Chapter 6: Retail Seduction
The costume stayed on for hours. It became a second skin, a permission slip. They ordered takeout, ate on the floor, and Julen’s eyes kept catching on the bow at her collar, the way the skirt fanned out around her thighs. It was a suspended reality, a bubble. But morning came, and with it, the nylon felt cheap and scratchy, the wig hot and ridiculous. Alex peeled it off in the grey dawn light, standing in her bathroom. The woman in the mirror looked back, familiar and utterly strange. The costume was a prop. The body was not.
A restlessness took hold of her by mid-morning, a fizzy, anxious energy. Julen was sketching at the kitchen table, headphones on, lost in some dungeon design. She watched his hand move, the quick, sure lines. He looked up, felt her stare, and pulled one headphone off. “What?”
“We’re going out,” she said. It wasn’t a suggestion.
“Where?”
“Shopping. I need… things. Real things. Not costumes.”
He blinked. “Like, groceries?”
“No. Like clothes. For this.” She gestured vaguely at her body, at the old band t-shirt and sweatpants she’d retreated into. “I have one bra. It’s a sports bra. I stole your socks. This isn’t sustainable.”
The mall was a cathedral of noise and light. The air was a processed chill, smelling of pretzels, perfume, and floor cleaner. Alex felt every eye on her, a paranoid prickle on her neck. Were they looking because she was tall? Because her walk was still unconsciously too wide, her shoulders too square? Or were they just looking? Julen stuck close, a silent presence at her elbow.
She bypassed the familiar stores, the ones selling graphic tees and cargo pants. She led them instead to a place with minimalist decor and soft, thumping music. The mannequins were draped in delicate fabrics, in tight skirts and soft knits.
“Here?” Julen asked, his voice low.
“Here.”
She moved through the racks with a clinical detachment at first, touching fabrics—silks, fine cottons, a lace that felt like cobwebs. Then her fingers closed around the hem of a dress. It was simple, black, short. She pulled it out. The material was heavy, expensive-feeling.
“Okay,” she said, more to herself than to him.
She gathered an armful: the dress, a slip of a skirt in emerald green, a blouse with tiny pearl buttons, a pair of jeans that looked impossibly soft. Then, steeling herself, she walked to the lingerie section.
It was a landscape of straps and cups. She stared, overwhelmed. A saleswoman with a kind, measured smile glided over. “Can I help you find a size, honey?”
Alex froze. Her mouth was dry. “I… I don’t know my size.”
“That’s perfectly alright. Fitting room three is free. I’ll bring you a tape measure.”
In the fitting room, a cubicle of flattering light and mirrors, the world shrank. Julen waited on the plush bench outside, scrolling nervously on his phone. Alex shed her old clothes. She stood in just the sports bra and her underwear, confronting the reflection. The saleswoman knocked, entered with a soft tape, her hands professional and impersonal as she took measurements.
“You’re a 32D,” she said cheerfully. “Quite a classic hourglass. You’ll want to try this style for support with that dress.” She handed Alex a few items—lace balconettes, a smooth t-shirt bra—and left.
Alone again, Alex put on the black dress. It zipped up the back. She couldn’t reach. She cracked the door. “Julen.”
He looked up, his eyes immediately widening.
“Zip me.”
He stood, awkward, and stepped into the room. She turned, presenting her back. The zipper was small. His fingers, rough from pencils and controllers, fumbled at the base of her spine. She felt the slow, ticking progress of the zip as it closed, felt his knuckles brush the bare skin of her back. Her breath hitched. The dress fit like it was poured onto her, hugging the dramatic inward curve of her waist, the outward swell of her hips, the full shape of her chest. It ended high on her thighs. She looked… powerful. And utterly foreign.
She turned to face him. His gaze traveled up her body, slow, heated. He didn’t speak.
“Well?” Her voice was a challenge.
“You look… expensive,” he managed, which was the perfect, wrong thing to say. It wasn’t ‘pretty.’ It was ‘valuable.’
A smirk touched her lips. She turned to the mirror, watching his reflection watch her. She did a slow twirl. The skirt flared. “I think it works.”
She tried the green skirt next, with a simple black top. It was shorter, playful. She called him in again to see. Then the jeans, which molded to her like a second skin, making her legs look endless. Each outfit was a new character, a new version of Alexandra she was trying on for size.
Then she reached for the lingerie. She held up a bra, black lace with delicate straps. “Wait outside,” she said, her voice quieter.
He obeyed. She changed, clipping the bra into place. It framed her, lifted her, the lace cutting into her skin in a way that felt both restrictive and exhilarating. She put the blouse with the pearl buttons on over it, leaving it undone enough to show a crescent of black lace and the shadow between her breasts.
She opened the door. He was standing right there. She pulled him inside, the space suddenly too small, too warm. She turned her back to him again. “Button me.”
His hands were less steady this time. He started at the bottom, each tiny pearl a struggle. She could feel the heat of his body close to hers, could hear his breathing grow shallow. As his hands worked higher, his knuckles brushed against the lace of her bra, against the sides of her breasts. She leaned back, just slightly, into the contact.
When the last button was fastened at her throat, she didn’t turn around. She looked at him over her shoulder, her eyes half-lidded in the mirror. “Do I look pretty, husband?” she whispered, the game from the kitchen bubbling back, but softer now, more dangerous.
His hands slid from her shoulders down her arms, then came to rest on her hips. He pulled her back against him, and she felt how much he was affected. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, his voice a rough murmur against her skin. “You look like a problem. A beautiful, complicated problem that no one else gets to solve.”
In the mirror, she watched them. Him, tall and tense behind her. Her, enveloped in the new clothes, her face flushed. A perfect, twisted picture. She pressed her hips back against him, a slow, deliberate roll. He groaned, his fingers digging into the soft green fabric of the skirt.
“We’re in public,” he gritted out, even as he rocked against her.
“I know.” She watched her own hand come up, lace at her wrist, and cup the back of his head, holding him to her. For a long minute, they just stood there, breathing together, a frantic stillness in the too-bright room.
A polite cough sounded outside the curtain. The saleswoman. “Everything fitting alright in there?”
They broke apart like guilty teenagers. Alex’s heart hammered against the lace. “Yes!” she called, her voice surprisingly steady. “All good. We’ll take it all.”
She changed back into her old clothes, the cotton feeling coarse and sad against her skin. At the register, Julen pulled out his card before she could. “My turn,” he said quietly.
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” The look he gave her brooked no argument. It was the same look he’d had when he’d called her his. It was possession, but also provisioning. Taking care of what was his.
The bags were heavy, swinging from their hands as they walked back into the mall’s chaos. The spell was broken, but the charge remained. She felt seen, and not just by him. As they passed a group of guys their age, their eyes tracked her—a quick, appreciative sweep. One of them nudged his friend. She heard a low whistle, cut short. A hot flush spread up her neck. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. It was power. It was a violation. It was both.
She stopped walking, right there in the middle of the bustling thoroughfare. Julen stopped beside her. “What’s wrong?”
She looked at him, the noise of the mall fading to a dull roar. “They were looking at me.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you… like it? When they look?”
He considered, his jaw tight. “I hate it,” he said finally. “And I love that they have to look. Because you’re with me.”
It was the most honest, messed-up thing he could have said. She took his free hand, lacing her fingers through his, a public claim of her own. His grip was tight, almost painful.
“Take me home,” she said. “I want to wear the black dress.”
He didn’t ask for what. He just nodded, and they walked, hand in hand, through the staring crowd, the plastic bags rustling with every step, full of the fragile, beautiful armor she was learning how to wear.
The mall’s central atrium soared above them, a cacophony of echoing voices and shuffling feet. The staring faces blurred into a watercolor of noise and light. His hand in hers was the only solid thing. She focused on the rhythm of their steps, on the promise of the black dress waiting in its bag. A group of teenagers loitered by the fountain, their laughter sharp and performative. One of them, a boy with a practiced slouch, locked eyes with Alex as she passed. His gaze was a slow, deliberate scrape from her ankles to her face.
He smirked, nudging his friend. “Damn.”
The word wasn’t for her. It was a bulletin to his tribe. Julen’s grip tightened, his knuckles going white. He slowed, his body coiling. Alex felt the shift, the aggressive energy rolling off him. It was the same possessiveness from the fitting room, but raw now, undirected.
“Don’t,” she said, her voice low. She pulled his hand, kept them moving. “He’s nothing.”
“He’s an asshole.”
“He’s air.” She said it with a conviction she didn’t fully feel. But she wouldn’t let this be about a boy’s leer. She wouldn’t let Julen fight her phantom wars. This was hers. The stare, the comment, the hot-cold flush it brought—it was data. A part of the new ecosystem.
They neared the giant glass doors leading to the parking garage. The natural light was grey, flat. The transition felt like an ending. The curated world of the store was behind them; the messy reality of their apartment ahead. A sudden, reckless impulse seized her, a need to claim the narrative, to own this uncomfortable, dazzling power on her own terms.
She stopped, tugging him to a halt beside a giant concrete planter filled with sad, waxy greenery. The fountain’s mist cool on her skin.
“Julen.”
He turned, his expression still dark, jaw set. “What?”
She dropped the bags. They hit the polished floor with a soft thud. She stepped into his space, closing the distance. Her hands came up, framing his face, her thumbs smoothing the tense line of his brow. He blinked, startled.
“You’re really pissed,” she observed, her voice softening.
“He was disrespectful.”
“And you called me a ‘beautiful problem.’ We’re all disrespectful here.” A faint smile touched her lips. “My beautiful, jealous husband.”
She saw the word land, saw the anger in his eyes fracture into something more vulnerable. She didn’t let him speak. She rose onto her toes, the new boots giving her just enough height, and kissed him.
It wasn’t like the kitchen, or the living room floor. This was deliberate. Public. Her lips were soft but insistent, a seal pressed against his. She felt him stiffen, then melt, a low sound catching in his throat. His hands found her waist, pulling her closer against the rustle of her jacket. The mall’s noise faded to a distant hum. She tasted the coffee he’d drunk hours ago, felt the warm shock of his breath.
She broke the kiss, just enough to whisper against his mouth. “Let him see that.”
She kissed him again, deeper this time, one hand sliding into his hair. It was a performance and it was utterly real. It was for the staring boy, for the passing families, for the entire buzzing world. But mostly, it was for them. A flag planted in the middle of the fluorescent-lit commons. His arms wrapped fully around her, lifting her slightly off her feet, the bags forgotten at their feet. When he finally set her down, his eyes were wide, his anger completely dissolved into dazed wonder.
“Okay,” he breathed, resting his forehead against hers. “Okay. You win.”
She smiled, a real, full smile that lit her face. “I know.” She bent, picked up her bags, and slung them over her shoulder. “Now take me home. I have a dress to debrief.”