Chapter 19
Black Friday in any retail store is the best case study of consumer behavior, a terrifying peek into how much pain one human is willing to inflict on another human to save five bucks on a lotion with glitter in it.
I usually enjoy the people-watching in a sick sort of way, but today I can’t.
I’m exhausted. Only got two hours of sleep last night.
Couldn’t find a comfortable position. Couldn’t stop the looping thoughts.
I spooked him. I crossed over that invisible line we were toeing and I spoiled it.
Everything it might have been or might not have been but I still could’ve pretended it could be.
Turns out fantasy without a shred of possibility isn’t really fun at all. It’s agony.
“Hi, doll! Happy Black Friday!”
I smell her before I see her. She smokes a pack a day so she sprays on extra drugstore perfume to try to cancel out the smoke smell, even though it doesn’t work like that so now she just reeks of two bad things instead of one.
She weaves through the crowd of hysterical women pawing for thongs with their gooey Cinnabon fingers, her arms overflowing with bras and bustiers and lingerie slips that she can’t afford.
She kisses me on the cheek and dumps her things into a fitting room, hangers clanging against each other, bra straps getting tangled.
“I was hoping I could use your employee discount.”
She sifts through her pile of lingerie to avert her eyes from me, untangling the bras and laying them straight on their hangers.
“Don’t look at me like that, like I’m using you or something,” she says. “I mainly came by so we could hang out. Even with your discount, I could find cheaper places. You think JCPenney doesn’t have a cheap, decent bra? You’re dead wrong.”
“I’m sure JCPenney has lots of good bras.”
“They do. They really do…”
She pulls the curtain shut behind her and flings it open again once she’s wearing the first look—a white chiffon slip with black polka dots.
“You hate it, I can see by your nose-scrunch,” she says. “Well don’t try and stop scrunching now that I called it out. I saw. I can’t unsee.”
She swooshes the curtain shut and changes into the next one. A baby-doll style with a gaudy floral print.
“I thought you didn’t like floral prints.”
“Well I don’t, but Tony does,” she says.
“People always say that bullcrap about how it shouldn’t matter what the guy thinks is sexy, that you should dress for yourself or whatever, but the truth is, I feel sexy when I’m his ideal version of me.
I feel like my best self when I’m what he wants.
Maybe that’s not healthy, but waddaya want, health or honesty? ”
She strikes a pose—ass shoved out, back arched, seductive mouth, bedroom eyes—really trying to give this floral print a fighting chance.
“It’s bad,” she answers for me, then yanks it off and shuts the curtain to try on the next one. A barely-there maroon bikini set. The bottom, a stringy thong. The top, a push-up that hikes her breasts up and shoves them together.
“Better, right?” she asks. I nod. She peels it off and chucks it into her shopping basket.
“When in doubt, let the tits hang out, right hon?”
My phone buzzes. It’s him. Finished up some work a bit earlier than expected…if you still want to go on that walk?