Now, there’s only small remnants of the old business district; a mostly-defunct strip mall half a dozen blocks away from the current mall, the shells of old, failed businesses, and the occasional hopeful storefront decorated with bright signs advertising sales and discounts and loyalty cards.
It contrasts strangely with Downtown proper, which was designed to look like a ritzy, almost glamorous place. Much of the lustre has faded from it by now, with weather and traffic and time stripping away the brightest colours and dulling the shine of the stone and glass used to construct many of the buildings, but it still looks like the kind of place where money flows.
There are also a lot of people here. It’s crowded enough outside the bus that, when the bus finally comes to a stop in front of a sign bearing the words ‘BUS AND TAXI ZONE’, you have to wrap your arms around yourself and make yourself as small as possible so that the press of bodies on the pavement doesn’t crush you.
The side-streets of Downtown are thankfully less busy, you find, once you manage to push your way through the crowd of people. They’re still busy—far busier than you really like your streets to be—but there’s enough space for you to move around and in front of people without constantly having to brush up against them.
Still, the promise of safety offered by the lingerie store is enough to draw a sigh of relief from you once you manage to make your way to the building. It’s only a small store on the ground floor of the mall, but there’s a door in the back that opens up to an alley behind it. You slip in there, feeling the tension slip away as the sounds of the crowd fade when the door closes firmly behind you, the dull murmur drowned out by the soft crooning of a singer you almost recognize playing through the shop’s speakers.
You move into the store, glancing around. There’s another customer, a brunette woman in her thirties, browsing through a selection of nightshirts so risqué your cheeks flush a little as you look at them, and a younger girl—you recognize her, vaguely, as the same Middle Eastern woman who had served you the last time you were here—standing next to another college-aged girl, this one with red hair and wide, blue eyes. Aside from those three, there’s nobody else in here that you can see.
It’s a little overwhelming, having so much lingerie around you. You don’t really know where to start. You do know your measurements, but you don’t know what materials you should be looking for, or what styles would be good for you, or anything like that.
Really, there’s only one thing you can do. So you default back to the obvious thing to do in a situation like this: you ignore how red your cheeks are, clutch your card and money tightly in your pocket, and move with jerky movements to the front counter, where the two women behind it give you bemused looks. You flush harder at that, but try to ignore it.
“U-Um,” is all you can manage at first. You stop and lick your lips, trying to fight the nervousness rising in you. “I want to, to get some lingerie. But I don’t really know anything about it. Could you, um, come and help me?”
The red-haired girl smirks for a moment, until the other worker gives her a side-long glare and shakes her head, then turns back to you. It’s the Middle Eastern girl who gives you an actual friendly smile, settling the butterflies in your gut and replacing them with a new, different kind of butterflies. She has a really pretty smile.
“Yes, I can help you,” the girl replies, giving the other girl a warning look. “Jess, mind the register for me.” The other girl grumbles while the Middle Eastern girl moves out from behind the counter, unlatching a little door in the side and moving to stand next to you with a warm smile. “Follow me, please.”
She leads you over to one of the least overwhelming sections of the store— the same place you’d taken Madison last time, a simple panty-and-bra section of the store. There’s still an enormous amount of choice here, some of it bearing the brand of labels, and some just marked as having been made by Parian.
Finally, she gestures for you to sit down in a chair across from her. There’s two, so you choose the one that looks more comfortable, with a plush leather backing. She nods in approval, running a critical eye over your frame, causing you to shift awkwardly beneath her gaze. You lash your power out over her briefly, just long enough to get a taste of her emotions. She’s not mocking you, which is good; mostly, there’s just an undercurrent of amusement and affection in her, with faint traces of lust cutting through the emotions. Understandable; if you worked in a lingerie store for women, you’d probably end up feeling turned on all the time too.
Still, it relaxes you enough that you’re able to settle back into the chair, offering her a small smile. She returns it, then taps her chin. “So,” she says thoughtfully, “do you know what kind of lingerie you’re after today?”
You stall. “Um.” Looking up at her helplessly, all you can really do is shrug, shrinking in on yourself a little. “Not really. I just, I bought some lingerie in here a few weeks ago, or my girlfriend did. And it was… fun.” You miss the small leer that crosses her face at that, too focused on your current embarrassment.
Before you can say anything further, though, she snaps her fingers together, a satisfied expression on her face. “Aha!” she exclaims, her voice modulated not to carry too far through the store. “That’s where I recognize you from!” A moment passes, and her voice is calmer when she continues, “Sorry. I don’t get a lot of lesbians in here, let alone ones as cute as you.”
Your face, which had been in the process of turning back to a normal shade, suddenly flushes hot red again. Your mouth moves, but for a moment, nothing comes out but a choked sound. Then, you take a breath, and finally, mercifully, you can talk again, just in time for you to realize that you really have no idea what to say to that.
She’s—she’s actually flirting with you. You! You really don’t know how to react to this except to continue to stare up at her, frozen, a dorky smile in your face and your face as red as it’s ever been.
Luckily, she seems to find it more charming than anything, because she just smirks at you and turns back to the lingerie display behind her. “So anyway,” she says deliberately, glancing back at you, “do you have any ideas, or do you need some time to think about it?”
Finally, a safer topic. Discussing your tastes in lingerie is only slightly mortifying, compared to being reduced to a stammering mess in the face of a cute girl flirting with you. “I don’t really… know anything about styles,” you reply, giving her a weak smile. “But I, um. I liked the ones Madison bought for me. They were really soft. Kind of silky.”
“Hm.” The woman looks at you for a long moment, pursing her lips, then moves over to you and crouches in front of you so she can take your hand and look at it. “Okay, softer materials, then. Some rayon, then. Modal, probably. Maybe some vegetable cashmere…” She frowns, and internally, you mirror the facial expression. She wants you to wear a vegetable? Ew. “Do you have any preference in colour?”
You shake your head, eyes widening. You do, but—you really don’t want to mess this up with a bad choice in colours. “No,” you say hastily. “Could you pick?”
She nods distractedly. “Sure.” She examines your hand again. Her hand is warm in yours. “We can’t go wrong with pink and teal, of course. I think you’d look cute in pink.” Luckily, she isn’t looking at your face, so she can’t see you blush again at that. “But you’re definitely autumn-toned. Maybe some coffee, or beige. Actually, you’d look great in green, too.” This time, she does look up at you, wearing a teasing grin that only widens when your blush deepens at her words. “How much of a budget do you have?”
You shake your head, pouting a little. “Not really that much,” you admit glumly. “I can probably only afford one set.”
“Hm. We’ll see.” She stands finally, straightening her posture. “My name is Sabah, by the way. What’s yours?”
“Taylor.” You nod, then have to shake your head at your own silly movements, a movement which just makes you hunch in on yourself in embarrassment more. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Sabah pats you gently on the top of your head, smiling down at you. “Yeah, it is,” she agrees. “Alright. If you follow me, I’ll show you over to the dressing rooms.” She leads you over to a small room, with a sliding door and a curtain covering it. A small part of you is growling, but a larger part of you—a part of you that you don’t normally listen to—urges you to ignore the unease in your gut and follow her in, to just listen to her.
The woman thankfully does not follow you into the dressing room, an idea that doesn’t leave your head once you first imagine the scenario. It makes sense, you suppose—there are other customers in here, and even if they weren’t, that’d be illegal. You’re only fifteen, and while you’re not really the best at judging people’s ages, you’d say she’s in her early twenties. Not… that you’re really one to talk about age differences, but when you’re working in a store like this, you can’t imagine getting away with much more than mild flirting.
Luckily, you do know your measurements. You have been fitted for bras before, and you really haven’t grown too much since then. Sabah still makes you take your measurements again, an act that actually cheers you up some when you find that you’ve grown another whole half a centimetre around the chest since you last got measured. And from there, it’s just a flurry of activity.
Surprisingly, she takes an entirely different tack from the kind of lingerie you expected her to provide you with. Rather than handing you panties and a bra designed for your lack of a chest, the first item she hands you is a small chemise, coloured deep black and with a lacy black pattern across the low-dipping collar. It looks very nice, to your uneducated opinion.
A short procession of similar items follows; nightgowns, chemises and slips. You have to admit that you actually quite like the look of a lot of them—they don’t try and emphasize your non-existent bust, but they still flare out around your hips some. If the fabric clings to you as you think it will, then you might actually look somewhat feminine in them. And that’s a pleasant thought. It’s been a long time since you looked particularly feminine.
After about two dozen items, the procession of lingerie stops. You wait, clutching a particularly short beige chemise against your chest, until Sabah knocks on the door of your dressing room. “You can come out,” she says, amusement thick in her tone. You hesitate, but eventually unlock the door and move out, your movements stiff and unsure.
Behind you, you’ve folded everything she passed you and placed it neatly atop a small bench in the room. “I, uh.” Your voice comes out surprisingly soft. “I don’t know which ones to pick.”
The dark-skinned girl gives you a placating smile. “Were there any you liked in particular?” she asks. You can’t help but notice that her gaze is lingering on the chemise you’re holding to your chest.
You have to stop to think about it for a moment. “I liked some of them a lot,” you allow. The only problem is, they all look expensive. You can buy one, maybe two if you go for the cheaper options, but Sabah is really good at picking lingerie to suit you. There were six or seven pieces in there that you really liked.
She blinks at you, as though unimpressed. “Which ones?” she asks, turning her gaze to linger on the pile of lingerie in the dressing room still. You wait a moment, then trot over there and begin pulling out the pieces you’d really liked.
Six seems like a lot, but when you’re holding them, it really doesn’t seem like all that much. The materials they’d been made out of are thin, though not sheer, and they’re luxuriously soft. You’d mostly stuck with darker colours, blacks and greens and purples cut just short enough to make you feel a little naughty while holding them, though there’s one pink nightgown in there too.
Your choices seem to meet with Sabah’s approval, if her smiles and nods are anything to go by. “They look nice,” she says, reaching over to squeeze your arm. “Alright. Do you need anything else before we head up and pay?”
For a quick moment, you’re absurdly tempted to ask for her phone number. She’s—she’s flirting with you, right? Getting the phone number of cute girls who flirt with you is a thing, you’re pretty sure. Unless books have been lying to you. And in fairness, they do that sometimes. Not really worth the risk. In response to her question, you shake your head. “No, thanks,” you reply softly. “But, um. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to afford all of this.”
She just pats you on the arm. “Don’t worry about it,” she says glibly. “Call it a cute girl discount.” And she winks at you, causing your face to heat up once again. This girl has made you blush more today than you have in a month prior. “Just make sure to come back here if you end up needing more, and we’ll call it even, hey?”
You manage to nod. “Of course,” you say, surprise faintly colouring your tone. Then a thought strikes you, and after a moment to gather your courage, you manage to choke out, “I like to visit pretty girls,” and flash what you hope is a winning smile at her.
The lingerie doesn’t cost you all that much, surprisingly. You’re not sure how big that discount is, but it must have been pretty substantial, because it didn’t even cost you all the money from your latest paycheck. It makes you feel a little guilty, but Sabah just waves you off with an airy, “I run the place, I can give discounts to whoever I want.”
