"Hard to say."
"Ever thought of switching to Civil Engineering?"
"Do they have design projects?"
"Sometime we get to use blow torches."
"Maybe that's what I need."
After the sandwiches, she tried on the gown with the panty hose. She'd removed the loin cloth, and the gown looked much better without it. Simpler, more elegant. But you could clearly see the silhouette of her legs. Even worse, the panty hose weren't exactly the same shade as her skin, and you could see the discontinuity around her middle. It was almost as glaring as the panties had been.
She reached up under the gown and peeled off the panty hose. That got rid of the discontinuity, but you could see that she was naked. You could see her pubic hair in front and her butt crack in back. Not enough dress, way too much girl. She suddenly remembered that she wasn't alone and hurried behind the changing screen.
"What I need is a body stocking," she said from behind the screen.
"Have you got one?"
"I'm trying to think. Maybe a dancer's leotard. Maybe even a one-piece swimsuit."
I knew a guy whose girlfriend was a dancer, but I couldn't reach him. I called his roommate. He gave me the girlfriend's dorm phone. The girl was out, and her roommate thought she mostly kept her dance things at the studio. But she knew someone on the swim team. I called her up. She lived in the same dorm as Mindy and Carly. And, she had a swim suit we could borrow.
Back on the bike. It was starting to get a little chilly. It was an all girls dorm, and at this time of night you had to wait in the lobby for them to come down. The swimmer was a muscular red head. The swim suit was white, but it had three bright red stars across the front. I had to laugh, imagining how the gown would look with those stars.
"Wild goose chase," I said, back in the sewing room.
"I'll just go with the panty hose," Mindy yawned. "I finished the top. I just need to try it on one more time."
She went behind the screen and came out in the gown. She looked at herself in the mirror from every different angle. The boobs were satisfactory. But your eye was still drawn to the glaring discontinuity across her middle.
"I look like a mannequin where they put the wrong top on the wrong bottom."
It was starting to feel very late, the way it does in the wee hours of a design project.
She stood there for almost a minute. I couldn't tell if she was lost in thought or just tired. But then she seemed to come up with something. "OK," she said. She rolled out the bolt of peach fabric and cut off two full yards. She held it up in front of herself, gathering it at the shoulder like a sari. She took a piece of chalk and made a couple of marks.
She went and changed back into her jeans and blouse. She turned the gown inside out and laid it over the cutting table. She wafted the new piece on top, adjusted, stretched, pinned, measured, held up, cut, re-adjusted, and pinned some more. It was like she was operating on a jelly fish. She took it back behind the screen.
"Hector?" she called.
She'd been half swallowed by the jelly fish, with only her arms and legs sticking out. "Can you help me pull it down gently so I don't pull out the pins?"
I tried to sort out the different layers. I couldn't avoid touching her panty hose. Her head emerged, and she wriggled the gown the rest of the way.
The inner panel crossed her chest like a tunic and then fell along the midline of her thigh, making the gown richer and less transparent. It hid the juncture between her legs, although you could still see the hem of the pantyhose along her side.
"We'll have to adjust the pins so that the weight hangs evenly," she said. "Can you undo this one for me?"
But the pins were on the underside.
"Johnny Bungle," she muttered. She hitched the gown up a bit and slid her arm out to let the left side of the bodice hang down. This gave me access to the pins, but it also uncovered her breast.
Her breast was beautiful, soft and round, just the size of my cupped hand. The nipple was pale and shy. She was embarrassed to have me see it. "Is there anything else I haven't gotten around to showing you yet?" she asked.
"I guess we could go over the checklist," I replied.
She showed me what to do with the pins. I was careful to avoid touching her breast. I had to reach down into the other side of the bodice too, which brought me right up against the other one as well. When she was satisfied with the pinning, she pulled the bodice back up and put her arm back through.
She was still somewhat embarrassed. "I'll have you know I don't usually let boys adjust my pins until at least the second date."
"No idea what you're talking about," I said. "I had my eyes closed the whole time."
I helped her lift the gown back off again without disrupting the pins. I got a brief glimpse of her naked chest before ducking around the screen to let her put her clothes on.
She cut and stitched along where we had pinned. She took a bite of sandwich. It was awfully late; but the end was in sight. She cut the back panel and stitched it into place.
"Well, come on," she said at last.
I went back behind the changing screen with her. She took off her jeans. Then she unbuttoned and took off her blouse, allowing me a full view of her breasts. The contrast of the panty hose was even more pronounced against her naked skin. She slid the them down over her hips. Her pubic hair was soft and translucent. She peeled off one leg, then the other. She took a self-conscious second to wad up the panty hose. Then she dropped her arms to her sides and looked at me.
"Well," she said, "there you go."
Her breasts weren't too small at all. They were gentle, but arousingly full and feminine. Her waist was narrow, her tummy taut, her hips voluptuous and caressable, her legs long and pleasingly turned. With her golden curls and her pale pink skin she looked like an angel come down to earth.
An angel with nipples that reddened as I watched. And a belly button. And the dusky silhouette of a vagina. And the earnest, vulnerable expression of someone who did not rule out the possibility that this meant more than she was letting on. She had been compelled to reveal her secrets prematurely, in the foxhole, but she was entrusting them to me nonetheless.
"It's a real nice start," I said.
She took up the jelly fish, and I helped glide its diaphanous tissues down over her nude body. We still had to be careful with the inner panels. Between us, we pulled them taut over her midriff, then straightened them below her waist. I stood back to take a look.
The effect was stunning. You now saw the gown instead of the legs. The color was fuller and more vibrant. The two inner panels overlapped to make an even richer swath along her right side, while a swath of hip and thigh was left revealed under only the single outer layer along her left. The fabric shimmered enticingly as she walked. If she had used a more opaque material to begin with, the gown would have been modest and sedate. With these different shimmering layers of transparency it was teasing and sexy.
"Man, oh man!" was all I could say.
She looked from the front, then from the side. She turned around and looked over her shoulder. "I guess it'll do."
She was able to take the gown off by herself, but I stood by to make sure the basting wasn't overstressed.
She was naked again. Bare, rather, bereft of her wings. And exhausted. I ached to put my arms around her. I wasn't sure whether I should stay while she dressed. I did, but I looked away.
She put the gown on a hangar. She collected her things. But there was something she couldn't find.
She sighed. "Carly and I left together. I must have forgotten to bring my key."
She tried her phone. No response. "Probably gotten herself handcuffed to some stranger again."
I was exhausted. "Don't worry. She'll drag him back to the dorm eventually."
She yawned. It was the bleary, tinny, bespotted, shivery butt fag end of the day.
"Listen," I said. "You can crash at my place if you want. My roommate went home for the weekend, so there's an empty bed."
I couldn't tell if she heard me or not.
"No telling when Carly will get back."
"Thanks, Hector. I'll be all right."
"Well, OK then."
"Thanks for your help."
"Night."
"Night."
