The breakfast rush was busy at Grandmother's when Big Bad Wolf walked into the diner. Red looked up, ready to give him attitude, but stopped when she saw the white bandage wrapped around his head.
He sat at the counter without his usual swagger, looking uncomfortable. When Red approached, he just said, "Coffee," without meeting her eyes.
She poured the coffee and couldn't help asking, "So what's the bandage about?"
Wolf touched his head self-consciously. "Oh, I fell," he said, but Red could tell he was lying by the way he looked embarrassed.
Curious why she even cared that he was hurt, she decided to push. Wolf tried to change the subject by flirting with her, but she wasn't having it.
"So did you try to rob someone again and get beaten up?" Red asked bluntly. "Is that what the bandage is about?"
"No!" Wolf snapped, genuinely hurt by the accusation. "That didn't happen!"
Seeing how embarrassed he was, Red felt guilty for some reason. "Okay," she said more gently. "Well, I'm gd you're not hurt that bad."
Wolf smirked. "Oh, so you do care about me, Red."
"No," Red said quickly. "It's because you're a customer and you buy stuff."
"That's it?" he asked.
"Pretty much," she responded.
"I'll be back," Red said and went to the kitchen. She came back with a full breakfast pte and set it in front of him.
"I didn't order this," Wolf said, confused.
"Shut up and eat it," Red told him.
Wolf didn't argue. He just picked up his fork and started eating while Red watched from the corner of her eye, as she served her other customers.
---
Cheshire had always found shopping therapeutic—the smooth slide of silk between her fingers, the whisper of expensive fabric against her skin, the way a perfectly tailored dress could transform not just how she looked, but how she felt. Nordstrom's designer section was her sanctuary, a pce where she could lose herself in the ritual of selection and self-improvement.
She was examining a midnight blue cocktail dress when she noticed the redhead across the rack doing the same thing, but with an expression of complete bewilderment. The girl—and she was definitely young, maybe early twenties—held up a price tag and her eyes went wide.
"Six hundred dolrs for a dress?" the redhead muttered to herself. "Jeez Louise."
Cheshire couldn't help but smile. The girl's voice carried that unmistakable scrappy quality that reminded her of someone who'd grown up counting every penny. But here she was, in the designer section, clearly with money to spend even if she wasn't used to having it.
"First time shopping designer?" Cheshire asked, moving around the rack.
The redhead looked up, and Cheshire was struck by her eyes—they were bright and curious, but without the calcuted wariness that most women in Cheshire's world developed after their first few months. This girl still had something that Cheshire realized she'd lost somewhere along the way: genuine enthusiasm.
"Is it that obvious?" the girl ughed, and even her ugh was different—uninhibited, like she didn't care if people looked. "I'm Annie, by the way."
"Cheshire," she replied, extending a manicured hand.
Annie shook her hand. "Well, I've never had money to spend on stuff like this before. My... employer recently gave me a clothing allowance, and I'm supposed to upgrade my wardrobe." She gestured helplessly at the racks around them. "But I have no idea what I'm doing."
Something about the way Annie said "employer" made Cheshire's antennae twitch, but she pushed the thought aside. Lots of jobs required professional wardrobes.
"What kind of work do you do?" Cheshire asked casually, pulling the blue dress from the rack to examine it more closely.
"Client services," Annie said, which was vague enough to be either completely innocent or completely not. "What about you?"
"Consulting," Cheshire replied with equal vagueness, though she couldn't help smiling at how they were both dancing around specifics. "I work with a very... select clientele."
Annie nodded like this made perfect sense. "So you probably know about this stuff. What do you think of this dress?"
She held up a red number that was beautiful but completely wrong for her coloring. Cheshire tilted her head, studying the redhead's features—the bright copper hair, the fair skin with just a dusting of freckles, the way she carried herself with natural confidence despite being out of her element.
"It's gorgeous," Cheshire said diplomatically, "but with your hair, you'd be better in jewel tones. Blues, emeralds, deep purples. That red is going to compete with your natural coloring instead of enhancing it."
Annie's face lit up like someone had just handed her the secret to the universe. "Really? I never thought about that. I usually just grab whatever's on sale at Bull's-Eye."
The honesty was so refreshing that Cheshire found herself genuinely smiling. "Here, try this." She handed Annie the midnight blue dress. "This will make your eyes pop."
"You think so?" Annie held the dress up to herself in front of a mirror, and even Cheshire had to admit the color transformation was dramatic.
"Definitely. Trust me, I have an eye for these things."
Annie looked at the price tag again and winced slightly, but her expression was determined. "Okay, if you say so. I guess I'm learning that you get what you pay for, right?"
They continued shopping together, with Cheshire finding herself oddly invested in helping Annie pick out pieces that would work together. There was something infectious about Annie's excitement over small details—the way a particur shade of lipstick made her feel confident, or how she'd never owned shoes that cost more than thirty dolrs before.
"You want to grab lunch?" Annie asked as they finished paying for their purchases. "I mean, if you're not busy. You've been so helpful, and I feel like I should at least buy you a sandwich or something."
Cheshire almost said no—it was her automatic response to invitations from people she didn't know well. But something about Annie's genuine gratitude, the way she offered lunch like it was a real gift instead of just politeness, made her reconsider.
"Sure," she heard herself saying. "Food court?"
They found a table in the bustling food court, Annie with a slice of pizza and Cheshire with a sad, shopping bags clustered around their chairs like colorful barricades.
"So," Annie said, taking a bite of pizza, "what's your story? You seem like you've got it all figured out."
Cheshire ughed, a sound with more edge than she'd intended. "Trust me, I definitely don't have it all figured out. I just got good at pretending."
"Yeah, but you're so confident and beautiful. Like, when you were helping me pick out clothes, you just knew stuff. You move through the world like you belong wherever you are."
The observation was surprisingly perceptive, and Cheshire found herself studying Annie more carefully. Most people saw her confidence as intimidating or untouchable. This girl saw it as something admirable.
"It's learned behavior," Cheshire said finally. "I wasn't always like this. When I was your age, I was probably more like you—excited about new experiences, trusting people too easily."
"What changed?"
The question was asked so simply, without any of the careful probing that usually accompanied personal inquiries in Cheshire's world. Annie seemed genuinely curious, like she really wanted to understand.
"Life," Cheshire said, which was both completely true and completely evasive. "You learn to protect yourself after you get hurt enough times."
Annie nodded thoughtfully. "I get that. I mean, I've had my share of hard knocks. But I don't know... I think if you let the bad stuff make you hard all the way through, you miss out on the good things when they come along."
It was such a naive thing to say, but Annie said it with quiet conviction, like she'd tested this philosophy and found it solid. Cheshire felt something twist in her chest—not quite envy, but a recognition of something she'd lost.
"You're going to do well in client services," Cheshire said, not entirely sure why she felt confident about that. "People are going to like you."
"I hope so. I'm still figuring out how to be... professional, I guess. How to give people what they want without losing myself in the process."
The words hung in the air between them, loaded with meaning that Cheshire was almost certain Annie didn't realize she was conveying. But the sentiment—the struggle to maintain authenticity while meeting others' expectations—was so familiar that Cheshire felt an unexpected kinship.
"The trick," Cheshire said carefully, "is figuring out which parts of yourself are non-negotiable. The things you won't compromise on, no matter what the client wants or how much they're paying."
Annie's eyes sharpened slightly, and for a moment, Cheshire wondered if she'd said too much. But then Annie nodded slowly.
"That makes sense. I guess I'm still figuring out what those things are."
"You will," Cheshire said, surprised by how much she meant it. "You seem like someone who knows who she is, even if you're still learning how to be her."
They finished lunch with easier conversation—Annie talked about growing up moving from foster home to foster home, always nding on her feet, always finding reasons to be optimistic. Cheshire found herself sharing more than she usually did, talking about her love of literature, her secret addiction to cooking shows, the way she'd learned to read people's desires before they even knew they had them.
As they prepared to leave, Annie hesitated. "This might be weird, but would you maybe want to be friends? I don't know many people in the city yet, and you seem like someone I could learn from."
The request was so direct, so vulnerable, that Cheshire felt her usual defenses glitch. She could count on one hand how many true friends she had Alice being one of them. It was too complicated, too risky.
But looking at Annie's hopeful expression, remembering the way she'd ughed at her own confusion over designer prices, the genuine gratitude she'd shown for simple help with shopping, Cheshire found herself nodding.
"Sure," she said, pulling out her phone. "Let's exchange numbers."
As they programmed each other's contacts, Cheshire couldn't shake the feeling that she was making either a wonderful decision or a terrible mistake. Possibly both.
"Thanks for today," Annie said as they gathered their shopping bags. "I feel like I learned more about... everything in the st few hours than I have in weeks."
"Yeah," Cheshire said, realizing it was true for her too, though in ways she couldn't quite articute. "Me too."
They parted ways at the mall entrance, Annie heading toward the subway with her arms full of designer bags and an expression of determined excitement. Cheshire watched her go, noting the confident set of her shoulders, the way she'd already started carrying herself differently.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Alice: *How's shopping? Find anything good?*
Cheshire looked in the direction Annie had disappeared, then typed back: *Yeah. I think I did.*
