9. Rosie
Chapter 9
Rosie
T he back door of the boutique opens, and my friend Bambi walks in with a haphazard load of bags and hangers draped over her arm.
Dropping the last of my art brushes on the drying rack, I hurry to free the dress bags before one falls to the floor.
“Thanks,” she huffs out, dumping her purse and other bags on the desk. “I bought out the entire lot at that estate sale yesterday. The woman kept an attic full of her grandmother’s courting dresses, but the family didn’t want any of them. It makes me so sad.”
“We’ll find them a home,” I remind her, adding the load to the inventory rack and heading out to her car to check the back.
She’s not joking. The entire backseat is full of dress bags. I can’t wait to get them inside and see what she’s found. Scooping up another bunch, I haul the load into the store while Bambi gushes about her finds.
“There’s a Jack Bryan evening gown, late sixties or early seventies, that I think you could—” She stops mid-sentence, her eyes widening. “I assume you got your invitation in the mail and dressed for battle.”
“Desperate times,” I joke, looking down at my outfit: black stockings, combat boots, black leather paper-bag shorts, and a soft, tucked-in pale-pink turtleneck. I’m not fucking around.
She takes another step and eyes my tights. “Are those?—"
“Tiny little handmade Scream masks sewn into my tights? Yes… but I’m wearing dainty earrings.” I twirl, letting her get the full effect. “And the sweater is pink. So, it’s not all femme fatale.”
“So, knife earrings are dainty? How can I argue with that logic?” She laughs, clearly amused by my stylistic choices. Bambi leans more toward pastels and doesn’t quite understand my lifetime commitment to the color black.
“Exactly. You can’t,” I say triumphantly. “I think after finding out that for the next few weeks, downtown will be crawling with people I’d like to avoid, the tights and the earrings are pretty mild. I could have given myself bangs.”
“True. Jace got his invitation on Monday and immediately made it into a dartboard at the garage. He hates that place, brings back too much bad shit,” Bambi explains as we bring in the final load of dresses from her haul.
Jace is one of Bambi’s mates and my age.We weren’t friends in high school, but we’re friendly now because of how much time I spend with Bambi.
“Can you guess where my invitation is?” I ask, voice thick with sarcasm.
She peeks at me as we load the rack. “In the trash where it belongs?”
“Ding-ding-ding,” I confirm with a laugh. “And good riddance.”
Bambi parts the hangers so we’re face-to-face. “You look kickass, but I’m sorry it brought back bad shit. Fuck those stupid bitches. You’re amazing, your cousin and her crew are awful, and I fully support wearing combat boots until June.”
“Thanks, babe,” I say, almost teary-eyed.
Damn, this is a weird day, but it does mean a lot to me that she understands.
Bambi is my boss, but she’s also my friend—the real kind, which took me years to find. I started working for her because of a sign in her window advertising for a seamstress, but I found out later that we went to the same high school, though we didn’t know each other then. She was a junior when I was a freshman, and we bonded over our war stories.
She always says high school taught her that she was the “funny one” because the role of “pretty one” was already taken. If she used humor to survive, I learned to fight by turning my body into protest art. Other people crafted a narrative about my body once, made me feel as though it wasn’t safe, wasn’t my home. Never again.
My style is like a mood ring, varying from camouflage some days to bold declarations and fuck-yous other days. Bambi has been my friend long enough to know the key. She’s right that today my outfit screams that I’m out of sorts. That invitation thrust me right back into my sixteen-year-old self.
Somewhere along the line, I feel as though I settled into my skin, even after returning to Knotty Pines. I don’t look over my shoulder or spend my time obsessing over trying to fit in where I’m not wanted.
Do I still hide from almost everyone from high school when I see them around town? Till the day I die.
It took many years and a whole lot of unlearning to love all my parts. Moving away, learning to make my own clothes in art school, sketching—that all helped. I still have days when I want to chuck this skinsuit and be someone else entirely. But most days, I like my body and my designation.
Unfortunately, today is not shaping into one of those days. The anxiety pulsing just below the surface is so bad that I want to erase the mural on the windows and start over just to lose myself in painting again. I’m hoping that the new collection of dresses will offer a similar escape.
“Does this call for a dance party or a sweet treat?” Bambi asks as we head onto the floor and begin our ritual of opening up the shop.
Bambi’s Boutique is known for upcycling vintage finds and using our alterations to add a little flare. We’re size inclusive, and we handmake some lingerie, but that’s mostly commissioned pieces. The store isn’t huge. There are only six employees, and we do most of the bulk of our business online, but we’ve been working off a waiting list for lingerie for almost two years now.
“What kind of sweets are we talking about?” I ask, flipping the door sign to “Open” before straightening a display.
“I lied. I think we need both.” She turns on our dance party playlist, shouting over the mix as she sways behind the register, “I snagged you the last cheese danish over at Mel’s this morning. It’s in the back.”
“You’re an angel.” I bow to her.
“I know, so hurry up and come back to dance with me,” she yells.
Thirty minutes later, sugar and endorphins have made this day a lot better. I settle in with the newest collection in the back, finally finding my groove for the first time this morning.
By lunch, I’ve gotten myself together. We had a swell in foot traffic, as we usually do when the new seasonal display is revealed, but it’s been manageable. Bambi had appointments for fittings all morning, so I was pulled out to the register twice until Lana arrived. But since then, I’ve spent most of my time in the back.
I’ve managed to tag the rarest items for repair, sort the entire collection into project types, and craft rough sketches for a series I think we could do with several of the pieces. Setting down my notebook, I stretch, mentally working through a detail I haven’t gotten quite right.
Lana pops her head behind the curtain, practically bouncing with excitement. “I love new season display days. The drama! The competition. It’s so exciting!” With her bubbly personality and affinity for making a friend out of every stranger she meets, it’s no wonder why she works the front. “I’ve already had three people guess the number four, but your sticky note says this design has twelve !”
“Four?” I chuckle. I bet I know the ones.
“You’ve got them totally stumped on this one, me too. I could only find one.” She cocks her head, her long braids falling over her shoulder. “You’re really going through it, huh?”
I never share my designs ahead of time, so it’s not as though she knows the painting is a deviation from the one I planned for weeks. “What gave it away?”
She raises her dark brow in question. “Don’t get me wrong, the woman caught in the rainstorm with her umbrella is beautiful. The way you painted the fabric of her dress to transform the melting snow into spring flowers makes it look like she changes with the season.”
“But?” I ask playfully, grabbing my phone and purse so I can run across the street to pick up lunch.
Lana winces, her floral omega scent becoming sickly sweet. “The rain looks really sad . It’s so pretty, but I want to cry when I look at it, you know? I’m a hoe for a tear-jerker, and everyone today has been saying how much they love it, but I just figured that meant you were in the thick of it.”
I shrug. “Probably. But art is good for the soul.”
“And dick scavenger hunts make everything better,” Lana adds, going back to the register when the jangling bell above the door alerts her that customers have arrived.
I weave around her and onto the floor. “I’m heading to Tanzy’s. Do you want anything?”
“Just the dick map.”
From somewhere in the fitting room, a chorus of agreement rings out as I laugh my way out the door.