The skimpy tank top was barely containing her massive boobs.
“Bye,” she said bluntly, not looking up from her book.
She had gotten really grumpy recently. We had been really close at one point. Soon after my mom married her dad. We were young enough that it still felt like we were sisters. I was ten and she was eight and we were both hurting from the death of a loved one.
As she got into her later teens, though, she started to change, going into full bitch mode by the time she turned eighteen a couple months before, becoming the more brutal type of nihilist. Not quite a member of the Black Pill crowd but close enough to make me concerned.
I decided not to rise to her negativity and let it go. Dad had taught me how to build and go to what he called an ‘inner realm.’ Similar to a ‘happy place,’ it was a kind of visualization or day dreaming, combined with meditation, that lets you build a specific location in your mind that seems as real as any other.
Mine was a field of flowers in a mountain valley on a clear, bright summer day.
On my way out, I called my boyfriend Kenny on my cell phone. I thought I would see what he was up to.
Maybe we could go for coffee when I was done work for the day. My mom would have likely disagreed with this characterization of writing as “work,” but writing was what I got paid for. It didn’t pay very well – I would be the first to admit – but enough to get by, barely.
The inheritance that my dad had left me was helping out to no end, of course – for now, anyway. We didn’t come from a lot of money so it wasn’t going to last forever.
Kenny didn’t answer my call, so I turned off the phone, putting it back in my bag. It seemed that everyone I cared about was ignoring me lately and I wasn’t sure what to do. I returned to the soft grass under the warm sun and calmed down on my way to the elevator.
It’s funny when you suddenly remember things. I was more than halfway to the park before I thought to look in my bag. But I did, driven by an unknown force, and discovered that I hadn’t brought my notebook.
I must have been distracted by Raquel’s tenseness and Kenny ignoring me. I had been assigned a signature ring on his phone, so I knew he knew it was me. Unless he was driving or something.
Even then, though, he would have called me back, in the past, at least. But he didn’t. He never really did anymore. I couldn’t do very much writing without my notebook, so I had to go back to the apartment, but I decided to stop off for some caffeine first. With or without Kenny.
I had planned for a quick stop, but the barista was clearly new and wasn’t very quick about anything. I identified his accent immediately as southern Irish, Chris O’Dowd being a major girlhood crush.
Sure, that actor wasn’t as handsome as someone like Colin Farrell or even Cillian Murphy, but I had a thing for guys who were funny. There was no faster way to get me wet than to make me laugh.
Cute as the barista was, I got a bit frustrated because I was working on a really good story and was anxious to get back to it. I took a deep breath in and slowly let it out, actively trying to slow my heartbeat. Stress never helped anyone.
I focused on my story and where I was planning to go with it when I got the chance. I was trying to get it clear in my mind to help things go fast when I actually got pen in hand. Finally, I got my take-out cup full of my latte, along with a lilted apology that sounded so much like Chris O’Dowd that it almost made the wait worthwhile, and headed back to my car, my lust for writing relinked and raring to go with the new story.
I was in no way expecting to hear what I did when I got home. My notebook was under the couch where my bag had been. I thought Raquel had brought a guy over for some afternoon – or, at this point, still morning – delight and I tried to ignore the creak of mattress springs and grunts of assertion until I realized that they were coming from my room.
Raquel was actually fucking someone in my bed. I was used to her bringing men home. She had been fucking regularly, since she became of legal age, but usually she did it in her room and made an effort to keep things quiet.