Page 80 of Five Fingers of Death

I nodded. The more I told myself I was fine, the more I might actually believe it. I quickly got into the car and pretended everything was fine and that I hadn’t just flipped out over someone touching me or any of the other thoughts running through my head.

When we pulled up to the mattress store fifteen minutes later, my good mood had dimmed quite a bit. The realization that I had to start making decisions for myself was kicking in, and butterflies swarmed my stomach at the thought.

The moment we stepped foot inside, an overwhelming feeling washed over me. I pressed a hand to my stomach as I let my eyes trail over the rows of mattresses.

“What do I do?”

“You test them out. Lay down on them and find out what you like,” Eva explained.

That sounded simple enough. I laid down on the first and wiggled around. It was fine. Then I laid down on the second and felt pretty much the same way. And the whole time, everyone was watching me.

“They’re fine.”

“Which one?” Vira asked.

“Both.”

“Well, you’ve only tried two. We should keep looking. There are so many to test.”

That’s what I was afraid of. I blew a hair out of my face as a salesman walked over with a smile on his face. “Ladies, are you out shopping for a new mattress today?”

“She is,” Vira pointed at me.

Great. Now the man was staring at me.

“Perfect. What kind of mattress do you like?”

I felt like the room was closing in on me as he watched me, waiting for an answer. What did I like? I didn’t know. Why did he have to ask me such hard questions? It was a mattress. Did it really matter?

“Uh…”

“Hard or soft? What size are you looking for? What about price range? Is there a certain brand you prefer?”

He was firing questions at me faster than I could consider each one. The enormity of it all was overwhelming.

Eva grabbed my hand and tugged me down the aisle. “I think we’ll just test a few more.”

“Are you sure? Let me know if I can help you with anything!” he called out as we rushed past him.

As we got further away, the anxiety I felt started to dissipate, but the looming decision still hung over my head. I started laying down on the beds just to get this over with. They all felt the same. I didn’t know what I was looking for.

“You know, I think any of them are fine,” I said after the fifth mattress.

They both looked at me in shock.

“You just laid on a firm mattress,” Eva said slowly. “And before that, a pillowtop. They were completely different.”

I shrugged, not knowing what to say. “I—” They would never understand what this felt like, to have never made a decision like this, and suddenly have it thrust in my face. I knew nothing about beds and I didn’t know how to pick.

“I don’t know what I like. Firm or soft…I don’t know.”

Vira grinned at me in one of the ways that made me feel like I should have kept my mouth shut. I was just about to tell her we should go home when she suddenly announced that she had a plan. I was dragged out of the store and pushed into the car to head to what I could only imagine was another mattress store.

The thought of them making such a fuss over me and my mattress was really starting to bother me. It was just something I slept on. This should not be an all-day event.

“Really, I think we should just go back to that store and get one of them.”

“You couldn’t even pick one out,” Vira said.

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