Page 31 of The Perfect Deception

“High school,” Dina replied, won­der­ing why that mat­tered.

Goth Girl gave her a once-over and turned to­ward a cloth­ing rack against the far wall. As Dina fol­lowed her, panic bub­bled in her chest. Most of the clothes she saw were in shades of mus­tard, olive, and rust. When Goth Girl pulled out a cream sheath with sub­tle ruf­fles along the hem, Dina’s jaw dropped.

“That’s per­fect,” Tracy said, grab­bing it from Goth Girl.

She had to ad­mit, it was lovely. But cream? Not ex­actly slim­ming. And the back had a huge cutout, which meant she couldn’t wear a bra.

“I need a bra, Tracy,” she whis­pered.

“No you don’t. Sticky Boobs!”

Goth Girl walked to the ac­ces­sory area and re­turned with a pack­age for Dina, who took it as her face went up in flames. They pointed her to­ward the dress­ing room and she obeyed with­out a sound, if only to get out of the awk­ward sit­u­a­tion.

Sticky Boobs.

She stared in dis­may at her re­flec­tion in the mir­ror. You’d think these things would be made for large-chested women, as they couldn’t af­ford to go with­out a bra. Ex­cept the mod­els on the boxes were al­ways waifs who looked as if they hadn’t even reached pu­berty yet. And, uh, how sticky was “sticky”? Sticky enough to defy grav­ity? God, she hoped so.

Once she read the di­rec­tions and fig­ured out how to ap­ply the sticky boobs, she picked up the dress. The ma­te­rial was soft and slid through her fin­gers. The ruf­fles cut against the bias were so­phis­ti­cated and the plung­ing back neck­line added el­e­gance. But on her? With a shrug, she put on the dress, let­ting it slide down her body and float into place.

Oy gevalt!

Who the heck was that woman in the mir­ror?

“Dina? Come on out!”

She blinked, notic­ing how her re­flec­tion hadn’t changed. Push­ing open the cur­tain, she ex­ited the dress­ing room.

Tracy and Goth Girl gasped.

“Oh my God, you look beau­ti­ful,” Tracy said. “Turn around!”

Dina obeyed, feel­ing like the bal­le­rina in a mu­sic box.

“You have to get this,” Tracy said.

Dina bit her lip. “I don’t know. I mean, the dress is lovely, but, is it me? I have plenty of ‘me’ dresses at home that I could wear…”

Tracy marched over and gripped her shoul­ders. “You are not wear­ing one of your old dresses to your high school re­union. You’re wear­ing this one.”

Goth Girl nod­ded her agree­ment. “It’s über stun­ning.”

Dina an­gled her­self so she could see her back. “But, it’s so…”

“Per­fect,” said Tracy.

“I don’t know.”

“Trust me. You want to wow the mean girls from high school and this is the dress to do it. Be­sides, Adam won’t be able to keep his hands off you.”

“Kim, can I talk to you a minute?” Adam stood out­side in the park­ing lot Fri­day evening.

Kim looked around and nod­ded. “What do you need, Adam?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I didn’t mean to put you in an awk­ward po­si­tion the other day, but I’m re­ally con­fused and was hop­ing you could help me. Why am I sud­denly the bad guy with the par­ale­gals?”

She opened her back door and stuffed her brief­case and purse in the back­seat of her mini­van. “We’re a tightknit group. We’re not al­ways treated well by some of the lawyers and we stick to­gether. What you did to Ash­ley re­ally got to us.”

“I swear to you, I didn’t blame her with­out cause. I gave her the mo­tion to be filed. I ac­tu­ally handed it to her be­fore I left and I clearly stated the dead­line.”