I glanced down at my chest. “Shouldn’t I have a large?”

After the woman’s comments on what she supposed our relations were, Jack waggled his eyebrows at me, but I chose to ignore him. I had two pair of pants in my cart, and that would do, I headed over to another rack to pick out some tops.

I tried to choose fairly plain ones in quiet colors, but Jack immediately challenged me. “Look,” he said, “if you end up changing back, what tops you pick now don’t matter, you’ve got a closetful of your old clothes.”

“Uh,” I could see where he was going with this.

“But if you don’t change back, or maybe not right away, you need to choose clothes that make the most of the new you. You want them to choose you for the big scenes, right? Even if you are just going to be an extra, it makes a difference.” He picked out a top and showed it to me.

The color was mostly magenta with sort of random swoops and swirls of yellow and white. It didn’t look that bad, actually. “This is a medium,” I pointed out. I glanced down at my chest. “Shouldn’t I have a large?”

“Definitely not,” he said. “In fact, you could get away with a small in most styles. You don’t want it to be baggy in the waist. Tight is okay, baggy sucks.”

“Hmph,” I said. But I picked out four more tops that met his approval.

“You’re getting the idea,” he said. “You don’t have to go to extremes. You’re so good looking, you don’t need to. And I bet the camera loves you.”

“One particular camera, maybe,” I grumped, “a little too much.”

He laughed, the rat. “I think that magic camera did you a favor.”

“Huh?” I glared at him. “Maybe we’ll find a dull knife and do you one?”

He held his hands up in a keep-away gesture but was still smiling. “You told me once that you’ve always known you were going to be a big star someday. I didn’t laugh at you then, but Billy, you didn’t have what it takes. You weren’t big and handsome with a deep manly voice—the most you would ever get would’ve been maybe some handsome guy’s best friend comic relief. That or character roles.”

I sighed. It wasn’t inaccurate.

“But now look at you!” Jack wrung one hand like he’d burned it. “Killer looks, and something else. It’s hard to not look at you.” He grinned. “And harder if you do.”

I gave him another glare, but he didn’t seem to notice. I pushed my hair back out of my eyes for what must have been the fifteenth time.

“Seriously,” he said. “I think you’d be making a mistake to try to change back. You’ve got the potential to be the next blonde bombshell. Uh? You really can act, can’t you?”

“I—I think so….” The situation wasn’t doing a thing for my confidence.

“Okay then,” said Jack, sounding very sure of himself. “That puts you ahead of 98% of the starlets who might have 10% of your looks.” If it were possible to bottle Jack’s nerve….

I felt my lower lip tremble. What the heck? Was I going to cry? In the middle of Target?

“What’s wrong?” Jack asked, reaching out for me. “That was all good stuff.”

I dodged away from him. “Leave me alone!” I protested. Turning away from Jack, I ran right into someone else. Someone big and solid. I looked up but was still seeing only chest and chin.

“Is this guy bothering you?” the chest rumbled.

“Uh,” I stammered. “N-n-no, not really. We disagree but….”

“But we’re not disagreeable,” Jack put in, grinning. His charm works on guys, too, just not the same way. “I’m Jack, and she’s Billy. I rent her a room in my apartment. She’s an actress.”

“I’m Gary,” said the big man. He asked me, “Are you a student at the film school?”

“Uh, yes,” I said.

“I work there,” he said. “Technical staff. If this guy does bother you, tell me. I promise I won’t hurt him.” He smiled at me, then at Jack, somehow filling the expression with menace.

I giggled. “Thanks,” I said. “Jack and I are friends,” I explained. “He’s just being pushy about what he thinks I should wear to my new job.”

“Mm-hm,” Gary rumbled. He looked Jack over. “He dresses well, so you should probably listen to what he says. But make up your own mind.” He pointed a forefinger the size of a bratwurst at Jack. “And you let her.”

“Yes, sir,” Jack agreed, still smiling.

The big guy smiled too, showing teeth the size of tombstones and moving off with a last, “See you around,” which might have been taken as a warning. I heard myself giggle again, seeing Jack’s expression.

Somehow, we ended up in what passed for the lingerie department. Without asking, my roommate tossed a package of panties into the cart, then another. “That’ll give you ten pair, enough for a week and laundry time.”

“I’m not going to stay this way that long,” I complained. I puffed a strand of hair out of my face, annoyed by that, too.

He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll decide you like wearing them better and buy your own after you change back.” He grinned at my expression and moved on toward the bras.

I felt a sinking sensation. Only women wore bras because only they needed too. One glance down at myself told me the truth—I needed a bra.

“With your build,” Jack said, “you might consider an underwire bra. The engineering is superior, but some people find them less comfortable.”

“Engineering?” I said blankly.

“Yeah, Howard Hughes improved the design in order to display Jane Russell’s assets better in a movie.” He smirked.

Well, I’d known that, I was a film student, but I thought of it as a publicity stunt, not engineering. Russell hadn’t worn Hughes’s contraption in the film because it was hideously uncomfortable, but the idea had certainly improved the bottom line for a basically pedestrian movie.

I shook my head. “I don’t think I need anything to make me stand out more.”

He chuckled. “You might be out of luck; this is Target, a discount store. They may only have larger cup sizes in underwire styles.”

“Hmph,” I said. But he turned out to be right. This Target, at least, had no 32DD bras in anything but underwire. The 34D size without underwire was available but only in white.

“You want bras in a nude color,” Jack told me. “They’ll show less under your clothes.”

That made sense, so I ended up with four bras to try on and instructions from Jack in how I wanted them to fit. “They really let you try on underwear?” I asked as we moved toward the dressing booths.

“Yeah? They pretty much have to for bras. Only supermarkets and drugstores don’t.” Supermarkets? I’d never seen bras for sale in a supermarket, but then, I hadn’t been looking for them. He went on, “You can’t get a good fit without trying it on. And you want to avoid slippage, which is excess flesh coming out the bottom or sides.”

“Eww,” I said. “That would probably hurt.”

“Yeah, and it looks like ass,” he agreed. “Also, you want to fit the hooks into the last loops on the strap and still have a snug fit, so that, as the bra stretches after washing, you’ll have some adjustments you can make.”

I looked at him from under my haystack of blond hair. “How do you know so much about bras, anyway?”

Jack grinned. “Research. Years of research.”