Lily White Lies Read Free Page B

fate.  She believed the wise lived in caution while the fool hearted lived in the moment...
     
     
    We had been at Miz Blaine’s Bridal shop for close to three hours.  I had shimmied in and out of more than a dozen dresses and was no closer to deciding on one than I was when I had walked in.  One made me look like two of me, one flattened my barely B-cups and one was made with so much satin and lace, I swear, it weighed more than I did. 
    Helen, my overly eager clerk, said she had one she thought I might like and went to retrieve it.  At this point, I had nothing to lose.  It could turn out to be the ugliest dress in the world and I’d be no worse off than what I was right now.  Ordering the cake and the flowers had gone rather smoothly and I should have known I would have to pay for the ease of those tasks somewhere along the way.
    Cory’s attention span was about as long as a short city block and by this point, she had already switched her interest from silk and lace to the assortment of construction workers gathered across the street, offering commentary such as, ‘nice package’ or ‘would you look at the arms on him,’ as she waited for me to model another gown. 
    Charlotte had spent the last hour fielding phone calls from her son, Bobby, who wanted to know when she would be picking him up.  He usually spent Saturday’s with Kevin and seemed to enjoy his time there, but she could always tell when boredom set in by the frequency of his calls and the urgency in his voice.
    “Here we go, dear!” 
    As Helen requested my attention, I noticed she was tapping a foot anxiously.  I had stopped waiting in the dressing room between each new gown after the first eight or nine and now sat on a couch in the middle of the lobby, wearing no more than my white bra and panties.  I thought the chance of any man walking through the front door was slim, assuming all men hated this sort of thing as much as Brian did. 
    I obediently followed her to the cubicle where I would try on yet another dress.
    “This one is definitely you.  From the minute you walked in to the shop, I could see you in this gown.  Of course, I wouldn’t have brought it out had you found one you liked among your choices, but somehow I knew you wouldn’t.  I’m pretty good at judging this type of thing after all these years.”
    After twelve or so gowns and three hours of standing around, I was no more in the mood for Helen’s chatter than I was for sex with Brian.  Funny, I thought.  It was more than eight hours before I would turn in for the night and the thought of sex was already darkening my mood. 
    She unbuttoned what seemed like hundreds of tiny, pearl buttons sewn to the back of the dress, and held it out when she was through. 
    “Okay, do you want to step into it?”
    An honest reply would have been no, but I stepped into the dress carefully, while I held my hair back, out of her way. 
    As Helen began the task of buttoning, I admired myself in the mirror.  I wasn’t certain yet whether I liked it, but from what I could see, it held more promise than any of the previous gowns had.  I turned my head toward Helen as I felt her hands come to a stop less than halfway through the buttoning.
    No matter how hard she tried to keep from staring, in the mirror I watched as her eyes involuntarily returned to the scar that ran from my left shoulder to the top of my right buttock.  It hadn’t occurred to me earlier that the ugly and unexpected scar might make her uncomfortable.  I had lived with it for so many years; I often forgot it was there.  And giving thought to the scar meant giving thought to how I got it so I found it easier and much less painful to forget.
    “Oh, I’m so sorry!  If I had—I wouldn’t have chosen a scoop back—maybe you’ll want to choose another...”  She timidly began to slide the dress from my shoulder. 
    Taking hold of her hands, I calmly said, “Helen, please finish buttoning this for