Regina
Lately, she's been smoking. She's been chain smoking at that, and she hates it. She never has liked the way the stale smoke clung to everything you owned until you couldn't even drink whiskey on the rocks without tasting it in the ice-cubes. But she's been doing it anyway, finding an odd sort of comfort in how quickly she learned to draw the smoke in deep and puff it out in little circles for hours on end. She likes it when she's good at things.
There are so many things she's good at. She's good at manipulating, at fucking, and even at cooking Italian food. It frightens her how she relates the three, chaining them together until not even a trace of the normal, healthy cognitive irrelevance is left. She lights a cigarette, and takes a drag, drawing in a deep lungful of smoke and looking at the man next to her.
It was a rare occasion when he actually fell asleep afterwards. He usually came, got up, got dressed, and left without another word. He never lets her smoke in his apartment, and for a moment she considers blowing smoke in his face, then drops the idea realizing she would take too much petty joy in it. Instead, she crushes the cigarette out in the crystal ashtray she now keeps by her bedside and considers him.
When he's asleep, he looks his age. She's done her research, and she knows of the man who lies next to her. He's actually three years younger than she is, from an influential English family with only a few oedipal skeletons in it's closet. His mother had married in at 19, and for a brief moment she wondered how often he talked to her. She hadn't talked to her own mother in months. There was really no point, she didn't recognize anyone anymore. She lights another cigarette and wonders when she got so weak.
She didn't love him, and even if she did she would never admit it. What she feels is worse than love, it's dependence. She's never depended on anyone, not since she had graduated high school with enough scholarship money to get herself out of her small town and on with her life. So the realization that she depends on him sickens her. She depends on the sick thrill of sado- masochistic glory she gets when they fuck, and the verbal abuse she's more than happy to take. The deep rooted sexual deviancy inside of her had never before had such a worthy sparring partner. She gave as good as she got in all aspects, and it wasn't something she wanted to give up soon.
She knew she would have to eventually of course, she wasn't stupid, but until then she would enjoy it for all it was worth. She lights another cigarette and takes another drag, and this time she does blow the smoke in his face. Just a little.
End
Fic