TWELVE | GREEN GREEN DRESS

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Cora couldn't have pinpointed at what exact moment she started disliking her body, but it was definitely at some point in middle school. And now, if she could tell her past self anything, it would absolutely be to not waste so much energy dwelling on it.

Human bodies—especially female ones—were constantly changing, constantly morphing shapes, and the body she had as a twelve-year-old was completely different from the one she had as a fifteen-year-old, an eighteen-year-old, a twenty-two-year-old, and so on. But when you're that young, all you can think about is the here and now. You can't focus in class because you're too busy glancing around at the other girls, noticing how their waists fit into such tiny jeans or that they were still so small-chested that they didn't need to wear bras yet. And just the other day, you realized that the boys in the back row stare at them in a way that they don't stare at you.

Even in her mid-twenties, she still wasn't sure if she'd ever had an eating disorder. It wasn't something she talked about because it never descended into anything drastic—she was never starving, never purging. Relatively, she was okay, so it never felt like a noteworthy enough piece of information that she should burden anyone else with it. But in middle school, she wasn't finishing her dinners. In high school, she was obsessively counting calories. In college, she was hitting the gym before her first class and avoiding carbs as much as she could. She was finding so few options in the cafeteria that she started getting dizzy during rehearsals, but sometimes she'd start to cry if she ate too much junk food that day. She enjoyed getting to be "normal" in the moments when she let herself eat anything that materialized in front of her, but she felt disgusting about it later.

It didn't help that she was trying to go into an industry where looks matter just as much, if not more, than talent. That even while she was still in school, she was going up against girls who were equally as skilled as her, and therefore which one of them got the part could simply come down to whose appearance fit the director's vision more. Theatre was a cutthroat industry and the college years were perhaps the worst of it because it was the time in which everyone was the most terrified. When they were about to find out if they would be catapulted straight out of school and into a dream job that would land them their Equity cards or if they'd be performing in community theaters for the next ten years. When making one little slip up during your senior showcase, one forgotten line or voice crack, could be the reason you didn't land an agent.

It wasn't a great environment for anyone, much less someone who was already insecure about their body as it was, and some days Cora felt like she was a ticking bomb about to go off at any second. The feeling never fully went away.

To this day, any time she got a role, she still questioned if she really deserved it. Had she won it fair and square?

Or had she gotten it just because she was pretty?

Cora's reward to herself for getting through the first half of previews was an outing with Siena to go dress shopping.

She needed something nice to wear for opening night since there would be a red carpet beforehand and then the cast party after, and she had already invited Siena as her plus one. Her parents were coming into town for the show, but she didn't want to bring one of them with her and not the other, and Simon wouldn't be able to make it back so soon after coming in for the first preview. That left Sie as the obvious choice.

And one thing that they both had in common was that they'd never turn down an excuse to dress up.

Getting Siena's traditional work schedule and Cora's very untraditional one to line up was a bit of a challenge, but they found some free time Sunday evening after her only show that day, the matinee. The department stores might only be open for another few hours, but as long as they ate a quick dinner, they'd hopefully have enough time to find some options they liked.

Siena helped expedite the process by meeting her at the theater after her show, and the two of them ate wraps she'd grabbed from one of the local delis while they walked five blocks to the nearest Nordstrom. As soon as they stepped through the doors, Cora was immediately both excited and nervous—she loved shopping but hated the disappointment that writhed in her stomach when something didn't look as good on her as she'd hoped.

As much as she wanted to meander around and look at shoes and handbags before she got down to business, she was a woman on a mission. And also a woman who was quite tired from performing for two hours, so she would probably regret it if she stayed out much longer than necessary.

So she and Siena flocked to the dress racks instead, starting on opposite sides of the room and working their way towards the middle, holding up items they wanted opinions on or thought the other person might find appealing as they came across them. Siena wouldn't need something with as many bells and whistles as Cora since she wasn't in the cast, but even Cora herself didn't require anything too flashy—it wasn't like this was Tonys night. Since their cast and crew were relatively small, the party was likely to be a relatively small affair as well.

By the time they met one other in the center of the dress section, each of them had three contenders to try on. Cora wasn't surprised to see that all of Siena's were black. She, meanwhile, had grabbed a silver one, a black one, and an emerald green one.

She tried to ignore the seed of dread that planted itself in her gut as they walked into the dressing rooms and closed themselves into stalls across from each other. If nothing here worked, they'd have to go to another store and hope for the best—ordering online just a week out from the day she needed the outfit would be a terrible idea. She shouldn't have let opening night sneak up on her so suddenly, but she'd been so preoccupied with learning the show and figuring out how to get along with Rasmus that she hadn't been thinking about much else.

And she couldn't just feel good about whatever she bought; she needed to feel great in it. There would be pictures of her, pictures that would potentially be spread all over the internet and seen by hundreds or thousands of people.

No pressure or anything.

She'd once thought that being an actress and changing in front of other people so much would make her a lot more comfortable in her own skin, and she supposed that it did to an extent, but not nearly as much as she would have hoped. For some reason, she felt much worse under her own gaze than someone else's—perhaps she'd internalized the idea that they would be more forgiving of her appearance than she herself was—and she refused to stare at her body in the mirror for too long while she stripped down to her underwear to try the dresses on.

The silver one was an immediate no—it was the right size, but it clung to her in all the wrong places. She was kinder to her body these days than she used to be, but there were still some areas of it, like her stomach, that she was much more insecure about than others. And now that she was seeing the dress on herself, she also worried that the number of crystals on it would make her look like a disco ball as soon as she stepped under any bright lights or in front of the flash of a camera, so she quickly shimmied out of it and returned it to its hanger.

The black one was pretty but nothing more than that; there was no wow factor to it. She didn't want to be an underwhelming, forgettable face. But it was still a flattering dress and would have worked well for an occasion where she wanted to blend into the crowd a little bit more, so she set it aside as a potential option for Siena to try on if none of the ones she'd picked out were working for her.

By the time she was slipping the emerald-colored dress off of its hanger, she was legitimately nervous that she was going to have to start from scratch. Her initial impression was that the material felt high quality in her hands, silky and luxurious, which was only going to make it even more of a bummer if it didn't look right on her.

She pulled the mountainous layers of fabric over her head, then turned away from the mirror as she wriggled and writhed like a fish out of water to get the dress zipped up without any help. But when the zipper slid all the way up, she let out a small puff of relieved breath. At least it fit.

Reluctantly, she turned around to look at her reflection. Her eyebrows shot up—in her own opinion, at least, she looked surprisingly nice. And it checked off all her boxes. The halter top flattered her chest and the dress fanned out at her waist, so she wouldn't have to worry about it awkwardly clinging to her midsection. Almost as importantly, it didn't flare out so much that she was going to take up a five-foot radius and look like she thought she was important enough to be at the damn Oscars or something. It screamed look at me, but not you can only look at me. Cora smiled at herself shyly as if looking at a lovely stranger, unsure if it would be conceited to give herself the permission to believe she looked as beautiful as she wanted to.

"Anything working?" Siena called to her from the other stall.

"I think so. How about you?"

"I look pretty hot, if I do say so myself."

Cora laughed. "Wanna show each other?" she asked. "I'm ready when you are."

After nudging her discarded shirt and pants aside with one foot, she cracked her dressing room door open and stepped outside. Siena was doing the same, and the girls smiled when they caught sight of each other.

Sie's top choice was a short, tight number with a sweetheart neckline and Cora was already conjuring up visions of all the magnificent statement heels she might pair with it. That was the nice thing about wearing black—it went with almost everything else in your wardrobe arsenal. And Siena already owned a lot of shoes.

Their outfits couldn't have been much more different, Siena's dark and sultry and Cora's bold and dazzling, but the piece of her brain that was easily made jealous had been grateful for the whole duration of their friendship that they were two different varieties of beautiful. They could shine next to each other instead of competing.

Perhaps that was even why she'd been able to latch onto Siena as a friend, a kindred spirit, so quickly and easily. After spending her entire life comparing herself to other girls and competing for roles, she was relieved to finally find someone unapologetically different from her whose personality still meshed well with her own.

"You're buying it, right?" they asked one another at the same time.

Siena gave a sly little smirk, like she'd read Cora's expression and figured out exactly what to say to conquer any lingering hesitation she found there.

"I'm buying mine if you buy yours," she bargained.

"Deal."

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A/N:

If you don't recognize the title reference, this is your sign to go watch Tick, Tick...Boom!

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