Dirty Kisses by Addison Moore Page B

Even the homely gray sweats with nary a trendy logo to call their own seem to be pulling me toward them.
    A whole week and counting. I had three dresses on hold at Neiman Marcus that I let go to waste because I was too horrified to venture out that far into the world. Not that I have a single dress to adorn myself with at Jet’s house. I’ve been through hell and back with just a few things my friends tossed into a bag. Per my request, my things have been hermetically sealed in boxes and are currently taking up space in Jet’s living room, but I’ve been so busy, and so emotionally distraught, I can’t seem to go through them.
    I can’t be expected to live in a pair of flip-flops until I get my life back in control. It’s fall for fuck’s sake. The weather in Hollow Brook has been known to turn on a dime. My feet are the foundation of my body. They’re expected to last a lifetime. I can’t just leave them without stability, exposed to the elements, and expect them to offer up decades’ worth of loyal service in return. I practically deserve these shoes. My feet deserve them. Also, I snatch up a couple of OPI nail polishes in the university’s team colors of blue and orange for the big game coming up next week. Rex is playing, and Scarlett has already insisted that I go. Those gray sweats somehow magically find themselves in my arms along with a couple of scarves from the Impressionist collection that catch my eye. The scarves are exceptionally cute. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist from the engineering department to know those will be snatched up quickly. If I’ve learned one lesson in my short retail related year here at WB, it’s if you see it and you like it, you buy it or you’re not guaranteed to see it the next time you visit the bookstore.
    By the time I hit the register with my half dozen different sized sketchbooks, a plethora of pencils, both colored and charcoal, scarves, sweats, shoes, polish, and the cute little eye shadow palate they had on clearance in the beauty section, I’m winded.
    A tall brunette with a punched-in nose quickly rings up my order. “That’ll be three hundred fifty-three dollars and twenty-two cents.”
    “ What ?” I balk at the ridiculous total. “That can’t be right. Did you clear the last purchase? That frat boy ahead of me in line had three fat textbooks. Everyone knows what you charge for those is highway robbery.” A smug sense of self-righteous anger fills me as if I’m on a mission to right all of the overpriced scholastic wrongs—as if my shopping spree might benefit more than my shoe collection. It just might be the catalyst to start a revolution against overinflated textbook prices the world over.
    “Nope. It’s all you.”
    “Me?” I glance around at the line forming in the queue. God, there are six other registers. Why the heck aren’t they all open? “Um, exactly how much are the scarves?”
    She glances up at the screen as another coworker comes up alongside her. Thank goodness. I glance back at the angry mob forming behind me and give a knowing nod.
    Her coworker fondles the blue-green one who slightly reminds me of Jet Madden’s eyes—not that I’m gunning to go broke as a reminder. “This is Monet, isn’t it? I’m so in love. I’ve had my eye on it for weeks.”
    A tight knot builds in my belly in response to her lust-filled declaration.
    “They’re sixty-nine dollars a piece,” pug nose announces. “You want to take them off?”
    “Sixty-nine dollars?” An explosion of heat prickles over me at once.
    “I know .” The cashier chooses to ignore my repetitive in nature albeit legitimate question. “It’s the last one, though. I’ve been blowing these out the door all day.”
    Blowing them out the door all day? My stomach wrenches at the thought of sending one back.
    “Here.” I hand over my credit card in a commanding, yet confident manner. What’s another three-hundred dollars going to hurt? It’s been hell all week.