My drive to the office was one filled with pleas and distractions. I was almost breaking the traffic rules at every point or pleading with a car to my left or right to turn a blind eye to how I was barging into their lane.My mind was agog with a lot of distractions that bordered around Carol and my growing feelings for her which I couldn’t come out plain with. I drove straight into the parking lot, yanked my bag off the seat, stepped out, and locked the car.As I moved through the ground floor, heading for the elevator, I could feel a lot of eyes on me, staring as though I had just walked out of a pit of dirt. I paid no heed to their ridiculous stares till I was in the elevator. The corners of the elevator shimmered as though a mirror had been stamped on them.There and then, I saw that the tie I had hung loosely on my neck when I entered Carol’s room earlier was still there hanging loosely. Damn! I must have looked like a clown in a suit. Little wonder why their eyes never left me
Yawning and stretching my whole being on the bed like I was in a fight with an invisible being I wanted to push off the bed, my eyes fluttered open to the bright rays that sought to poke its head into every part of the room, especially my face.“Arrrrgggg!” I exclaimed, reminding myself that if I had only remembered to take the window blinds down, perhaps, the ray may not have been so bright. I yawned some more and sat up on the bed, grateful that Antonio didn’t come in to force me into pleasing him yet again.He was still my husband but sex with him had been both annoying, disgusting and forced all because I wasn’t happy that he was sharing his body, my body with multiple women whom I don’t even know if they had any transferrable sexual diseases.Making an effort to rise from the bed to wash off the sleep traces from my face, I heard the door creak open softly. My heart fluttered but as I turned and saw who it was, panic shot through me like a jolt of electricity.“Are you insane?”
I stood there, silent, my gaze fixed on the glass of half-finished juice and the crumpled cupcake wrappers littering the otherwise pristine floor of my kitchen. But it wasn’t the mess that caught my attention. Clara’s stammering attempts at explaining how it got there were nothing but noise in the back of my mind. My thoughts were elsewhere, locked onto what felt out of place.Clara stood stiffly across from me now, wringing her fingers, clearly unsure why she was in trouble yet too frightened to ask. I said nothing to her for a while. I didn’t need to but fear did the necessary work.My eyes drifted down slowly, like a predator surveying its kill, and there it was, half-hidden behind the base of the counter, close enough that anyone in a hurry could have dropped it and forgotten was a bracelet. It wasn’t just any bracelet but Carol’s. I recognized it instantly, the small emerald stone at its center and the delicate gold chain. I had bought it for her on her birthday, two months be
“Why are you asking about that now?” My father asked me, looking straight into my face, his eyes as cold as ice.I wasn’t supposed to be the one to follow him up with whatever he had wanted to say to me, I had never done that since I lost my mother and I never took any of his words seriously but I had to follow up on his request to speak to me because it was a ploy to cover up my tracks.Even though I was itching to collapse on my bed and my body begged for sleep, I couldn’t pull myself away from the kitchen yet, not until I heard what my father was going to ask Clara.I stood there, just some inches away from him, silently praying he wouldn’t suspect something odd about my askance. Stolen bread really is sweet, until you're caught with crumbs all over your face, that was exactly how I felt. My heart was still hammering from the near escape with Carol, and now I was standing there like an idiot, risking everything just to satisfy my curiosity but I couldn’t help it.“Was only curious
I could almost guess my father didn’t really want to enter Carol’s room from the way his footsteps hesitated just outside her door and the silence that followed, it wasn’t the silence of someone preparing to open a door. No…. It wasn't that. It was the kind of silence that came when someone second-guessed themselves, when suspicion wasn’t heavy enough yet to push the door open.I stood frozen behind Carol’s door, barely breathing. I pictured him standing out there, frowning, running scenarios in his head like he always did before making any move. A man like him didn’t act on impulse. Everything had to be calculated, even when checking on his wife in the dead of night.After a few agonizing seconds, I heard the soft creak of his shoe pivot and his footsteps continued down the hall or so I thought, away from Carol’s room. I knew immediately, he was headed toward the kitchen, maybe to grab water or something else or maybe not. Either way, I wasn’t about to stand there any longer and
I stood frozen to a spot as the bathroom door clicked softly. My heart thudded so hard that I didn’t move until I heard Luca lock it from the inside.Then, slowly, I dropped to the edge of the bed, clutching the crumpled panties in my fist, my entire body shaking, from the unbearable and ridiculous absurdity of it all. I dared a glance at the door and waited for it to burst open any moment but after some seconds of my anticipation, the door didn’t creak open like I had expected. My heart still pounded, but minutes dragged by without anyone stepping into the room. I tapped my finger nervously against the edge of the sheet draped over my legs, my body tense, and my ears straining to catch even the faintest shift of sound from the hallway but all I heard was Antonio’s voice.It floated faintly through the walls, it was steady and almost casual. He was talking as if it wasn’t the dead of night and as if there wasn’t something painfully wrong in the air.I couldn’t make out his exact wo