8
SUGAR
I’m a zombie for the rest of the night. I put away the food in the fridge, I clean up my mess. All done silently, quiet as I go from task to task with little emotion or drive, just getting the necessary things done. Staring blankly into the mirror as I brush my teeth.
It’s not until I faceplant on my bed that tears start to fall.
Just the slightest hint of his scent makes all the emotions come screaming back at me.
The lust, the delight, the fun, the joy, all of the things that I felt with Rainier, and how I pushed them all away.
Some of those things I had with my mother. I loved her, I put my complete trust in her, I looked up to her as a guiding force in my life. Only for her to stab me in the back abruptly.
My trust was thrown away for a villa in Italy. Her own flesh and blood second to a fancy retirement home.
How can I ever love anyone again? Trust them enough to share my life with them?
There should have been no strings attached with Rainier. Just a fling. A hot, sexy guy giving me mind-blowing orgasms, and nothing more than that. I would have liked that.
If Rainier was only that, it would have been fantastic. But no, he’s more than that. And that’s the problem.
I agonize over anything and everything as I lie in bed. I rationalize, I try to talk myself into accepting him. I do just about everything besides sleeping.
Even touching myself. My thoughts drift to how much better Rainier is at it, though, and it goes nowhere.
But the fear is there in my mind, clearly.
If my mom could get sick of me and leave me, then a guy can definitely do the same. It’d be some months down the line. After I’ve left Seattle, and I’m fully dependent on Rainier. We’d be fucking nonstop, until the honeymoon was figuratively over.
He’d slowly wise up. He wouldn’t want to advance the relationship, or marry me, so a literal honeymoon would be out of the question. Maybe he’d exploit me. Maybe he’d just dump me.
And that’s the true terror.
Being alone in the world in small-town Linesworth with nowhere to go and no one to rely on. Possibly being pregnant, because my dumb ass told him every last one of my hopes and dreams.
As much as I want to have children, I want motherhood to come with a family. I’m terrified of having to do it alone, when life is so hard for me already.
Even when I think of the worst-case scenario, there’s a voice in my mind echoing to me that Rainier wouldn’t do that. Nothing has told me he’s the kind of man who would use a girl for kicks and just throw her out on the street when he got bored, especially if his child was involved.
As opposed to my mother, who, with the power of hindsight, I start to realize was never as tender and caring as I thought her to be. She’d always been a bit self-centered, thinking back. Always worried about how I reflected on her. When we learned about the windfall that came with the death of mystery uncle, she was all about using the money to travel. I brought up my dreams of being a professional baker with my own bakery, and the best she did was try to tell me that doing it in Italy was a better idea.
When I don’t even speak Italian.
The worst came when she put down my dream. That being a baker is not all it’s cracked up to be. That I should consider something more lucrative, like investments, or even worse, using our money to try to worm into some rich Italian guy’s life. Being a gold digger.
Sleepless, I get up and continue to be a zombie through the morning. I head down to the kitchen, put on some coffee, and notice that the sugar cookie dough is still in the refrigerator. I abandoned the endeavor midway last night to sate my lusts with Rainier. Growing up poor, I’ve always abhorred wasting food, so I get to work on finishing the job. Some good sugar cookies always raise my spirits a bit, and even as low as I’m feeling, I think they’ll be effective, at least a little bit.
Toss in some bacon and eggs, and of course the caffeine boost of coffee, and I rise from absolute self-loathing all the way up to just horribly depressed.
I crash on the sofa, trying to figure out what to do next, avoiding thinking about the most sensitive subjects. I have the cabin for another week, and I’m not so broke that I need to start living on ramen and Spam alone.
Just too broke to go with the original plan of pastry school.