Chapter 16 – Juliette #2
“Oh, you have to try this.” April bounced forward and pulled something out of the clutch bag she had strapped across her shoulder.
She unzipped it and pulled out a round compact thing.
“I don’t love this color, which is why I leave it as my touch up only because it cost so freaking much,” she said, even as she boldly tapped her fingers along each of my upper cheeks then smudged whatever she’d applied. “But yes, on you it works.”
I turned back to the mirror and saw me with highlighted cheekbones wearing a really pretty dress. The way it hit my waist and chest made me look shapelier than I actually was.
“You have to buy it!” April insisted.
“I just need…I want to make sure…he’s okay with the extra purchase this month.”
“Oh sure. But send him a picture. Trust me, he’ll be okay if you’re a little over budget this month.”
Stepping back behind the dressing room curtain, I dug my phone out of my overall pocket.
Me: Hey, are you okay if I buy a dress? It’s a consignment shop. I ran into someone who wanted to shop there and I saw it.
Creed: A dress, huh? Send me a pic.
I held the phone up toward the mirror, my face was covered, but you could see the color of the dress, the way it fit. I snapped a picture and sent it to him.
Creed: Damn, baby! You look hot. Hell yes, you can buy that dress.
I rolled my eyes.
Creed: You don’t have to ask me. If you’re not doing something crazy, like buying Armani or shit, you can buy something you like.
Me: They don’t have Armani in Riverbend.
Creed: Wear it home.
Me: No way. It’s special. I don’t want to wrinkle it in the truck.
Creed: Fine. You can try it on for me when you get home.
Me: We’ll see.
See, always that bit of stubbornness. I changed back into my shirt and overalls, stepped into my worn sneaks. Carefully, I put the dress back on the hanger and pulled the curtain aside.
“I’ll take it.”
Kaye beamed. “Excellent, what’s your shoe size?”
“Shoe size?”
“You’ll need something to pair with it. If you’re a seven, I have a pair of nude ballet flats that will work perfectly,” Kaye said.
“You need shoes,” April said, like it was obvious.
“I’m a seven,” I told her.
April and I were walking back to the grocery store parking lot together and I had a brown shopping bag in my hand that, not going to lie, made me feel a little bougie.
I. DID. NOT. SHOP.
Like ever. So having this bag with a pretty dress and shoes, wrapped in tissue paper, seemed entirely unnatural and absolutely amazing. I could not wait to go home and try them both on together.
Creed was going to lose his shit.
“Thanks for this,” I said, as I stopped at my truck. “It was fun.”
April smiled and handed me the compact she’d taken from her clutch. “It was. Take this.”
“No, I can’t. You said it cost too much.”
“It did, but I hate it so I never wear it. And it looks good on you. Consider this my thank you for Will, the asshole.”
I took the compact. Technically, my first makeup ever. Which was sad and pathetic, but I didn’t tell April that.
“See you around,” April said with a wave. “We should do this again.”
“Yep,” I waved back. Not sure if I believed it or not, but I hadn’t lied about today.
It had been fun.
“I want to see it,” Creed said, reaching for my bag. Practically assaulting me as I walked through the back door with my shopping bag and a bag of groceries.
“No,” I snapped. “It won’t look like anything off.”
“Then put it on. I liked what I saw in the picture.”
“No,” I repeated. “It’s for a special occasion.”
I set the bag of groceries on the kitchen table, and didn’t have to ask before Creed was out the door to grab the rest of the bags.
While he was getting them, I ran my brown bag with the tissue paper upstairs to my bedroom, put it in my closet where it wouldn’t get squished by my other farm clothes, and ran back downstairs before he came back inside.
Pulling stuff out of the first grocery bag, I was shaking my head when he came back into the kitchen.
“Boy, I’ll tell you what. The price of eggs today is crazy.”
“The fuck do we need to buy eggs for? We have more than we can eat with the chickens we have.”
“I just meant groceries in general. Like super crazy expensive.”
He grunted. “We should do something with all those extra eggs we have.”
“What do you mean? Like egg salad? Trust me, there is only so much egg salad you can eat. I know.”
“No, I mean sell them or something. Will the grocery store take them?”
“No, Mr. Nash already has contracts with folks around here who have larger chicken operations. Herb had me put up a stand by the highway one summer, but the problem is most folks around here have their own chickens, and people passing through don’t want to haul eggs on long trips.”
“There are people going hungry in this world, Jules. I know. I’ve seen them. Don’t like that we have an excess.”
“I suppose I could…bake stuff. Use the eggs that way. Flour and sugar are cheap.”
He nodded. “We could make shit together. See if there are shelters around here that need food.”
“You want to bake?” I asked him, somewhat incredulous.
“Baking is just following a plan. I can do that.”
I watched him for a second more, unpacking groceries, putting them in their place. Making sure the vegetables and fruit went in the appropriate drawers in the refrigerator.
“So, I was hanging with April Talley today. It was kind of fun,” I said, having this weird need to share.
“Yeah? Cool.”
“You know what she was telling me? Her parents still go on dates,” I said, super nonchalantly. “Isn’t that crazy? They’ve been married for like fifty years.”
“Fifty?” he asked, with a raised eyebrow. “Jackson was probably what, twenty-five, twenty-six? Don’t imagine his folks have been married that long.”
“Whatever, I’m just saying, isn’t it crazy that they could be married that long and still date? Stupid, right?”
Creed paused then, one hand on the fridge door, the other holding a stalks of celery. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds and then seemed to reach some sort of conclusion.
“I don’t know. Doesn’t seem all that crazy.” He bent down to put the celery in the vegetable drawer along with the others. “I’m thinking you just bought that dress. Probably should have some place to wear it, no?”
I had my face in the cabinets above the counter. “There’s not really a place around here. No one is wearing a dress to Ruby’s or Pete’s.”
“You’re not twenty-one yet. You can’t get into Pete’s bar.”
I snorted. “Anyone over eighteen can get into Pete’s. It’s the unwritten, written rule in Riverbend. But also…I’m going to be twenty-one.”
“When?”
“Soonish,” I hedged.
“Jules,” Creed growled. “I’m sure I saw your birthday on some paperwork, but remind me.”
“The thirteenth. Next month.”
“Next month?” he asked, his voice going higher. “That is soon. We should probably do something to celebrate.”
Herb didn’t celebrate my birthday. Not shocking.
Most years it came and went without me even remembering it.
The only reason I tracked it was because there were important milestones.
Eighteen had seemed like the biggest, but twenty-one came with a new stamp of independence. I could walk into any bar I wanted.
“I don’t usually do much.”
“Yeah, I don’t either.”
“When is your birthday?” I asked him.
“Not until August. But I’m thinking maybe we can change that. New rule. We fucking celebrate birthdays.”
I laughed at his vehemence. “Whatever.”
“We’ll go on a date,” he said. “You and me.”
“That’s not how you ask a girl on a date,” I said, primly.
“You been asked out a lot, huh?” He shut the refrigerator door and leaned back against it.
“Once,” I said, lifting my chin. “Kevin asked me to get coffee. He didn’t tell me we were getting coffee.”
“Pimplefuckingface,” Creed muttered. “Fine. Juliette, would you like to go on a date with me? I would like to celebrate your birthday. With you.”
I shot him a quick glance to see if he was serious. He wasn’t smiling, but that didn’t really mean anything.
“You mean it?”
“I do.”
“Okay, but not just Ruby’s or Pete’s. Someplace you have to make reservations.”
“Wow, fancy,” he said, but he was nodding. “I’ll find something. You’ll wear your new dress?”
A smile danced around my lips. “Maybe. I’ll have to see what’s in my closet.”
At that he laughed outright. The groceries for the most part put away, he came up behind me and wrapped his arm around my middle. He hauled me up against him and planted his lips against my neck, right where it met the curve of my shoulder.
“You’ll wear your dress for me. I can’t fucking wait to see you in it.”
Then he gave me a slap on the ass before he left the kitchen to do whatever and I had this feeling in my chest I couldn’t shake.
Worse, I didn’t want to shake it.