Or was that too vain?
“Let’s see it Stel!” Piper called from the other side of the door. I took one more minute to adjust the long sleeve, blood red velvet number she had demanded I try on. The sleeves swallowed my hands, opening up at the end in extra fabric that reminded me of something a witch would wear. The too big dress had enough fabric to spread out in a long train behind me and the color completely washed out my complexion.
I tromped out to the hallway, trying to suppress my laughter. Piper stood waiting for me, impatiently tapping her foot. She looked as equally ridiculous as I did in a white, chiffon ruffled disaster. The tight bodice fit her awkwardly and made her look like she had the chest of a little boy, while the ruffles tumbled in messy, gaudy waves from her waist to the floor and gave her the hips of a woman who could claim giving birth to at least twelve children.
“Are those feathers?” I burst into laughter at the realization Piper looked like a partially plucked chicken.
She gave me a stern glare and then burst into her own hysterical giggles. “You look like Valentine’s Day threw up on you!” she wheezed, clutching at her stomach.
“I’m not coming out there if you two are just going to laugh at me!” Bree hollered from behind the fitting room door. “I already feel ridiculous enough!”
“We promise not to laugh,” Piper swore stoically. She swatted my hand away as I tried to pull on one of her shredded, dilapidated feathers, poking out from where her belly button might be.
A foreshadowing giggle escaped Piper as Bree opened the slatted wood door and stepped tenuously through the narrow doorway. Piper and I held our breath for three whole seconds before exploding in laughter, tears streaming from the corners of our eyes. We leaned on each other for support, sucking oxygen in through laughter that had become completely silent as it racked our bodies in hysteria.
Bree stood before us in a vintage, as in eighties, Pepto-Bismol pink taffeta gown, the sleeves ballooning into giant puffs that sat unevenly on her shoulder blades, the sweetheart neckline, dipping crassly into her cleavage, the skirt swallowed her body in folds of wrinkled fabric and the apron of lace both seemed to domesticate the outfit and tie the whole awful look together. Under her wounded scowl, Piper and I tried to pull ourselves together, but then she turned to get a better look at herself in the three fold mirror and her gigantic skirt swooped around and whipped Piper in the side. Piper took an exaggerated side step and we dissolved into more laughter, this time with Bree taking part.
“This was such a terrible idea,” Bree whined when we had come back to ourselves and the sales clerk had stopped to check on us twice, not understanding our sense of humor.
“Sometimes you get lucky and find something amazing,” Piper defended her thrift-store idea, although she was still laughing so neither Bree nor I took her seriously. Suddenly she stood up straight and cocked her head to the side examining us all over again. “This could work….”
“What could work?” I asked, feeling the flare of panic at the look in Piper’s eyes.
“This,” she gestured to the three of us. “We could splash black paint over all of the dresses and then wear like corsages with dead flowers in them as like a statement against the greeting-card holiday that defines the awfulness that is Valentine’s Day.” Piper proclaimed, growing passionate at the end of a speech that fell on Bree’s deaf ears and my vain ones.
“Absolutely not!” Bree shrieked, immediately trying to rip off her dress before Piper could pull out some hidden black paint to splash it on her. “Go right ahead and protest consumerism all you want, but I want to look pretty!”
“Are you saying Piper wouldn’t look pretty covered in black paint, carrying dead flowers?” I gasped. “For the record, Pi, I think you look gorgeous in any color of death.”
“I’m not worried about what will look good on Piper! I’m trying to get Tristan to notice me!” Bree lectured and I suddenly had to quell the unfurling of a very angry, desperate beast that seemed to take hold of my insides. I clutched against my stomach that was determined to make me sick. A darkness settled on my shoulders, one that refused to let Bree claim what belonged to me, what I could never have but wanted ferociously anyway. I swallowed against the hole in my chest, the pit dug out by irrational jealousy. Tristan wasn’t mine. Could never be mine.
“Well, he’ll definitely notice you in that,” Piper gave her a suggestive look and we all burst into laughter. And just like that I found myself again.
“Ladies, what is going on here?” the sales attendant poked her head in for the third time and we knew our time was up. We offered apologetic smiles and ducked back into our separate fitting rooms to change back into the clothes we came in and the clothes we were thankfully leaving in.
Two hours later, shopping bags stored in the trunk of Piper’s parents Durango, we met back up with the guys at a city based pizza chain. We had ridden together into the city, since Piper’s SUV had three rows of seating and was big enough to hold us all, but we had dropped the guys off at an arcade to kill the time while we shopped. When we met back up at the restaurant all of them looked a little worse for wear and definitely on edge, even Lincoln.
We ordered at the counter, the boys respectfully paying, even Seth, and then went to the back to find a table big enough to fit us all. Unlike at our designated lunch table, where we sat definitively segregated, we mingled together here so we could sit by our dates. I was thankful the petty immaturity of Mead did not follow us into our Friday night. So we sat boy, girl, boy, girl around a large circular table.
“Did you ladies get your dresses picked out?” Tristan asked, breaking what had turned into an uncomfortable silence.
“Yes,” Piper sighed, sounding sorely disappointed.
“Do you not like yours?” Lincoln asked quietly, picking up on her tone. She leaned into him, making him squirm just a little before he relaxed too and put his arm around her.
“No, I like it, I mean…. I’m definitely going to look hot,” she bragged and I hid my smile behind my napkin. “It’s just I had this great idea for really sticking it to Valentine’s Day, but they didn’t want anything to do with it.” She pursed her lips and shot both Bree and I a look promising her future wrath.