Page 21 of My Big Fat Shifter Wedding

Clearly, I was in the deep end, and I wasn’t getting out without trying on more clothes than I had in the past few years.

“Here goes nothing,” I said, methodically hanging the clothes on the hooks along the wall. I was finished by the time that Amanda returned, only to have her throw over at least a dozen more items.

“Okay, I think that’s a good start.”

“A start?” I objected, and sure enough, the lock clicked then her face appeared again, looking mildly surprised.

“Why do you say it like that? Do you need me to get more?”

More? “Uh, no. Thanks. This will be fine to begin with.” I didn’t know why I wasn’t telling her to shove it, but much like our instructor, her earnestness got to me. Neither of these people were talking to me because I was their relative, or because I was pack. They were talking to me just… well, just to talk to me. Like I was enough on my own.

Her smile was instantly back and she clapped again. “Fantastic! Why don’t you start with the jeans and casual tops first? I put several peasant tops in there because you’ve got some stunning décolletage there and need to be showin’ that off, girl!”

“I do?” I repeated, turning to look at the mirror behind me. Whatever Amanda was seeing was invisible to me, because all I saw was a slightly below-average thirty-year-old woman who’d made some big steps but now felt lost more than anything else.

“Girl, yes. And when you pair that with that impressive cleavage, that’s a combination you don’t wanna waste!”

“Pfftt, I will pay you to never say the word cleavage again.”

“Okay, what do you want me to say? Titty crack? Knocker canyon? Bosom fault-line? Chesticle crestical? Booby raveen? Swea⁠—”

I had a feeling she was going to continue with just as much vigor as she started with, and honestly, the depth of vocabulary she had for breasts was borderline impressive. “How about we avoid the topic entirely?”

Like one of those drama masks that rapidly swung between expressions, that confused look was back on her face. “We’re shopping. Why wouldn’t we talk about something we should be celebrating?”

“Oh, I uh…” For some reason, her word choice threw me through a loop. When had humans become so out of pocket? “Celebrating?”

“Yeah, I mean that’s what shopping for yourself is all about, right? It’s not like you’re doing this for a job, or like a performance. You said you were feeling too schlubby to feel confident enough to approach a guy, right?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“So what better way to feel confident than to wear a killer outfit that makes you feel like the badass, beautiful bitch that you are?”

Oh. “So… this isn’t to make Keith think I’m sexy, it’s for me to think I’m sexy?”

“Of course! Well, and to not get caught in the lathe. I read those things can scalp you.”

I grinned despite myself, and suddenly the overwhelming deluge of fabric around me was a bit more exciting. I wasn’t trying to find a miracle outfit that would make some random human instructor think I was hot to trot. I was searching for something that would make me love what I saw in the mirror.

“We wouldn’t want that,” I murmured, picking up the closest pair of jeans.

“Exactly. So, buckle up, partner! You’ve got a shopping montage to survive!”

***

“And then you wanna scrunch, scrunch, scrunch to really encourage your curls to keep their form.”

I stared at the row of haircare products Amanda had set out in front of me. If she wasn’t currently holding a perfectly coiled lock of my hair, I would have thought she was a covert salesperson trying to make a banger of a commission off me. But no, apparently my frizzy, static-filled hair had been curly this whole time. I simply never knew how to take care of it. Why had no one in my family ever taken me aside and told me I wasn’t supposed to brush my hair when it was dry? There were so many curly heads in the pack, surely someone should have recognized it, right?

“How come no one else has ever told me this?” I asked Amanda instead of keeping the question in my head, like she could have any clue.

“Probably because you have a very fine hair strand with low porosity, which is very different from many people who have thick hair strands with high porosity. It tends to translate into frizzier hair without more specific care rather than the ringlets that you’re probably used to seeing on any relatives.”

Oh. Apparently she didn’t just have a clue, she had already puzzled out the whole damn mystery.

“Where did you learn all this?”

“You know, here and there. I imagine during your time it was a bit harder because you had to look for fashion magazines or what few runways made it onto TV, but with the dawn of the internet, everything is just a few image searches away.”