Ben wanted this to be a love story, but it's not. That pretty much describes our entire friendship. JUST KIDDING... Maybe.
Macy Jones (though Ben calls her Trina Roca because he was too lazy to ask me my character's name...) is a school bus driver in her 30's. She has curly blonde hair and is slightly overweight, but just at that point where women can still say they are concerned about their weights and get away with it. She has always lived in the suburbs of Houston, Texas and has no intentions of moving. Even if she did, she tells herself, it wouldn't matter. It's not that she has the financial power to go anywhere, and what've they got that could be better than where she is? It's not that she's completely content where she is, just that she is, to quote The Sound of Music, "suffering from a deplorable lack of curiosity." She's never been the best at anything and of course she's had friends in different stages of her life but they got up and left and she never had the motivation to leave. She doesn't like her job and is searching halfheartedly for where to go next, but she also appreciates its dependability and general ease so it could be a while...
Macy Jones walked into Dress Barn Women's around noon and waited to be attended to, as if it were a restaurant she'd just entered rather than a dress shop. "No pink," she said to the younger woman who came to help her. "And none of that orangey yellow either. Nobody really likes that color."
The attendant was at least ten years younger and never seemed to stop smiling. "Alright then," she said, "let's look at some darker colors. There's a plum dress over here and a nice navy blouse-"
"Good god no," Macy cut her off. "This is my sister's wedding! Why on earth would I wear dark to a wedding?"
The attendent apologized, directing Macy to a sleeveless lavender dress.
"It must have some sort of sleeves," Macy instructed. She'd never admit it to this stick of a girl, but Macy was quite self conscious about her shoulders. She recalled the last man in her life saying "must be a woman thing," but by the time they broke up a year later he'd become certain it was just a Macy thing, that most women were completely comfortable with their bodies. No matter, that was years ago. Macy had concluded that men were a hassle and had therefore given up on them entirely.
Macy rejected dress after dress for being too thick, too busty, too short, to expensive, too informal... The attendent gave up trying to understand it all. "Red is for prostitutes," Macy would say, or "do I look fifteen to you?" She finally picked a green floral print from the back of the store, with sleeves just long enough to cover all that she wanted concealed but short enough to be cool for an outdoor wedding in Houston.
Macy left the store thirty dollars later and checked the time. 2:00 pm. She needed to be at the school by 2:20 and bus drivers are always early. Hurrying through the parking lot, she brushed by a pack of guys a bit too briskly- within seconds her hard- sought out dress was covered in a red energy drink. "Do you people pay any attention?" she asked. Her tone was plenty beyond irritable as a man in a Sumo in the City 2008 sweatshirt attempted to clean up the mess.
"Sorry ma'am," he said, his voice reflecting no more intelligence than she could expect with a man of his size. Not that she held any stereotypes, but if she were to be a judgmental type of person, he'd have fit her expectations pretty well. "I'm sure I've got napkins in my car or something..." he trailed off.
Macy was not always the brightest woman around, but she was well aware that napkins would not solve the mess, and she didn't have time to figure out what would. "Napkins?" She asked, clearly aggravated. "What, do you have kleenex too?" Not waiting for him to answer, Macy dragged the stranger with her back to the store. If she was going to have to exchange this dress she'd spent so much time finding, The man who caused her problem was going to suffer as well.
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