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“Wow. I never knew that.”
That wasn’t the only story like that about Rush. He often helped people in need. It was one of the things I loved about him.
She came around from behind the register. “So what brings you in today?”
I patted my belly. “Well, as you can see…I’m pregnant. I can’t fit into any of my clothes anymore. And with this being the only maternity shop in town…I figured this was the place to be for expanding people like me. I need to find at least three staples that I can rotate. I’m a bit tight on funds, so stuff I can wear with a lot of different things.”
She rubbed her chin as she walked toward the back of the store. “Okay, so then we’ll mainly want to stick with bottoms. With tops you don’t really need to buy maternity…you can go to Target and just get some looser fitting shirts.”
“That’s true. So maybe a couple of pairs of pants to start, not sure what selection of jeans you have?”
Naomi walked me around and helped choose a pair of dark blue jeans, a pair of basic black pants, and some maternity shorts. Even though I said I wasn’t going to buy a shirt, I couldn’t help picking one off the rack to try on. It was periwinkle blue with a drawstring at the back.
“Let me set you up in a dressing room,” she said, leading me into one of the back stalls.
I slid the curtain open and hung my items on a hook.
“Holler if you need anything,” she said.
“Thanks.” I closed the curtain.
I blew out a breath as I just stared at myself in the mirror for a bit. Slipping my dress over my head, I was truly shocked to see how much I had popped. I rarely took the time to look at myself this closely—or at least not in this kind of stark, fluorescent lighting. It was really clear how fast this baby was growing inside of me. Depending on my mood, I could either look at myself and feel beautiful or fat. Whenever I thought about Rush, I felt beautiful. He made me look at all of the changes my body was going through as a good thing. Not sure I would be able to see the positive in all of this if he didn’t constantly remind me how hot he was for me. Even the thought of that made my entire body tingle. Rush had control of my body even in his absence.
Good thoughts of Rush would always somehow evolve into worrisome ones. It was hard for me to feel fully confident about where things were going with us. Even though his behavior toward me lately made me optimistic, there was one major factor that caused me to doubt everything: he wasn’t trying to have sex with me. It was the one thing he was holding back. It was clearly a conscious effort not to, given how horny he was. And it spoke volumes. Now that I knew he hadn’t slept with anyone else, despite how much of a relief that was, it made me even more amazed and curious as to why he hadn’t tried anything. Of course, that was enough to make me doubt all of the optimistic signs that he’d been showing lately.
Shaking that thought away, I slipped on the maternity jeans and somehow squeezed my ass into them. Once around my waist, they were pretty comfortable. I squatted to feel whether the material was stretchy enough. After I took them off, I tried on the other items before concluding that I’d be better off getting an extra pair of pants in a different color rather than the cute shirt.
Exiting the dressing room, I reluctantly returned the shirt to its rightful place on the rack, and Naomi helped me pick out a lighter pair of jeans in my size.
We took everything to the register. It seemed to be taking a long time for her to ring me up. She swiped the card several times and muttered something under her breath.
Naomi frowned. “You don’t have another credit card, do you?”
“No. Why?”
“This one was declined. I tried it three times.”
I was starting to sweat. Lately, I’d been charging a lot of baby stuff I was going to need in the future. It wasn’t that hard to believe that my card could be near its limit. The payment I’d just made two days ago probably hadn’t been applied yet.
Feeling embarrassed, I said, “You know what? I might have to call them and straighten it out. Don’t worry about it. Now that I know what I like…I’ll just come back and pick them up another time.”
“Are you sure? I could probably do like a layaway plan if you want to put some money down.”
The word layaway brought me back to flashbacks of going to T.J. Maxx as a child and depositing money toward my school clothes with my dad. That felt like just yesterday. Somehow pink and purple corduroys came to mind. Dad always found a way to get me what I needed even if it took some time.
