The curtain was pink polyester, and it had a gap that was going to ruin me.
I was standing outside the changing room at the back of the boutique, pretending to browse through a rack of scarves that I had no intention of buying. The store was busy for a Tuesday afternoon—women with expensive handbags and impatient children, sales associates folding and refolding the same stack of jeans, a soft jazz playlist that made everything feel more expensive than it was.
But I wasn’t paying attention to any of it. I was watching the gap.
Elena was inside, trying on a dress she’d picked off the sale rack—a black thing with a zipper that had stuck halfway up her back, leaving her exposed from the waist up. I could see her through the gap. The mirror inside reflected her bare back, the black lace of her bra, the way she was struggling with the zipper behind her head, her arms twisted in an impossible angle. She caught my eye in the reflection.
“Help?” she mouthed.
I reached through the gap. My fingers found her spine first—the warm, smooth column of it, damp from the heat of the small room—and she shivered as I traced a path upward toward the stuck zipper. Her skin was softer than I’d imagined. Softer than any fantasy I’d allowed myself to have.
“Your hand is cold,” she whispered, still watching me in the mirror. Her eyes were dark, her lips parted, her chest rising and falling in a way that had nothing to do with the zipper.
I didn’t move my hand to the zipper. I slid it higher. Past the fabric of the dress. Onto the bare skin of her hip. She gasped. Her eyes widened in the mirror. Her lips parted on a sound that she tried to swallow, her hand flying to her own mouth to muffle it.
“So warm me up,” she whispered. It was a challenge. A dare. An invitation to ruin everything.
I pulled the curtain open. Just enough to step inside. The space was barely three feet square—enough for one person, not nearly enough for two. She had to press against me, her chest against mine, her breath hot on my throat, her back against the mirror. I kissed her in front of our reflection, watching us, watching her hands tangle in my hair as I pushed her harder against the glass.
My hand found the front of her dress. The zipper that was stuck in the back didn’t matter anymore—I pulled the fabric down over her shoulders, exposing the black lace completely. She wasn’t wearing anything under it. Just the bra. Just her. Just finally.
I kissed her collarbone. Her shoulder. The hollow of her throat. My mouth moved lower, to the lace edge, and I was about to pull it down with my teeth when I heard it.
“Do you need another size?”
The sales associate’s voice. Right outside the curtain. Close enough that I could see her shoes through the gap at the bottom—black flats, standing still, waiting. Close enough that I could hear her breathing.
Elena froze. Her eyes met mine in the mirror, wide and terrified and somehow more aroused than before. I didn’t stop. I just pressed my finger to my own lips, signaling silence, and then I dropped to my knees in front of her.
The associate knocked. “Hello? Anyone in there?”
My mouth was on her breast, my tongue circling her nipple through the lace, my hands gripping her hips to keep her steady. Elena bit my shoulder—hard—to muffle the sound that was trying to escape her throat. Her body shook against the mirror, her fingers buried in my hair, pulling me closer, begging me silently to finish what I’d started. The mirror was cold against her back, and I could feel her trembling, feel her trying to stay quiet, feel her losing the battle.
“Just checking!” the associate called out, her footsteps finally moving away. But not far. Just to the next stall.
I didn’t stop. I pulled the lace down with my teeth and used my mouth the way I’d been fantasizing about since Elena had walked into this boutique. She came with her forehead pressed against the mirror, her reflection staring back at her—mouth open, eyes closed, completely destroyed—and the sound she made was so raw, so honest, that I knew no dress would ever look as good on her as this moment did.
After, she was shaking. I stood up, my knees sore from the thin carpet, and kissed her. She could taste herself on my lips—she told me later that was the moment she knew she’d never forget this. I helped her get dressed, my hands trembling as I zipped her back into the black fabric.
We bought the dress. Three hundred dollars. Elena wore it out of the store, the zipper still stuck, the gap in the back showing the world exactly what I’d done to her. The sales associate complimented her on the fit.
Elena smiled at me. “It fits perfectly,” she said. “Like it was made for me.”
It was. Every inch of it. Every broken zipper, every bitten shoulder, every moment in that three-foot square where we stopped pretending.
I still have the receipt. It’s in my wallet, next to the photo of her wearing that dress six months later at a party where she whispered in my ear that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
Some things are worth more than three hundred dollars. Some things are worth everything.
