Accept Jared’s help.

You run the numbers again and again in your head, and you realize that there’s no way around it: accepting Jared’s help is the only thing that makes sense. The fact that you’d be giving a guy who is clearly into you choices about what you’d be wearing makes a pleasurable chill go through you, just another in a long string of thoughts and feelings you don’t know how to process. Still, that doesn’t stop you from telling him, “Thank you so much, I’d really appreciate it.” With this new starting point in mind, you start thinking about what to do, looking at the various stores. Finally, you latch onto the best place to start. Namely, a women’s lingerie store.

As you walk into the store, you look behind you to see Jared still following you, if looking a little nervous. It makes sense, you reflect, since you had always felt nervous going into stores like this yourself. The fact that you don’t feel nervous in the slightest yourself, confidently strolling into the store, is something you don’t even notice. Your immediate plan is to buy yourself two or three pairs of panties and one bra. After all, that’s all you’d need, right? But after getting sized for both by a store clerk (telling her just got out of the hospital is all the explanation she needed) and starting to look around, that initial idea goes out the window.

It’s clear from the way they’re selling the stuff that you’re going to need a lot more of both. Not only that, but some internal sense is telling you it was dumb to think that in the first place. You pick out half a dozen plain panties in different colors and a few different bra styles that match your skin tone. You don’t get anything fancy or florid, because after all, it’s not like anyone else is going to see them, right? You bring the spoils up to the register, only for Jared to set down two more items for your pile: a lacey pair of underwear that’s see-through in most places, and a push-up bra. You eye him, but he gives you a smile that you know means, ‘We agreed I could pick some things out, right?’ So you use his card to buy all of it, and walk out of the store carrying a few bags, trying not to think about you wearing the racier pieces picked out by Jared.

From there you go from store to store, buying more than you initially planned each time. You always pick out the most unisex, least feminine things you can find, while Jared throws in a revealing top here and a miniskirt there. By the time you’re done, you’ve loaded all the clothes into Jared’s car, and he looks at you with a smile that makes your pulse race. “That wasn’t as bad as I expected,” he starts, despite the fact you easily cost him over a thousand dollars in one shopping trip. “So, did you want me to take you home? I’m a bit peckish myself, and wouldn’t mind treating you to lunch.” You don’t know what to say to that. On the one hand, he did just buy all these clothes for you, and drove you around. It would be rude of you to turn down the offer, right? But on the other hand, you still weren’t 100% comfortable with this being a ‘date’, and you didn’t want to take it further with making it more date-like.