Baby Doll Ch. 03

Her bicycle was carefully propped up in the backyard the morning after the "Buddy Incident," as Rebecca had been calling it in her head. Did Buddy go and fetch it for her? What in the world did Buddy do in his spare time? Did he have a job? He had to be human, right? He had displayed a human level of intelligence. He was just ... hairy and weird looking. Maybe he was the secret result of an experiment on fetuses.

Rebecca couldn't come up with a proper answer to any of her secret questions.

A few days passed without much of anything interesting, but there was a moment at work where she tied the shoe of a wandering preschooler. Rebecca had then guided the kid back to his unaware mother. She could never understand how so many parents would just let their kids roam free in public like that. One person had asked about her scratched up arm. Rebecca gave an excuse, and that was it. Nothing major went down.

Her new Lolita clothing and accessories arrived in the mail, and she was excited. She thought she should have a nice day out to show it off. She picked a Sunday, since Conner's Cafe would be closed. The destination would be the nearest bookstore, almost forty-five minutes away, in a completely different town than where she worked as a waitress.

Everything in the rural USA was so damned spread out that you needed a car, and it was just a fact of life for her. As a small child, Rebecca half-believed that taxis, public buses, and subways were mythological. The same logic had been applied for malls, businesses in buildings that didn't look like houses, skyscrapers, and swimming pools that weren't above ground. Of course, as she grew, she learned these things were all real and not just stuff on TV.

She chose this bookstore because she was sure they had manga, figurines, and related things. And so, while people would definitely stare at her, there would at least be some customers who got the basic gist of her clothing. She got dressed fairly early in the morning.

Rebecca braided her hair into pigtails with little white bow knots. Funny, she hadn't known how to braid hair until recently. She always had a certain someone do it for her. She shook the thought out of her head. Then she pulled on a pair of shorts called bloomers, because Lolita skirts sometimes tipped upwards, and there was no need to show everyone her panties. A white blouse with long sleeves and a high neckline slipped over her head. A short, crinoline-like petticoat was tied about her waist, to give the outfit its desired shape.

A jumper dress made of pale pink fabric was pulled on. There were pretty round buttons on the shoulder straps. Decorative, yet functional pockets on the skirt also had a similar set of buttons. Rebecca pulled on long socks that ended under her knees. Her feet slipped into pink Mary Jane styled shoes with thick heels. A headband with a small bow knot was put on her head. The skirt was wide, but it was also long enough to just barely show off her knees, and she thought that her legs looked cute. Overall, she was pleased.

Soon, she had her brand new pink purse in her hand, and she was leaving her bedroom, but she was stopped by the sound of the front door opening, and she heard Jessa greet someone.

"Hey Cliff. What are you doing here?"

"Hi. Where's Rebecca?"

Cliff Miller was wiping his feet and coming into the house, cradling a small wrapped up gift like it was Christmas. When he found her, a mild surprise came over him. "Woah. Why are you dressed like that?" His black eye had healed. He was all perfect again.

"Because I felt like it," was Rebecca's venom soaked response.

Jessa folded her arms and quirked an eyebrow at her. "Damn, Tiny. You look like something Nana would put on a shelf." At Rebecca's questioning look, Jessa clarified, "We call our grandma Nana." She went over to the living room couch. "So, what's with the outfit?"

"I'm going to a bookstore and I want to be dressed up." Rebecca tried to go to the exit, but Mr. Miller was blocking her, those green eyes sparkling with amusement.

"You always dress like Alice in Wonderland when you go to a bookstore?" He really was getting on her nerves.

Her fingers tightened around the handle of her frilly purse. "It's just a fashion style, like Goth or something. Would you let me through?"

"Not until you open my present. Happy Birthday!" He poked her chest with the box. She almost felt the hatred seeping from her face. It made sense that he'd know when her birthday was. She had written it down on her application.

But ... there was a problem, a major problem.

"I figured," went on the man, "that since you live with my sister, you're almost family, and I should probably get you something." He wiggled his arm, letting the box move up and down.

The problem was ...

"Mr. Miller, my birthday was two months ago."

Silence, and then laughter, but it came from Jessa. She almost fell over in her seat.

Mr. Miller's eyes winced for just a moment, and then he recovered. "My mistake! Well, might as well open it. It's not like I'm going to take it back."

Normally, Rebecca would love a gift, but she thought this gesture from him was very inappropriate, so she couldn't bask in the moment. Still, politeness beat her brain into submission. She took the box and thanked him with pleasant words and a strained grin.

Her fingers tore at the gaudy wrapping paper.

It was a box of chocolate candies.

She tried not to barf at the thought of eating all of it. She wasn't the sort to go through a whole package. At her parents' house, there were probably years old bags and boxes of wrapped candy that she had forgotten to finish eating, and she wasn't the one who spent all the money on the candy. That was her father's doing. She could go through fruity candies like crazy, but thick chocolate was too heavy to dig into for long.

Rebecca's words were carefully measured. "Why, thank you so much for the thoughtful present. I appreciate it." She stepped into the kitchen, put the box of candy in the fridge, even though she was pretty sure that would make the chocolate melt faster once it was in the heat, and then she went back to the living area. "I bet it'll taste delicious." She smoothed out her skirt. "Well, I need to get going."

Mr. Miller stepped just a little bit closer to her. "What bookstore are you going to?"

It was then that Jessa took a plastic water bottle, pointed at her brother with it, and asked, "Thirsty, Bro?"

He gave her an impatient look. Then he looked back at Rebecca, waiting for an answer. Reluctantly, she gave him the name of the store. "That's right," he said. His tongue flashed out to swipe at his lower lip. "I wanted to go there too, been there lots of times. It's a nice place."

Tapping her heels together, raising an eyebrow, Rebecca said, "I wanted to sit down and have some coffee first, but I'm concerned about the distance between the two stores. I'm worried that I might use too much gas, driving from one side of town to the other."

His hand combed through his hair. "That's nothing to worry about. Just get some coffee now and drink it on the way to the store, or just drink coffee here."

Rebecca's shoulders slumped. Her lips flattened. Then she called out the bullshit. "First of all, I don't drink coffee. Second, the coffee shop is literally in the same building as the bookstore. The interiors aren't even separated by walls."

Jessa was laughing so hard that she ended up coughing and gasping for breath. That was when Jenny emerged from her bedroom, looking pretty tired. "Hey, what's going on? What's Cliff doing here?" She took note of Rebecca's clothing. "Oh. You're a Lolita girl? Cool."

Mr. Miller's face seemed to darken. His head lowered and the tip of his shoe drew short lines in the carpet. "Must have been thinking of a different bookstore," he mumbled.

"Everyone makes silly mistakes," Rebecca said with a musical voice. "Now please, I need to get going. See you guys later."

Mr. Miller stepped aside, and Rebecca tired to ignore his delicious scent as her heels tapped the wooden steps at the entrance. Her skirt swished and brushed up against his hand and thigh. When she was on the ground, she heard his sneakers slam down on the steps, and then his body was touching her skirt again.

"I still want to go to the bookstore. Maybe I'll talk to you when I get there."

He still had that outdoor, grilling out smell about him, and now that he was outside, his scent mixed with the sunshine and weed-like flowers.

"That's fine," Rebecca said with a weakening breath. She couldn't stop him from going to the same place she wanted to go to. "Well, see you."

She got into her car. He got into his four-door truck.

The next forty-five minutes of driving was possibly the most irritating forty-five minutes of her life. She wondered if she was growing a rash somewhere.

She was the first to arrive at the bookstore, and she was the first to admire all the carefully laid out books with shiny new covers. Books on sale were laid out on tables near the entrance. The rest were in labeled aisles. In the center of the store, there was a place where you could find figurines, educational toys, and tablets. On one side of the store she could see board games, dice, puzzles, and crafting kits. On another, she saw blank journals, key chains, CDs, records, and large cloth bags. Everything was bright and fun and she wanted to run around like a kid on a sugar high.

Hipsters were sipping coffee at the coffee shop. A somewhat unkempt man wearing a trilby hat and a T-Shirt with a cartoon pony on it was studying the cover of a guide to drawing anime characters. Rebecca cringed at that. She thought those sorts of people only existed as jokes on the Internet. She moved on.

An old man was looking at a book about fishing. A middle aged woman was idly sliding her fingers against the backs of paperback romance novels. Rebecca used to love those things, especially in her late teens. Maybe she should get one?

She shrugged and discreetly went on to study another person, then another.

"Hi there."

She turned around to see Mr. Miller. He was holding a book about raising pet pigs. Rebecca nodded at him, then she walked off.

"Oh come on, wait up!" His stride was impressive. He didn't need more than a few steps to catch up to her. "I'm curious. What kind of books do you like?"

"You'll find out eventually if you're persistent enough." Maybe she was being a smart-ass, but Rebecca felt she had the right to be one. She looped around the store a few times, and silently, patiently, the man stayed at her side, occasionally bumping into her poofy skirt.

She halted at a section full of art and fashion books. Trying to ignore the heat from the man who quietly stood beside her, she flipped through a book about Western fashion history, from the ancient Egyptians to contemporary Americans. For a moment, she wondered if Egypt was considered to be part of the West. She wasn't clever when it came to geography. It probably didn't matter anyway.

The price on the book was too high. She left it on the shelf and walked to a different aisle, her unwanted companion sauntering at her side. Her hand touched an adult coloring book for a moment, but she decided she didn't like the subjects meant to be colored. She went on, then stopped at a non-fiction novel about the history of Dungeons and Dragons. It wasn't expensive. She snatched it up to her small bosom.

They continued this way, Rebecca reluctantly and silently leading Mr. Miller around the store. They had a few products each when Rebecca had announced that she was getting tired. She had the Dungeons and Dragons book, a small container of cheap plastic dice meant for tabletop games, a book of Kanji, a manga book, and a cheesy historical romance novel. She really didn't want to spend so much money, but her greed won her over. She was having difficulty balancing all of the items in her arms.

She noticed that, along with the book about pigs, Mr. Miller had picked out a puzzle box and an art book full of vintage pin-up girls, some of them basically nude and most of them drawn instead of simply photographed, although Rebecca was sure the models for the drawings were photographed. The only reason Mr. Miller had known about the book's existence was because Rebecca was the first one to pick it up. She had spent a long time gazing at the pretty images with almost loving eyes, but the book was too expensive, and so she had put it down.

Rebecca said she was going to the cash register, but Mr. Miller yanked up a cloth bag that he apparently wanted to purchase, put his desired products inside, and then told her to put hers into the bag. Her blue eyes turned quizzical.

"You didn't like my birthday gift. Let me make it up to you," the man said with that warm, husky voice of his, looking down at her with lowered eyelids and a confident smirk. The way a corner of his lips jerked upwards seemed to imply something to Rebecca, but she wasn't sure what, exactly, was being implied. Mr. Miller held the bag out to her. "Come on, put them in. I'm paying."

She looked at his hands. They were firm, self-assured things, securely gripping the handles of the bag. He was probably proud of the scars running down and around his flesh.

Her eyes flew back up to his face and she reminded him, "It's not my birthday."

"I don't care, Girl." There was a laugh in the middle of that sentence. His chest shook from it. "Let me do something nice for you."

"You'd expect something in return," she quietly objected.

"Yep, a thank you. That's about it." He shook the bag a little.

She was tempted to comply. She loved free shit. Her lips rubbed against each other. The lip gloss was thinning. She hated having bare lips, except when she was trying to sleep. She was the type to rub her face into a pillow.

Mr. Miller's eyebrows went up and down a few times. She turned her head, trying to think of a way to convince him to rescind the offer.

Then she thought she saw him.

She dropped all the things she had wanted into the bag and snatched it away; she held the handles of both the bag and her new purse in one shaky hand. Then she shoved herself into Mr. Miller's bosom, earning a little "Ooof" from him.

Rebecca's face pressed into his torso. "Don't say my name," she whispered.

"What?" Mr. Miller's fingers grazed her back. "What's wrong?"

"Shut up!" she squeaked into his shirt. It had a smooth cotton texture, almost as comforting as her favorite pillowcases. Her petticoat and skirt made little crinkle sounds against his body. But she wasn't in the mood to delight in such sensations. She was hiding.

As the blond man walked off, she peeked at him, and then she released a heavy sigh. It wasn't him. It was just another guy who sort of looked like him. That was a perfectly reasonable thing. Lots of guys happened to be muscular, tall, a little tanned, and blond.

Rebecca returned the full bag to Mr. Miller, her chagrined eyes focusing on a spot somewhere near his jaw.

"What's up with you?"

Might as well be honest. She rubbed a spot under her hair and behind her ear. "I thought it was my ex-boyfriend. It wasn't. Everything's okay now."

"Are you going to act like that every time you think you see him?"

Her lip pouting, she looked down at her pink shoes. "I hope not."

"Well, since you put the stuff in the bag, I'll buy it all."

Her head swung back up. Her pigtails bounced. "You're not even getting a handshake out of me."

He turned his back to her. "Like I said, I want a thank you."

Her purse flapped against her skirt as her hands rose and fell in a gesture of impatience.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Miller." The words were very fast.

When everything was paid for, her temper cooled, and she thought she should be more pleasant with a person that had just bought her things she had really, really wanted. So, when he asked her if she wanted something from the coffee shop, she nodded and kept her voice at a gentle level. She hated coffee, but there were other things to consume. She chose a fruit smoothie and a toasted raisin bagel. Mr. Miller picked one of those iced coffees she could never understand the point of and a thick cookie.

She couldn't ignore the fact that he was paying for the food.

At that point, she felt like she owed him something, and she wasn't happy about it, but she remained calm and docile.

"So," Mr. Miller began once they were at a small table and preparing to enjoy their food, "you're into Dungeons and Dragons?"

She wanted to brag, because she thought the game in general was cool, and she would have loved to say that she was an expert in all of everything there was about it. However, it wouldn't have been a wise choice.

She told him the truth. "I understand the basic concept of it, but I've only played once, and that was online. I've forgotten the finer details of the edition I was playing, and I don't know much about the other editions. I do love learning more about the game, though, and I have a weird obsession with the specific dice. I want to collect them for some reason. Anyway, I'm not an expert on this. I know I must get lots of stuff wrong."

Those green eyes were austere. She felt like she was being scolded.

"I've never played the game," he said, breaking his cookie in half with those beautifully shaped hands, but not looking away from her face. "Is it hard?"

"For me, the hardest part is keeping up with stats and stuff, but I can't imagine how hard it is being the DM."

"The what?"

"The Dungeon Master."

"Sounds kinky." He sipped at his coffee. Rebecca watched his lips draw on the straw a little bit longer than she should have. She hoped he didn't notice.

"Each game has its own story for you, the player, to work in. The Dungeon Master is the one who sets the story up. The DM makes up the setting, the NPCs, and the enemies."

"What's an NPC?"

"Don't you play video games?" She almost wanted to strangle him.

"I play racing and fighting games sometimes."

Rebecca tapped the smooth part of her bagel with her fingertip. "Non Playable Character." She put the bread to her teeth and tore at it.

"So," said Mr. Miller, "what's the point of the game?"

A rough swallow, then Rebecca gave him a weary look, like a mother whose child had asked where babies come from. "To play. That's the point."

"No, I mean, how do you win?"

"You don't. You just keep having sessions until the group is satisfied."

"And how long does that take?"

"As long as you want. A week, months, years. However long the group can keep it up."

That arrogant smile of his was back. "Will you teach me how to play?"

"Absolutely not. Get a handbook and an experienced DM instead of a weak casual like me." She softened her demand with a smile. "Do you like pin-up girls?"

"I think they're sexy." His cookie was almost gone.

"What do you know, we have something in common."

Rebecca loved the laugh that came from him. His great shoulders quaked. His green eyes were promising something. "You like girls, Sweetheart?"

"Don't call me that, okay? You're my boss. It's weird." She patted her bagel against her plate in a nervous rhythm. "Yeah, I like girls ... I mean women. You know what I mean." Rebecca tried to ignore the flash of interest in his eyes. "I love the funny poses the pin-up girls are in, and I love the aesthetic, you know? The textures and colors and stuff. I mean, photographs are cool, but I like the drawings better."

She was afraid that he might get weird since he knew a teeny bit more about her tastes, but he didn't. He was actually the one to change the subject. She learned that he really liked photographs of animals, especially baby ones. She also learned that, recently, a pet of his had died, a little Chihuahua puppy. His name was Cheeto. Rebecca had given him the typical "I'm sorry for your loss" statement, but she really did feel bad for him. He still had pictures of the little dog on his phone.