The Promise of Lace Read Online Free

approached the lingerie store, pausing outside and
pretending to admire the huge posters of mostly-naked women in the windows. I
did my best to use my peripheral vision to spot Dieter. He was behind the
counter, looking bored.
    I took a deep breath, which evidently I needed in order to
go talk to an attractive man, because I was some sort of ridiculous teenager.
    He smiled at me as I walked up to him. It was warm, but
restrained. Not exactly the saucy grin that he had given Hailey and I last week. It made me nervous. Maybe he’d realized that we
had been trying to pin down his whereabouts since nine in the morning.
    “Hi, I was in here last week and I tried something on and
thought I’d come back to get it. It was purple, sort of,” I set my fingertips
to my collar and traced the shape of the neckline over my blouse.
    “I remember. I’ll go get it for you.” He rapped his knuckles
on the desk before he disappeared.
    He remembered.
    Sigh.
    I mocked myself for the little tickle of butterflies in my
stomach caused by a salesman being a good salesman and then moved on to mocking
myself for pre-emptively buying a nightie when I was single, and my only
potential prospect was a slightly too young cutie who did, upon further
reflection, seem to be a little too into lingerie.
    Dieter returned, the shining plum fabric dripping from his
hands. I watched the way he crossed the floor, with sharp, controlled steps,
nearly a march. He walked like he should be carrying a flag.
    I indulged in a brief fantasy of him in uniform, then banished it as he actually ducked around the counter
and started scanning the sales tags.
    He was business-like and efficient about the whole thing,
taking my card and giving me the receipt to sign with a polite little smile,
and I left with the purchase and a coupon for an upcoming sale and felt
disappointed about it, which was just stupid.
    What had I been expecting him to do? Cry out that he had
been waiting for me to return and could not quell his desire for me? That we
must away to the dressing room post-haste for an up-against-the-wall-fuck with
the tags still on the nightie?
    A fantasy about being fucked up against the wall in a public
place was a sure sign I had been watching too much porn.
    I sighed, adjusted the bag on my arm so that the jute
handles weren’t rubbing into the crook of my elbow and walked back out to the
main hallway of the lingerie store.
    Noah and Hailey were playing cool, but trying way too hard.
Maybe Dieter had been a little cold to me because there was so clearly
something weird about a woman’s friends waiting outside the store for her to
buy something and then hovering at the entrance as though they were expecting a
debriefing when she came back out.
    “Let’s move,” I said, pointing a finger like I was gesturing
us all to some predetermined destination instead of
making sure that we did this far away from where Dieter could see us. I’d had
more than enough humiliation for one day.
    “What happened? You were gone like two minutes. You didn’t
even flirt!” Hailey moaned. “I didn’t devote my entire fucking day to this just
so you could blow it!”
    “I didn’t blow it. There was nothing to blow. He was like,
ice cold professional. He didn’t say any of the stuff he usually says, he was
just like, ‘Ah, yes, here is your revealing undergarment. Please leave’.   There was no flirting to be done. It was
brutal.”
    “He wasn’t even friendly?”
    “For just a guy doing his job? Yeah he was totally friendly.
Compared to usual? No. Not at all.” Something occurred
to me. “Wait. You guys weren’t just out here staring at him were you?”
    “No!” Noah said. “We just walked past. We were looking at
the map to see where Wilson Leather got moved. It’s not like we had our faces
pressed up against the glass or anything.”
    “Well. Whatever,” I sighed. “I’m tired. This blew. I’ve got
work that needs doing. I’ll see you guys later.”
    “Hey,