Scars Like Ours | Red View Romance #2

🍂 Forty Two

Annie's carefully curated playlist of feel-good songs played out from a speaker on her dresser as she held up the little black dress that her sister had gotten her. It was a shame, she thought, that it didn't go to someone who would get more use out of it. The last time she wore it would be the last time she wore it--from here on out, she was done wearing things she didn't want to, whether it was mascara or the heels she'd already tossed into the big donation-bound box sitting on her coffee table.

The dress should go in there too, she knew. If she was the same size as any of her friends, she'd ask if they wanted it, just so it would still be close by and not feel like such a betrayal. If she donated it and Faye asked about it later...

Annie straightened, marching out of her room to place the dress in the box. If Faye asked about it, she'd tell her the truth. The dress didn't suit her, and she would have kept it wasting away in the back of her closet for the rest of her life. If Faye was insulted by the re-homing of the gift, so be it--Annie would consider it a payback for all the times she'd been insulted, and consider them even. Knowing her sister, she had a feeling the topic wouldn't even come up--she'd likely already forgotten about the gift.

Annie hoped Faye had forgotten about Cliff, as well, but knew that there likely would be questions about him the next time they saw each other. Her sister would pry and make assumptions--ones that would probably end up being painfully close to correct.

And I'll deal with it. She sighed, heading back to her room to continue her closet culling. She would tell Faye that she hadn't appreciated the advice, either, and that she was done worrying what people thought about her based on her looks. From now on, she was Annie, and if she found a guy who liked her for that, great. If not, she'd make it just fine without one. She always had, whether she'd realized it at the time or not.

She pulled out a few more things from her wardrobe that she'd purchased over the years for her body type, her coloring, and moved them to the donation box. If she didn't like a piece of clothing, she wasn't going to wear it--whether or not she was "supposed" to look better in lilac than violet, or a cinch-waisted tunic instead of her chunky sweaters no longer mattered.

A crumpled up mess of chartreuse fabric in the back of her armoire caught her eye, and she reached back to fish out the dress she'd worn to Kenzie's bachelorette party. She'd told herself she'd never put it on again, thanks to all the lack of attention she'd received that night at the club. But when she held it up to herself in the mirror, she smiled, remembering how right it had felt in the dressing room. 

She liked the dress. She liked herself in the dress. So who cared if it didn't make anyone buy her a drink or ask her to dance?

Instead of taking it to the box, she placed it in her laundry hamper. When she was done with her clothes, she went to her bathroom sink and collected all the makeup she'd purchased in an old shoebox. She'd let her friends look through it, and whatever they didn't want, she'd toss.

Flipping her wrist over she checked her watch, making sure to keep an eye on the time as she worked. She had a hair appointment later that morning to get her ends and her bangs trimmed--because yes, she decided, she liked them. No matter what Faye or anyone else had to say about it.

Still having twenty minutes, and only being a five-minute walk away from the salon, Annie got to work on the next step: cleaning up her studio. Wanting to get the biggest part--and probably the hardest to stomach--out of the way, she put on her coat and slipped into her boots before bundling up the paint-stained tarp and the large canvas that had once been a painting of Cliff.

It was nothing but a large splash of pink now. It had been irrational, she knew, and mourned for the hours and hours of lost work. But even so, she didn't regret it. What would she have done with the painting, anyway? It wouldn't have felt right to sell it, but she certainly wouldn't have wanted to keep it. She supposed she could have given it to one of the McAden's, but felt weird about even the vague idea of doing so and exposing how head-over-heels she'd been.