I may as well be a princess in love with a goddamn toad, for all that he’s available to me.
Or maybe I’m the toad.
Shaking off thoughts of ill-fitting fairy tales, I take off the dress and head outside, relieved that this whole shopping excursion is over and I can finally go home and climb into bed.
Annabelle
After the shopping excursion, I’m hit with a depressive state. Another cloudy chunk of time where I don’t leave my bed, but the sun rises and sets for everyone else.
I think it’s the third or fourth day when I feel like getting up.
Paul doesn’t come home that night, but now that I’m paranoid about the house being bugged, it doesn’t feel much more relaxing. Initially I thought, no, when would they have bugged the house? I’m literally always here.
But then I remembered the sudden invitation to dinner. We were out of the house all evening. If they started following me after that, they would’ve had a perfect opportunity to come into my house while Paul and I were over at my mother’s.
So maybe my house is bugged. That’s fun.
When I emerge from my sleep cave, I find the house a mess.
Paul has been home each night I’ve
stayed in bed, so dishes are piled up in the sink and the kitchen smells sour. Empty Sprite and beer cans litter the countertop (the garbage can is just so far away) and there’s an ashtray full of ashes on the coffee table in the living room.
He’s smoking again?
I’m more aggravated by the fact that he smoked in the house than anything else. When we first moved in, Paul was a smoker, and I was very adamant that if he wanted to keep up with that disgusting habit, he could smoke in the driveway.
I thought he quit over a year ago, but I guess I haven’t really been paying much attention to his habits.
I spend the day cleaning. Sweeping and mopping and doing dishes. There’s a rust stain on the sink from a pan he shouldn’t have left soaking in water. I even open the window above the sink even though it’s really chilly outside, because I need to get the sour smell out.
Some woodland creatures to help out would be nice.
I get everything cleaned and take a shower, but it just makes me think of Liam. I close my eyes and imagine his hands on my breasts, his rough thumbs swiping across my nipples. In my fantasy, he bends to take one and then the other into his mouth, and before I know it, I’m a sexually frustrated mess.
Since I’m in the safety of my shower, I let my hand wander down between my legs, and I imagine his much larger fingers pushing inside me. My other hand caresses my breast, like his would, and I give myself the orgasm he didn’t.
My body feels better afterward, but overall it just makes me sad.
I want Liam.
I can’t have Liam.
I could’ve at least had Liam for a few minutes, but Liam pulled back.
I turn my thoughts off before I wind up back in bed.
I decide to go for a walk, more because I want to see if I can figure out who’s following me than because I actually want to freeze my ass off. I imagine whoever it is out there scrambling, unsure what to do. Am I going to meet someone? How will they keep an eye on me? They can’t walk with me. If I see the same car passing me over and over, I’m bound to think something is up.
Paul calls when I’ve made it a block away, and Paul never calls me, so I’m severely unimpressed with their stealth skills.
“What are you up to?” he asks, his tone all droopy and lame.
“Going for a walk,” I reply.
“Why?”
“Because I felt like it?”