The Bet
by Karen Singer
Chapter 35 (Friday – week 5 Part 6 of 8)
Chad hurried to get dressed again. He had showered after work as the best way to get himself cleaned up after removing his messy diapers. Now, dressed in two fresh diapers, his plastic panties, his waist cincher, the all-in-one girdle, and the same zebra print dress, he hurried to his closet to select a different pair of shoes. Since he would be having his toenails done too, he had left his pantyhose off this time. His skirt felt strange against his bare legs as he select a pair of open toed sandals that would later show off his freshly painted toes. As quickly as possible, he buckled the shoes onto his feet and checked his image in the mirror mounted to his closet door. His dress looked good – if not really nice. His makeup looked… okay. His hair looked… good enough. Acceptable… he hoped. With so little time to get ready, he couldn’t do anything more.
He hurried into his living room and opened the door to see if Mel was there yet. He saw her just driving into the parking lot then. He quickly grabbed his purse and diaper bag and ran out to meet her for their trip to the nail salon.
“Perfect timing,” Mel declared as he jumped into her car. A moment later, she was hurrying through traffic as fast as she could. “So, have you decided to keep the nail length you have now?” she asked as she drove.
Chad held up his hands and looked at his nails. It was a tough decision, but the more he thought about it, the more he thought he still liked the length his nails were now. “Yeah,” he decided. “I think I like them this way.” He could always get them cut shorter next week – and probably would.
“How about the color, have you thought about that?”
“Not really,” Chad replied. “Maybe I’ll just keep that the same too.”
“Pick something different!”
As they were walking up to the door, Mel stopped him for a moment. “I shouldn’t have to remind you about this, but I don’t want there to be any question about it when we get in there.” Chad had no idea what she could be talking about. “Remember how I had you greet everyone last week?”
Chad remembered it very well. She had made him curtsey to everyone.
“Well, this week,” Mel continued, “I better see you curtsey respectfully to everyone you talk to and I better hear nothing but your sissy voice when you speak... and I’ll probably ask your nail tech about that later if we aren’t close enough where I can hear you all the time.”
Chad hated having to act like a super sissy everywhere they went. Real women didn’t do things like that. It made him stand out all that much more! But at least she wasn’t making him go in there with a pacifier in his mouth this week. That would have been much worse. In fact, lately, she seemed to have forgotten about the thing. He dared not remind her about it though for fear of the consequences.
As usual, there were a few women sitting in the waiting area just inside the door who didn’t have appointments. Mel and Chad walked right past them and up to the counter where Mel’s usual nail tech was waiting for them. “Hello, Mel,” the woman said in her Asian accent.
“Hi,” Mel returned politely. Then she turned to Chad. “Aren’t you going to say hello too?”
Chad hated this. She hadn’t even been talking to him. But he dropped a polite curtsey and said hello in his sissy voice. The woman giggled. “You’ll have to wait a minute,” she told Chad, “your tech is still with customer.”
Chad started to tell her that it was just fine, but the scowl on Mel’s face stopped him. He curtseyed once again, then told her it was no problem. He would just wait.
While Mel walked into the back with her nail tech, Chad glanced around the waiting area. Everyone was looking at him curiously. He definitely felt like a fish out of water here. What should he do, just stand where he was? He noticed a few empty chairs together and decided to sit down. This time he remembered to grab his skirt before he sat. He heard someone across the room giggle slightly.
“That was a lovely curtsey,” one of the women closest to him commented.
Chad couldn’t ignore the smirk on her face. “Thank you,” he replied in his sissy voice.
“Lovely voice too,” she added after hearing his high pitched reply.
“Uh… Thanks.”
“Do you come here often?” the woman sitting next to the first one asked.
Chad hated being the center of attention like this. Or was it the center of ridicule? “Every week,” he replied. The women giggled together.
“So you’ve been here before?” the second woman asked, trying to prolong the conversation.
Dumb question! Didn’t he just say that? Instead of answering, he held up his hands so they could see his nails.
“Oooo. They’re lovely,” the first woman said, her gaze never leaving his hands. Then she leaned over so she could see them better and actually grabbed one of his hands so she could inspect his nails further. The second woman got up from her seat so she could see better too. “These are from last week?” the first woman asked as if she didn’t believe it.
Chad nodded. “Yes,” he replied.
“They’re lovely,” the first woman commented. Chad figured that lovely must be her favorite adjective.
“I like the shade,” the second woman added. “Maybe I’ll have mine done in that color too.” She looked up at Chad. “Are you keeping the same color?” she asked.
Chad shook his head. “No, I’ll probably be going for something different this week.”
The woman just nodded and sat back down. The first woman dropped his hand and sat back in her chair too. Chad was glad. He had been uncomfortable being under such close scrutiny, no matter how polite they had been. He noticed the other women in the waiting area turning their heads. He turned to see what they were looking at and was pleased to see his usual nail tech walking to the front with her previous customer right behind.
Chad waited where he was while the woman paid. Then before the woman could even get her wallet back into her purse, the nail tech looked straight at him and said. “Ready, Sissy?” Chad thought he heard someone sniggering nearby.
He quickly got up from his chair and would have followed his tech to the back, but she was just standing there like she was waiting for something. The woman who had just paid was watching closely as she closed her purse. Hating every second of it, Chad dropped another curtsey and said hello to his nail tech in his usual sissy voice. He heard the woman who was just leaving grunt with surprise, he dared not look at her. The nail tech just smiled broadly however and led the way toward the back.
As he walked toward the chair where she would be doing his toenails, he passed Mel having her own toenails done. The container of nail polish that was sitting out looked an awful lot like the color that would soon be removed from his own nails. Mel must have liked it.
As soon as he was seated and had his shoes off, the nail tech asked him about what color he wanted. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Can you recommend anything?”
The nail tech opened a cabinet and stared at the bottles inside for a few moments, then she pulled out two of them. “I think either of these would be great for you,” she said as she showed him the bottles.
Chad was very surprised at what she had selected. They were both slightly different shades of purple! He would have selected a pink or a red… or at least something in those families. But purple? He was about to say no way, but suddenly she was talking again.
“I think the lavender would be the best,” she said as she set the bottles down and began grabbing what she would need to remove the polish that was on his toes now. “But the lilac is very pretty too. What do you think?”
Chad didn’t know which color was lilac and which one was lavender. He wasn’t even sure he could spell lilac. And as to them being pretty? “Uh… Yeah, they’re both pretty,” he agreed, he just had never thought about it before.
He was about to ask her to show him something else, like another pink, when she started telling him all about doing another woman’s hands with the lavender earlier that day and about how the woman had wanted her nails to match the color scheme for her wedding. Then Chad was forced to listen to all the wedding details that the woman had told the nail tech about. He wasn’t the least bit interested in wedding details, but obviously the nail tech was.
With the nail polish finally removed from his toes, the tech grabbed both the bottles of polish again. “So which one?” she asked, obviously delighted with both choices.
Chad still wanted to tell her he wanted to pick something different, but the delighted look on the tech’s face stopped him. Knowing he was going to probably regret it, he said, “I guess the lavender.”
“Yaaay!” the tech cheered quietly as she mimicked clapping her hands together. “I think is so pretty.” Chad wasn’t all that sure, especially when the lavender turned out to be the less subtle of the two colors.
Purple toes! And now he was watching her finishing his fingernails the same way. Purple! Something inside of him felt a bit squeamish at not only the thought of it, but now the sight of it. It wasn’t that the color was ugly – far from it. The nail tech had been right, it was sort of a pretty color, it’s just that… well… it was different! Okay, he had seen many of the young girls wearing much stranger colors than this, but… it wasn’t what he usually associated with a nail color he would wear! And now he was wearing it! Not only was he was wearing it… he was stuck with it for the next week! He wondered if Mel had silently pre-arranged this in advance. It would be just like her!
As soon as the tech was finished, Chad held his hands up and stared at his purple nails. The length was the same – she had only filed them down a bit to smooth out the edges – but now they looked so much different. And worse, he was sure that they would stand out so much more. The nail tech got up and headed toward the front, Chad got out of his seat too, but instead of moving, he glanced between the purple nails on his hands and the purple nails sticking out of his shoes. It was almost shocking! In a daze he followed her toward the front.
“Let me see,” Mel said excitedly as the tech was ringing up the sale. Chad noticed that Mel was now wearing the same nail color he had last week. He held his hands out to show her his fingernails. “Oooo… lavender.” Chad didn’t know how she had named exactly the right color. He wondered again if she had anything to do with it.
“I’m really surprised,” she said, sounding like she meant it. “What made you pick that color?”
Chad wasn’t really sure. “A wedding!” he finally replied.
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