Page 33 of Bronx

Trying not to be obvious about it, I refuse the items that have a hefty price tag and try selecting items that are on sale or reasonably priced but there isn’t much to choose from and I’m more exhausted than I was when I walked through the door.

I despise shopping.

“Let’s try this. It’s casual, but you could dress it up with the right accessories.”

She hands me several outfits to try on but wants me to first try the pair of dark blue slim pants made with a great deal of stretch and a matching top that cinches at the waist and slightly flairs at the hips.

“Monochrome outfits make everyone look slimmer,” she says as I close the changing room door on her offensive ass.

I hate that she’s right. The outfit makes me look ten pounds slimmer and skims my body in all the right places. I hand the items back over the top of the door.

“You can ring me up,” I tell her.

“Fantastic! Your boyfriend will love it.”

“He’s not–”

Never mind.

There’s no sales tax on clothes in Pennsylvania, but it seems to me that Kelly adds her own special tax anyway to hike up the prices. The total for my basic blue outfit was two-hundred and thirty-eight-dollars, which is outrageous. I don’t even have a permanent place to live and now I owe this man over two-hundred bucks for an outfit?

Bronx keeps his eyes on me as I shift the weight between my feet at the counter and nervously play with my hair. He saunters over, looking sexy as hell, and I practically hold my breath as he stands next to me, inspecting what I purchased.

The next thing I know, he’s pulling a pair of flip-flops out of a wicker basket in the corner of the shop. They’re a different shade of blue than my outfit, but they’re a well-made pair of sandals with those built in arch supports.

“You’re a size seven, right?”

“Yeah,” I answer, shocked that he guessed my shoe size just by looking.

“We’ll take these too.”

There’s something so damn attractive about those four words.

“And did that black outfit work out she gave you to try on?” He asks me.

“Well it–”

“It looked great on her!” Kelly interjects.

“Ring that up too.”

“It’s way too much money,” I try whispering in response, but he nods his head no as if he wants me to stop talking, so I do.

Kelly’s shop is relatively a quiet place. We’re the only customers, and as she rings up my things Bronx can’t help but hear my cell phone vibrating inside of my tote bag.

It stops.

Then starts again.

It stops.

Then goes off again.

“Who’s that?” he questions as he signs for the purchase.

The owner looks back and forth between the two of us as if she’s anticipating trouble.

“No one.”