“Yes.” She’d bought some just two years ago. But she hated the way they kept sliding down her butt and she had to hitch them up every ten minutes. The elastic waist and draw ties of the scrubs were infinitely more comfortable and didn’t threaten to fall down.
“The first thing you need to realize is that you’re a woman. This shapeless, amorphous look of yours is fine. If you’re trying to disappear in a crowd. But you want to stand out. And clothes that actually fit is a good place to start.”
The saleswoman returned with stacks of clothes in her arms and went to hang them up in the dressing room. “How did she even know what size to get?”
“We took a guess. Now stop complaining and get inside. We’re not leaving until you have two pairs of slacks, a pair of jeans, at least three tops, and one dress.” He stopped, eyeing her cleavage. “A new bra couldn’t hurt, either. I know you’ve got breasts under there, but you make it almost impossible to tell.”
The urge to kick him was almost too powerful but she managed to restrain herself and gave him a withering glare instead, then and turned to follow the saleswoman back to the dressing room.
The door shut behind her, she stared at the clothes hung neatly on hangers and stacked on the bench next to her. A particularly pretty green wrap dress caught her eye, something she would never have chosen for herself in a million years. But it was pretty.
She glanced at the price tag, and her eyes bugged out. She could buy lattes for a month with what it would cost her for this one dress. No, probably a year. Not that she couldn’t afford it now, with her new salary, but not living frugally was a new thing for her after scrimping the past few years.
The next dress with a cutout in the back had her cringing. How would she even wear a bra in that thing?
She wiped her forehead, which was damp with sweat from her barely repressed panic attack. Is it hot in here?
She was so out of her element.
Benny had always felt like she was trying—and failing—at playing dress up when she wore dresses, only wearing them under protest, like at Kate’s wedding last spring. It might have something to do with the fact that most dresses she wore as a kid had been Daisy’s castoffs. Castoffs had made up the majority of her wardrobe growing up as the youngest of four kids. Unfortunately, when Benny hit her teens and puberty, the pounds just seemed to pack on, and she found it near impossible to fit in any of Daisy’s clothes without her belly hanging over the top of the pants, so she would have to leave the zipper not all the way done up. The feeling of her legs squished into Daisy’s old pants, the tightness of the shirt when Benny doubled her bra size in one summer, was a distant but distasteful memory.
When her dad’s construction company started to take off by the time she was sixteen, thanks to his growing sons’ help, the family was finally able to afford a lot more things, including a firsthand wardrobe for Benny. But by then, all she wanted was the biggest and loosest things she could find. To hide the rolls and bulges. To hide swelling breasts that the boys snickered at and the girls looked at in disgust. And even though she’d lost most of that baby fat—although there were some curves that just weren’t going to go away, the curse of being a Latina woman—the inclination to want to hide herself was hard to suppress.
And now this guy wanted her to dump the baggy for tight and formfitting? It was enough to give her hives.
She pulled off her pants and kicked them to the corner and held up a pair of jeans. They looked like someone had already worn them, with crease marks on the sides by the pockets, the scuffing along the leg. This was stylish?
“How’s it coming in there?” Henry called out just as she finished zipping up the jeans.
“You do know I’m a pediatrician, right? I don’t think the kids are going to care about what I’m wearing before they throw up on me.”
“But you’ll know. You’ll care. And so will Dr. Seeley. He is the person we’re here for, right?”
She didn’t bother to respond, instead tugging the first shirt off the hanger and pulling it over her head. “Shouldn’t we be working on conversation? What to talk about? You know, the real stuff?”
“You’re not going to feel capable of talking to him until you feel confident about yourself. When you know you look good, when you’re at your best, you’d be surprised how much easier it is to hold a conversation with a person you might not otherwise.”
She made a fake gagging noise. “Thank you, Dr. Phil.”
“Trust me on this. In one week’s time, you’re going to feel like a different person.”
“I like the person I am.”
He sighed. “I’m sure you’re a terrific person.” She could hear the sarcasm in his tone. “But you’re trying to get Dr. Luke Seeley to see you as a woman. Not the goofy new kid in the office who would sooner run into a wall than make eye contact.”
He might have a point.
She stared at herself in the reflection, still unable to feel anything but ridiculous. The shirt was pink and hideous. Not helped by the way the buttons puckered around chest level, trying not to burst.
The jeans though… She turned around and lifted the shirt up. Hmm. Her butt didn’t look too bad. Actually, almost kind of decent. She turned back and studied the front.
Okay. So these didn’t make her legs feel like summer sausage, stuffed in thick, uncomfortable casings.
This shirt, though, had to go.
She threw it off and grabbed another one. It was a soft blue that she was kind of curious to see on.
Another minute later and she studied herself. Not bad, even if she might hate the slight constriction around the chest.