“Fine,” I got to my feet reluctantly. Hanging out with Eleanor these days left me feeling more exhausted than ever; she was always running around, dragging me to this and that even, as though just my company alone wasn’t enough for her anymore. Now that she had split with Johnathan who she had been with for almost a year, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was going to be seeing a lot more of her than I had been before. In the past she tended to get obsessed with dudes, getting stuck on them at the expense of nearly everything else in her life and needing me to offload on, but at least with this stripper, Chad What’s-his-name, he would be out of the city by the end of the night.

Although, I had to admit, I was a little cynical about her chances of hooking up with him, anyway. How many women must throw themselves at him all the time? I mean, Eleanor was beautiful, with slim hips, a wasp waist, and bee-stung lips that seemed to have men falling at her feet, but this guy got women hot for a living. It wasn’t like he could be short on them.

“Oh, I’m so looking forward to this.” She was practically prancing down the street as she peered into the windows of shops we passed by, to find something that looked good on me. I really didn’t want to get anything new, but if it would make her happy and help get her mind off the break-up, then I wasn’t sure I, as a best friend, was allowed to argue. Even though it often felt as though we’d gone in different directions these last few years, I still felt this sense of duty towards her.

“Ooh, what about that one?” She pointed at a blue dress in the window of a shop I knew just by looking would be way out of my price range. The dress looked pretty good on the mannequin, but I wasn’t sure how it would go on me – the deep blue was a pretty color, and I liked the sweetheart neckline that looked smart and not too over-the-top. Like something I could wear to work.

“I guess we could give it a go,” I replied gamely, and we headed in to try it on.

The shop was part of a big shopping center. There was a bookshop sitting next to it that I glanced longingly over at. God, if I could just duck in there for five minutes… I never regretted blowing a big portion of my paycheck on books, even if my sister always mocked me for it. Not that I had much of a paycheck these days, the company I’d done sales for two years just shut down last month. That’s part of the reason I didn’t want to drop all this money on a dress, or on tickets for this show tonight. I didn’t have it to spare. But I would do what I had to, to help Eleanor.

“Come on, try it on!” she urged as soon as she’d found a version of the dress in my size.

I took it from her and slipped into it in the changing rooms, trying not to look at myself too closely in the mirror. It wasn’t that I hated my body or anything. No, I just didn’t find much use for it these days. I hadn’t dated anyone in a long time, and, not being one for one-night-stands, that pretty much meant that I hadn’t had sex for a very long time. Also, I had put on some weight. I knew that my hips were wider and my thighs softer than they had been before. It bothered me enough to want to try and pretend it wasn’t happening.

I looked up once the dress was zipped around me, and I twisted back and forth in front of the mirror while I tried to figure out whether I liked it or not. It certainly wasn’t bad. The blue popped against my dark hair, and it cinched in a few bits of me that needed it, but it wasn’t precisely good either. It just sort of was.

“You dressed in there?” Eleanor called, and before I could reply she had whipped the curtain back. She looked me up and down and nodded slowly, as though this was exactly what she’d had in mind.

“Yeah, that’s perfect,” she grinned up at me. “Don’t you think?”

“Uh, it’s okay,” I nodded. “Not…not really much, to be honest.”

“Once you’re all done up for going out you’ll feel different,” she promised with some authority. “You should definitely buy it.”

“You think?” I asked doubtfully.

“For sure,” she replied firmly.

I glanced down at the tag hanging off the hip and winced once more. The tickets for this place were going to be expensive too, I knew that, and then there would be the taxi there and back and the overpriced drinks at the venue…

“Stop worrying,” Eleanor clicked her fingers in my face, pulling me back to the real world. “It’s all going to be fine, alright?”

“Alright,” I conceded.

Shooing her out of the dressing room I took another look at myself in the mirror. Yeah, I guess the dress looked okay. I had seen myself look better, but that was before I put on all that weight. Also, I just wasn’t used to seeing myself dressed up. It had been more than a month since I’d had to go into the office with anything resembling a nice outfit on. Most of these days, I sat around in my apartment in jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, reading and cooking and jumping every time the phone rang in case it was someone wanting to offer me a job interview. It never was.

The job market was as rewarding, it seemed, as the dating one.

I bought the dress and watched as the saleslady careful folded it in tissue before slipping it into a bag. Fortunately, the one pair of heels that I owned were black and would go with it.

Eleanor was practically skipping along beside me, she was so excited about the rest of this evening. It was starting to get dark, the light leaking from the sky, just like the hope that I had any chance of getting out of this event which was about as far removed from ‘me’ as it could possibly be.

“I wonder what he’ll be like in bed,” she wondered, like it was just a matter of time before she found out.

I bit my tongue to keep from pointing out to her that this hook-up wasn’t a given quite yet. If she wanted to have her little fantasy no good would come for me to shit all over that. I just smiled and nodded along. Might as well get used to it. I was going to have to listen to that for the rest of the night.