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“Did you want me to call you back?” Audrey asked. “We’ll be at the house in five.”
“No, it’s fine,” Maggie said and resolved not to mention her underwear or the fact that her boyfriend was fake. She and Cal probably couldn’t recover from that kind of sharing. “If you don’t want to call it a makeover, can we agree I need a wardrobe update? Refresh? Hail Mary?”
“You’re being dramatic, but if you want new clothes, then I’ll drop Cal off and come grab you. I never turn down a shopping experience. I’ll see you in fifteen. Be ready.”
Maggie stared at her hanging t-shirts and hoodies. She grabbed the shirt she’d worn to the fair and reached for another nondescript pair of black leggings. Together they were nothing special, but a sliver of her pale stomach showed between the twist at the shirt’s hem and the top of pants. The outfit was like the clothes she saw on the college students who walked past the store, so that probably counted for something. After today, she’d have a wardrobe from this decade meant to knock Dean on his bite-able butt and enough sports bras to convince him she was a regular exerciser.
Audrey pulled the car up exactly twenty minutes later—she couldn’t arrive on time any more than her brother—and handed Maggie a small hair clip covered in tiny books. Maggie lifted one tiny cover with her fingernail.
“You’ve been pushing your hair out of your face a lot, and you’ve had a rough day at work this week.”
Maggie turned the clip over in her hands. “Where did you even find this?”
“Oh.” Audrey bit her lip and pulled the car away from the curb. “Etsy.” She said and merged into traffic.
Audrey drove them both to the local mall. It was mostly dead inside, and as they walked through the multilevel atrium, a fountain burbling between two rows of massage chairs, Maggie marveled at the fact that all malls smelled exactly the same—like recycled air, vinyl, and popcorn.
“I haven’t been to a mall since high school,” Maggie admitted as they passed a small group of women all power-walking with their hand weights and buzzing with conversation. Maggie was pretty sure their mouths were moving faster than their legs, and they still almost knocked her flat. Audrey had the common sense to get out of their way.
“I figured it was our best bet.” Audrey said and pulled her sandy blonde hair into a high ponytail. “I wasn’t sure what you were actually looking for.”
“Workout clothes,” Maggie said.
“You don’t work out.”
“And some other stuff, too. I’m pretty sure most of my wardrobe came from my last mall trip.”
“That’s sad.” Audrey pointed to the nearest shop window with headless mannequins dressed in neon Lycra. “We’ll start there, and you can tell me where this idea came from. Dressing you up is usually like pulling teeth, and since you’re more than your clothes, I stopped trying to change your style in eighth grade.”
Audrey pulled Maggie through the store’s entrance and to a rack of slippery leggings. The fluorescent lights made all the neon colors even brighter. Maggie liked color. She specifically liked black, and gray, and navy blue, and white. None of those seemed like an option in this store. She thumbed through a few of the subtler colored pants as Audrey started pulling some off the rack to hold up against Maggie’s waist.
“Dean took me running,” Maggie said, and Audrey almost dropped the leggings in her hands.
“Was someone chasing you?” Audrey shoved the bright fuchsia pants back into the rack to study up another. She held each pair up to the light as if they were diamonds she was inspecting for flaws or imperfections. “You don’t run, Maggie.”
“I know that. You know that.” Maggie took the purple pair Audrey shook in her face. “And thanks to my complete lack of sporty clothes, your brother knows it, too.”
Audrey paused and raised a brow at Maggie. “Why? What did you wear?”
Maggie looked down at her black cotton leggings and pinched them away from her hip. “I wore these, and my one sports bra, it only had a tiny hole near the neckline, and a t-shirt.”
“That’s not awful, Maggie,” Audrey said. “At least you didn’t wear sweatpants or jeans.”
“After the third time he told me we could pick another activity, it was pretty obvious he knew I was miserable and definitely not a runner.”
“Why didn’t you pick something else?” Audrey moved to a table covered in sports bras.
She hadn’t done that because Dean had seemed so excited to go on a run together. One thing Maggie was not good at was changing her mind after she’d agreed to something. Or saying no to people she cared about. Saying no was one of her anxiety triggers. She didn’t panic at the word itself. It was the thought of disappointing whoever had asked her for something. Maggie and her therapist worked extensively on knowing and enforcing boundaries, and Maggie also had an arsenal of breathing exercises.
Not that she’d said "yes" to avoid a panic. Exercise itself wasn’t a hard limit for her, and Maggie had been pretty sure Dean was going for a run with or without her, so it was better to suffer through a little extra time in his company—his company really was a good time—than to cut the date short, even as her lungs seized up and her throat stung after about five minutes. By the time she stumbled back into her apartment, her blisters had blisters, and she’d had to soak her feet in an Epsom salt bath from Mrs. Weller.
“It doesn’t matter,” Maggie said, “Because I may have tried to send him off my deceptive trail by saying my workout clothes were all in the wash.”
“First, this is Dean.” Audrey held a lime green bra up against Maggie’s chest, “So I’m not really sure why it matters. You aren’t trying to impress him, but at least he knows you do laundry.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “He knew I was lying, Aud. His clothes were in my washing machine and there conveniently wasn’t a load of sports bras and running shorts in there because I didn’t know he’d suggest running, like for fun.”
A muffled snort snuck out of Audrey as she valiantly tried to hold back the rest of her laughter. She shook her head, blond wisps escaping her thick ponytail to flutter around her temples. “It’s a good thing your relationship is fake,” Audrey said and handed Maggie a cropped top with so many straps Maggie wasn’t sure she’d be able to get it on by herself. At least it was black. “You and Dean are just too different. The only board game Dean enjoys is Chutes and Ladders, even though it’s entirely luck.”
