Dresses and other Entanglements
"Please shoot me. Right. Now."
I'm still staring incrediously at the fine fabric in my hands that feels more like the purest sandpaper in my fingers than anything else (scratchy and just like something your skin shouldn't get in touch with. Like at all).
In a trance, I get up to look at this thing in full size.
The hem of the dress in my hands slides like a snake over the top of the white box on the table I just pulled it out of and stays in midair at the level of my knees. My fingertips hold the narrow straps at an arm's length away from me. I'm pretty sure these two thin ribbons should not be the part of the dress making sure that this thing stays on my body the whole time. The fabric to which they are attached to is slightly gathered around the chest area and falls smoothly down from the waist. To make matters even worse, some kind of fabric flower, made of the same material as the dress and seemingly winking at me ironically, sits enthroned on the top right seam of the fabric. Why not just put a button there, saying: ''Caution: cheesy ''?
I do not even want to start with the color of this dress. It probably has its own, very individual color code. Such as the ones they come up with for wall paints in the hardware store. I'm thinking of something like Orchid-Pink. Or Midsummer-Dream-Pink. Or how-to-best-humiliate-my-sister-slash-bridesmaid-on-my-wedding-magenta.
"Wow ... is that it?"
I lower the dress from my field of vision and see my roommate standing in the doorway of the bathroom, a blue towel wrapped around her head like a hood, and a hint of a grin on her lips.
Puffing, I turn the front of the dress in her direction, repeating the words I just said: "Please shoot me."
Terry lets her gaze wander over the dress in front of me. I know exactly when her eyes get stuck on the pink fabric flower, as her mouth twitches wildly at the sight.
"No, I'm not going to do that, Cath." Grinning, she walks past me toward the kitchen and hauls herself onto one of the front counter chairs. "Otherwise you'll miss your little sister's wedding."
The blue towel slips back a little at her words and she pushes it carefully back over her forehead. A little further and I would not have to see her nasty grin anymore.
I do not know if it's my dark side or the dress talking, but the way she's sitting on the high chair, the towel on her head, she looks like E.T., the alien.
No, that was mean ... and inappropriate.
E.T.'s towel is white and not blue.
"Gloating doesn't fit you," I grumble as I pack the dress back into the box with more care than I think it deserves.
Terry reaches across the counter for the 'Froot Loops' box and drops a handful of the cereals into her cereal bowl. "It's not that bad. Actually, I think it's pretty nice. "
Pretty nice?
"It's pink," I say, staring at her in consternation, demonstratively pushing the white cardboard box in her direction, as if I had not held the full extent of the catastrophe out for her to see ten seconds ago.
"Old pink." Terry.
... what should one answer to that?
My roommate tilts the rest of the milk into her bowl before she puts the empty bottle next to the fridge and gives me a knowing look. "Come on, Cath. If it were up to you, this dress would probably be black. And you just don't attend weddings in black."
One to zero for Terry. Although I really do not understand why black was so frowned upon at weddings. Most of the male guests wear black suits. Shouldn't they dress in old pink?
Frustrated, I fall back into the chair next to the cardboard box and watch Terry push a spoonful of cereals after the other into her mouth and still manage to bring out clear sentences. "Weddings are a reason to celebrate. It is the feast of love. «
"You're confusing this with Christmas," I say, but my roommate simply continues, "They celebrate that two soulmates have found each other and swear eternal loyalty to one another."
"Now you sound like Lizzy," I exhale, ignoring how Terry lengthens the ‚e' in eternal.
Soulmate ... that's the very word my sister used four months ago when she told me on the phone that Brad wanted to marry her. At the time, I tried to be happy about this news. I really did. But the words 'wedding' or 'true love' always trigger a kind of allergic reaction within myself that causes my consciousness to declare an emotional quarantine right away.
It's not that I'm not happy for my sister. Not at all. If one deserves a soul mate, eternal faithfulness and everlasting happiness, then it is my sister. It's just that she does not deserve to lose everything again.
I do not know exactly when I started to-
"Don't do that."
I flinch in surprise as Terry's harsh voice stomps through my mind like Godzilla stomps through the streets of San Francisco. Confused, I look over at my roommate, who is still sitting at the counter to our kitchen and raise an eyebrow in bewilderment. "What do you mean?"
"Your Robert de Niro face." Terry swings around in her chair and looks at me, a serious glint in her eyes.
"My what?" Me.
"Whenever you're ill-tempered, you pull your eyebrows together grimmly." Terry and the cargo of Froot loops in her mouth. "Just like Robert-de-Niro."
"I do not."
"Yes, you do."
"You look like E.T .."
"So ... what are you going to do now?"
Yeah, well, my plan… It wasn't that I had a big say in the choice of the clothes for Lizzy's wedding. Sure, my sister had actually declared me to be her maid-of-honor when she was just a little girl and had heard of this tradition for the first time. But helping her to plan the wedding had proved somewhat difficult by the great distance between Washington D.C. , Columbia and Haverford, Pennsylvania. The bride and groom had decided to celebrate the wedding in the place where we grew up and went to school to. Or more specifically, in the garden in front of our dad's house, where we played hide-and-seek, climbed trees or secretly smoked. So I lost my job as the maid-of-honor in a direct duel to Brad's sister Clarice, who lives not far from Lizzy and Brad in Philadelphia. If I had known what dresses Clarice wants us to wear as bridesmaids, I would have not thought tiwce about firing a simple 'Expelliarmus' in her direction. Or just withheld my clothing sizes.
"I think I have to go to Aberdeen," I say thoughtfully. "It's Saturday, is it not?"
"I guess so," Terry replies with a frown. She works seven days a week in a irregular shift service, so she probably wasn't sure for real.
"The others are meeting in the clothing store today. Clarice said I could come too if there was a problem with my dress, that needed changing."
Terry grunts under her towel. "Cath, you'll all wear the same dress as bridesmaids. Theres not a chance you get them to tailor your dress or, god knows, to even color it. "
Two to zero for Terry. Today is not really my day.
Nevertheless, I get up from my chair and search for my purse, while I pull a gray sweater over my head and throw my car keys on the table next to the box.
"Maybe I can at least have the stupid fabric flower cut off," I murmur, pushing the cardboard lid back onto the box with its white silk XXL bow on it. Maybe I can also incite a revolt, and make all the other bridesmaids vote against this dress. "I'll see you tonight."
Terry has turned back to her breakfast and waves goodbye to me like the Queen of England.
With the misshapen cardboard box in both hands, I lean against the doorknob and nearly stumbled over another box in the stairwell. In the narrow hallway in front of me are several square, piled up boxes, half of them on the worn linoleum floor of the stairwell and half of them on the new wooden floorboards of the opposite apartment, kind of giving the impression of being unsure if this should really be their new home.
Our ex-corridor neighbors moved out of the apartment 2B over a month ago and since then potential new tenants have been in and out of this apartment over the last couple of weeks. It seems that Mr. Petcher, our landlord - gray-yellow hair, bulbous nose - has finally found suitable candidates. With luck, they were just as invisible as the two students who had previously lived opposite us. For the entire three hundred and sixty days of them living in the apartment, Terry and I had seen the two men only twice. One time in daylight, which had disproved our theory, the two might be vampires.
The checkered linoleum on the steps squeaks moodily under my soles, as I cautiously overcome one step after the other and go to the large front door through which, in this very moment, a man in a gray shirt and also a moving box in his hands appears. However, he turns around again when he sees me and sprints back to the door to stop it from falling back into the lock. Surprised, I stop at the bottom step of the stairs and look suspiciously at the man, who now puts his box on the floor next to him, in order to keep the door open and stands beside it. I can not remember someone opening a door for me before. Not ever. This is not right.
The young man gives me a friendly look out of his azure blue eyes. His blond short hair is a mix of neatly combed and daringly disheveled, and the way the muscles tense under his shirt as he makes a deft hand movement towards the exit suggests that he is not just attending the beginner's course at the gym. "Miss."
'Miss'…alright ... I can play that way too.
"Thanks, Carson. Do not expect me back soon. I have to make an important appointment in the city, "I say in my best British accent as I step outside, passing him. He pulls his eyebrows together in confusion as I turn to face him again, his eyes wandering rather helplessly than anything else between mine. "Carson?"
"The butler ..." I reply, as if all of this is perfectly logical. I know, in this scenario, I would be an English Landlord, which may be a bit presumptuous, but ...
The man still looks at me incomprehensibly. He almost looks like a little boy who had just been told that he could never become an astronaut. Or president. Or superhero.
"The butler from 'Downton Abbey' ...?" I try one last time to help him on the jumps, before I realize slowly but surely that this normal-almost-romantic-scene is on the verge of changing to an embarrassing-from-now-on-he-will-give-me-the-funny-eyebrow-everytime-he-sees-me-situation. Sometimes I just forget that not everyone is spending their days watching series.
"Sooo ...", I lengthen the 'so' in this sentence and swing almost rhythmically up and down with my heels. "So you moved to the apartment on the second floor?"
The blond man throws one last scrutinizing look at me and the giant bow in my hands before nodding slightly and pointing to the moving box on the floor. "Yeah, um, I'm about to get my things in the apartment." He puts one hand on his neck and smiles lightly at me. "So you also live in this house?"
I pull up my right shoulder briefly to protect the straps of my handbag from falling and nod affirmatively. "That's right, Apartment 2A. I guess I'm your new neighbor."
I can not quite interpret whether the young man at the door is excited about this prospect or not. His mouth is set with a polite smile, but it is one of the kind that does not quite manage to reflect itself in his eyes. One of the kind that I like to put on.
Carefully, I slide the cardboard box onto my left forearm and stretch out my right hand. "Cath."
The blond takes a step towards me, which makes the door in his back fall back into its lock with a squeak and stretches his muscular forearm in my direction as well. His palm feels rough and soft at the same time and as I look up from our hands to his blue eyes and his angular featured face, strangely enough, I notice how carefully shaved his chin is.
"Nice to meet you," he replies, smiling, and the whiteness of his teeth makes me wish I had cleaned mine more carefully this morning. "Steve."
Note: Hey everyone :) welcome to this Steve Rogers-finds-love-and-doesn't-know-it-until-chapter-20-something-story^^ This Story is set between the first Avengers movie and Captain America:Winter Soldier (and is actually a translation of my german Fanfic. So I hope my english doesn't suck as much as I think it does (I tried it anyway;) ). Hope you like it!:)