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My face heats. Before I realize she’s talking to a bra.
“Unfortunately, breathing is mandatory. Shh. Shh, please don’t cry. I still love you. We just can’t be together.”
Scarlet, I find myself biting my lip again to stifle yet another onslaught of laughter.
When the dressing room door whirls open, I still haven’t completely recovered my composure, so Marcella shoots me a disgusted look before turning to the attendant and losing all her ire in a single blink. “Your store is very tidy and well organized. I apologize for my personality. I mean no disrespect.” With another blink, she’s trying to kill me with her eyes again. “I want this one. Let’s go.”
My eyes fix on the black butterfly bra. “Don’t you need more than one?”
“No.”
“Don’t you need…” I don’t want to say panties. I already should be locked up for coming in here, but, well, Marcella refused to accept my card when I tried to hand it to her in the limo.
Her eyes said suffer, and I leaned into my fate.
“You can get a six pack for ten bucks at Walmart. Those are the kind I’m familiar with. Since my effort to branch out resulted in pain, I would like to go to Walmart now and get the exact same things I have always gotten. Plus this.” She splays the butterfly side of the bra, looking at it almost tenderly. “This sparks joy. I will condemn myself to the pain for her.”
Mm. Yeah.
I think it’s unavoidable.
I may very swiftly be falling in love with this woman.
“If that’s all you want, I feel the need to reiterate how poor a job you’re doing of being a gold digger.”
“Untrue.” She trots her cute pant-suited self up to the register. Once she’s handed the bra to the woman behind it, she braces an elbow against the counter and looks at me. “I already have plans to abuse your funds at Walmart. Don’t worry.”
I’m really not worried. At all.
“That loaf of bread was only a dollar at full price,” I say, as Marcella opens the plain white french loaf in the back of the limo.
“Your point?” She lays the forty-seven cent bread beside her, atop a pathetic number of plastic bags.
“Why did you get it off the clearance cart?”
Sitting across from me, she tears open a bag of Sargento cheddar cheese sticks. “Because these were five dollars.” She peels one out of its plastic prison and tears the heel off her bread, seeming subtly pleased with herself when she says, “A week more of this and you’ll be broke.”
She bites into them together.
I find myself inexplicably entranced and mulling over all the times in these past two months that I’ve sat across from her, bored out of my mind, as she smiled calmly while working away on her tablet. She was hiding so much spice beneath her composed façade.
Snapping out of the spell, I say, “Please tell me you don’t think that’s a meal. I was hoping to take you to dinner once you ran out of cupcake energy.”
She licks her lips. “I got hungry. Dinner wasn’t available. Walmart discount bread cart and cheese were.” She settles in. “Man, I love bread cart.”
“I take it you don’t cook much?” I murmur.
Mouth full, she blinks at me and swallows. “What an offensive question. Can’t you tell this recipe has been passed down in my family for generations?” Realization crosses her expression, and she removes another stick from the bag before passing me both it and a new torn piece of bread. “Girlfriend behavior. Couples share food. I excel at this.”
She is…such a strange creature.
I’d very much like to put her in my pocket and take her with me everywhere.
Assembling the cheese bread, I turn my attention out the window, at the buildings easing by.
This is nice.
Not the cheese bread.
