ANA
When Alexandre walks into my room the next morning with the breakfast tray, I don’t know what to expect. A part of me hopes that maybe yesterday was just all some terrible dream or that he’ll have decided to forgive me after a good night’s sleep.Maybe he’ll even sit down on the edge of the bed like he sometimes does while I eat and explain what I found in the study. Or perhaps that was a part of the dream too. It’s unbelievable enough.
All it takes is one glimpse at his face as he pushes the door shut behind him to see that’s not the case.
He doesn’t look as angry as he had yesterday, but neither does he have the usual pleasant smile on his face as he walks into the room. His eyes don’t quite meet mine, and he sets the breakfast tray down on the vanity instead of bringing it to the bed, turning to face me with his lips pressed tightly together.
“Good morning,petit,” he says stiffly, as if this is making him as uncomfortable as the tension in the air is making me. Or maybe this is his way of trying to conceal his anger.
For some reason, that last thought makes me more sad than frightened.
“Come and have your breakfast.” Alexandre reaches for the plate and glass of orange juice next to it, and I have a moment of pure confusion. I eat breakfast in bed every day. He brings me the tray, and I eat while he fetches the maid’s outfit, and then I get up and allow him to go about undressing and dressing me—
My stomach knots as I realize for the first time that I’ve actually begun to depend on my routine here. However unconventional and strange this might be, however much I know I should be bucking against it at every turn—it’s brought me some comfort. The sameness of it, the way Alexandre has repeated the same motions day after day, was a comfort that I hadn’t even realized I had until right this second when it disappeared.
I used to have a routine—a strict one. Up at five a.m., without question. A breakfast of a hard-boiled egg and black tea, or sometimes avocado toast if it was a particularly demanding schedule, and out the door for my first class of the day. That schedule might vary from semester to semester, but the days didn’t, and I’d gone through them like clockwork, never missing a class, never missing a practice. I had been wholeheartedly devoted to ballet, what I’d believed to be the great love of my life, more than any man could ever be. My nights might have been unpredictable and wild, but I’d had my days down to a science.
That had been ripped away from me suddenly, without warning. And now I see that as borderline concerning and certainly morally grey as Alexandre’s possession of me and behavior with me has been—it’s also been a source of stability that I hadn’t seen how desperately I’d needed it until right now, as I’m watching it dissolve all over again.
When Alexandre clicks his tongue at me, his eyes narrowing with a growing annoyance, my fingers curl around the bedspread, and I try not to panic as I realize what he’s doing. I figure it out in the second before he bends down, placing the plate with my usual eggs and crepe and the glass of juice on the floor, stepping back.
“Now, Anastasia,” he says, and my heart sinks down into my stomach.
It’s not disgust or anger that I feel as I realize that when he’d said I’d lost his trust yesterday, he’d treat me like the pet that I’m meant to be until I earn it back. It’s a sudden, yawning desperation to do exactly that.
To earn it back.
To regain the stability and safety that I hadn’t realized he afforded me until just this second.
All the other things I’d laid in bed and thought about last night, realizing that he’ll likely never offer me and couldn’t do so with any real equality anyway—love, companionship, pleasure—fade away instantly in the face of the sudden, stomach-clenching uncertainty of where I stand with him and what will happen next.
“Anastasia.”
I nod quickly, my mouth going dry as I slide quickly out of bed, my silk pajamas catching a little on the rug as I sink instantly to my knees a few inches away from him in front of the plate, looking down at it with sudden nausea that makes me wonder if I’m going to be able to eat at all.
Even though I needed to know, even though it would have eaten at me continually if I hadn’t after Yvette’s comment, a part of me suddenly, viscerally, and deeply regrets having gone into his study. If I could go back and do it again—
But I can’t. There’s no changing what happened yesterday. All I can do is try to figure out what I’m going to do now.
My appetite is completely gone, but I know he will be upset if I don’t eat. It always does.
The last thought startles me a little, enough to make me pause. It feels too intimate—to know a thing like that about a man like Alexandre.It always does.
But it’s also comforting. The sameness of it. The surety.This is something I know. He wants me to eat.
I’ll please him if I eat. Even if it’s on the floor.
I manage to glance up at him under my lashes as I reach for the crepe, going to tear a piece off of the end. I hate eating with my fingers more than anything, but if that’s what it takes to please him and make things the way they were before again, then that’s what I’ll do.
He doesn’t look pleased, though. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that he looks as if he’s hating every second of this, watching me eat off of a plate on the floor as I kneel in front of him.
But that wouldn’t make any sense.
I hear the sound of the front door opening and closing, light footsteps in the hallway, and my stomach clenches with dread.Please don’t be her,I think desperately as any fledgling remnant of an appetite I might have had instantly flutters away, leaving nothing but a cold knot in my gut.
“Alexandre?” Yvette’s richly accented voice drifts down the hall, and I have to clench my jaw to bite back the protest that threatens to escape.
Who else did you think it was going to be? The Easter bunny?