At Face Value

By Iris Forester

Pedro Ramirez is a Hollywood actor with a hot Netflix series tired of women who only want him for his fame and fortune. That's why, with the help of his makeup artist friend, he's about to become Ramon Garcia, a bespectacled, nasally endowed, mysteriously employed face among millions of others on OkCupid.

One of those other faces belongs to Ingrid, a talented composer whose face bears the evidence of a childhood accident, but where many see only her scars, "Ramon" sees her beauty. Can he find the strength to tell Ingrid who he really is before his ruse is discovered? Or will a series of misunderstandings involving an ill-fated skinny-dipping date and a young pop star tear these lovers apart?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Shorts
• Release date: Jun 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094418612

Iris Forester

Iris Forester is never happier than when she’s tossed everything aside to follow one of the story threads that cross her path. She shares her home place with eagles, ravens and owls — but also makes time every year to spend in New York City. When she’s not writing, Iris works with paint, clay, and various difficult creatures.

Book preview

Chapter One

The dog park was unreasonably crowded, and Ingrid could feel a headache starting as she extricated the dachshund, Mr. Big, from his latest attempt to pick a fight. This time, Mr. Big’s target was a rottweiler, who was doing his best to ignore the tiny dog. If Mr. Big’s owner, a shady but generous woman, wasn’t paying Ingrid twice her normal rate, Ingrid would’ve ditched this dog exercise gig a long time ago. She apologized to the owner of the rottweiler, tucked Mr. Big under her arm, and hurried over to where her other charge, an exhaustingly social black lab named Morty, was licking a little girl’s face. It was nearly impossible to monitor both animals at once.

The little girl looked about five and was actually having a pretty good time with the goofy animal, but her mother was not pleased. Ingrid got hold of Morty’s collar and tugged him away.

Sorry! she said to the girl’s mother. The child looked at Ingrid as she wrangled the dogs and asked, What happened to your face?

The same question. After so many years, Ingrid wasn’t offended by children’s curiosity. At least they were straightforwardly honest.

I got burned, she said. But that was a long time ago. The little girl looked appalled, and Ingrid could see embarrassment taking hold of the child’s mother.

It’s okay, Ingrid said to the mother. To the little girl, she added, It doesn’t hurt anymore. I don’t think about it.

These exchanges were familiar, but they were also tiring. Ingrid was relieved when she’d made it back through the dense traffic to her own small, cool apartment. The Los Angeles area was having one of its early spring heat waves, but she wasn’t ready for hot weather yet. After a cooling shower, soothed by the fragrances of her conditioner and lotion, she stared into the mirror at herself.

Her scars were always pinker right after a shower, and they crossed her face and neck like a spiderweb. At the corner of her left eye, the skin was drawn and puckered, and this indentation marred her left cheek. The discoloration could be covered up with makeup, but there was no way to obscure the damaged contours of the skin itself. On days like today, when Ingrid didn’t care who saw her, she usually didn’t bother with makeup anyway. She hated the suffocating sensation of foundation, and in general, she didn’t care about children’s inquiries. From adults, she’d get a quick glance and then they’d look away, engaging in a charade of not noticing.

Ingrid took a Tylenol and put on a fresh white cotton blouse and a pair of cut-offs. She braided her wet hair into one long plait and pinned it up on top of her head. It would be curled oddly when it dried, but it was worth it to have it cool and wet and out of the way right now.

Things were all right for her, they really were; but she’d been unusually affected by the child’s question. She called her friend, Kellen.

Well, hi! Kellen sounded chirpy. She worked as a lab supervisor at Valley Hospital, and Ingrid knew that this was her day off. That might mean she was headed somewhere to a party, and if so, Ingrid suddenly wanted to see if she could go along. Even if it were just stupid, straight-up sex, she needed to be with someone who could see past her face.

I had more stuff about my face today. A kid at the dog park, Ingrid told Kellen.

Well, that sucks. Want me to come over there? Or no, why don’t you come over here and go for a swim? We can order pad thai afterward.

Kellen’s apartment complex had a couple of nice pools, and Ingrid took her up on the invitation. Maybe she could wear herself out and let the chlorinated water wash out the tiredness from her brain. At the age of twenty-four, she shouldn’t be feeling like an old lady.

Section Break

Ingrid decided to wear her bathing suit under her clothes so she could get out of her car at Kellen’s and just pull off a little over-dress. She liked this bathing suit; it was brand new. She hadn’t even cut the tags off yet. It was a bikini in the palest yellow, just the color of her hair. She didn’t have much of a tan yet, and she was always somewhat careful of her fair skin in the intense southern California sun, but the pale color of the bikini didn’t make her look too ghostly white. Ingrid was justifiably proud of her figure; Kellen liked to say that Ingrid’s fairy godmother had foreseen the accident that would cause her scars and given her the world’s hottest body to make up for it.

Ingrid smiled now, thinking of Kellen’s support. The two of them had been friends since high school, and they kept each other from crashing in the harsh economic and social environment that was twenty-first-century life. It would be fun to show Kellen her new suit. And who knows? Maybe they could go out to a club after the pad thai. Ingrid grabbed a short white dress and a pair of high strappy sandals, added a small bag, and went back out to her car — her magic little red Honda Fit, the tiniest car Honda made. It already had over 100,000 miles on it, but it still ran like a charm, and she was absurdly fond of it.

The night went partly as Ingrid had pictured. They mostly had the pool to themselves, and Kellen distracted Ingrid with the latest bridezilla stories about her sister, Brianne. Brianne was getting married in about three weeks, and by now, Kellen had accumulated an entire portfolio of her sister’s outrageous behavior. Ingrid thought she would actually be sorry when Brianne finally got married and the tales ended.

They won’t end, Kellen pointed out. She’ll get pregnant, and then she’ll have babies. Can you just imagine my sister with babies?

She’ll be taking them for manicures before they can even sit up by themselves.

Over pad thai and milky coconut cocktails, from which the next-door Thai restaurant made most of its money, Kellen peered analytically at Ingrid.

You need to date more.

That’s why I wanted to go clubbing.

Kellen made a face. I’m not talking about finding someone to hook up with. I mean, with a body like yours, that’s just automatic.

But club lighting is my friend, Ingrid said. If everything is all shadow and flash, then my body is what they see.

No, seriously. You need to find someone who’s going to stick around and go out with you again. Someone who wants to do dumb daytime stuff with you, not just be part of the scene at night.

Yeah, well, it’s daytime that I don’t show up that well in.

Look, instead of going out dancing tonight, we’re going to stay home and do something more constructive. We’re going to make you a profile on OkCupid.

Ingrid sighed, but Kellen already knew all the things she was going to say, so she didn’t bother interrupting further to say them.

Look, Ingrid. If you gave up as easily with your music as you do with your looks, you’d never get anywhere. But you’re still hungry, still writing songs, still pushing. Well, you can’t let a few failures in your personal life turn you into a lonely old cat lady.

Dog lady, corrected Ingrid, but she rolled her eyes and capitulated. Kellen opened the app and started creating Ingrid’s profile.

I’m not going to let you photoshop my face, Ingrid warned, and Kellen paused to look up at her friend and scowl.

As if I’d ever consider that, Kellen snapped. Ingrid, those marks on your face are part of who you are. They’re what set you apart and make you special, and once you start to flaunt them instead of worrying about them, they’ll become part of your beauty.

Stop with the pep talk and just do the thing, Ingrid growled, but she was warmed nonetheless by Kellen’s unflagging encouragement. Even if Kellen was a little unrealistic, at least it felt good to have someone she could talk with so openly.

Ingrid had visited a county fair with her cousins when she was nine. During an intense and complex war game with them and some other kids they’d met there, Ingrid had blundered through an area set aside for food tents, collided with a funnel-cake vendor as he was straining burnt bits of dough from hot oil, and been splashed in the face.

In her teen years, her parents had arranged for two different rounds of cosmetic surgery, but it had been nearly impossible to eliminate the irregular growth of skin. After the second time, Ingrid called a halt to the medical approach, because no amount of treatment was going to restore a perfectly normal face.

Meanwhile, at age twelve she’d been diagnosed with synesthesia, the neurological condition which caused some people to experience multiple sensory inputs in combination, like colors having different aromas, or every numeral getting its own sound.

In Ingrid’s case, she perceived sounds as visual entities; different shapes and colors, which made her a natural musician. As her peers became more cruel with their taunts, she’d retreated into a private world of music and turned all her energy and focus into proficiency on the piano and the flute. High school had been mostly miserable except for her growing connection with music and the people who were equally dedicated to it. Her parents used their modest resources to pay for private music lessons, and Ingrid’s native talent flourished. She began to compose pieces for piano, exploring the overlap of jazz and classical structures, and one of her compositions won a national award when she was sixteen. As a result, she’d been invited to enroll in the University of Southern California’s prestigious music program, and it was there that she began to believe she could have a future in that field.

After graduating two years ago, however, the inevitable financial pressures had threatened to overwhelm her. Despite help from three scholarships and some financial aid, Ingrid had graduated with an intimidating amount of student loan debt, and now she was making minimum payments on it through a combination of gigs. Dog walking was the most profitable of these, but she also gave piano lessons to a gaggle of eager children. Even if she struggled to advance her own future in music, it felt good to be handing some of that love of it to the next generation. When she wasn’t working, Ingrid put hours into writing new music, and she was saving up for the rental of a recording studio so that she could put together a demo of her work.

Her post-college social life, on the other hand, was sparse. At college, Ingrid had learned the exuberance of dancing for hours on end. Her classically perfect body and gleaming fall of straight white-blonde hair meant that when that

Reviews for At Face Value

[Deb Pden · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An adorable romantic comedy about visual imperfections and trust issues concerning fame. Hallmark worthy. No steam just cutesy.