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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Kim, this mall is way, way out of my price range. I feel like I’m going to be frisked by security if I look at something the wrong way.” I said, trying to keep up with Kim. Damn the long, luxurious legs on that woman.

“They’d have to come through me first…and you’re a pretty white girl, Vi, you could steal something, and they’d be like ‘oh sweetheart just pay us when you can’ and they’d probably take you out to ice cream after.”

“Valid.” I finally found relief when Kim stopped in front of a Prada store that had a particularly stunning charcoal grey dress with ink black details in the window.

“What do you think?” Kim said, analyzing the dress.

“You look great in anything, so I’d say you’d look great in that as well.” I smiled. Even before this new and now a little concerning obsession, I always thought Kim was effortlessly beautiful.

“I really did a disservice to myself by not keeping you around these last ten years, Vi…” Kim turned away from the dress, losing interest in it, I guess .

“It was my fault, I should have kept up.”

“You’re doing it again…” Kim looked back at me with a tinge of disappointment I’d seen before.

Kim was the one that kept me confident, and maybe her absence in the past ten years had gotten me to the low point I had found myself before, well, everything Yara, Emma, and my wonderful new friends had rescued me from.

I had a tendency to blame myself when things went wrong…or not even when they went wrong, just when they went a different way than I’d planned. I didn’t dwell on the past now as much as I had a year ago, but the moments still snuck up on me. Now that Kim was here to call me out on it, maybe they’d be fewer still.

But Kim never really dwelled on my self-pity or worry, or let me do it either. Her mind was way too quick to move onto something else before any of that could set in, so in the moment I was trying to figure out some way to delve deeper into apologizing for apologizing, Kim had whisked me past a couple other stores before stopping in front of another immaculately staged storefront.

I always loved how stores like this created fantasy dioramas in such a small space, how intricate and involved they could be. Sure, they were ultimately about selling clothes, but these kinds of scenes were art unto themselves, selling the fantasy of what the clothes made the wearer feel, not just how they would look on them.

This display at the Loewe boutique was like the inside of my brain, though. Pink cotton candy clouds cradling shiny leather bags with gold accents, shimmery iridescent chains trailing down from the clouds and pooling like chrome serpents on the powder blue floor. Pink and violet hydrangeas covered the top of the scene like a floral dome, directing the eye downward toward some of the most gorgeous dresses I’d ever seen.

“Now that, for you…” Kim said, her long crimson red nails glinting in the sun. “Yo u have to…” Kim was pointing at the one in the center, a pale blue sleeveless dress with a bubble hem that billowed out, teasing just below the knee.

“Kim, two weeks ago, I was collecting unemployment, I’m not sure I’m ready to be investing in haute couture quite yet, but I appreciate the thought.” I smiled, looking down, trying to take my focus off of the dress because it did look utterly perfect.

“I didn’t say anything about you buying the dress, Vi…” Kim looked at me and scrunched up her cherubic face. “Also, this is pret-a-porter…it’s for rich people, not celebrities.”

Where this woman who I watched throughout college wear sweatpants and Target tank tops exclusively gained such impeccable fashion knowledge I had no clue, but it was charming as hell.

“It’s probably thousands?—“

“Vi.” Kim held her hand up to stop me. “Don’t say another thing about the price. The price doesn’t matter, what does matter is how good it would look on you…” Kim playfully grabbed my left arm and walked her fingers up to my elbow, “…show off these tattoos that the Vi that I used to know wouldn’t even consider…”

OK, this was flirting, right? My brain wasn’t just so clouded by my newfound lust for Kim that I was interpreting innocuous things as romantic affection, it couldn’t be. The way she held my forearm, her strong fingers pressing into the hollow of my wrist, the pricks of sensation as her nails walked up my skin, the way her lips seemed to tremble slightly when she talked about my tattoos. Listen, I know I’m a horny person, sometimes too much so, but I had no other way to classify this as some kind of sign.

“Call it a signing bonus, I don’t know. You just need to at the very least try it on.” Kim tugged on my arm, urging me. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and back in college or even before it had gotten me into more than a little trouble, but Kim was pretty successful at getting me to do what she wanted when she deployed the full charm offensive.

“Alright, fine…” I pushed away from Kim and walked toward the door of the boutique.

“This dressing room is bigger than my first apartment here in LA.”

“The people coming here, can you imagine if they were inconvenienced in even the smallest way by something as shocking as a cramped changing room?” Kim put her purse down on the plush velvet seat of the chair next to her.

I pondered the dress on the rack that was wheeled in here a minute ago by the very, very friendly clerk. God, it was beyond gorgeous and I knew it would look amazing on me, but it still felt part of a world that I was never really exposed to.

But I knew Kim wouldn’t let me delay this any longer, so I unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them down my legs. “Are you going to just…be in here for this?” I said, choosing to say this to Kim while I was bent over in the simple black thong I wore that made these jeans look fucking great.

“I’ve seen it all before, Vi, it’s not like we didn’t shower together every day for three years.”

Yes, but back then I didn’t have a massive crush on you, and I didn’t just yesterday fuck my girlfriend while fantasizing what it would be like with you

“You don’t have to stare…” I grinned, because that’s exactly what I wanted her to do right now.

“But I can?”

“If you start throwing singles at me, maybe…” I pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it on top of the jeans and unhooked my bra, putting it in the same pile .

“Vi, what the fuck are those?!” Kim said, loud enough that I’m sure the clerks heard it.

“What?” I said. I mean, I knew what she was talking about, but I wanted to make her work for it.

“Who is this woman that swooped in and replaced the Violet I knew? The tattoos are one thing, but…pierced nipples? Vi?” Kim raised an eyebrow, but I noticed she didn’t avert her gaze from my tits.

“They’re relatively new…” I plucked at them a little, adjusting the bars so they were re-centered.

“Did it hurt?”

“Well, a woman took a big needle and lanced it through my nipple, so what do you think?” I held my breasts up from the bottom, I guess presenting them to Kim for some reason. “It wasn’t that bad, and…I think the end result looks good.”

“It…umm…yes, it does.” Kim said. She finally broke her gaze from me and folded her hands in her lap. It took a lot to get Kim nervous and flustered, but I guess the piercings were enough to do it.

I turned to the rack and pulled the dress off, then stepped into it. I reached around my back and no matter how flexible I was, there were things I couldn’t accomplish.

“Kim…a little help?” I looked back and saw Kim was busy on her phone. Damn, my boobs must have done a whole lot to knock her completely off balance.

“Oh, yeah, of course.” Kim stood up and walked to me, and slid the zipper up my back.

I took a step to the side, so I was in front of the mirror, and I almost shed a tear when it all came into view. I knew the dress would be beautiful, but I had no idea how perfect it would look on me. The top portion hugged my curves perfectly, and the cut of the sleeves showed every bit of my witch tattoo that I got a few Halloweens ago. The skirt started high on my waist and trailed down, billowing and stop ping precisely above my knee. It’s like it was made for me.

“Oh my god, Vi, you look so hot…girl, you are just…a vision…” Kim held my shoulders and twisted me around in the mirror a little. I held back a happy tear…this was the kind of thing that not long ago, I would have tried it on and thought it was too revealing, or that you could see the creases in my armpit, or that it would only look good if I didn’t wear a bra, because that Vi would never be so bold as to not wear a bra, especially if it was in a dress where someone could gasp see her nipples if things lined up the right way.

“You don’t have to buy it, Kim, it’s cute enough to just try it on.”

“Vi, I’m going to say this nicely, but shut the fuck up. There’s no way you’re leaving here without this.” Kim continued to look up and down at my reflection, and I couldn’t blame her.

“You win…” I shrugged, knowing that arguing against a foregone conclusion was a waste of time. “Zipper?”

Kim pulled the zipper down and then lightly brushed the fabric from my shoulders, taking the dress down for me. I stepped out of it and turned around to face Kim, who took the dress and somewhat haphazardly tossed it against the gold clothes rack.

“Can I…admit something to you, Vi?” Kim said, her lips dark and glistening in the even light of the dressing room.

“Sure.”

“I think…back in college, when I was setting you up with Lucia…maybe it was a defense mechanism. I still don’t know if I’m…into women, or anything like that, but, I can’t take my eyes off of you, Vi, ever since we reconnected.”

So it was flirting.

“You don’t have to take your eyes off of me…and I wouldn’t really mind you putting your hands on me…” I giggled a little.

“But, I mean…Emma? You two are…?”

If this wasn’t an achingly tender moment, I would have burst out laughing at the idea that Emma and I were practicing anything even in the same realm as monogamy, but I held it in.

“We are, umm…very, very open about things.” I said, still stifling the laugh. “If you’re so interested in the piercings, maybe…investigate a little?”

“You’re…you’re sure?”

I reached down and took Kim’s hand, moving it to my breast. “Very.”

“Oh my god…” Kim’s hand shook as she closed it around my breast, her fingers twisting the piercing slightly, sending a thousand shivers down my back. My nipple hardened in response to the touch, making it even more sensitive.

“Fuck…that feels good…” I said, a hoarse whisper, wanting to not do anything too unexpected to scare Kim out of the moment.

“It’s so warm.” Kim seemed stunned and overwhelmed by the idea of touching another woman, and I wasn’t going to prevent her from doing it as long as she wanted. But, after a few seconds, Kim sighed and pulled away, and I ached for her to keep going. “…but I should stop.”

“You don’t have to…” I said.

“But I do…” Kim let the tension hang in the air, but I knew not to push further.