Nothing Has To Change

Part 4

"Okay, so what do you think?"

You step out of the dressing room, giving a quick spin, while you watch yourself eagerly in the mirror. The short dress falls against your legs as you stop spinning, the fabric settling. The color suits you, complementing your complexion perfectly, as does the fit of the dress, showing off all of your curves in all the right ways, or so you thought.

"I don't know, it's nice I guess," he sighs.

You feign disappointment as you look at him, it hadn't been the response you were hoping for, but to be fair, you weren't really asking the best person for his opinion. You turn back to the mirror, looking yourself over, turning now and then to get a better angle.

"Well that doesn't boost my confidence in the slightest," you purse your lips, now wondering if he may have been on to something.

"Sorry." he sighs, "Why did you drag me along?"

You turn to face him once more, looking him over, sitting there with his board shorts, and top that doesn't match in the slightest. He grabs his hat, resetting it on his head before he looks up at you.

"I dragged you along because Kie was busy, and Pope has little to no fashion sense." you smile.

You slip back into the dressing room, slipping out of the dress to try on another.

"Neither do I," he calls out.

You step out of the room and give him a quick twirl.

"Well, you were the next best thing," you smile, gesturing for him to look at the dress.

"Thanks for that," he chuckles, he grimaces, shaking his head in disapproval.

"Oh come on John b, you know I love you." you pause, "And besides, you're also going to midsummers and you're going to need a suit."

You walk back in, agreeing that this new number wasn't it, pulling the next one off of the hanger.

"Yeah, love you too," he pauses, "What about JJ? You could have brought him," he suggests in a hushed tone. You wonder if you were even supposed to catch it, but you did.

"Oh I'm sorry, I wanted to spend time with you, but next time I will forget about asking you," sarcasm rolling off your tongue.

You emerge from behind the curtain, a scowl on your face. You can see it on his face, he was scared that he hurt your feelings, he hadn't, however.

"Oh, and JJ was my first bet, but he was busy," you add.

That was a lie. There had been no communication between you and JJ since you ran out on him last night. Things had heated up and your judgment had been clouded, so when you got a phone call, you panicked. You grabbed it, and rushed out of the chateau, leaving JJ in the kitchen by himself, dazed and confused.

You wanted to talk to him about it, or more so, needed to talk to him about it, but you hadn't worked up the courage nor had you had a proper chance to do so. You felt like it was something that needed to be talked about face to face instead of over the phone, and so it seemed like the most reasonable thing to do was to ignore all of his messages and calls. It wasn't!

In all honesty, you were probably just going to pretend that it didn't, until you absolutely couldn't do anything else but speak to him, which wasn't an entirely good idea, but it was the one you had.

"Oh, I thought he was free today," John b mumbles, looking you over, and shaking his head.

You tried on yet another dress, determined to find the right one.