Page 22 of My Big Fat Shifter Wedding

“Excuse you! During my time?”

“Yeah, like the nineties. And even the early two-thousands. Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong decade.”

Was I suddenly an episode of The Twilight Zone? Amanda was growing on me, but some of the things she said made me feel like it.

“I was born in nineteen-ninety-six,” I said with finality. The last thing I expected was for Amanda to literally hit me with a woooooow!

“I think it’s so cool that you were born in a previous century! Like, how many people can say that?”

I was going to kill someone.

“You were mentioning something about scrunch, scrunch, scrunch?” I chose to say instead, for the sake of both of our sanity.

“Oh! Right! Then you want to wash the ends of your hair after you’ve applied the conditioner. Remember, try not to get any on your roots, because it’s going to weigh your hair down!”

Cheerily, she continued to explain why I needed a clarifying curl shampoo, a scalp cleansing shampoo, and curl conditioner. And then curl cream, styling gel, and mousse. Then, not to forget, hair oil, an anti-frizz serum, and these strange comb-like things I was supposed to stick into my roots so my curls would stick flat to my scalp from the weight of my hair.

And did I mention some fancy dandy hair dryer with a strange attachment on it called a diffuser? Apparently, that was essential if I didn’t want to air-dry my hair all the time. My credit card was taking a hit, that was for certain. I wasn’t worried about paying for everything, but I was worried that my purchases were so out of character that the company would call me to do a fraud check.

“Here, let me do your whole head, then you can change into one of the new outfits. We can go grab some smoothies to celebrate our victory!”

Like I was going to say no at this point. Sure, I was bordering on overwhelmed, but I was enjoying myself. In a strange sort of way. It really was the coming-of-age shopping scene in every girlie-pop Disney movie or makeover scene in rom-coms. And although I’d yet to really see the results of my whole package being hauled over and turned upside down, all the pieces I’d seen so far had been pretty cool.

Cue another hour of her wetting down my hair with a spray bottle and washing my hair in the shampoo bowl of the salon and makeup store that we were in. At first I’d been tempted to ask Amanda if she was allowed to use one of their stations at her leisure, but after the fourth store where everyone greeted her by name and thanked her for her reviews, I had long since gotten the picture that they let her do whatever she wanted.

Although I wasn’t human, I was certain that wasn’t typical behavior, so for the dozenth time, I wondered who the hell this woman was.

That mystery lingered in my head right up until she finished drying my hair with that diffuser thing—which took FOREVER!—and escorted me straight to the bathroom to try on one of my outfits, covering the mirror by stretching out her pink jacket. When I raised my eyebrow in question, she gave me a beatific smile.

“Gotta wait for the big reveal,” she said, like that explained everything. And I supposed to her, it did.

I got changed relatively quickly, my hair bouncing around my head unseen as I bounced in the jeans to get them up over my rear end. Normally, I would say they were a size too small, but according to Amanda, they were the perfect size to complement my “full hips.” I’d never really given much thought to the general shape of my lower body, but after Amanda spent five minutes waxing on about how she sometimes wished she had a silhouette like mine instead of her own fiddle hips, I was starting to see myself in a new light.

Before our little shopping trip, I didn’t even know that hips could have any sort of similarity to a string instrument, but much like the whole natural waist conversation, I was beginning to find out there was an entire world of terms, shapes, and fabric types to discover.

A bit breathless once I was fully clothed, I allowed Amanda to call me out of the bathroom and guide me back over to the salon area where she positioned me very specifically. I felt a bit like a piece of art that was being displayed by its creator, and honestly, it wasn’t the worst feeling.

“Okay, perfect! Turn around and see what it looks like when you’re celebrated!”

It was funny, in a way. All Amanda and I were doing was addressing my outer shell, which was, technically speaking, the least interesting part of me, and yet I felt something within me heal at her sheer exuberance and her word choice. This wasn’t about fixing me, it was about emphasizing what was always there and amplifying the features I’d always had.

And yet, even with all those feel-good emotions flowing through me, I was still nervous to turn around and see the end result. I’d caught glimpses, but never the whole picture. What if I didn’t like that picture? What if the image I was building in my head that was helping me feel so confident was pure imagination and my reflection would shatter it within a second?

“Hey, Olivia, I said you could turn!”

There was no more avoiding it. It was time to face the music, no matter what that song might be.

So, I turned. My gaze was unfocused at first, but it quickly locked on to the full-length mirror in front of me. I had braced myself for the disappointment, knowing that what I was visualizing in my head probably wasn’t technically achievable and I should be happy with any sort of improvement.

It turned out I was wrong. So very wrong.

My reflection wasn’t a disappointment at all. No, it was a shock. I stared openly at my reflection, my brick-red painted lips parting slightly.

“Oh my god…” I whispered, unable to say anything else.

“I know! Scrumptious, right?”

Amanda’s praise wasn’t a surprise. She’d been thrilled about the whole process since we started. Yet it still served as a background chorus for the maelstrom of thoughts and emotions rushing through me.