckle.

"Exactly!" Anita propped her elbow up on the side of the bar. "The toilet is automatically rigged to shoot lavender scent after you flush. It's a nice idea but by the end of the day you feel like you got stoned in Toulouse."

Chiara was giggling now, but trying desperately to hide it, a hand riddled with ragged edges glommed against her mouth.

"You know what, I was going to offer you a free treatment as thanks for your kindness and veracity in returning my clip, but I think I've done a poor job of selling."

The girl's eyes widened. "It was just a stupid barrette."

"Hey! It's my favourite stupid barrette."

"Well, it's covered in dirt and shit now, so I'm not sure how much you want it back."

Anita waved a hand passively. "I bought it for two dollars at a church rummage sale. It's been worse places."

"Oh, ew!"

"Well, it's in amazing shape for a hand-me-down and I don't exactly have money to burn. Besides, Mrs. Patterson swore up and down that nobody had ever worn it before. She's really religious so I doubt she'd lie about that."

As the cool hand of the devil crept up the nape of her neck, Anita found her thoughts cut off as abruptly as they often begin, and her dear friend Gilbert was at her shoulder like a voracious parrot.

"Anita, darling, I had requested your favourite song for you and you don't seem to have noticed in the least. Angered at your distinct lack of gratitude, I come over here at once to find you without my beer and nursing this tall drink of water instead." With that, he thrust a hand in Chiara's general direction, nearly whacking off the spectacles of Anita's very near-sighted and rather short uncle Luiz. "Gilbert Beilschmidt, at your acquaintance, madame."

"Okay." Chiara gingerly accepted his hand, taking care not to disturb the delicate pretzel he had formed by keeping his chin nestled between Anita's ear and her shoulder-blade and the way he had angled his arm below her armpit. Both women were quite wary of their situation.

"I should get back to my table." Chiara said abruptly, stepping gingerly away from the eager pair and backing her through the throng gathering at the appearance of a breakdancing twelve year old. "It was nice meeting you." She hollered as more gathered in the circle.

In the excitement of the cardboard-floor prodigy, Anita's "you too!" was lost to any future record.

Gilbert untangled himself from his friend and used his (sweaty, Anita felt it when his hand had passed along her ribcage) and slid it backwards over his tangling locks. "Damn. Who was that?"

"Chiara Vargas."

"Vargas? No shit. My brother's dating a Vargas."

Anita had no desire to linger on the subject of Miss Chiara Vargas with Gilbert any longer. She'd captured such a perfect image of her- that dimpling smile, the smattering of freckles dabbling over her olive cheeks the way an unfiltered sunbeam was captured by faintly bobbing waves, the way her hair, though it was clearly carefully styled, carried an air of wildness that only Mother Nature herself had the irons for. That rolling accent, though certainly attuned to the rhythms of the Canadian beat, still laved special attention on the vowels.

And that flush, that hot little flush, which Chiara herself no doubt saw as a dirge on her beautiful skin just had that visceral element to it, that untouchable power of the capillaries to wring beauty out of a slight and flatter the good nature of their master.

That beauty had no place on Gilbert's tongue, however much she loved him.

"What song did you make them play?"

"Simply the Best"

"That is in no way my favourite song."

"You always do it in karaoke."

"The song you do in karaoke is never your favourite. Don't tell me Radio Gaga is your favourite song."

"It's a fabulous piece, you ignorant varmint."

And with that, the basket full of posies came crashing down.

Thank you for reading!