Chapter 3: Getting Dressed

Autumn forced herself not to cry in front of him. Maybe she could get a hat.

“It’s too different,” she said. “I was supposed to look sophisticated.”

“You do,” Ian said. Autumn didn’t believe him. “And you look younger, too.”

She did look younger. Younger and less like a punk. Whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen.

“You sure you don’t like it?” Ian asked. “Because we could go out and get you a wig.”

Maybe she should do that. She could buy some cool hair that would look good on her and never get any longer. Only, she couldn’t afford to. She couldn’t afford to waste her money on something like that.

Something she should have considered earlier. Like, before Ian had started cutting.

Damn it.

***

Autumn avoided the mirror on her way to her closet. Ian was already inside the closet, for once in his life. She hooked on a bra and walked over to join him.

Autumn loved her closet. It felt like a huge spacious walk in, the kind of place that really rich people have when they own tons of clothes. Closets that were more like spare bedrooms; walls of shoes and row after row of dresses, blouses, pants, and things that used to be living, breathing animals.

Autumn’s was just a group of four independently standing closet units. The kind you buy at Ikea. Six metal bars make up a little frame, another lays across that you hang shit on, and space at the bottom for shoes. All told, her huge closet had only cost her a hundred bucks.

But it still felt like a walk in. The way she had them arranged, she could walk in and stand among them. They were walls of clothes, making her feel like there was a separate room in an apartment that had none.

She looked around, trying to decide what clothes would be the best to wear. “What are you looking for?” Ian asked.

“What says ‘respectable’ but still ‘creative’?”

Ian looked around. The first rack was her rack of club clothes. They were designed to draw the eyes of the right people, and scare away the wrong ones. And they were designed so she could dance without being too hot. Ian lifted out a fishnet shirt. “You thinking about a career change?” He asked.

She gave him the finger.

He laughed and moved on to the next rack.

Next were her work clothes. Shoes that were comfortable to wear all night long, but that were still sexy for those few times when a guy spent the time to notice them as she walked down the bar. Maybe they had fetishes, maybe they didn’t; she didn’t know or care. All she knew was that the more attractive she looked at work, the better she was tipped. There were places she wasn’t willing to go, but not many. And the second rack of clothes was lined with places she was willing to go for those extra few bucks.

Ian glanced through this rack, commenting briefly on some of the shoes. Then he moved on to the next rack.

Ian pushed aside cargo pants, parachute skirts, jeans, t-shirts, and a few half-shirts. Then he stopped and pulled out a tube top. “Oh, honey,” he said. “Tell me you’ve never worn this in public.”

“I should have thrown that out a decade ago.”

“Sweetheart, you should have thrown it out before you ever bought it. Why do you have it anyway?”

Autumn didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. It was enough that it was there. She knew she should have thrown it away. She might be able to convince Ian that she was too embarrassed at owning it to throw it away. She might even convince him that she’d never worn it. But the truth—she pulled her eyes away from it and watched Ian moving down the rack.

Ian finally moved to the last, sparsely populated, rack. Actually, it was as full as the others. Only, it didn’t have its own system to it. “What do we have here?” Ian asked, pulling out a flower dress that had looked awful on her back when it did fit, ten pounds ago.

“Oh, god,” Autumn said. “Put that back.”

Ian laughed. “So what’s the system for this rack?”

“It’s supposed to be the formal rack.”

Ian pulled out a pair of jeans that had holes ripped in places that made it barely decent, and not at all formal. “That so?” He asked.

“Well, formal and other.” She blushed. “It’s become the overflow rack.”

“Uh huh.”

Ian pulled out a business suit. Autumn remembered how good it had looked on the rack at the store. And how great it had looked when she had tried it on.

“What about this?”

Then she remembered how hard it had been to breathe with it on. It wasn’t a corset. It was just small. “Too tight,” she said, hoping that was a nice way of saying things. She hated admitting that she was fat.

“Well what do you expect when you buy children’s sizes? Honey, you’re skinny, but you’re not a kid anymore. If it’s so tight, why’d you buy it?”

She shrugged. “Incentive to lose weight.”

“You don’t need to lose weight, Autumn.”

She laughed. “That’s sweet of you. But such a lie.”

He shrugged. Ian knew the futility of trying to convince Autumn that she was skinny. Which, of course, she was.

Autumn looked at the rack, further down from where Ian was still flipping. There was a white button down shirt that seemed out of place. She pulled it on. It was kind of silky. Not really silk, but some other really good material she couldn’t have named for a thousand dollars. It fit, but it wasn’t quite cut right. Long in the arms too. But it looked good.

She had it on before she realized what the problem was.

It was a man’s shirt. It had been Derek’s. She hesitated, almost ripped it off herself, almost tore it up and threw it in a fire. But then she stopped. She smelled it. Didn’t smell like him at all. And it felt so good. And it wasn’t like he was going to come take it back. It was her shirt now. And, even rolling up the sleeves a bit, it still covered all the tattoos.

Ian nodded. “I like it,” he said. “Very artsy, but sophisticated.”

“What should I wear with it?” She had dropped the towel, leaving her in just the man’s shirt. If Ian hadn’t been gay, she would have expected him to blush. As it was, he just turned back to the clothes.

“Black pants,” he said.

She liked that. Black is slimming. And it’s a great way to show off your ass, if you get the right kind. A pair of black pants that’s tight at the waist but loose on the legs. That’s the best kind. It shows off the ass without looking like a cat suit. So it doesn’t seem like it’s trying to show off anything.

She slipped into the pants and walked over to the mirror. “I need shoes,” she said.

Ian nodded, looked down at the floor. “Not high heels,” he said. “All you’ve got is whore heels.”

“Hey, fuck you.”

He laughed. “They’re not formal. That’s all I’m saying.”

“What about boots?”

Ian shook his head. “Sweetie, with that hair, you look enough like a butch dyke as it is.”

“How about boots with heels?”

“That could work,” Ian said. “The heel look, the boot comfort. Goes with the pants. I like it.”

She had one pair, which came just above her ankles, but looked like they went at least up to the knee, that were comfortable and good looking. They were in her work closet.

She didn’t have anything to do with her hair. There was a thin sheen of hair, but that was it. Maybe a hat wasn’t a bad idea. A beret maybe. Or one of those golf hats, the kind that guys always wore backwards. They were the only hats you could do that with besides baseball caps, and they were the only ones that looked good backwards, period. They almost looked better backwards than forwards.

She was moving for the hats when Ian pulled her back. “No,” he said. “You cut it all off. Why hide it? Live up to it, admit it. Put it out there. If people don’t like it, then fuck them.”

She smiled. This was one of the reasons she loved Ian so much. “Okay,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Do I look okay?” She asked.

He shrugged. “I’d hire you,” he said.