Read Online Life Without You by Liesel Schmidt - Free Book Online Page B

dressed head to toe in the store’s strictly mandated black, though she wasn’t letting corporate dictates box her in—she wore a lacy black bustier top peeking out of a black blazer, a cropped specimen that hit her at hip level and showed off an hourglass figure and hiked her boobs up like a car on jacks. Leather leggings were capped off by patent black leather heels that appeared to add six inches to her height; and her bleached blonde hair had an unexpected shock of purple in it, cut into a pixie that displayed high cheekbones and bright green eyes. If she hadn’t seemed so friendly, I might have hated her.
    “No, not really,” I said noncommittally, not wanting to be trailed around the store. “Just looking to see what’s in.”
    “My name’s Erin. Just let me know if you need any help,” she bubbled.
    “Great, thanks,” I bubbled back.
    She toddled off, heels clacking over the floor’s slick tiles as she went.
    When she was out of sight, I set about my wandering in earnest, scoping out each table and rack to search for something that fit the “sparkly” category.
    It didn’t have to be pink.
    Heck, it really didn’t even have to be sparkly; but I
really
wanted something sparkly.
    Wear sparkles, feel sparkly, right?
    And then, I saw it: a bright teal stretch satin and sequin thong that hung with glorious deliciousness from the clips on a hanger on a wall display, right below a coordinating bra with padded cups generous enough to fit my head.
    True, I could never hope to wear a bra like that, but the panties were definitely in my wheelhouse.
    They were decadent.
    They were divine.
    They were something that belonged nowhere in a sensible woman’s lingerie drawer.
    They were the antithesis of the white granny panty.
    And I had to have them.
    “My George would have loved those,” a voice quipped behind me.
    A guilty ripple of shock ran up my spine, and I snatched my hand away.
    “George had a wicked streak, that’s for sure,” the voice continued. While the voice bore distinct traces of age and years of a cigarette habit, it was still melodic. There was feistiness and spunk, and I could imagine the speaker, even as I turned around.
    I tried to arrange my face into a confident smile rather than a guilty, self-conscious grimace to face this person, this interrupter of my hunt for the perfect panty.
    The face that greeted me bore no resemblance to the image I had conjured in my head.
    I was expecting to see Shirley MacLaine but was greeted, instead, by someone whose features seemed a strange mash-up between Estelle Getty and Ellen Albertini Dow, that weird little old lady who played the rapping grandma in
The Wedding Singer
. Needless to say, I had to shift my gaze down to meet her eyes—so short was she.
    Not that I’m all that tall, but still.
    She was positively
itty-bitty
.
    “And boy, could we make some trouble together,” she said, reaching up, up to stand on tiptoe and trace over the sequins. “George would have loved these,” she said again.
    “George sounds like quite a guy,” I murmured, not quite sure how else to respond. I’d never met this woman before in my life, so the randomness of this encounter—while it certainly had all the components of an interesting story—was something I felt unprepared for. I don’t generally start up conversations with women who are obviously pushing ninety in the lingerie store, and the fact that I’d been fingering a pair of such racy underwear felt a bit…taboo?
    “Oh, he was,” said the aged little woman who stood before me, her eyes crinkling in a smile. “We shocked everyone when we got married. It was quite the scandal,” she tittered.
    By that point, I couldn’t help the smile that crept across my lips. There was no way around it. In the two minutes we’d been in one another’s company, I had no choice but to be absolutely fascinated by the impossibly impish little sprite in front of me, and the writer inside of me was dying to know