Page 21 of Love, Academically

Oniomania (noun) onio·ma·nia

An uncontrollable desire to buy things

Lila

Rhys was on time, precisely on time. Of course he was.

“Sit on the sofa. I will be two minutes,” she said, grabbing her handbag from the floor and plonking it on the table. She just needed her heels to try dresses on with (especially now she could walk properly again), and her sunglasses, because the weather had promised some sunshine.

“Are you not ready?” Rhys asked, arms crossed in front of his rather pleasant chest. Casual Rhys was looking especially edible today. Worn, dark blue jeans and a plain, long-sleeved beige Henley with the two buttons undone at the neck had never looked so good.

“I am ready, I just need two minutes to get a couple of extra things.”

“So, you’re not ready then.”

She pinned him with a look. “Rhys, are you going to be like this all day? Because I need to know whether to bring extra cookies or not.”

“You’re taking cookies on a shopping expedition?” he asked, eyebrows drawn together.

“Expedition? It’s not like we’re trekking through the jungle. It’s just the Bull Ring.” On a Saturday. So it pretty much would be like a jungle. “And yes, I will have to bring cookies if you are going to continue to be the most pedantic person in the entire world.”

“I don’t think—” he started, but snapped his mouth shut. “Okay.”

Lila rewarded him with a grin. He was learning.

“Also, I have a request,” she said. Rhys gestured for her to continue. “Can I be in charge of the radio? I don’t want to listen to the news this morning.”

Because the news was depressing, people were awful, and she didn’t need that kind of energy when she was preparing for dress shopping.

Rhys narrowed his eyes at her, and she gave him the sweetest smile from her arsenal.

“Fine.”

There was nothing in the first shop, or the second.

There was more selection in the next few, but nothing that screamed ‘wear me to a posh family dinner whilst pretending to be a work colleague’s girlfriend’.

Trying stuff on in high-street shops with their unflattering lighting and tiny changing rooms, and then parading herself around in front of Rhys-Tuxedo-Aubrey was not her idea of fun and Rhys certainly didn’t look as if he was enjoying it.

She’d managed to pry out of him the type of thing that his sister would wear, so hopefully she wouldn’t look like a complete idiot. With a couple of good accessories and maybe a couple of alterations, she could make a dress look less high street and more high end.

“So?” she asked, as she pulled at the satiny fabric around her hips. “What do you think?”

The thin spaghetti straps would need shortening and possibly a bit off the length. The green-y colour wasn’t great, but it fit all right across her boobs and hips.

“It’s fine,” Rhys said with a shrug.

Her shoulders drooped. ‘Fine’ was not what she was going for.

“I’d take the hem up a little, so it would fall here,” she said, pulling it up slightly so it wasn’t draped on the floor. “Would that be okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” he repeated.

“That’s what you said about the last one and the one before that,” she said, pushing a despondent half smile onto her face.

“They’re all fine, Lila,” he said with a huff.

“Okay,” she said quietly, stepping back into the changing room to scrape her ego off the floor and put on her own clothes again.

It was the best so far. She snapped a photo of the dress on her phone, just in case she couldn’t find anything better. Hanging it, and the other three that she’d discarded on the ‘not today’ rack at the entrance to the changing room, she gave a wan little smile to Rhys.

“Not that one, then.”

“Maybe, if I don’t see anything else.”

“Okay.”

Shopping sometimes was like purgatory. A purgatory full of dresses that were too tight, too loose, too long, too short, didn’t fit across her boobs, didn’t fit around her hips, too cut-out-y.

She sighed as they headed out of the shop and into the bright lights of the shopping centre. Despondency was creeping in, and her feet were starting to hurt.

“What about that shop?” Rhys stopped and pointed at one with tall, skinny mannequins in the window.

Lila shook her head. “I don’t fit into clothes there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Rhys, women come in all different shapes and sizes and I’m telling you, that shop does not make clothes that fit my body shape.”

“Oh.”

He probably waltzed into the Rich-Boy-Jeans-Shop and picked up a thirty-two-inch waist, regular and they fit like…

well, like good-fitting jeans. That’s just not how it worked for her.

If jeans fit her arse, they did not fit her waist. If they fit her waist, it felt like her legs were squeezed in like sausages.

“Sorry,” she murmured.

“It’s okay.” He was peering at her as if he was doing some incredibly hard maths in his head. “Shall we stop for coffee?”

A break from this horror? Yes please.

“And cake?” she asked in a small, pathetic voice.

“And cake,” he said, giving her a small smile.

She took him to Bumblebee Cafe because it had the best (and biggest) cake, where she ordered a raspberry milkshake, a millionaire shortbread and a huge slice of chocolate cake.

“You have so much sugar there, Lila.”

“Shopping is stressful, I need comfort sugar.”

The fortification was definitely needed, especially with Rhys’s crumpled up mouth saying ‘it’s fine’ etched into her brain.

“Why is buying a dress so difficult?” he huffed, closing his hands around his black coffee. Because of course Rhys drank boring black coffee. He poked at the muffin she’d forced him to buy. “Seriously, why is it so hard? I don’t see what was wrong with those other dresses. They were fine.”

Lila stared at him incredulously. He actually didn’t see it, did he? How could he have gotten to early thirties without having any kind of shopping experience with a woman?

“Look Rhys, I get that shopping is boring and you’d much rather be doing pretty much anything else with your Saturday morning, but I’m doing this to help you,” she said. “What would your posh, rich family think if I turned up just looking ‘fine’?”

Rhys had the decency to look a little bit ashamed. Just a little, mind you.

“I don’t want to make a fool of myself.” The words came out quietly. Trying new things often didn’t work out for her and she really should just stick in her lane. But Rhys had done her a favour and she did say ‘anything’.

“Okay, I understand,” Rhys said, breaking off a bit of muffin and forking it into his mouth.

A sad smile pulled at her lips.

“I’m not super rich, I work at a university, I’ve still got some debts from Jason, and I can’t afford hundreds of pounds to spend on a dress I’m only going to wear once.” She stirred her thick milkshake with the straw. “It’s a waste.”

It was embarrassing, talking about what little money she had. Well, it wasn’t like she was poor, she was just a normal person who couldn’t fork out about a million pounds for a dress.

“You have debts from Jason?” Rhys tilted his head towards her. “Why?”

She snapped her eyes to his and raised an eyebrow. That was a bit much, wasn’t it?

“Too personal. Rhys, not answering that.” She flashed a smile. Rhys let out a breath and closed his eyes for longer than a blink.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. There was a tension around his mouth that wasn’t there before and she took pity on him. Societal niceties were sometimes a bit beyond him, but he was learning and that was good.

“Perhaps I’ll rent one. Put it on the credit card, and send it back when we’re done.” She tapped her chin with her finger. “Or I’ll just get that green one and alter it.”

Rhys stared off into the distance and she busied herself with her cake.

Both cakes. Sugary fortification for yet more crappy dresses.

Perhaps they could go somewhere expensive and she’d put it on her credit card.

But she’d been so good with the credit card, and it was nearly paid off.

Things had been tight when Jason was in medical school; he hadn’t been earning and her salary didn’t go very far.

Joint credit cards and a loan had helped get them through some really tough spots, but the repayments came out of her bank account.

She was so close to being free of the last vestiges of her relationship with Jason.

Rhys

Life wasn’t fair for some people. It just wasn’t. Jason had a lot to answer for. Lila, for all her rainbows and ridiculous pink steering-wheeled car, was kind. Perhaps she was too kind and dickwads like Jason took advantage of that.

Rhys took a quick look at her, sliding her second cake towards her. Two cakes. She must really need sugar if she was having two cakes. The muffin was all right, but he would have preferred one of her cookies that she’d threatened to bring but ultimately didn’t.

Although, as he watched her attack the chocolate cake, he realised he was just as bad as Jason. Here she was, helping him out when she really didn’t have to and he was asking her to spend her hard-earned money on something she’d only wear once.

Spend her money for him and his stupid family. Yeah, they’d made a deal, this was her end of the bargain, but if she’d said no, it’s not like he could have forced her to do it, was it?

He pulled out his phone and scrolled to Elin’s number, holding his finger up at Lila’s questioning look. His sister answered on the second ring.

“Shwmae big brother, to what do I owe this tremendous pleasure?”

Rhys rolled his eyes.

“Shwmae Elin, I need your help,”

“Wait, let me press record. Right, say it again.”

Why couldn’t his sister just do what he needed? Why the snarky comments?

“Elin,” he said shortly.

She laughed. “Go on, what do you need?”

“I’m shopping with Lila—”

“Your girlfriend!” she interrupted. “Lila is such a pretty name.”

“Yes, well,” he said, shooting a quick glance at Lila, catching her polishing off her cake. “We’re looking for a dress for the family dinner. Where do you go?”

“Oh my God, if you’d have told me, I would have gone shopping with her!”