It was love at first sight. Charlotte Nelson rocked back on her heels, closed her eyes a moment and then reopened them. There was no doubt about it. She'd fallen in love—with a dress.

"How'd you like to try that on for size?" asked the sales clerk, stepping up behind her.

"I'm just looking." Charlie sighed, casting one last longing look at the clingy red dress before replacing it on the rack.

The girl emitted a low sigh. "Me, too."

"Oh, I don't know. I've never tried anything like that before." If she wore it, what would the neighbors think? But the feeling the dress evoked was palpable. Maybe the clerk had a point. "Does it come in black?"

"The hat?"

What hat? Charlie gave the clerk a double-take.

"I wouldn't change a thing. The clerk was positively drooling and her eyes were trained on…something other than the dress. Or rather someone.

Oh, no. Not the Rhinestone Cowboy.

Charlie recognized him immediately, the Rhinestone Cowboy who frequented her library research department. He'd soaked up more books on cowboys and ranching than anyone she'd ever met. "I don't do cowboys."

"My gain." After watching him until he was no longer in sight, the sales clerk grinned, then gestured toward the dress. "Red is your color. You ought to try it on."

"You think so?" Charlie bit her lip. Normally she wore muted colors, more fitting for her job as a librarian. She wore sensible fabrics: cottons, synthetic blends and wools. Certainly, nothing like this personification of everything she'd like to be and couldn't.

But what about that lecture from her roommate, Joanne? Was it time for her to let loose a little? Joanne certainly seemed to feel that way. In fact, she'd called Charlie a turtle, hiding from the world.

She ran her forefinger down the satiny smoothness of the fabric. How she wanted to be the type of woman who could wear a dress like this. She searched her memory for something, anything, she might own that felt so deliciously different, and came up empty.

"Go ahead and try it on," encouraged the clerk, nodding with perky enthusiasm, as if a dress could repair all that ailed Charlie.

Joanne had said the reason Charlie felt isolated was because she'd set herself up to feel that way, by withdrawing from life. She hadn't withdrawn, not exactly. But putting her heart, herself out there, she risked being hurt—again. She risked that feeling of somehow never doing it "right," of never being able to measure up, of somehow lacking some essence that others seemed to carry confidently on their shoulders.

The dress might prove to Joanne and herself that of course she could. She'd start small, though. She'd experiment a little, take a few more risks like the satiny red dress. She nodded at the clerk who quickly snapped up the dress and led her back to the dressing rooms.

Charlie normally didn't shop at Neiman's and she'd never visited the dressing rooms before. They were larger than in most stores and had a chair and a real door. Soon she was alone behind the closed door and there was nothing in the room to look at save the mirror, the chair and The Dress.

She quickly stepped out of her neat lavender shirtwaist and laid it across the chair. Then she pulled the red dress off the hanger and slid it over her head. As if it had been custom made for her, it clung to her hips and hugged her form. Was that her in the mirror, looking excited and a little guilty?

She started at the sound of a knock on the door. Opening it a crack, the clerk peeked her head in. "Come out here and look at yourself in the full-length mirrors."

Before Charlie had time to refuse, the clerk managed to drag her to the mirrors.

"It's perfectly lovely and fits you like a dream," said the clerk.

There, before Charlie's eyes, were three of her and she looked as poised as any magazine cover model. She looked like a woman who gulped life, didn't measure it in risks taken. Was it her imagination, or did the very air around her crackle with excitement? The woman gazing back at her looked as though she was the life of every party, not the wallflower watching from a dark corner. No, this woman didn't know dark corners existed. Could a dress do all that?

"Oh, I couldn't," she argued with her little voice. But the voice was insistent.

This dress should prove to Joanne, and to herself, that she was a risk taker. Sure, she didn't take heedless chances, but the occasional rash purchase was perfectly within her capacity. What had really stung was when Joanne accused her of not changing toothpaste brands, or flavors, since 1986 and it had been true. She couldn't ever remember using another product. She'd immediately gone out and bought three other brands but hadn't tried them yet.

Joanne had been right.

But not anymore.

"I'll take it."