Page 42 of Between Love and Loathing
There was just one last dress to try on, and I knew it was the one I’d love but also the one I shouldn’t have even considered with its price tag. I chewed my cheek and tried to figure out what to do right as I heard the old-fashioned bell over the boutique’s door jingle.
My heart sank when I heard the saleswoman squeal, “Oh my God. Natya Fitch. Weren’t you two just an item?”
“Just?” A soft laugh sounded on the other side of my curtain. “We’ve always been more than that, right, Dom?”
Her voice sounded like a kitten’s purr, purely sexual when she said his name, almost like it could lull you into a trance. And wow, had the saleswoman’s tone changed. She sounded like Natya was royalty and she wanted to cater to them both as a couple.
My heart raced in the fitting room as I listened to that woman’s voice, soft and calm, tell Dominic how she’d so missed seeing him.
We were supposed to see her at the reopening together. Now wasn’t the time for a show. Yet, I shook in that fitting room, contemplating what to do. She might have been his ex, but she needed to know who I was. Fake or not, it was time to make an introduction. It could have been his words before to own it, it could have been the saleswoman already making me feel less than, or it could have been my heart suddenly feeling tired of being walked on over and over.
I was going to lay down a boundary. He’d asked for this, and now he was going to get it. I grabbed the dress I was saving to try on. I might have loved color, but I understood how nudes and black lace swirling strategically over fabric could be used to somebody’s advantage. I slid the skintight fabric up my body and felt the weight of it. With rhinestones and beads threaded through the lace, the Valentino dress reminded me of red carpet showstoppers. The plunging neckline and high thigh slit hinted at the confidence in a woman who wore it too.
I took a deep breath, trying to channel that confidence. Then I opened the door and looked at my fake boyfriend, staring at his beautiful ex. She was so beautiful she was almost statuesque. She wore black and white, exactly how he would have wanted, and the lines on her pantsuit sculpted lethally around her to demand respect for her beauty.
Every angle of her face was precisely in the right spot, her high cheekbones, her straight chestnut-brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, and her dark eyes shadowed perfectly to add a sort of mystery. Her gaze caught mine, and we stared at one another. No part of me ever really stood up to people unless it was Dominic and me fighting over my bakery. Here though, I didn’t break eye contact, and I didn’t look away as I cleared my throat, hoping Dominic would turn to face me, hoping that I wouldn’t be made a fool of.
When he did, I didn’t break eye contact with her. I just asked, “Dominic, could you zip my dress?”
Natya narrowed her eyes and the hand on her small designer clutch clenched as the other that was on Dominic’s arm tightened. She leaned in to say softly to him, “To think I was missing you and then you showed up to our favorite boutique. Destiny, my love, or the universe is trying to tell us something, no?”
A small gasp escaped my lips. He’d brought me here knowing it was her favorite place? Was I the fool? Or had he made me one by not even telling me that?
“Natya.” Dominic shook his head, his muscles coiled even when he shrugged her hand off him. “The universe doesn’t speak. So, excuse me, my girlfriend needs a bit of help.”
She clucked her tongue and then gave me a tight-lipped smile. “The universe always speaks, Dom. But I’m glad you’ve found someone new. Your name?”
She stepped toward me and held out a hand. I took it even as Dominic walked up to me and put his arm around my shoulders. “I’m Clara.”
“Ah, Clara. Be good to him. He and I … Well, I still love the fool.” She chuckled like this was some small girl talk. “And we’ll always have something between us, right, Dom?”
He didn’t answer her or say goodbye as she walked off to shop and he steered me into the fitting room.
He might have been my fake boyfriend, he might have been a man I was supposed to hate, but the pain of seeing him standing there with his ex and the look on his face when she said they’ll always share something … that was very, very real.
DOMINIC
Ididn’t give Clara a moment to respond to Natya because I saw the emotion on Clara’s face all of a sudden. Instead of me dwelling on Natya’s words, I yanked Clara into the fitting room and closed the curtain. “Don’t engage with her.”
Clara narrowed her eyes at me, and I knew she was gearing up for a debate. “She’s instigating, and you know it.”
“Of course she is. That’s what she does. She wants attention, and if we give it to her—”
“Is there still something between you two?”
“No.” I said it loud and fast, mostly because I didn’t want to share my heartache but also because I was starting to believe it.
Clara scoffed and then whisper-yelled at me, “Don’t lie for my benefit, Dominic. Better that I know what I’m dealing with than you lie for truly no reason. I don’t care one way or the other.”
“Is that right?” I growled because if her ex had come waltzing in the way Natya did, I’d have cared. I’d have dragged her to the fitting room and fucked her loud enough for him to hear. “You’re telling me you don’t care if I want to have relations with my ex?”
“It’s your life.” She stepped back, crossing her arms.
The dress bunched her cleavage together and my hand shot out to drag across her collarbone and down against the edge of the fabric. “You know,this, between us, whether it’s fake or not, it’s exclusive, Clara.”
Her breath hitched as I dipped my finger between her tits. She stepped back, but I followed her, and she lifted her chin to keep my gaze. “I didn’t agree to that.”
I hooked a finger on the V of that dress and yanked her forward. “You’d better agree to it now, little fighter.”
