15 Finding Bella

More days passed but still there were no signs of Bella. Emily tried to ask almost everyone in her neighbourhood and even checked the town registry but nobody seemed to know anything about the mysterious shop owner.

She found it ironic how everybody knew her yet knew very little about her.

She had been using the leftover soapbars from Bella and her boils were almost gone but she noticed that her skin and body were starting to return to their old and ugly form. She starting to look like the loser Emily once again. The one people used to reject, the one ignored by men, the mediocre one, the average and the uninteresting lonely woman.

" I am not going to let that loser version of me ruin my new life" she said to herself while putting layers of makeup and forcing her stomach to fit in a corset desperately trying to hide her returning looks.

After work, she went to the gym then straight to the salon for hair, nails, eyelash services. . She also booked an appointment for skin and aesthetic clinics for facials, non invasive weightloss and all the other available treatments she could afford.

For her, it is better to be broke than to be plain and ordinary. Still, people in her workplace people were noticing that she looked tired, heavier and older.

To add insult to injury, Carlos made a mean comment the day they bumped into each other in the hallway and said " I know you are whore and you slept with the VP that's why you got promoted but seriously, where is the fuckable Emily that I banged? Did you eat her or are you her mother pretending to be the daughter?"

Everyday after work, she would walk to the House of Fairy hoping it would be open and she would finally see Bella.

And one unexpected evening, the shop was open and the woman she'd been looking for was there.