Seven Dresses - The Second Dress by Maeryn Lamonte Copyright © 2023 Having awoken something in the half hour alone with his cousin's bridesmaid's dress, Michael wonders what might be possible, especially with his father around. Fortunately for him, his aunt is also present and gifted with a little insight.

-oOo-

The First Dress I Wore in Public

Like the genie released from the bottle, I knew there was no way I would willingly go back to the way things had been. I had tasted the rainbow and I was hooked. All I had were the memories of the half hour I’d spent in Chaney’s dress, and most of that time scared half to death that someone would walk in on me, but it was enough to convince me that life would only remain bearable if I could spend at least some of it in a frock.

I wouldn’t have put it in such words back then, but there was a definite feeling of crossing that first ridge. A whole new valley stretched before me, filled with possibilities I’d never dared believe could exist. It was a step away from the safe and familiar, which was more than a little terrifying, but the safe and familiar were what had me bent out of shape. I didn’t know how I was going to manage to keep to this new course, but wild horses could not drag me back to where I had been.

Freed from my cage, my mood soared – a lark ascending on currents of hope and singing its delight to anyone who would listen. Even sweating in my suit with the hated tie threatening to throttle me, I could still feel that unusual sense of liberation my cousin’s clothes had bought me. It kept my usual sullen self at bay, and for the rest of the afternoon I held my own in conversation with the other guests at our table. Mum kept looking at me as though I had somehow grown a second head, and eventually even Dad felt the new me deserved a comment.

He leaned towards me and murmured in my ear. “I don’t know what you got up to up there,” he said, “and maybe it’s as well that I don’t. It’s good that you’ve sorted yourself out. Now no more nonsense, alright?”

How was it that he always knew the exact wrong words to say? The newly released me felt some inkling of how much my father had contributed to putting me in the cage in the first place. For an instant I was tempted to tell him exactly what had improved my mood, but it wouldn’t have been fair on Lonny and her new husband. Besides, I didn’t want to spoil my buzz. It had been so long since I had last felt this good, I was resolved not to let him of all people ruin it. Instead I offered him a generic teenage grunt and focused back on the table conversation.

The food was good, as was the company – Dad being the exception that makes the rule – and the disco that followed wasn’t a total loss. Not quite my preferred style of music, but it had a beat which made you want to move.

Again, Dad did his best to derail the train. A couple of songs in he gave me a fairly hefty nudge and told me to go ask one of the girls to dance. It’s not something I’ve ever been comfortable doing. For one thing, whoever you choose, it affects how the others look at you, and I’ve always preferred to be on good terms with all girls rather than have a special relationship with one. For another thing, I know I’m not the greatest catch in the world – a bit scrawny and very self-conscious about it – which knocks my confidence, and most girls don’t seem to like that. For one more thing, I’m really sensitive about rejection – yeah, thanks Dad – and it hurts more than I dare show to be turned down, and since that’s pretty much what happens to me every time... I get that a lot of guys enjoy it – thrill of the hunt, challenge of trying to capture the heart of the most beautiful girl around, kudos to be won, etc. It’s just not me.

I was tempted to ask Chaney just to mess with Dad’s head, but without her bridesmaid’s dress she’d blended into the background and I couldn’t find her. Besides, as I’ve already said, it would have been unfair on my other cousin to wind Dad up on her special day. Instead my eyes fell on another girl about my age. She had a somewhat plainer than typical face and had apparently acquired a minor cake addiction in consequence, but her dress was exquisite.

I told her so. It was a fairly neutral introduction, but she blushed a little and looked around her, checking whether it was okay to accept a compliment from someone like me. Before she received any definitive response, I asked if she’d like to dance. Her mother was apparently on my side, providing a gentler equivalent of the parental nudge that had brought me here. She accepted my hand with some reluctance, and I led her out onto the dance floor.

I can’t say it was the highlight of the day. My dance partner was all enthusiasm and very little talent when it came to dancing and gave a creditable impression of an epileptic trifle. What’s more, she didn’t look at me once during our time out there – universal body language for, “look, I may be dancing here, but this guy just followed me, okay?”

My dad caught my eye at one stage and shook his head with an expression of bemused disappointment. Apparently, my choice of dance partner hadn’t even made it to the bottom of his list of suitable girls. That didn’t bother me. It turned out that the reinvention of me that had occurred earlier in the hotel room, in Chaney’s dress, had given up on the idea of Dad’s approval. If he was incapable of seeing me from the right perspective, then he wasn’t much use to me.

We lasted through about three tracks before the mixture of heat, embarrassment and impending exhaustion had her begging for a break. She headed for the terrace, and I followed, via enough of a diversion to pick us up a couple of glasses of fruit punch. Non-alcoholic of course.

She accepted hers with a mixture of gratitude and discomfort. She was still glancing around looking for some way of escape. Apparently, there were worse things than being a wallflower, and the evidence suggested that I was one of them.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re not into me, I get it. Thank you for the dance. It is a very pretty dress, and you look amazing in it.” I moved away from her, found a low wall to lean on and gazed out at the hotel grounds. She did me the courtesy of looking uncertain for a second before heading back to the safety of her family. It occurred to me that she had not said a single word to me in the short time we’d been in each other’s company.

“That was nicely done.” Aunt Miranda leaned on the wall next to me.

“Yeah,” I snorted. “How to win friends and influence people.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You were courteous and kind, and that little white lie at the end didn’t do any harm. I’m guessing she’ll be regretting some of her decisions before the day’s out.”

I gave my aunt a grateful smile and we stared out at the grounds in silence. One of the things I liked about Aunt Miranda, when there wasn’t anything to say, she didn’t try to say it. After about five minutes she glanced sidelong at me.

“This isn’t really your thing, is it?”

I shrugged. “Not really.”

“You’d be more comfortable if you took off that jacket and tie.”

She was right, but… “I don’t think Dad would like it.”

“You leave your dad to me.”

That was a point. Hadn’t I stopped worrying about what Dad thought? He’d probably give me a good ear bashing on the way home but compared to enjoying a little cool air on my skin… I slid my jacket off and went to work loosening my tie and top button while Aunt Miranda glanced at the sweat stains down my back and under my arms, her expression unreadable.

“Shall we re-join your family?” she asked once I was well and truly comfortable.

“Er…” I looked nervously at my jacket, now folded neatly over my arm.

“Don’t worry, I’m coming with you. I’ve a few words I’d like to say to your dad.”

The temperature was significantly lower inside, despite the packed crowd. I felt the damp patches in my shirt evaporating and let loose a sigh of relief at the coolness. Aunt Miranda threw an amused grin my way.

Dad’s expression wasn’t so welcoming. I tried to brazen it out, but I was too used to him winning. As we approached within earshot – quite close given the volume of the music – my anger curdled into defeat and I withered under his gaze. He was about to launch into one of his disapproving rants when…

“Derek, don’t you dare!” My aunt was using her dangerous voice. “This is your niece’s wedding and it won’t be improved by you publicly lambasting your son. Besides, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s hot. If you took a moment to look around you, you’d see you’re pretty much the last person here who hasn’t made some concession to the weather.

“If it makes any difference, Michael only took off his jacket after I told him to, and even then, he needed some convincing.”

Dad held his tongue, but the look he gave me promised that long and tedious lecture on the way home. I think Aunt Miranda must have spotted it too, because…

“Actually, I was hoping you wouldn’t mind lending him to me for the next couple of weeks. With Lonny off on her honeymoon, Chaney’s going to be moping about the house and getting under my feet. It would help if she had some company her own age to keep her distracted.”

Dad’s eyes were still boring into mine, his mouth twisted in disapproval and he twitched an eyebrow at me.

“I suppose you’d like that, wouldn’t you Michael?” I dropped my gaze.

“What do you mean?” my aunt wanted to know.

“Well Michael? Would you like to tell your aunt how you were ogling your cousin earlier, or should I?”

Way to give me a choice Dad. I had no response to give other than the reddening of my neck. Fortunately, Chaney arrived just then, and she did have something to say on the matter.

“You have to be joking Uncle Derek,” she laughed. “We’re cousins. That’d be too weird.”

“Well, he couldn’t give me a decent answer when I challenged him about it earlier in the church, and he doesn’t seem to have much to say about it now.”

My aunt and cousin turned their eyes my way. I took a breath and reminded myself that I didn’t care about Dad’s opinion anymore. I did care about what Aunt Miranda and Chaney thought though.

“I was admiring her dress, Dad. I didn’t say anything then because I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

“There you go.” Chaney turned back to my dad. “He said as much when he came up to the room earlier.”

“Your cousin was in the room when you went up?” The storm clouds over Dad’s head darkened. “Well that certainly explains your good mood.”

“You’re twisting things around, Uncle Derek,” Chaney said. “Michael’s not like that. Mum, tell him.”

“I have to agree with my daughter.” Aunt Miranda sounded a little distracted, and the look she was giving me made me feel even more uncomfortable. “You always were lousy at choosing which tree to bark up.”

“I’m not sure it would work.” Mum joined in the conversation. “Michael doesn’t have any clothes with him apart from his suit.”

“That’s okay, we have shops where we come from, and I’m guessing you’ve grown out of most of your things this year, haven't you Michael? My two were constantly doing the same at your age.”

“Er…” Hang on, what did she mean at my age? Chaney was only a year older than me.

“And who’s going to pay for this shopping spree?” Dad wanted to know. He’s not used to being on the losing end of an argument, and his sister’s response was making him more belligerent than usual.

“We’d be glad to buy him a few things. Call it a thank you for letting him come and stay for a while.”

“We don’t need any handouts,” Dad spat.

“Fine,” Aunt Miranda said, finally losing patience with her brother. “When my daughter’s virtue remains intact at the end of the summer, you can pay me back twice whatever I spend on his clothes. I’m sure I can find a charity somewhere that wouldn’t say no to the money.”

Somewhere along the line it had stopped being about me. It seemed my aunt had as little time for my dad as he did for her. I kept quiet and tried to keep out of it. The two of them locked gazes and I tried not to squirm under the weight of Aunt Miranda’s hand, now grown heavy and not a little uncomfortable.

“Fine,” Dad said at last.

“And you’ll apologise to your son.”

He glared down at me, and I dropped my eyes. I wished my aunt had left me out of this.

“Or you’ll apologise to me,” Dad told his sister.

“Agreed.”

“We should go,” Dad said to Mum. “We’re obviously not welcome here anymore.”

I watched them walk out of the hotel. I could feel tears prickling behind my eyes. I wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, only that it hadn’t been that good.

Aunt Miranda crouched next to me and squeezed my shoulders.

“That had nothing to do with you,” she murmured in my ear. “Your dad and I have always found it easier to argue, but that’s between him and me, and it won’t ever affect the welcome you will receive from us. I hope you know that.”

I managed a nod.

“Your dad’s an arse,” Chaney said from my other side. “Sorry Mum, but he is.”

“Right now, Chaney, I couldn’t agree with you more. Michael, you can take that stupid tie all the way off if you like.”

We stayed the night at the hotel. As parents of the bride, Uncle Richard and Aunt Miranda were hosts of the party and felt obliged to stay till the last of the guests had left, which was past midnight. Besides, they’d booked the hotel suite – for changing and stuff – so it seemed sensible to sleep in it.

It had two bedrooms, one master which my aunt and uncle shared, and another smaller one with two single beds. My aunt demonstrated her trust by insisting I share the smaller room with Chaney, and I wasn’t about to do anything to betray it. For one thing I really wasn’t into my cousin – not that way in any case – for another I wanted my dad to pay for what he’d said, and if the best I could do in that regard was land him with a bill for double the clothes Aunt Miranda was going to buy me, then that would have to be good enough.

I slept in my underwear, having nothing else suitable. By the time I went to bed I was exhausted, mainly from the emotional turmoil, and fell asleep before Chaney had finished in the bathroom.

She was awake and dressed before I cracked my eyes open the following morning. It was another bright sunny day and, with no formal gathering to attend, she had on a pair of denim short shorts and a white summer top with spaghetti straps. She looked pretty stunning, and I told her so.

“Well good morning sleepy head, and thank you for the compliment.” She took it as it was intended, purely as an observation, not in any way as a come on, which pleased me.

“Where are my trousers?” I asked.

“Mum has them. Shirt and jacket too. They’re a bit hot for this weather, so she wondered if you might want to wear this instead.” She pulled a yellow summer dress out of the nearby closet and held it up for my inspection.

“She wants me to wear a dress?” I asked, somewhat dumbfounded.

“Not what I said. She wondered if you might like to wear it.” Emphasis on the like.

“It’s a dress.”

“Yup. It’s one of mine. She brought it in case I decided to go girly. She keeps hoping things like that.”

“So, you get to wear shorts and I get the dress?” I was beginning to sound like a broken record.

“One, you wouldn’t fit in these shorts. Two, they’re my clothes, so I get to choose what I wear, and this is it. Three, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but you might want to try it on before you decide.”

She threw it at me and scampered out the room.

I wasn’t sure what was happening, but for some reason it didn’t feel wrong. Maybe it had been my experiences from the previous day still living with me, maybe it was Dad not being around, maybe it was the matter-of-factness in the way both Aunt Miranda and Chaney had dealt with the issue. I pulled the dress over my head and twitched at it till it hung neatly from my shoulders. There was a full-length mirror in the closet, and I spent a few minutes staring at my reflection. My hair was the biggest giveaway. Dad always insisted on a standard, boring side parting and that, more than anything, made me look like a boy in a dress.

I headed out into the main part of the room where Uncle Richard sat behind a paper. He gave me a nod over the top of it and went back to reading as though nothing were amiss. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out how Dad would have reacted on seeing me like that, which made my uncle’s acceptance all the more liberating. I still felt awkward, but a little less terrified.

Aunt Miranda appeared a minute later, fiddling with one of her earrings. She stopped and gave me a long appraising look.

“Chaney?” she called.

My cousin stuck her head through the door and smiled at me. It was a friendly smile rather than the half-expected ridicule.

“I bought you some new underwear yesterday. Do you have any skippies left that you haven’t worn?”

Chaney disappeared for a second then reappeared carrying a pair of lemon coloured knickers. Apparently the aforementioned skippies. She threw them at me and, in an uncommon feat of athleticism, I caught them. I looked at them then at my aunt.

“They’re new and unworn,” she said. “They’ll probably be more comfortable than what you have on under there, and they’ll definitely look better,” she said, before heading off in search of her other earring.

Somewhat bemused, I returned to my room and replaced my boxers from the previous night with the lemon “skippies”. As my aunt had predicted, they were considerably more comfortable. Another look in the mirror and I could see that the dress hung better after the change. I made my way back into the main room with my underwear draped over a finger.

“Much better,” my aunt said. “Drop those in that bag over there and come in here.” She indicated first a plastic bag already bulging with used underclothes, then their room. I did as I was told, eventually settling into a chair in front of the dressing table in their bedroom.

Aunt Miranda flourished a pair of scissors and smiled at my reflection in the mirror. “Do you trust me?”

I swallowed and nodded.

Her smile widened a little. “Good. Just relax and close your eyes.”

Again, I obeyed. It was kind of my default setting with Dad, but somehow I felt safer in my aunt’s hands. The scissors snipped a few times and I felt one or two locks of hair fall onto my shoulders and arms. There wasn’t much to cut, which did make me wonder what she hoped to achieve, but after a surprisingly few minutes, she brushed me down and told me to open my eyes.

The parting was gone. The pixie cut that replaced it was maybe a little short, but between it and the dress, I found myself struggling to find the boy in my reflection. My body filled with a strange cold sensation – more excitement than terror, but not by much. I stood and brushed the last of the hair from my lap.

“Right,” My aunt said. “Who’s ready for breakfast?”

That gave the terror the edge. “You want me to go downstairs to breakfast looking like this?”

“Well, you could put your trousers and shirt back on if you prefer. You may get a few odd looks with your new haircut though, and I doubt you’ll be that comfortable when the day starts heating up.”

“People will laugh at me,” I said.

“Why?” Chaney asked.

“Because I’m a…”

“You don’t look like one,” she interrupted me.

I looked in the mirror. I supposed I didn’t.

“What would you like us to call you?” Richard asked, folding his paper. “We could stick with Michael and explain who you were named after, or we could avoid all the potential awkwardness and…”

“I like Michelle,” Chaney interrupted again. It was kind of rude, but I get a little cranky when I’m hungry too.

“Michelle sounds good,” I said, trying to soften my voice a little. It was still pretty high pitched, but my efforts definitely made it sound a little more girly. “I, er, I don’t have any shoes.”

“Lon left a pair of sandals,” Chaney said, offering them up, hanging from her fingers by their ankle straps. “I think her feet are closer to your size than mine.”

They were. The thin straps were fiddly to buckle up, but it didn’t take long. Before I knew it, certainly before I was ready, we were outside in the corridor and heading for the lift.

I felt horribly exposed, but the people we passed in the corridor, the people in the lift, the people in the foyer, all either ignored us or gave us pleasant smiles and passed on by. By the time we reached the hotel restaurant, I was totally over my nerves.

The dress was nothing special, certainly not compared to Chaney’s bridesmaid’s dress. It was old enough for the colour to have faded noticeably, and it had a snag or two where my cousin had evidently tried climbing trees in it, but it didn’t matter. What did matter was the way people saw me.

My new found confidence lasted all the way to the breakfast table. By the time I was seated, I had my head down and was glancing around nervously for any signs that someone had figured out that I wasn’t what I seemed.

“Relax,” my aunt told me. “Everyone who was at the reception last night went home. Outside of the four of us, there isn’t a single person in this hotel who might recognise you.”

“Mind you Michelle,” Uncle Richard chipped in. “If you want people staring, you’re doing exactly the right thing. Nothing like that guilty look of yours to pique someone’s curiosity.”

His words might have made me more nervous had he not used my newly adopted name. That in itself helped to calm me, which allowed me to think about his words rather than simply react. I took a deep breath or two then looked up and around.

“That’s better,” Aunt Miranda said with a smile. “You do make a pretty girl, you know.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Playing a hunch,” she said, “but let’s wait till we’re in the car, when there aren’t quite so many ears about. For now, what would you ladies like for breakfast?”

I settled on a bowl of muesli and a small glass of orange juice then looked on enviously as Chaney tucked into a full English. Her eyes turned out to be considerably bigger than her stomach though, and she gave up half-way through, passing her plate across for me to finish with her mother’s reluctant shrug of approval. It wasn’t quite as balanced as I might have liked, Chaney having polished off all the hash browns, but she’d left the mushrooms untouched and I’ve always liked mushrooms. I kept my bites small and ate slowly, and nobody so much as glanced at me twice.

Aunt Miranda’s car was a sizeable SUV – not at all what you might expect from a dyed in the wool hippy (tie-dyed in the wool, my dad would say and expect a laugh. I didn’t get it, but then being a dad joke I figured there wasn’t much to get).

Chaney and I spread ourselves across the spacious back seat and settled down for the hour-long drive to their place. Not the worst way to spend an hour, I decided as I curled up on the white leather seat.

“So, this isn’t just a way of getting at my dad?” I asked once we were on our way,

“Sweetie, of course not!” Aunt Miranda glanced back at me long enough to elicit a nervous cough from Uncle Richard. In someone as laid back as him it was about the equivalent of a terrified scream.

“Then what?” I wanted to know.

“Shelley.” It took me a while to realise this was just a contraction of my girl name. I decided I liked it. “Shelley, your father can be insufferably frustrating at times, but I would never do anything to you, or anyone else for that matter, just to get at him.”

“So what is this about?” More or less a repetition of my last question, but at least I felt somewhat mollified.

Just as well, since Aunt Miranda went into one of her pensive silences. It lasted maybe five minutes before she’d sorted out what to say next.

“Sweetheart, no judgement, but did you put on your cousin’s bridesmaid’s dress yesterday?”

That cold sensation was back, and this time considerably more terror than excitement.

“Chaney suggested I should,” I offered rather lamely.

“Would you jump off a cliff if your cousin thought it was a good idea?”

If it was the right cliff, sure. Some cliffs aren’t so high and have deep pools of water at the bottom. But I would have looked before doing what she said, so point well made.

“She did suggest it, but...”

“But it felt like the right thing to do?”

“Kind of. How did you know?”

“Oh, a whole bunch of little things. I can’t say I was certain, but there were enough hints and suggestions to make it more than a guess.”

“Your aunt has always been highly intuitive,” Uncle Richard chipped in.

“Do you think...”

“Your dad hasn’t the first idea – too self-involved. As for your mum, I think she spends so much time and effort worrying about your dad, I doubt she has much left for you. Sorry kiddo.”

“See what I mean,” Uncle Richard smiled and twitched his eyebrows at me. “Scary, but quite impressive.”

“Anyway, you should know I never intended to push this on you. Nudge you, maybe, but the decision has to be yours – not Chaney’s, not mine or your uncle’s. Give it some thought and let us know how you want to spend the next few weeks. It might be easiest if you could do that before we get home though. Quite a few twitchy curtains on our street. Your suit’s in the laundry bag in the back if you decide to go back into hiding.”

They left me to my brooding. Chaney kept her eyes out of the window, but there was something about the set of her shoulders that suggested she really wanted to say something. Once she looked my way, but a warning glance from her mother, via the rear-view mirror this time, kept her from speaking.

Eventually we took a slip road off the motorway and as we eased up to the traffic lights – red of course – Aunt Miranda spoke again.

“Well kiddo? Decision time. Who’s coming to stay?”

“What if I’m found out?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that. It’s more a case of when rather than if.”

I think it was the matter of fact way she said it more than anything that had me shocked.

“Listen, if you’re going to let her out, you’re going to have to accept that sooner or later someone will spot something, so rather than worrying about whether or not it will happen, try and come up with a few strategies of how to deal with it when it does. Either that or, as I said earlier, go back into hiding.”

“I don’t know if I could do that,” I said, surprising myself with the realisation.

“Good, so Shelley it is. Best you have a chance to explore this side of yourself in a supportive environment first.”

Chaney had her megawatt grin aimed my way, so I nearly missed that last part.

“Wait, what? What do you mean ‘first’?”

Aunt Miranda sighed. “Shelley, what do you think’s going to happen at the end of these two weeks?”

“Well, I suppose I’ll be going home, then…”

“Then? You’ll pack this part of you away and never speak of it again? Somehow I don’t think so.”

“I can’t tell my dad about it. He’d kill me.”

“I think the law has some fairly firm views on that sort of thing.”

“You know what I mean. He’d never stop going on about it. It’d be his new favourite rant, and he’d never get tired of it.”

“So, you’re going to let him tell you how to live your life? Yesterday you gave me the impression you’d decided to stand up to him.”

I recalled the sensation. It was distant, almost as though it had happened to someone else, but I remembered how good it had felt.

“I went through a similar thing around your age,” my aunt continued. “Your dad’s always been completely in love with his own opinions, and he’s always needed a passive audience for his rants. Once he has someone under his thumb, he’s really good at keeping them there. The moment they show signs of having an opinion of their own he comes down on them like a ton of bricks, trying to keep them in their place.

“The thing is Shell, you can’t let him do it. For me, I just got tired of his rubbish, so I told him he was a prat and spent all my time with my friends until an opportunity came along for me to move out. You have it tougher since you have to live under the same roof with him for maybe at least another three years, but if you fall into the habit of giving in to him now, you’ll end up trapped like your mum.

“This may not be the most conventional way of standing up to him, but if it’s right for you, it has the added advantage of being totally wrong for him.”

“What do you mean?”

Aunt Miranda smiled. “I deal with people like your dad every day, Shell. The ones who hold the strongest opinions are generally locked into the most fixed ways of thinking. I seriously don’t think your dad would have the first idea how to respond to you as you are right now. You never know, it might just be enough to break him.”

“I don't want to break my dad,” I said, suddenly worried. “I mean, however much he pisses me off, he's still my dad. Besides, I'm not sure you're right.”

“Oh?”

While we drove the last half mile to ‘the Wolves’ Den’ – and yes, that’s actually what they call their house – I told her about the note from the tooth fairy. It had happened such a long time ago, but some memories don’t fade with time.

“Your dad is such an arsehole!”

Chaney’s exclamation yanked me out of my memory. As usual, I’d allowed myself to be consumed by the misery of it all, but for once I had a sympathetic audience.

The outrage on Chaney’s face shocked me. I glanced at my aunt, whose jaw was set, her lips pinched shut. Even Uncle Richard’s usually easy-going manner held a hint of thunderstorms in the distance.

It’s probably as well that Aunt Miranda’s auto-pilot found its way onto their driveway about that time, because it meant we had to ‘put a pin in it’, in Uncle Richard’s words, until the car was unloaded and we were all safely hidden behind our own defensive line of lace curtains.

It’s always amazed me that a couple like my aunt and uncle would end up settling in middle class suburbia. I mean living in a commune somewhere seems much more their style. Uncle Richard has only ever been a jeans and tee-shirt kind of guy, making a concession on his daughter’s wedding day by wearing the suit he’d worn at both his own weddings. Light blue with wide lapels and bell bottom trousers. You can imagine what my dad had thought of that.

Aunt Miranda, on the other hand, had worn a navy-blue pin striped skirt and jacket with a cream silk blouse. Entirely appropriate to the occasion if a little lacking in colour, but then it did have the added practicality of being something she could wear to work, according to my uncle who saw it as yet another sign she had ‘gone over to the dark side.’

The bohemian attitude remained though. My aunt offered me the choice between a small guest room which I could have had all to myself, or the option of sharing with Chaney whose room had become a yawning cavern of a space since her sister moved out.

I looked at Chaney, uncertainty etched in every line on my face.

“Would you be okay sharing with a boy?” I asked.

“I was kind of hoping I’d be sharing with my cousin Michelle,” she said tentatively, pointedly ignoring the looks her mother was giving.

“Well yeah, sure, but you know underneath this dress I’m just Michael.”

“It’s who’s underneath the Michael who interests me,” she gave me her megawatt smile – like her megawatt grin but softer. Unfortunately, it was the Michael in me that responded.

I plonked myself on one of the beds and dropped my hands into my lap to cover up my embarrassment. “Okay,” I replied rather thickly, doing my best to avoid everyone’s eyes.

“You’ll do,” Aunt Miranda said, turning away and guiding her husband out of the room. I could hear the smile in her voice though and felt the blush rising up past my neck.

“I’m sorry,” Chaney said, also smiling. “Are you alright Shelley?” This she said with genuine concern, hovering nearby.

“I’m great.” I don’t think I was selling the performance though. “Just, er, I’m not sure Shelley’s home right now.” I moved my hands enough to reveal what I was hiding.

“Oh my God! Do you really see me like that?”

“No! I mean no. I mean I don’t think so. I mean, this isn’t... I’m not doing this. I hate it!”

“You hate it?”

“You’re my cousin, Chaney. I don’t see you like this, at least I don’t want to. It’s like my body’s acting on its own. It feels like it’s not really mine.”

“What about other girls?”

“There are a few but none of them has your smile.”

Which of course prompted her to smile.

“Oh God!” I turned my face to the wall and started counting flowers in the pattern.

“I’m really sorry. I’m going to have to keep a lid on that, aren’t I?”

“I wish you didn’t have to. I mean I really like your smile, just my stupid body has this stupid reaction to it every time.”

“Yeah. Well thanks cuz. If it means anything, I really like your smile too.”

“What?”

“I’m hoping we’ll get to see more of it while you’re here.”

“What?”

“I’ll see you downstairs when you’re ready. If you want to get changed, my wardrobe is yours. You might like to try the left-hand side. That’s where I put all the wear-once-and-never-agains.”

“What?” I repeated for the third time, this time to her retreating back. My blood was slowly redistributing itself more evenly about my body and after a minute or so I felt safe enough to stand up.