What is Love? (Sequel to "Something like Love")

Dresses

  MARIA'S POV

   "Hey, this is Melissa, I was wondering of you and Emily would like to come to a masquerade with me, it's Sunday and it starts at eight.  We could all go get our dresses together and stuff.  Call back soon!"  I listened to Melissa's message and texted Emily and Sam, asking them about the event.  They agreed, and I called Melissa back and we agreed on going dress shopping today. 

****

"We have been EVERYWHERE looking for dresses, I doubt we'll be able to find something that meets our standards here," Emily gestures towards a small dress shop, that looks like it hasn't sold much for a while.

"We have got to try," Melissa sighs and pushes open the door.  A frazzled lady comes out of the back room.

“Hi, we were looking fo-“

“The bank is down the street and if you make a left you’ll find it,” the lady interrupts Melissa, barely giving us a glance.

“Oh, we are here for dresses.”

“Oh…well I doubt that you will find anything you like, you’re welcome to look though,” she remarks. We take up her offer and start browsing.   I take in my surroundings.  The store is very small. There is only one fitting room and maybe six racks of dresses.  There are a few mannequins modeling dresses, but that’s about it.   “May I ask what event you will be wearing a dress to,” the lady startles me, interrupting me from looking through the racks.

“Well, um Anne, we are going to a masquerade ball on Sunday and we can’t find anything that appeals to us,” I reply, moving my head to look at her name tag pinned to her shirt.  Anne nods, and walks away.  I am a little astonished by her lack of hospitality; the least she could do is lead me to a selection that could come close to my expectations. 

“Find anything yet,” Sam asks.  I shake my head, and move on to another rack.

“Ladies, if you’d like, I am willing to let you look in the back room.  That is where the longer, more formal dresses are.  I barely ever have customers, much less ones that are looking for long dresses.  Usually I get a couple of girls looking for the barely-there type dresses, so I never offer the formal dresses,” Anne speaks.  The four of us nod our heads and follow her to the back room.

 There are at least a dozen racks full of long dresses.  I am shocked by the amount, there are certainly more here than there were crammed on the racks up front.  The four of us split up, each going to separate racks.  Every rack contains dresses of a different color; I see orange, blue, purple, silver, green, and black racks. 

“Should I try this one on,” Sam asks.  In her hand she holds a red, strapless, floor- length dress that had sparkly silver stripes that met in the middle. A small red bow was stitched on her left hip.  From the waist down, the dress was a plain, red, silky material. 

“Yes, it totally suits you,” I assure her.  She nods and heads into the fitting room. 

“Ta-da,” Sam exclaims once she’s in the dress.  Our eyes fix on her (even Anne’s), and our jaws drop.

“Harry is going to LOVE it,” Emily squeals.  Sam blushes and looks down.  Anne smiles and walks over to her, starting a conversation that I can’t hear. 

Melissa’sPOV

“I will be right back, gonna go try something on,” Maria says and saunters off towards the dressing room.  She returns wearing a beautiful one shoulder purple dress.  The dress is fitted and hugs her curves, and starts to flow out down to the floor at her upper thigh. All of us convince her to buy the dress, despite her insecurity. 

“Well whoever you are trying to impress on Sunday is definitely going to be pleased,” Anne winks, making Maria smile.  Sam and I exchange a glance, agreeing that we need to ask Maria about the subject later. 

  Soon Emily and I have both chosen our dresses.  Emily went with a strapless turquoise dress (floor length).  A turquoise bow was tied with ribbon on the side of her waist and a silver broach was pinned to the center of the bow.  Meanwhile, I had been convinced into wearing a royal blue dress that had silver, curvy lines stitched across my chest (picture on the side).

“Thank you so much for showing us the dresses in the back room, Anne,” Maria thanked Anne politely. 

“It was my pleasure.  I hardly ever have customers, and it was really nice to have you girls here,” Anne smiles sweetly.   I was shocked when Anne took 50% off of the price of our dresses.  I tried to protest, but she refused.  We thanked her four times before rushing out to the car with our bags.

“I am SO excited for Sunday!  My goodness, Maria, when you hit the dance floor, all the guys will look at you,” Sam exclaims.

“Well, all I want is for one head to even cast a glance at me,” Maria says under her breath. 

“Where are we going to find masks,” Emily whines.

“Look in your bags… I think I found something that’s perfect,” Maria says excitedly.  The three of us copy Maria and gasp as we see masks in our bags, all decorated to match the color of our dresses. Sparkly lines curved and swirled around the mask frame, in silver and blue, purple, red, or turquoise.  Our jaws dropped as we looked at the decorated masks.

“Anne put these in our bags!  Did she decorate them?  They are perfect,” Sam squeals.  We laugh at her giddy attitude. 

“Melissa?  Are you going to the masquerade with Liam or Niall,” Emily asks curiously.  I shift uncomfortably at the subject.

“Niall texted me about it, he said Liam told him about it.  Liam and I aren’t really getting along right now,” I sigh.  Emily nods and then speaks again.

  “Well, why don’t we surprise him?  He’s not going to know what you are wearing if he doesn’t see you until you are already at masquerade, besides where is it anyway?  Anyways, we could all go in one car and the boys could go in another.  He is gonna freak when he sees you.”

“First off, I think the dance is at the city hall dining hall or something.  I guess we could go in separate cars it’s just-“

“YESSSSS!  Ok, Sam, you have to call the guys,” Emily gushed. Sam rolled her eyes playfully and texts Harry. 

“Hey says that he will make sure to tell the boys not to drink too much because 1.  They don’t want to drink and drive, and 2. They have an interview the day after,” Emily giggles as she reads the text. Sometimes I wish that Liam’s relationship with me was like that, but it’s not, and I doubt it ever will be. 

Hi!   I wish that I could insert a picture of all the girls' dresses, but I don't think I can...I chose to put a pitcure of Melissa's dress on the side though, just to give you a better picture.    Sorry if you couldn’t get a good picture of what all the dresses look like, I tried to describe them the best I could without having six sentences on each dress. :/  I will propbably insert a picture of what I picture the masks looking like (btw, the image of the mask is partially red but I imagined the other girls' masks looking like Sam's (red) just in the colors of their dresses.  Hope you had a good New Years! Happy 2014!!

xx,

Allison