The Balls in Our Courts [F.SxO.CxT.S]

Chapter Thirteen

Amelia couldn't say it enough, she bloody hated dresses. Which is ironic, because 99.9% of her wardrobe was either skirts or dresses. I really hate dresses, she repeated, as the clerk whipped around the store, shuffling through the racks to pull out anything and everything. Her and John sat on the cushioned ottoman, mocking each other's pose; arms crossed, pout. Both were thinking the exact same thing; I'm being punished. Perhaps they were, but for entirely different reasons. Amelia, because she was born in a world where women wearing trousers was carnal. And John? He just annoyed the superior. "I still have my blue dress...the one Grace had gotten me-"

"Tommy wants you to get a new one," John explained, dryly as if he'd been through it with her twenty times over. "Not a blue one," he told the clerk who pulled out a lacy periwinkle dress with a white sash.

The clerk turned to him, fixing her round specks. "It's periwinkle," she said, motioning to the dress.

John looked over to Amelia, and despite Tommy being clear that she already had a blue dress, he asked her, "do you like it?"

"It's fine enough, I suppose," she said, but decided to ask if they had a pink or purple dress with lace trimmings. She went through about ten before she settled on neither a purple or pink dress, but a yellow. Her mother always told her yellow flushed her out and made her look ill, and perhaps getting the yellow dress was a moment of spite. It was a long cotton dress with a lace overlay, tied at the waist with an ivory sash. The sleeves were cut and it came with an ivory cardigan.

"Let's go," John said all too enthusiastically, excited to get out of the dress shop. After placing the bag on the back seat, he nodded for her to get it, but she halted, grinning. "What?" he asked, taking the tooth pick from his mouth. She pointed to the confectionary shop across the way. The same one her and Finn had just gone to. He looked over and sighed, "alright...quick, alright?" Palm up, she pushed her hand at him. "What? Bloody hell," he groaned, digging into his trousers for a few pence. "Go on. Be quick."

With three pence, she was able to get six pieces of chocolate, a loli, and a licorice stick. On her way out of the shop, she paused, her eyes instantly spotting Timothee in the distance. Smiling, she looked over to John's car. He wasn't even in there. It'd be harmless to quickly cross over and say goodbye. She looked both ways, and went to step off the curb when John grabbed her wrist and pulled her back, "we have to head back-"

"But I just want to-"

"Amelia," he warned not unkindly, gently grabbing her shoulders and pressing her against the brink wall. "Amelia, it isn't a great idea, okay? Tommy isn't very pleased about you sneaking off the other night. Besides, you're a young girl-"

"And?" she asked, a bit miffed he'd be so assumptious.

"It isn't proper," he explained, releasing her and nodding to the car. "C'mon, let's head back home. Polly is going to have to hem your dress."