Chapter 7

Evie woke up with a terrible cramp in her stomach and a pounding in her head. She kept her eyes closed a moment longer, the pounding seemed audible. Her heart sped up a little. Someone was knocking at the driver’s window.

She squeezed her eyes tighter, hoping to hide, but they knocked again. She coughed a little and looked at the window. A middle aged man wearing a hard hat and high visibility jacket was tapping the window with the corner of a clipboard.

She jumped up, startled and belched. Her swollen belly still hanging out of the tears in her tattered makeshift dress.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but if you don’t get out here now, I'm calling the police.” He said loud enough to be heard through the glass. He looked very serious.

Evie felt a sudden shame cross over her, realizing how careless she had been to get caught like this.

She muttered “Sorry, I just had to pull over, it was a long drive.” Although she did not wind down the window, so she was just mouthing blankly at him.

He was clearly staring at her gut, maybe glancing at the mountain of rubbish which she accumulated the night before on the passenger seat. “Right.” He bellowed. “Get yourself a coffee or find someplace to have a walk. Get a bit of fresh air, but you can’t stay here.”

She felt herself blushing and nodded slowly, trying to avoid eye contact with him.

He turned his head to blatantly stare at her gut. “Maybe go for a jog, looks like you might need one.”

Evie waved coyly as she slowly rolled her seat back upright, still trying to avoid eye contact. She looked at the dashboard and made a note of how much petrol she had left. Not much, but enough to get her far away from here.

She left the site. People had arrived and were already working away on the housing. Some people on the roofs stopped to watch her driving out, she felt the eyes burning into her. Hopefully, not too many of them saw her asleep.

She drove on a short distance and pulled into a quiet layby. Luckily there was not much traffic around. She squeezed uncomfortably through into the back seat and fumbled around, looking for the shirt and skirt she had been wearing until last night. They smelled stale and sweaty. Sitting in the back, she tore off the tatters of the bin bag and draped the shirt over her shoulders, trying to close the buttons. Her tummy still too bloated, but she managed to fasten them all, feeling somewhat embarrassed as the fabric strained tight to cover her.

Still too full to bend, she lay on her back to pull the jeans up. There was no point trying to fasten them this morning. As she sat down, her belly spilled over the waistband onto her lap. At least nobody could tell they were wide open.

She sighed, feeling sluggish and aching from the digestion of the heavy meal still inside her. No more sexy fetish dress and only a few euros for fuel, maybe a few less if she wanted food for the day. At least there was enough in the tank to drive on for a while.

She sat in the backseat enjoying another moment of peace, at least she did not feel like she was dressed indecently. She turned on her phone, only a few percent of battery left, but enough to sit there for ten minutes before needing to charge it again. It was open on the app she downloaded the day before. She had new messages. One from the man last night, she read it. "Hi. Thanks for last night, I hope we can do it again next time I'm paid. In the meantime, I owe you a new dress. Hope it's not creepy, but i managed to track down the drive through you were at last night and had it shipped there. Should arrive there at midday by courier, pick it up from there, I assume you don't want to give out a home address. Thanks again, Drake."

She smiled. The thought of fresh clothes brightened her up a small, kind gesture to help her feel a bit more normal. With this thought in mind, she replied. "Thank you so much! I had a lot of fun. Message me again next time you're ready."

Still, she didn't make much money from last night. She needed to go hide somewhere and make some videos to sell. After treating her burger stuffing as a lesson, she had a vague idea of what people wanted to see. She closed the app again, ignoring the other messages for now and texted some replies to her regular friends, who had been checking in on her.

She crawled back into the driver seat soon after and put her phone into charge before starting the engine again. It was still too early to pick up her new dress from the drive-in so she took a short drive to charge her phone battery, stopping shortly to nibble on her depressing breakfast of cold, soggy fries and flat cola leftover from the night before. She had a look through the app store for other things to do and downloaded one of the free games, to pass the time.

The time slowly ticked towards midday. The free to play game she had found was actually an online game, with other people. She was initially irritated by the complexity, but had found herself somewhat sucked in and joined another alliance with other players from around the world. She kept quiet in chat, they seemed to know more than her and she worried about sounding stupid. But they were friendly enough.

As midday arrived, she made her way back to the drive-in from the night before, wondering how much Drake must have paid for a courier to get there so fast. He probably also used a local shop.

Driving back to the order board, she awkwardly asked for a burger, despite not being particularly hungry and asked about the package. The woman crackled through the microphone and informed her that the manager had recently received a package in her name, with instructions to give it to her. She was told to pick it up at collection with her food.

She drove up to the collection port and wound down her window. "Hi. It's Evie. I believe you have a package for me."

"Sure," the young woman said. "I'll go get it from the manager. Did you order anything else?"

Evie nodded and collected the single cheapest burger she could get and the woman disappeared for a moment, holding a brown paper package. “Can I just check your ID before I give this?”

"Okay." Evie said, handing her driver's license.

"Thanks." Said the cashier handing over a large plastic wrapped bag, with the delivery sticker on it. "Is it something nice?"

Evie paused to think of a cover story. "Oh. I asked my boyfriend to send me a new dress. I’m driving up the country and needed to have it before I got there.”

She smiled. “Oh. Yeah, your top does look like it got shrunk. You need to be careful with tumble dryers if you’re staying in hotels. They never work the way you expect them to.”

She bit her lip and tried to look away. “Yes. That would explain everything.”

The cashier sighed. “I know I shouldn’t ask, but can I see what he sent? I wish my boyfriend would be nice enough to send me new clothes when I go away. He always pretends to be broke tho.”

Sofi squeezed the bag. It felt firmer and heavier than she expected, it must be thick packaging. "Okay. I hope he got something light now the weather is getting warm, but I don't think he really knows about fashion." She said as she tore into the wrapper.

Strangely, inside there was heavy plastic material, shiney purple in color. She started pulling it out, it did not look like a normal protective wrapper. Especially as there was clearly a zip on it. Confused, she held an end and let it unravel then gasped.

"Kinky Curves plus size fetish boutique. Discreet shipping." Said the cashier.

"What?" Evie spun the dress around, a piece of A4 paper fell off with the company name printed in bold letters landed on her lap.

Holding up the "dress" it was clearly a purple latex fetish micro dress, strapless, with a thick metal zip up the front. Biting her lip and feeling her heart race in embarrassment, she quickly threw it into the backseat. "I think maybe He went to the wrong website."

The cashier stared wide-eyed. "Yes, of course. Easy mistake to make."

She drove off without saying anything else. She wanted to kill Drake, but thinking about the context, she didn't know why She expected him to send a nice summer dress. She pulled away from the drive-in and from the town, feeling she had embarrassed herself enough here and vowed to avoid driving through here again in the future.