Roger and Hannah (as Marietta): Dinner and (gulp!) Cuddling
Who: Roger and Hannah (as Marietta) When: Thursday evening Where: Marietta's flat What: The flu excuse worked for the morning, but it's wearing a little thin as the evening progresses.
It was one of those days where it felt good to throw up.
Hannah's attempt to live out Marietta's day as it had been written on the schedule had been thrown off course almost immediately, but it turned out to be a huge stroke of luck in the end. She'd made it into the flat, to the threshold of the bedroom, and stood there for one long moment staring at the man who was not her boyfriend in the bed that was not hers, and at that moment her tangled nerves and doubts and fears that had been twisting in her gut since she'd realized what this task really was overwhelmed her, and she was running to the toilet, bent over and holding back unfamiliar curly hair in her hands.
Roger had been sweet--very sweet, actually--and whatever small annoyance she'd developed toward him around New Years evaporated as he took care of her--no, of Marietta, but still. He was a nice bloke deep down, just like she'd said, and she was reminded of how kind she'd seen him be to Annora. And in the middle of all of that, in an instant when she'd glimpsed her own sickly paleness on Marietta's features in the mirror, it had come to her: play sick. No one wants to pass the flu onto someone they care about. It was the perfect excuse.
After Roger left, the rest of the day passed quickly enough. Hannah discovered a couple of things she was surprised about. One was a stack of birthday cards, all of which were addressed to Marietta's mother, but with just her name on the envelopes. Stranger still, the sentiments were all crossed out inside. Hannah couldn't make kneazles or krups of that, and so she left them how she'd found them. Next to them, though, was a note marking the budget for Sabine's fashion show and launch party void. It seemed that Marietta was paying for quite a bit of it herself. That struck Hannah as odd--shouldn't Marietta be trying to make money off of this enterprise, not lose it?
Other than that, though, she'd actually found the trip to the bookstore to find books on starting a Muggle/Wizarding business relaxing, and after that, she'd gotten to indulge in a manicure, pedicure, and facial and then go grocery shopping. After all of the stress she'd been under from getting caught by Quinn's father and from work in general, for those two and a half hours she was able to really relax for the first time in days. She'd met with a few models at the Nymph and Kneazle, collecting their headshots and measurements and resolving to see how her diet of chocolate and little else had affected her own measurements. The dress fitting had been strange, to say the least, with three of them in on the secret and Marc out in the cold. Cho--or, rather, Sabine--had ended things early, and that was probably just as well.
But now as afternoon bled into evening, and Roger's ETA was looming next on Marietta's schedule, Hannah's nerves were coming back. After all, not only did she have to stick to the schedule yet keep up the appearance of being sick, but she also knew what was happening on her own schedule at the same time. Marietta would be heading over to Quinn's flat for the evening, and Hannah had no way of knowing what was happening. So she waited, trying to stick to the schedule and relax with a book as she waited for Roger, but completely failing as both the book and the concept of relaxing went ignored. At least, if nothing else, cooking dinner with a boyfriend was something Hannah had done before.