Once we finish lunch I gather up the damn dishes myself and set them outside my bedroom door for Maria. No point in giving her another chance to come in and ruin our afternoon with more of her reality.
Mia’s fine in my bubble. I’m never going to let her leave.
Well, okay, never is quite the commitment, but for a long time, at least.
Afternoon fades, but it’s not quite evening. The day is still going by much too quickly. Now that I’ve come to the decision to keep her instead of testing her, I’m settling into it, though. I texted Adrian while Mia dried her hair after our shower and told him to call off my cops. I’ll need to eventually prepare her, just in case anyone should ever try to talk to her, but I have no trouble that I know of now. Still, someday I’ll need to prep her. Right now she would get tripped up, but I don’t think she’d talk on purpose. Maybe I just prefer to think that, but it’s a chance I’m willing to take. I’ll be more diligent than I was with Beth. At the first signs of her wavering on me, I’ll…
I don’t know. I’m not sure what I could have done differently with Beth. I don’t know what I did wrong to begin with. I was only being myself—and a toned down version, to be fucking frank.
Still, it was too much.
Now I have Mia—younger, less experienced in every way, in no way prepared for me… but here she sits next to me on my bed, days after I unleashed myself on her, inspecting her nail polish like it’s normal to be having a lazy day with her sometimes-rapist.
“I should do my nails.” Mia looks over at me now, as if she can feel my gaze on her. “Maria brought my nail polish in. Wasn’t that nice of her?”
“It was,” I agree, eyes drifting back to my laptop.
“Maria’s a keeper.”
I smile faintly. “I know.”
“I should probably go do my nails in the bathroom.”
I click save on my proposal and pop over to email to upload the document. “Just do them here in the bed.”
“The polish smells really strong,” she warns me.
“I don’t mind.”
“Really?” She flashes me a bright smile. “Cool. I should still do it in the bathroom though. I’ve never spilled before, but I’m sure this would be the time.”
“Remember the maid I was just talking about? She could easily change the bedding.”
“Yeah, but nail polish does not wash out. One time I got dressed too soon after doing my nails and my pants smudged it. Two years later when I finally threw them out, they still had the nail polish on them.”
At that, I forget what I’m doing and look over at her. “You kept a stained pair of pants for two years?”
“They were really comfortable,” she explains.
I raise my eyebrows in disbelief.
“I didn’t wear them out, just to bum around the house,” she says, trying again to convince me.
I raise my eyebrows even higher.
Giving up, Mia rolls her eyes and throws back the blankets. “You know what, Daddy Warbucks, we don’t all have lucrative criminal empires. Some of us have to keep pants with nail polish stains on the thigh. That’s life.”
I’m still vaguely disturbed at her uttering “daddy” at me. Luckily, her back is to me as she heads for the dresser to retrieve her basket of nail polishes, so she doesn’t see the revulsion that flits across my face.
Unaware of my brief discomfort, she climbs back up on the bed, curling her legs beneath her. There’s a constant click-click as she moves her nail polishes, trying to decide on a color. Eventually she narrows it down to three and she moves the basket back so she can pick one.
“Hm,” she murmurs to herself, rotating a tacky, sparkly polish that I don’t like at all. There’s a silver one I also don’t like. I’m going to throw them away when she falls asleep. Saving her the trouble of picking, I reach over and grab the only suitable choice—a classy red.
She seems surprised I was even paying attention as she takes it from me. “Classic red, huh?” Without argument, she tucks the ugly nail polishes away in her basket and puts them over on her nightstand. Before uncapping the red, she glances my way and gives me one last chance. “You’re sure you’re okay with me doing this on the bed? You probably have like $300 worth of bedding here. I’ll feel awful if I ruin it.”
Just the comforter was $400, but I obviously don’t say that. I do find it amusing that she plucked a “big number” out of her head and came up with $300. I should bite back the faint smile I feel coming on, but I don’t. Surely she’s figured out by now that I’m fucked up.