Muse

9

Shopping makes the world go round. An undeniable fact of life. When Lottie had sent me that text asking if I wanted to have a girls day, knowing that would include shopping, I heard the cries from my bank account begging me not to overdo it before I had even finished reading the message. Despite the fact that I know that the gallery does not pay me well enough to even consider purchasing the things my dreams are made of, my intrusive impulses like to tell me otherwise.

"What if we go into Levi's?" Lottie asks whilst sipping on her pineapple juice from a cardboard cup, out of a paper straw, that would definitely currently be dissolving on her tongue as we speak. "I need some new jeans, you know."

"Why not?" I shrug, as we both sharply turn in unison into the unsuspecting store. The store itself is nothing too high class, posh or fancy by any means. One look at the price tag on those jeans and you'd think that maybe the set up of the store was one elaborate trick for innocent bystanders to get caught up in. Not the most expensive by any means, but compared to the price of denim five years ago, it was a shock to the system to see such prices on a pair of skinny jeans, never-mind jeans in styles that I actually have in my wardrobe. Still, I can't seem to resist.

We walk around mindlessly, looking up and around at dozens of denim fits. A pair of dark wash flare jeans catch my eye, a very early 2000's inspired style that I had recently started to enjoy incorporating into my outfits. This pair had a dark wash that was not too dark, a nice even blue throughout the jean. I had to get them. I walk up and snatch the hung up pants from the rack and held them into my body, swiftly and decisively to avoid any eye contact with the small tag that hung off the back of them.

"Oh those are nice!" Lottie smiles as we meet in the middle of the store. She held three pairs of jeans all different shades of blue denim in her arms, draped over the side of them. "I don't even want to try them on, I'm just gonna get them and if I don't like them it'll give me an excuse to come back here."

I laugh at the honesty and relatability of her statement, I also did not feel like taking off the outfit I came in to try on this pair of jeans. They were my size so I'll have to just pray for the best. My mother had taught me sewing, so maybe a practical use for that skill would be to taper in these jeans if needed. We scurried along to the check out, jeans in hand and wallets also in hand.

•••

"So, he wants to show you... in private?" Lottie winks, taking another sip out of her pineapple juice, the straw falling apart with every sip.

"Well now that you've said it like that..." I laugh, wiggling my eyebrows high and displaying a wide grin across my face. I shake my head no, and compose myself, even though part of me had almost felt that way. "He's pretty cute, but it's a professional thing, he want's his and his clients works to be displayed somewhere."

"True," Lottie uses a finger gripped on her cup to point toward me, tilting her head and raising her eyebrows to validate the point I'd made. She finally puts the drink down, lipstick stained straw removed from her mouth. "But that's boring. You know Liam and I met at the gallery too, look how that's going for us."

I smile at her while she wiggles her petite fingers around, her big shiny ring catching the unflattering down lights of the shopping centre. As much as I am happy for Lottie – she had found the man of her dreams who she is now set to marry – she was older than me, by only four years, however our views on where we want to be in life are drastically different. She wants to have a big happy family, the white picket fence kind. I see that for her, she would be a wonderful mother. However, I haven't even experienced true love yet. Like the kind you see in movies. Any of my ex boyfriends just had different views on life in general, it pushed me away even though they were perfectly decent lads.

"You know he's not gonna just hide a ring in one of the pages of his binder." I remark.

"Maybe one day you will be one of the pages in his binder." She sighs, cupping her face in her hand as if she was daydreaming about what could be. I couldn't help but laugh at the thought of me literally being a piece of paper in a binder, but the words she said made my heart skip a beat. A thing I'd always fantasised about since I watched Titanic was to be the subject of someone's art, rather than being the one composing it. To be a subject in someone's art was always something my mother cherished, as she had her fair share of paintings of her. She felt as if she was beautiful, sitting still for hours for someone to capture her in the right emotion. She felt loved, that someone would want to capture it.

"A girl can dream." I mumble, hinting to her that her idea would be something astonishing in my reality.

"Well, in those jeans there's no doubt in my mind it'll become more than just a dream."