Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Hallie
“ A re you fucking kidding me with that, Hal? Take it off.”
Molly is sprawled on the couch in the big, lavish dressing room of Gallery, champagne in one hand and phone in the other. She convinced her friend to shut down the store for two hours, so the four of us are on a solo shopping excursion. Molly chose her dress ten minutes after we set foot in the store, and she is now doing her very best impression of one of the difficult family members on a Say Yes to the Dress episode.
I am wearing a massive pink dress with ten layers of tulle and short, puffy sleeves. It is the most hideous one I could find. I can’t figure out why it is in this chic, painfully expensive Shadyside boutique, but the second I saw it, I knew it was perfect for the dressing room picture Ben so weirdly requested.
“Quick, take a picture.” I toss my phone to Molly and strike a pose.
“Um, why am I taking a picture of you in a dress that resembles cotton candy?” she asks as she stands up and snaps the picture.
“Ben asked me to send him pictures of the dresses I try on, so I wanted to find the grossest one I could and send him a picture of that.”
She hands my phone back to me. “He asked for what?”
“Dress pictures.” I shrug.
“And how did this come up?”
“We were texting. He asked me if I could hang out today, but I told him that we were going dress shopping for the gala. He told me to send him pictures and then got all weird. It was kind of funny, so I figured I would fuck with him a little.”
Molly just stares at me.
“Hallie,” she says carefully. “Have you ever gotten the feeling that Ben has feelings for you? Like, more than lifetime friendship feelings?”
“What? No way. We’ve been friends forever. If he liked me like that, I would know.”
“Let me see your phone.”
“Why?”
“Just hand it over.” She holds out her hand and gives me her signature you will do exactly what I am asking you to do right now or else face. It works every damn time. I hand her the phone. She holds it up to my face to unlock, and then navigates to my texts with Ben. I know exactly when she sees the dress picture request because she snorts and clicks off the phone. She hands it back to me and collapses onto the couch.
“Well?” I ask.
“Oh, he totally has a thing for you. I think he has for a while now.”
“Mol, there’s just no way. And keep your voice down.” Emma and Julie are still browsing out in the store, and the last thing I need is for them to hear this. I have enough stuff I’m keeping from Julie. I don’t need to add this to the list.
“Okay.” She just shrugs and leans back on the couch with the look of someone who is satisfied and secure in the knowledge that she planted a seed that she will now sit back and watch grow. This is what Molly does best. She is sly and brilliant and has an uncanny ability to make people see things that no one else knows are there.
But this can’t be that, right? Ben doesn’t have feelings for me. We’re friends. We have always been friends. We have both dated other people—although not lately, I guess. But still. Our families are close. Julie is his sister and my other closest friend in the world. It would never work.
Without warning, I’m assaulted by an image of Ben kissing me and my face heats before I shove it aside. No. Nope. Absolutely not. Molly is wrong. I look over at her and see her smirking at me, as if she knows just where my brain went.
I scowl at her. “Shut the fuck up. You know what you did.”
“I sure as shit do,” she sings, gleefully, as I flounce back into the dressing room.
As if to prove Molly wrong, I whip out my phone as soon as the curtain closes.
Me
[img attached] I’m pretty sure this is the one.
Ben
You’re planning to go to the gala in cotton candy cosplay?
I think it makes a real statement, don’t you?
If the statement is, I am a food that little kids eat at a carnival, then definitely.
I laugh and throw my phone in my purse. See, Ben doesn’t have feelings for me. Definitely no feelings at all.
I unzip the pink confection and drop it to the floor then rifle through the other dresses I have on the rack in my dressing room. My hand moves to the bright red floor length dress Molly pressed into my hands while we were browsing. It’s bolder than I usually go and completely unlike anything I’ve ever worn before. Without another thought, I pull it from the hanger and put it on. I’ve been feeling so off kilter for the last year, and particularly for the last couple of weeks, that I’m in the mood for something different.
The silky material of the dress glides up seamlessly. I stick my arms through the spaghetti straps and reach around to zip the back. The front dips just low enough to show a hint of cleavage that, with the right bra, will look amazing, and the dress clings in all the right places before falling straight to the floor. This is the one.
I step out into the outer dressing room where Julie and Emma have just returned, their arms full of dresses. All three of my friends are silent for five full seconds before everyone talks at once.
“Oh my god, Hallie! That has to be the one,” says Emma.
“Your boobs in that dress look even better than Emma’s boobs,” says Julie, grinning. That’s the biggest compliment she could ever give me, because it’s just common knowledge that of the four of us, Emma has the best boobs by far.
“That dress is so hot I would fuck you in it,” Molly chimes in.
There is literally nothing on earth better than girlfriends. “Aw, thanks, pals. I think this is the one.”
“No thinking about it,” declares Molly. “Go put your clothes back on. You’re finished here.”
I do what she says, slipping the red dress back onto the hanger and placing it on the rack that the store left us to hold our final choices. I join Molly on the couch where she is scrolling through her phone. She turns to me when I sit next to her.
“Hal, we’ve barely talked about the Caseys since the hearing. Have you heard anything from them?”
“Jen called me yesterday. They have both sets of grandparents with them this weekend. They couldn’t make it for the hearing, so they are having a little weekend family celebration. She says Maya is over the moon and has already written her new name on everything she owns.”
“That’s the sweetest thing I have ever heard,” says Julie, as she walks out of her dressing room in a black halter dress and starts examining herself in the mirror. “I’m so sad I missed the hearing. I would have loved to have been there.”
My mind reels with all the things I could say to Julie right now. At first, I say none of them, not wanting to upset our balance or mess up this shopping trip that Molly planned. But then, I hear Ben in my head. How you feel matters . And he’s right. It does matter.
“You could have been there, you know. I would have liked you to be there. I think Eric, Jen, and Maya would have appreciated it.”
Julie turns to me. “I wish I could have, but there was so much to do at the office. The plumber came that morning, and some tech equipment was being delivered, and someone had to be there for all of that. I texted Eric and Jen, and I sent Maya some gifts later that afternoon and promised I would come see them as soon as I could.” With that, she turns back to the mirror.
It’s nice that she made it right with the Caseys, but what about me? She didn’t even apologize or mention she knew how important that hearing was to me. I consider saying more but decide against it. My stomach is churning with nerves, and I know this is just the way Julie is. She gets so tunnel-visioned when she goes into work mode that she forgets about the people around her. She is impossible to reason with, and trying would just toss a wet blanket over the rest of our day. I stay quiet even though I’m reeling on the inside, words and words and words that I could say to Julie bubbling up before I shove them back down again.
Before long, Emma comes out of her dressing room and all four of us weigh the pros and cons of the dresses that she and Julie picked out.
But in the back of my mind, I keep hearing Ben’s soothing and sure voice saying, over and over again, How you feel matters .