Gale Force Page 0,5

complemented Cherise's blond hair and beautiful skin. It was a simple sheath dress, clinging in all the right places, and it ended at the right length for her, just below the knee, to display her perfectly sculpted calves to full advantage. No dyed generic pumps for Cherise; she'd scoured the stores and come up with a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes that made me pray to the fashion gods for something half as great to appear in my closet.

The first time I'd ever met Cherise, she'd looked fantastic. Cherise could look delicious wearing an oversized foam-rubber sun - I know, I've seen her do it, back in the days we both worked for the local bottom-of-the-barrel TV station as weather girls.

I, on the other hand, did not look delicious. I looked like a wedding cake that hadn't quite risen properly. And white really wasn't my color.

"You're a true friend," I said, and unzipped my dress to let it slide into a confusion of frippery on the dressing room floor. The waiting dress wrangler rescued it, fussily dusted it, and put it back on a hanger and in a garment bag, the better to protect its doubtful charms. "Right. Something in off-white? With less - " I made a vague, poofy gesture with my hands. The salesclerk, who must have seen brides make a thousand terrible decisions, looked relieved. She nodded and turned to Cherise.

"Ma'am?" she asked. "Can I bring you some more selections?"

Cherise turned, hands on hips. "You're kidding, right? Look, I gave her fair warning. I am not giving up this dress. I'll be maid of honor, but not matronly of honor."

"Keep the dress," I said hastily. "It really does look great on you. So you're done. It's just me we're still working on."

Cherise, mollified, unzipped and shimmied out of the dress. She was the one who fussed with it, getting it hung just so, and zipped it into the garment bag before handing it to the salesclerk. "Be sure nothing happens to it," she said. "Put my name on it in giant letters: Cherise. In fact, if you've got a vault - "

"Cher," I said, "leave the poor lady alone. She's dealing with enough as it is. Your dress is safe."

"Maybe I should take it with me."

"Maybe you should put your clothes on. I'm feeling kind of outclassed, here."

Cherise grinned, undermining her Playboy Bunny appeal but making herself real in a way most pretty women weren't. She looked after herself with care, but she also didn't put too much emphasis on it. Cherise liked to do things that the Genetically Chosen Few generally didn't, like read, geek out on TV shows, indulge in online gaming. Her most prominent body decoration, which showed plainly as she turned to gather up her jeans and tank top from the bench, was a Gray - a little gray alien tattoo waving hello from the small of her back, where most beautiful women would have put a rose as a tramp stamp.

That was Cherise, cheerfully mowing down the barriers.

I sat down on the other bench, legs crossed, feeling exposed and vulnerable in my lacy underthings. I had a huge list of things still to do for the wedding, and I was running out of time, and the last thing I needed to be doing was obsessing about the dress. I mean, I had good taste in clothes, right? I could usually walk into a store, grab something right off the rack, and get it right.

Today, I'd gone through more dresses than I'd worn in the last year. Maybe I ought to try the designer line again. Or get married in a garbage bag. Add a couple of frills, a nice bow - couldn't be worse than what I'd just seen myself in today. There was a fashion hell. I'd been there.

"You okay?" Cherise finished buttoning up her jeans, skimmed her top down to street-legal levels, flipped her hair, and voilà, she was fantastic. She stepped out of the Jimmy Choo pumps and boxed them up with the care usually reserved for crown jewels or religious relics, and slid her perfectly pedicured toes into a pair of hot-pink flip-flops. "Because you look a little bit - "

"Spooked," I supplied sourly. "Worried. Scared. Nuts. Insane. Completely, utterly - "

"I was going to say hungry. It's already two hours after we should have had lunch."

Low blood sugar probably was impairing my impressive dress-choosing skills, and even though this was a full-service bridal store, I doubted that