Page 41 of The Princess and the P.I.

“That is what boobs do, Fiona.” Janae pushed her shoulders back with the strength of a linebacker.

Somebody frantically screamed, “Get me catsuits, all the catsuits you have!”

“So how is it working with Maurice?” Deya pulled her dress at the hem. “You’re the longest-serving assistant.”

“I love it,” Fiona said, trying not to sound too breathless.

“You don’t mind the long hours?” Liza placed a delicate shoe under her foot.

“They’re not long enough,” Fiona said.

“You don’t mind the close quarters?” Janae shook out Fiona’s press, giving her more volume.

“They’re not close enough,” Fiona said. Janae’s hands stopped mid-zhuzhing.

Fiona felt their eyes shift to her now, all three of them at once, as if she were a bug pinned beneath a magnifying glass.

“Maurice can be…complicated,” Liza started.

“Really stubborn,” Deya added, leaning in a little.

“He only sees what he wants to,” Janae said, lifting her gaze from her phone to look directly at Fiona.

Fiona felt the room contract: three women, three careful measurements being taken, as subtle as dressmakers with pins in their mouths.

They wanted something—maybe reassurance, maybe blood? Could Fiona handle Maurice? Could she handle them? Their world? She didn’t know all of that. But they didn’t have to be afraid she’d crack like an eggshell underneath him.

Fiona breathed, carefully.

“How can I put this?” she said softly. “I’m—cut on the bias, you know, made to stretch.” She paused and watched their eyes, hoping she’d remembered it right, hoping the midnight YouTube sewing sessions she’d binged held up.

Liza’s eyebrows lifted. A quick, skeptical exchange with Janae.

“I mean, I’m stitched for stress,” Fiona continued, gathering courage. “I don’t crease when you fold me.” Her voice steadied, almost certain now. “I don’t mind that he’s complicated or stubborn or single-minded. I just mind when he’s not there. I’m not myself, my true self, without him.”

The sisters didn’t say anything right away, but their gazes softened.

The outside rustled and rumbled like a construction site as the women ordered corsets with obscene amounts of leather, and Fiona saw a barely there lace underwear getup that Liza kept calling Chekov’s negligee in the keep pile.

This was looking like a mortgage down payment’s worth of clothes.

And the sisters showed no signs of stopping.

Her father would chide her, tell her this was all vanity, and to put on her modest clothes that kept the evil of man at bay.

But she finally felt visible in this dress, like if she walked down the street, people would move out of her way.

Maurice’s sisters were arguing about an updo versus a blowout, and Fiona’s chin had inexplicably begun to wobble.

With compliments coming on all sides and the glances she kept snatching of herself in the mirror, a thought unfurled and sprouted in her head.

To look at her body and see possibility, power, and even beauty—not the sin and shame she had been stuffed with since puberty . The mirror had always been an enemy.

One more layer, Fiona. Not too tight, Fiona. The neckline is too low, Fiona.

She wasn’t looking at herself, realizing she was beautiful like a teen movie makeover sequence. Rather, she was scraping off all the sin and negativity she had placed on an otherwise beautiful body. Touching her breasts and belly and neck, she almost gasped with the pleasure of it.

It was still a transformation, but the alchemy was internal.

She held her heavy breasts, let them bounce pleasantly, and slapped her hips to see the skin jiggle.

They were talking about brunch by the time Maurice came back and Fiona had slipped into her final outfit: a simple yoga two-piece in seafoam blue.

He clapped his hands. “You all set, Fi—” Fiona pulled the drape open. The dressing room was so quiet that the swoosh must have sucked all the air out of the room.

Everyone was wide-eyed and fish mouthed.

“Damn,” LeDeya said.

“I think something LGBTQ just happened to me,” Liza said.

Maurice backed up into a soft chaise at the edge of the dressing room until he toppled onto it, silky slips and lace underthings feathering to the floor underneath him.

When his eyes shot up to hers, that look seemed to take on a texture, a color, a taste, it was so real.

Tangible, violent, like that brick with a note through her window—a Molotov cocktail of a thing.

Fiona was trying not to think about the feel of him hard against her on the couch, or his head on her lap, or him tickling her under the chin with a cheap rose.

Fiona had a wild thought that maybe the hellfire she was seeing in his eyes right now had always been there, and she was seeing differently. He walked away again, and it was just as well, because she didn’t want him to see this tally.

At the register, the pile of clothes was obscene—lace and silk spilling over the counter like secrets. The clerk rang up each item, holding up that scandalous scrap of string and fluff like it was a plain white tee.

One of Maurice’s sisters let out a sharp, “He gon’ be sick!” and that was all it took. They cackled like a coven over a shared joke, falling all over each other. “I feel sorry for that man,” Liza wheezed, wiping her eyes.

Just then, Maurice strolled back with a wide shoebox balanced on one hand like he was delivering treasure. His sisters descended like vultures.

“Ew, no.” His oldest sister wrinkled her nose.

“Why would you get anybody anime shoes?”

“And they’re last season too,” Deya added.

“Put them back,” they demanded in unison.

Unfazed, Maurice pulled open the box. “Fiona, what do you think?”

Fiona hesitated, not knowing who “Jimmy Choo” was—but recognized a Sailor Pluto boot when she saw one. Calf-length black leather, a perfect velvet bow, a gleaming crystal heart at the heel. She could kick serious butt in these.

“Wow,” she breathed. “These are perfect.”

It was an understatement.

“Fiona, you don’t have to be nice,” Liza insisted. “Maurice doesn’t know fashion—”

But Fiona’s eyes never left the boots. “No. Sailor Pluto is one of the four Guardians of the Solar System,” Fiona explained, stroking the velvet bow like it might vanish.

“And the Guardian of the Door of Space and Time. She was really lonely because she couldn’t…

” Fiona faltered, glancing up at Maurice, suddenly self-conscious.

“She couldn’t leave her post. She always experienced things… vicariously.”

Maurice watched her, softness flickering across his face. He gave her a small nod, the corner of his mouth slipping into a smile.

“Wear them out,” he said.