"Good."
He took the dresses from me and set them on the counter, and the cashier—a young woman with purple hair and a nose ring—rang them up without comment.
"Is that everything?"
I looked at the display behind the counter. Hair bows. Dozens of them, in every color, attached to cards with little metal clips.
"And those."
I pointed.
"The bows?"
"Yes."
Matt looked at the bows, then at me, then back at the bows.
"How many?"
"All of them."
He didn't argue. He just nodded at the cashier, and she swept the bows into a bag, and Matt paid with a card that didn't have my name on it.
The toy store was across from the dress store.
I saw it while we were walking back to the entrance—a window full of stuffed animals, arranged in a rainbow of fur and fabric. There were bears and bunnies and cats and dogs, and in the center, sitting on a little chair, was a bear.
Brown. Soft. With button eyes and a stitched smile.
I stopped walking.
"Bunny?"
Matt's voice, from somewhere behind me.
"You okay?"
"I want the bear."
"The bear?"
"The one in the window. The brown one. With the button eyes."
He looked at the bear. Looked at me. Looked back at the bear.
"Okay."
He walked into the store without another word, and I watched through the window as he approached the display, lifted the bear from its chair, and carried it to the register. Hepaid with the same card, and the cashier wrapped the bear in tissue paper and placed it in a bag, and Matt carried the bag back to me.
"Here."
He held it out.
"For you."
I took the bag. The tissue paper rustled. The bear was soft, softer than anything I'd touched in weeks, and I held it against my chest and felt something loosen in my ribcage.
"What are you going to name it?"
