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She needed a shy, gentle man who held her hand for six months before he kissed her, and virtually proposed before he took her to bed. Squeezing her hand was Mr Larger Than Life, who couldn’t read her well constructed thought bubble, who’d barrelled through her run and hide defences and persisting in thinking there was more to her than rank ordinary.
Damon paid the driver. He used a fifty. It had a fold in the corner like a tick. His fingers had moved other notes with different folds lines. He pocketed the change, got out and held the door for her. She moved beside him and he took her arm.
“Lead on, Gunga Din.”
That had to be a movie reference, but it was lost on her, until he said, “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant,” in Cary Grant’s voice.
She walked them to the fashion precinct of the centre, which meant navigating escalators. Maybe she could find a dress she could afford. It had to be one she had shoes for. Mentally rifling through her shoe collection made her forget to tell Damon they’d hit the top of the first escalator. He walked into her side, making them both stumble.
A voice behind them said, “Idiot, watch what you’re doing.” A man with a baby in a stroller was right on their heels.
Damon caught her in a hug. “Yeah, about those moving footpaths.”
“I’m so sorry.” She said it to Damon and the father’s back as he moved around them.
“My fault. I can tell when it levels off, I was too busy thinking about you.”
She looked up at his face. Sunglasses gone now, big smile, dimple depressed, a flick of hair fallen over his forehead. He shouldn’t say things like that. They were meaningless, and yet she wanted so badly for them to be true.
She picked a boutique that had a sale sign in the window and then she wasn’t sure what to do with him. “Do you want to wait in a cafe? I can do this quickly.”
“What, and let you wriggle out of this deal? No chance.”
“I’m not wriggling. We’re standing outside a dress shop.”
“Better not be Target.”
She looked towards the shop. It was an explosion of pink and teal. “You want to come in there with me?”
“More than I want to be dumped on my own.”
He wasn’t going to do this quietly, like those incredible boyfriends and husbands who waited patiently, silently with a newspaper or phone screen in hand, out of place with their hefty maleness among the floaty fabrics and feminine shop fittings.
“You’re not going to behave, are you?”
“I’m going to manipulate the situation so I get what we want.”
She could stop right now. What he wanted, what she wanted, they were never going to be the same thing long-term.
He pulled her hand so she stepped closer. He kissed her forehead. “It’s just a dress and I want to do this. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Let me play.”
It was a Pretty Woman moment, without the thigh-high boots and the sex. What the hell. “Pay to play, Damon.”
He grinned. “Music to my ears.”
The shop assistants fussed over him. Installed him on a plush ottoman, brought him iced tea. They fussed over her as well. Dress after dress being brought to her in the change room. All of them her size, most of them too revealing for comfort, only one of them red.
The red one was ankle length, a split in the side front seam to her mid-thigh, vee neck and back, ribbon straps. It fit perfectly if she stood on her toes. It was also the simplest and the cheapest. She redressed and went to him with it in her hands.
“It’s red, it’s long.” She felt awkward describing it, but he was paying. “The fabric is nice.”
“It’s not the right one.”
She grunted. “I’m the one wearing it.”
“And you’ll have chosen the cheapest.”
“That shouldn’t matter if it’s want I want to wear.”
