BAYOU

cinderella

"I knew you liked him."

"Liked who?"

It was one of those rare occasions that Sugarplum was in the same room as Imogene and Daisy-Mae, amidst their busy schedules, Sunday was the only date that worked for all of them to dig through layers and layers of white tulle, beaded lace and laced trim to help their oldest sister find the perfect wedding dress.

It would probably be more difficult to find a dress that didn't look good on her. Coke-bottle figures had the tendency to make a dreadful sack of threads look enticing. Yet somehow, Sugarplum had a feeling this would take a few hours. She looked around, less than excited to be here.

The bridal shop felt excessively feminine and glamorous but there was an essence that was trite to Sugarplum, like the high school prom she never attended since she never got asked.

Her sisters had the entire bridal shop smelling like them, neither the few stragglers that were sorting through racks nor the workers could upend the sickeningly sweet artificial roses mixed with amber. Already, Sugarplum was on her fourth sneeze.

She sighed at the whining sound of a wired hanger against the metal rack. Her only escape was the clearance section, "bride on a budget" dresses were good for clearing her airways and taking a break from her sisters- the double dose reminded her of why she hung out with them separately.

Another sneeze.

She missed Angel.

And oddly enough, she hadn't realized how much she'd missed him until she was alone at the estate, hours after he'd left, with the clothes he wore the night before the only evidence that he'd been there in the first place, crumpled, beside the bed, abandoned.

Looking to her left then right beforehand, she felt passionate enough to sniff his balled up clothes though sniff was hardly the word for a girl who was drunk with the taste of his smell, through her nostrils onto her tongue, drinking in this boy's dirty laundry unabashedly. The irony wasn't lost on her. Angel had done this same thing with her panties and right then, in that moment, she understood it.

His clothes still smelled like him- musk, smoke, undoubtedly expensive. And something soapy fresh underneath it all, a good laundry detergent.

By the third day of sniffing manically at the fabric with hopes that it would bring him back to her, she noticed his scent was starting to wane ever so slightly.

No, she began to panic- that was the last thing she needed after radio silence on his end and admittedly, she'd waited by the phone, far too aside herself to make the first move, but Angel was a caveman after all, wasn't he? Not the type to court her, more so the type to toss her over his shoulder even if she was kicking, screaming, and biting her way out.

Had he went back to Atlanta without her? And then the panic started all over again because going back to life as she knew it might as well have been an impending threat.

She'd taken his jeans to the mall outside of her hometown, she didn't need the nose of a quaint shopkeeper, no. She needed an olfactory expertise, a true connoisseur to capture him in one scent so she could have something of his that he'd never have to know about.

Right before Sugarplum handed the jeans over for...she observed the name tag, Mrs. Lochland, to waft, she saw her reflection in the cosmetic mirror and she thought to herself, this is how I look at my lowest low. Not bad, but still.

To make the encounter more humbling, the scents Mrs. Lochland recommend were either too peppery or too synthetic, the closest match was a Versace cologne, Eros but even that only captured the soapy notes. The disappointment was evident in her face.