A Charitable Scandal

The Blue Dress

As much as the both of us would have liked to wander into one of the more exclusive boutiques in the richer neighborhoods of the city, we ended up going to a chain shop that was looking a bit drab in the fall season. All we saw were some high school students doing last minute shopping for homecoming and a few brides either getting fitted for their winter wedding or getting an early jump on their summer one.

We did, however, appreciate the elbow room and the bountiful selection. At first we started off together, perusing and chatting as we went along, but soon our interests were caught and the chitchat diminished. Without even noticing when she left, I found Emily long gone and off in some different part of the store. So I picked out a few selections on my own before making an effort to find my friend.

"For someone who seemed awfully upset about my favorite color question, you sure are picking out a lot of blue dresses to try on."

I found Emily holding me a spot in the line for a dressing room. Her torso was lost behind the pyramid of dresses she held out in her shaking arms, which looked ready to snap beneath the weight. I took my spot and then looked down at the wide range of blue dresses draped over my own arm.

"They look good with my skin tone."

"So how does it feel to be so lost in denial?"

I wanted to tell her that I was far from anything that looked like denial. I knew I liked Alec. I wasn't questioning, ignoring or disregarding that. In fact, it was a rather painful truth that was stabbing my heart repeatedly. I, however, couldn't followup that confession with the truth necessary to explain the hurt. I could see how much Emily was enjoying this shopping trip and I wasn't ready to ruin it with what I had found out about the charity.

"Oh," I said with a strained smile, "and how about all those red dresses you've got there?"

"They're for Theo of course."

She gave me a sly wink and headed into a dressing room that finally freed up.

Putting the woes of Friday behind me, we both put on a mini fashion show for one another. We danced around in the sweet and frilly as well as the tight and sexy. After much back and forth, Emily settled with a ravishing red dress with an asymmetrical hemline and a halter top. As for me, I went with a silvery blue Grecian dress with off-the-shoulder straps. Emily thought it was classy, but she didn't know I was thinking of more than just Alec's favorite color when I picked it out. She had no idea I was hoping to channel Andromeda as Alec and I played out our own Greek tragedy.

"I think it fits you perfectly," said Emily as we stood in line for checkout. "It will certainly win Alec's heart, which is what you want, right?"

The question was a trap, but she said it with enough compassion that I knew it wasn't meant to be another jesting poke.

"I hope this line moves along. Now that my stomach has settled, I'm starving."

"All right," she said with a sigh. "Don't forget though, we are having frozen yogurt too."

"Nothing like a cold cup of sugar in the middle of October."

"Maybe they'll have pumpkin flavor!"

With the tension broken we both paid for our dresses and headed for lunch at the same plaza Alec and I had frozen yogurt together not too long ago. There I chose to eat at a burger joint despite Emily's insistence that greasy food may be a bit of a myth when it came to conquering hangovers. However, I felt completely sober at that point, with only a slight dull pain in the back of my head, which may or may not have actually been a result of drinking.

As I chewed through my delightfully indulgent burger, I wondered how Alec managed to deal with such a secret for so long. Then it occurred to me that perhaps he wasn't the only one who knew. For all I knew, Colin could have been made privy to the information as well. He was the department manager and had been entrusted with the charity office information. Then I wondered, if perhaps others had made the same discovery? Was I the only one that found out and had some moral dilemma over it?