"I am."
"You're not, and it's driving me crazy. Sit still!" She stared right into my eyes as she roared the words to me.
"Gee, relax, will you? This isn’t my first time on a makeup chair. I'm not moving." I tried again to escape her blame, but the truth was that I couldn’t stop twitching and bouncing through no fault of mine.
From the corner of my eye, I watched the three hardworking guys start moving my living room furniture around while the girls arranged items on the countertop in the kitchen and seemed very busy. Everything looked so well thought out, and I ached in anticipation to see what the end result would look like, yet all the while, Etty kept asking me to sit still, with my back turned to them. So it really wasn't my fault that I couldn’t. I just had to settle for only sneak peeks I took every time she turned to replace one of her paintbrushes for another.
"I swear, Naomi. You're behaving like a child."
"What now? I'm just—"
"I know all about you and your 'just,' Naomi," Etty interrupted me, turning my seat so that I faced the commotion around us and gestured with her hand toward it. "Please look at them." She then crossed her arms demonstratively and placed the instruments she was holding aside.
"Are you angry with me?" I asked.
"See?" Etty turned to Nick. "Like a little girl."
"I'm not! You're being unreasonable. You can't expect me not to look around when all this is going on."
"I can, and I am." Etty sighed and returned to her work vigorously, but from that moment on, she made sure to stop occasionally and allow me to catch a glimpse of the progress so that my curiosity wouldn’t get in her way.
About an hour later, my face looked like a work of art, which only added to the roaring excitement that turned my stomach from the moment I woke up that day.
Long strips of deep red cloth were hung from ceiling to floor along the walls of my living room in a way that left no resemblance between what I called "home" and the magnificent place I was sitting in. Street lighting pillars were placed in different corners of the space. My sofas and sitting areas were pushed aside and also covered in various shades of sensual red fabrics, as aromatic candles added their warm yellow light over it all. My breath was taken away.
"So?" Nick spread his arms out to his sides. "What do you think about our cocktail party décor?" He seemed so excited, and I could easily see that he needed my verbal approval, yet I was too overwhelmed to speak.
I turned my gaze from one corner of the room to the other, taking in each and every detail he thought about and giggled when I heard Etty scolding Nick for causing me to cry in an emotional outburst. She immediately started fixing her work of art that got slightly destroyed due to the signs of excitement running down my cheeks, and by the time she finished, the evening dusk made the place ten times more spectacular.
On my balcony, Nick placed a heating pole, which stood right next to my bench. Folded neatly beside it on the little coffee table were two beautiful soft blankets, which made me turn my head to Nick for explanations.
"You wanted to get to know them better, so I created a private corner for you to do that. Here, you'll be able to sit and talk a little with the men you choose."
"This is getting too real." Again, I felt short of breath. "I think I need a drink."
"I'd offer you one, but I believe you're going to have more than enough drinks offered to you tonight," Nick said, gesturing to a tray sitting on my kitchen counter, on which were too many empty champagne glasses for me to count from afar.
"That's a lot of alcohol, right there, Nick. How many men are going be here tonight?"
"Oh, don’t worry. That's double the amount since you’ll want to clink glasses with the men you choose, so we've prepared one for you and one for them."
"Okay, but still, how many guys are coming?" I stepped closer to the glass door of my balcony to get a better view of the kitchen. "One... Two... Three..." I quickly counted the glasses in an attempt to figure out how many men I should expect.
"Ten, Naomi." Nick laid his hand on my shoulder. "I'll save you the effort. Ten men are expected to arrive tonight."
"Ten?" I wondered if I was pleased, frightened, or disappointed by that number.
"Yes, thanks to your mom and the power you gave her." He frowned.
"Are you upset? What did she do?" I rolled with laughter at his exasperated expression.
"She vetoed two steamingly hot candidates!"
"How hot are we talking about?"
"Hot as hell, and beyond, Naomi."
"Do you know why she ruled them out? Who were they? I wonder if I remember them out of the twenty-five that we went through... Did you try to talk to her out of it? Was Nathan Real one of them? Please tell me it wasn’t Omar?" True anxiety took over me, as the fear that she vetoed those who I thought would be my best match made me regret the great power I placed in her hands.
"If I understood your arrangement correctly, and I always understand the guidelines I receive for a project, you're not supposed to ask me for that information." Unfortunately, he was right.
"Yes, but..."
"No buts." He placed his hands on my shoulders and pushed me inside the house and toward my bedroom. "Break time is over. You need to go get ready, princess."
"Ugh, what now?" I shrugged.
"Dress, hair, and last touches of makeup. Next time you come in here, we'll get this party started." Nick turned and went back to the living room, while Etty joined me in my bedroom, and started completing my preparations for the 'Bachelorette' role.
Even though I saw the general guidelines of the cocktail party decor, when I was finally permitted to leave my bedroom, about an hour later, at exactly eight o'clock, I didn’t recognize the place.
My apartment seemed so spacious, and as soon as I passed through to the party area, Gilad stretched a large strip of deep red cloth behind me, hiding the hallway I came out of, leaving the place looking like a fancy TV studio with no trace of it ever being a lived-in apartment.
In what was my dining area just a few hours ago, on the counter stood beautiful silver trays with a variety of gourmet finger foods I hadn’t cooked. It seemed that just as Nick said before, all I had to do was get ready to meet my men.
"Now, I need you to listen very carefully to what I have to say, Baby Girl." Nick lowered his gaze straight into mine.
"Drama, drama, drama." I huffed at him.
"On the contrary, bitch. No more drama, since from this moment on we're not friends." He adopted a fake TV announcer's tone of voice, and his smile hinted that the excitement almost succeeded in overwhelming him too. "For the rest of this evening, I'm not your best friend, I'm the host of this project."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means that I'll talk in an emotion-free way, cold and to-the-point, and will probably use this annoying voice all night long."
"Gee, please don’t!" I laughed.
"I might upset or disappoint you, but please know I'm doing what I need to do to get this evening going according to my plan."