You’re just afraid he will hurt you, and that’s okay. But you have to try, June.
This is my new life. I have a job, an apartment, and friends in my building. The next natural step is a boyfriend.
We exchange numbers, and Oscar Michaels, CEO of a private hedge fund and my potential new boyfriend, leaves with a smile. “I’ll see you this weekend, June.”
It’s only after he’s walked away that it hits me I have nothing to wear.
“Undo the top three buttons,” Lucia says on the day of my date, eyeing my blouse critically.
I look down, frowning. “But it’s just tea. I don’t want to pop out.”
“You’re going to be sitting down, so he won’t see the rest of you. This gives you limited opportunities to catch his eye. Top three buttons. Undo them.”
I’m in her studio apartment, and she’s lending me a pretty floral dress with ruffled edges for my date with Oscar. I might have had something less revealing to wear if I hadn't gotten rid of the dress and sandals I'd worn from the hospital. But that outfit was the last remnant of a life I wanted to forget. As soon as I had new clothes, I packed the dress and sandals into a grocery bag and took them to the nearest thrift store.
During my unhappy year with my scent matches, I lost more weight than I realized. I dropped even more pounds when I wasin hospital. But I’ve been slowly putting that weight back on, and some of it has been going to a very specific place.
I undo the top three buttons and give Lucia a pointed look. “I’m going to get arrested for public indecency.”
She makes a face and pushes herself to her feet from her bed. “Okay, I see what you mean. Let’s try something a little less explicit.”
She rummages through her closet, pulling out a pink lace dress that she holds toward me. “How about this?”
“I don’t want to be overdressed,” I tell her, and I definitely will be if I wear that.
It’s a pretty sleeveless dress with a silky slip underneath that’s a little shorter than the lace.
“This is to remind him that you look pretty in a dress, so when he takes you to dinner at an expensive restaurant, he knows he has something to look forward to.”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “Dinner?”
“There’s nothing wrong with planning for the future.” She presses the dress into my hands and nudges me toward her bathroom. “Try it on.”
Her tiny bathroom is identical to mine, though she’s made the space work better than I have. A plastic shoe hanger on the back of her door would solve a lot of my storage issues.
“Where did you get the shoe hanger from?” I ask her, wrestling into the dress and stepping into my white sneakers. With sneakers, I’m still overdressed, but I look a little less like I should be at a cocktail party. “You can fit a lot of stuff in one of those.”
“Walmart. You can load that puppy down, and it’ll never fail you, unlike my shithead ex, Enzo, who had a thing for blondes.”
I laugh. “Why was he dating you then?”
Lucia has long, thick chestnut-brown hair. She bounced back from quitting the hotel cleaning job to get away from‘Wandering Hands Manny’ to land a job in a fancy art gallery in the city. If I knew anything at all about art, unlike Lucia, who majored in art history in college, I would have taken her up on her offer to work there, too.
“I asked him after I flung a bucket of cold water over his head from my window. I won’t tell you what he told me, but it definitely wasn’t the answer to my question.”
More laughter bubbles from my throat. I aspire to be more like Lucia. Her tolerance for bullshit is low, and her ability to hold a grudge is legendary.
I open the bathroom door and stretch my arms out wide. “What do you think?”
She whistles. “You’re definitely getting some. Wear nice underwear.”
Blushing, I look down. The dress is a tiny bit tight in the chest, with the skirt hitting just above my knees. It’s definitely too dressy for a coffee shop date, but I like it. “I’m not looking to get any on this date. Just get to know each other a bit. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” she says with a look in her eyes that says she isn’t buying it. She knows about Oscar’s Mercedes and that I have trust issues with alphas. I haven’t told her everything about my year of hell with my ex-scent matches. Not because I’m keeping it a secret, but knowing Lucia, she’d set their house on fire to get payback for me.
I don’t need to be arrested for arson or murder. Neither does she.
“You've gotta go test it.” She grabs my hand and tugs me toward her door. Her apartment, like mine, is a small studio, with the same worn furniture that came with the unit and not nearly well-maintained enough by our useless super. She’s decorated more than I have, with splashes of color coming from her drapes, cushions, and cute décor.
