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She realized it in the mall.
It was just her and Sveta, window-shopping and talking and just being friends. They were passing by a lingerie store, with those massive pictures of women wearing their products. The displays had always struck Victoria as tasteless.
“Doesn’t it strike you as over the top?” she asked Sveta, gesturing at the 15-foot tall poster.
Sveta nodded, hummed. “Sex sells, right?” she said. “And it’s not as jarring as when they try to sell you hot dogs like that.”
Victoria laughed. “Sure, but it’s just… so there.” She knew she was staring like a teenage boy, but she was considering distantly if this was the kind of place Ashley shopped. Ashley made it look good, but Victoria still felt like she was faking it whenever she wore lacy underwear.
“It’s a nice fantasy,” Sveta said. “But I don’t think I’d ever be confident enough to buy something like that. Not like I need bras, technically.” She tapped her chest with her knuckles, making a dull ceramic sound.
“And anyone who would judge you for it is a jackass,” Victoria replied, because all that practice avoiding names had to be good for something.
They did a loop of the mall like that, hand in hand, debating jean trends and the merits of chokers. It was when they passed the accursed store again that Victoria found herself slowing down, staring.
She’d thought she’d understood all of this, at one point. It was another kind of armor, another way to be beautiful enough that people defaulted to ‘awe’ instead of ‘fear’. Then she’d met Ashley. Then she’d met Ashley, and seen first hand just how much beauty meant to her. She found honest-to-god joy in her negligees, just as much as she found joy in her oddly erotic wall art. And Victoria just didn’t.
“I won’t make it weird if you don’t,” Sveta said, walking towards the entrance.
Step one: don’t make it weird. Victoria could do that. Don’t think about whether she found these women hot, because the sooner she figured that out, the sooner she’d have to consider telling her family something about it, and the idea of listening to Mark stumble through a coming out was just exhausting. (Thinking about Ashley in things like this was allowed, because Ashley almost certainly shopped here anyway, and they were whatever they were.)
Sveta stared at a rack of thongs, and Victoria couldn’t help but feel lost. What was the point of any of this? No one would ever see it. Dean had gotten plenty red when she just took her shirt off, regardless of details. And Ashley –
Well, Ashley wasn’t shy about her preferences, and she’d never talked about this. She seemed more interested in nudity, at least on Victoria.
And no, she was not blushing in the thong aisle, because she had just promised Sveta not to make it weird.
“They seem… impractical,” Victoria said, staring at the see-through thong Sveta was pointing at. The amount of shaving alone to pull something like that off – and all for one other person?
“Technically,” Sveta said, “it wouldn’t be. For me.”
Oh! Oh, she’d missed the point of this entirely. “You should try it on then,” Victoria encouraged. “No harm in looking, right?”
That was the encouragement Sveta needed, and she headed off to the dressing room with a couple of things to try.
Unfortunately, this left Victoria alone.
She reached out and felt one of the thongs – disappointingly scratchy. Polyester, too. Not breathable in the slightest. In an effort not to look lost and end up approached by a store employee, she started wandering. There were sheer black stockings that made Victoria think of Ashley, but she resisted picking them up. No need to make Ashley think she was weird.
Sveta came out of the dressing rooms, just one thong still in hand. “Thank you.”
“Yeah,” Victoria said. “Uh- this might be weird, but – why?”
Sveta gestured for Victoria to elaborate.
“Why care about things like this? That no one sees?”
Sveta took the time to think about that, all the way through her interaction with the cashier, and Victoria regretted failing step one. “For me,” she said. “I want to feel pretty. Even if it’s just me, all alone in my room.”
“You deserve that,” Victoria said, because hyping up her friends was far easier than actually thinking about things.
Sveta’s words kept playing in the back of her head anyway. ‘Pretty’ was something she put on like armor in the morning, and took off at night. She needed to look nice because it kept people from gossiping.
Huh. She sounded like Kenzie, keeping her scars hidden so no one had to worry.
And then Sveta tugged her towards mall pretzels, and she let herself be distracted from her own thoughts.
“Hey Ash?” They were sharing the loveseat, ignoring the TV and procrastinating sleep.
Ashley pivoted on the loveseat, abandoning all pretext of watching the TV, slinging her legs across Victoria’s lap. “Yes, love?”
The pet-names never failed to make Victoria smile. “Do you have a type?”
Ashley blinked at that. “I think it’s fairly clear by now that you’re in that set.”
Victoria didn’t let herself wonder why that answer wasn’t satisfying. “Humor me.”
“Good hands,” Ashley said, which was an odd place to start. “Confident, competent. Able to carry me across the threshold.” Victoria blushed at that memory. “Good sense of style, I can’t date someone who wears socks with sandals. Piercing eyes.”
Victoria tried to digest that, letting the silence stretch.
“You?”
“Tall,” Victoria said. “Stunning. They need to have good hair. And – they need to talk to me. I can’t deal with being frozen out.”
“So don’t freeze me out,” Ashley said.
“I’m not,” Victoria protested.
“There’s something going on. You’re not a good enough liar to pull this off, Victoria. Not to me.” Ashley reached one hand over to Victoria to hold.
She took it, rubbed her thumb over Ashley’s knuckles. “I- “
“Take your time.”
Having the tables turned on her wasn’t pleasant, exactly, but Victoria was mature enough not to be a hypocrite about it. She did take her time. She wasn’t asking for permission. That wasn’t right. She respected Ashley too much for that.
But there was also something in the back of her mind, that she wasn’t even quite sure how to word. Something that wanted to be seen nevertheless.
She wanted a break. Wanted a lazy day where she never brushed her hair and she stayed in and wore sweatpants and didn’t put on makeup. A day where no one saw her who hadn’t already seen her falling apart.
“I want to sleep in tomorrow.”
They were shopping for Rain.
The three of them with fashion sense: Victoria, Sveta, Ashley; because Rain had some sort of an issue with stores, maybe, or just malls in particular. He’d said it was complicated, and none of them had pushed him on it.
Besides, it wasn’t every day that they got to buy someone a new wardrobe. They were taking the whole thing with the seriousness it deserved.
Sveta held up a t-shirt with a brightly colored children’s cartoon character on it. “Thoughts?”
“And here I thought you had taste,” Ashley said, as if she had any ground to object on after trying to sneak pre-ripped black skinny jeans into the basket.
Victoria shifted said basket to her other arm – it had gotten heavy at some point – and shook her head. “Do they have it in Chris’s size?” It wouldn’t actually be worth antagonizing him, but the joke got the requisite snickers out of the others.
She turned away, intent on browsing the belts for something plain enough to match with anything, only to have something catch her eye.
It wasn’t special, exactly. A black baseball cap, with an embroidered star pattern in gold on the front.
She wondered, for a moment, if it was a logo she didn’t recognize. She didn’t like clothing with logos on it – it felt too much like unpaid advertising.
She wouldn’t wear a baseball cap. It was too masculine, too butch. It didn’t fit with her other clothes. It would stand out in any outfit she tried to wear it with.
“Victoria?” Sveta said.
Victoria looked over. “What is it?”
“You should try it on. No harm in trying, right?”
Her own words were so much more annoying when they were turned back on her. “It’ll mess up my hair,” Victoria said, but she picked up the hat.
She put it on.
Her reflection looked –
Her reflection looked back at her.
She fussed at her hair to make it sit properly.
It made her feel something. A curl of brightness in her chest that scared her as much as it thrilled her.
Ashley came up behind her, her slow smile visible in the mirror. “If you don’t buy it, I’m buying it for you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Victoria said.
“So you’re buying it?”
Victoria looked to Sveta for salvation.
Sveta just smiled back. “You look good. And it’ll keep the sun out of your eyes.”
Victoria stared at herself a little longer.
Maybe she’d just wear it when she flew. To keep the sun out of her eyes.
She took it off, and ignored the pang of something else in her chest when she did.
“I’ll buy it.”