“Do you know what kinda dress you want?” Dahlia asked me. She had changed out of the beautiful combination of clothes that made up her outfit with my help, and was now wearing her comfy home clothes. These consisted of an oversized hoodie of a pastel green and a pair of light gray sweatpants. She had even put down her hair, but seeing as it was a bit of a mess, I’m guessing she didn’t even bother to properly brush through it. To wrap it all up, she had on a mismatched pair of fuzzy socks. 

Surprisingly, the two different socks, a blue and a pink, went well with her outfit. I eyed her enviously. She could always look amazing, even wearing a disarray of clothes that were meant only for comfort. 

“Maybe red?” 

I came back to myself, snapping my head back up away from her feet as she continued to paw through the racks covered in dresses. 

“Maybe something similar to the way we did your dress,” I suggested, referring to the dress with a long jacket-like piece to bring in the 1800s style. 

“Well, yeah, duh,” Dahlia said, rolling her eyes around to give me a look. “Obviously. I meant what color for the dress.” 

I chuckled under my breath at this, but actually took her question into consideration. What color would I want it to be? 

“Hm... I think orange,” I said thoughtfully. Then, more confidently, I said, “Yeah, orange.” 

“Orange it is!” Dahlia said. 

Now that I had a probable color chosen, we both moved over to where the orange dresses resided. We looked at them all, one by one. A thin yellow-orange dress that would hug the wearer’s frame. A dark, near red dress with thin see through lace covering every inch of the actual dress in a thin film. 

To be fair, it was much easier to find a dress for me than it was for Dahlia. I already had a vague idea of what I would want, and it was so much easier when we only had to look through one color selection. Plus, I didn’t have to rearrange everything before we started looking. 

So in the end, which came rather quickly, we found a beautiful dress of a bright electric orange that shamed all of the tangerines and pumpkins that had and would ever cross the earth. 

It had a sweetheart neckline, like Dahlia’s own gown, except it was much sharper, more pronounced. It had a lower back, also of a corset type, and pinched in tightly at the waist. There, it dramatically poofed out in a skirt a bit wider than Dahlia’s own dress. It had a mix of red and yellow embroidery flowering across from the bottom up in a flame like pattern. However, the main decor had slightly less sparkles than the purple gown, though not completely non-existent. 

In complete honesty, we were probably overexcited and overdressing, but at the moment, I couldn’t care less. I felt like this dress was made to be worn by me. And like I was born to wear this dress. 

I held it up to my chest, right where the burning blossom of pure ecstasy erupted through my veins, chasing away my doubts. I felt the idiotic smile on my face, stretching out my muscles in a way that should hurt but didn’t, and looked up to meet Dahlia’s eyes. 

She looked blissful as she watched my own joy, like a parent watching their child try chocolate for the first time. Enjoying someone else’s enjoyment. As if my happiness brought her her own happiness as well. Like we were so spiritually connected that my feelings and her feelings mixed into one single bubble of delight. Or maybe, because my elation was so definite and infectious, she couldn’t help but grin along with me. 

Either way, our joint moment of perfect contentment and satisfaction felt... Well, perfect! 

“It’s perfect,” Dahlia said at last. I felt my heart expand at the complement, my resolve finally settling. Her confidence was all I needed. 

“Now, time for the jacket,” she told me, gesturing to the back of the wardrobe with her left hand. 

We smiled as we walked over to where the jackets were, and carefully looked through them. As we did so, I turned off my bubbling joy and turned on my color examination. 

“Not the red, it would be too dark. Not any cool color, that would just seem weird. Not another orange, we have to have difference. Maybe yellow?” I finally decided, slightly hesitant. 

“Yellow,” Dahlia said, nodding. She turned, business like, to the section of the rack that held the yellow. 

“No, no, no, no, and what is that?” Dahlia said. She was discarding the yellow cropped jacket, dark mustard one armed jacket, pastel yellow button cardigan, three toned yellow shawl, and... A bright, vibrant electric yellow, shining, black and silver accented leather jacket? Yup. 

I was trying not to laugh. I was actually holding my hand to my mouth as if it was a physical wall to prevent me from laughing. My stomach hurt from the effort of holding it in, but I wouldn’t laugh. I would not laugh. I would NOT LAUGH. I WAS NOT going to LAUGH. 

So far so good. It hurt, but it was going good. 

I looked at Dahlia. Big mistake.

She wasn’t even touching the strange leather jacket, recoiling from it actually, staring at it in disbelief. Slowly, she turned her head to look at me in a how did this end up in here? look on her face. No, scratch that. It was a what is this and how did it end up in here? kinda look on her face. 

I broke. My resolve broke. I burst out laughing almost immediately. The incredulous look on her face was what tore my resolve, throwing me over the edge of respectfully holding in my giggles into the territory of letting all my laughter out. 

I bent over, clutching my stomach in pain as the built up breaths of laughter fought to get out, clawing up my throat and out my mouth. 

Soon, my legs couldn’t hold me up any longer. My knees buckled under me, and I fell to the floor, carefully managing to somehow gently cradle my dress to prevent any damage. 

I swear, I was crying. Like, legit crying, I was laughing so hard. My throat felt raw, scratched up from how hard I was wheezing. I sat back onto my heels and bent over to touch my forehead to the fluffy carpet. 

Am I gonna die? Is this what dying feels like? I wouldn’t be surprised. 

Here lies Iris Auretta Siciliano, September 27, 2009 to September 24, 2024. Death from lack of air from laughing too hard. 

That actually wouldn’t be that bad of a way to go. At least I would die happily, with my passion wrapped between my arms in the company of my best friend. 

Eventually, though, my laughter subsided. I felt my life slowly draw away from the light of the heavens, slamming back into my body with a few more coughs of laughter. 

I opened my eyes to find myself on my side. When had I closed my eyes? When had I rolled over? I rolled onto my back and blinked the rest of the tears from my eyes to clear up my vision. Standing over me, upside down in my perspective, Dahlia stared with a single eyebrow raised and a smirk on her lips. 

“You alive there?” she asked me. I blinked a few more times. 

“Yup. Fit as a fiddle,” I told her from the floor. 

Dahlia rolled her eyes at this, but her smile hadn’t faded. It had actually grown slightly as she walked around to face me and stuck out her hand to help me up. I gladly took it, letting her haul me up into a sitting position. 

“Sorry,” I told her. “But your face was-” I cut myself of to let out a single bark of laughter before looking back at her and saying, “Sorry, your face was priceless!” 

I let out a few more huffs of laughter, and relaxed some when I heard Dahlia sitting next to me and joining me in laughing. We laughed together for a few more minutes before eventually returning to the matter at hand. 

“What even was that abomination?” I asked her, talking again about the weird jacket. 

“I don’t even know,” she told me, smiling. 

We simultaneously turned to look behind us, where the leather jacket was still on display. I chuckled once more at the sight of the atrocious disaster that was the bright leather jacket before pushing myself off of the ground. 

“Come on,” I told Dahlia. This time I was holding out my hand for her. “Back to the jacket hunt.” 

I hauled her up to stand next to me, and we approached the jacket rack. 

“So that’s a definite no on the leather jacket?” Dahlia asked me teasingly. 

In mock terror, I scoffed and told her, “Never!” 

We laughed some more at that, and I winced a bit at the pain it brought my throat. Luckily, Dahlia’s attention wasn’t on me and my chaffed throat. She had glued her eyes back onto her closet, in search of a suitable yellow jacket. 

In fact, she was so focused that I walked right past her to a possible jacket that had caught my eye, and she didn’t even see. 

I walked to a light yellow jacket that was of a similar style of the one we found for Dahlia. It had sleeves made completely of light orange lace that pinched together with baby pink lace, then ruffled out in orange lace that was of a similar color to the dress we had chosen. The light pink lace that hid the seam of the sleeves also lined all of the edges. It looked perfect. 

It also had its sash still intact on it. A thin dark reddish-pink strip of ribbon that wrapped around the waist of the dress and tied together in the back. 

“Dahlia, look!” I told her. 

“Hmm?” she asked. 

Her left arm hugged her waist, and her right elbow rested on the opposite arm as she rested her chin in a thoughtful way onto her palm. She turned away from the closet full of yellow options to look at me with a question in her eyes. Then, her eyes flickered downwards, to the discovery that was held in my arms, and she gasped. Her eyes lit up like it was illuminated with fireworks. 

“Perfect!” she shouted, clapping her hands together. 

We smiled together and I said, “Shoes!” at the same time as she said, “Mask!” 

We laughed together for a moment, before passing each other in the direction of the items that we mentioned.