Stained

Chapter 148

But there's no one behind us.

"What is it?" Hannah goes outside to check. Whilst she's doing that, I look back at Sarah. The shock hasn't wavered in the slightest. On the contrary, it's somehow... intensified. And she's looking right at me. Or maybe she's looking right through me.

She blinks wildly, parts her lips, close then parts them again. Has she lost her voice?

Hannah returns with her earlier bewilderment marking her expression, but this time it's mixed with annoyance. "There's no one there?"

Sarah's eyes leisurely trail over me. I glance over my shoulder for safe measures but still find nothing, so I look back at her, my eyebrows rising on my forehead.

"Bitch," Hannah snaps. "Can you see a ghost or something because you're starting to freak me the fuck out?" 

"Have you... have you lost your voice?" I ask, both perplexed and concerned.

That snaps her frozen posture, and she vigorously shakes her head no. "I-hazel is- I...hazels that's the fucking dress I got you," mouth agape, her eyes scan over me twice and with the speed of a cheetah. "Hazel, you're wearing the fucking dress I got you!" She screams, then muffles more that follow by covering her mouth with her hand and jumps up and down.

I have to look away because, with the way she's jumping, I'm afraid her breasts will spill out of the corset top, completely defying the sole purpose of one. I think.

I'm confused because this isn't the first time she's seeing me since I... my position dawns on me —  I was out of eyeshot when she was on the first landing of the staircase, so she only saw me when she did finally come down. Thus the reason behind her baffled expression.

"Oh shit," Hannah curses. "The unfortunate events of today erased your huge accomplishment from my mind."

Me too. Until this moment, I had utterly forgotten I was looking forward to surprising Hannah and Sarah. And Sarah's the one who got me this dress.

A loud cry racks through Sarah, and then she is burying her face in her hands and crouching down onto her haunches as her body begins shaking with violent sobs.

The movement is so unexpected, so uncharacteristic of Sarah, — well not the sitting on her haunches as she cries because that's her unique style of crying. It's the latter. The crying that has me jolting with alarm. Wide-eyed, I look to Hannah, only to find tears also forming in her chocolate browns and her attempting to conceal a stray one by quickly wiping it away, looking anywhere but at me or Sarah.

I'm so shocked, I struggle to form words. I expected them to be happy, yes, but not for them to start crying.

But I suppose I can understand why they're crying. I had deemed it impossible for me to ever wear this. Had insisted and even argued with Sarah to return the dress, but she never budged, not even when I stopped talking to her for a week. I didn't throw it out because it was expensive, and I had hoped she'd eventually see I would never wear it and take it for herself. But she didn't, and it was unbearable not talking to her for more than a week.

Sarah loosens her hands from her face, but keeps it concealed by pressing the tips of her fingertips above her brows. "I... I didn't think it would happen. I had given up hope," she rasps, her tone... ashamed?