UNHAPPY WOMEN IN BEAUTIFUL BODIES

FREDDY

"Fredmon!" I heard a voice call out from a distance not very far from the bathroom door.

My body moved before my brain thought - I grabbed the towel off its hanger with one hand, the other working hard to secure the material around my waist, the whole operation executed with the graceless urgency of a man who could not bare to let the fact that he was wanking off to his elder brother's wife slip even as an unsure suspicion.

I knocked my elbow against the soap dish. It clattered into the sink. I swore under my breath and spun around with the towel half across my lap at an angle that made me look guilty of exactly what I was guilty of.

It wasn't Eddy.

My father stood in the doorway in his robe, one hand still on the door handle, looking at me with that particular expression of his - the one that gave nothing away and took everything in. 

Gregory Langford had the eyes of a man who had spent a lifetime reading rooms and never once let a room read him back.

I straightened up, adjusted the towel, and tried to look like a man who had simply been standing in a bathroom for no specific reason.

"Dad." My voice came out steady. Decades of hockey had taught me how to take a hit and keep skating. "You mind?" I asked, directing him back to the bedroom with my eyes.

He didn't apologise. He never apologised. He stepped back instead, but his eyes never left where I stood, like he was looking for an answer to a question he didn't want to ask.

I sighed as I walked past him to take a seat on the bed, making sure I closed the bathroom door this time.

"You should have knocked at the very least, or am I not promised security at least?" I asked, my voice firm and angry.

"You're up early," he said instead, leaning against the dressing table, directly opposite my face.

"I'm always up early," I snapped, rolling my eyes at him.

"You weren't in your room last night."

My eyes widened to his question, but immediately, I moved, to distract him from paying too much attention to my expression.

Standing up, I hurried towards him, reaching for my shirt on the dressing table while searching my mind on how it got there.

"Couldn't sleep. Couch in the east wing," I muttered casually.

"Oh! Right," came his reply, casual, each word pronounced with an obvious air of unbelief.

I sighed, proceeding to pull the shirt over my head. 

The space the room provided slowly closed in on me. I ran my fingers through my hair in a manner that showed how much more uncomfortable I had gotten from few minutes ago - when it was just me and my bad decision in the bedroom.

Gregory had a way of compressing space. Always had. When I was a kid I thought it was power. Now I just found it exhausting.

"Can you leave my room?" I asked, my tone as unhinged as ever. "I enjoy my mornings slow and empty."

Gregory heard me, but his expression did not falter, not even for a second. I hate it here.

"It's Eddy's house..." he corrected. My knuckles clenched hard as I waited for the last part of that sentence.

He let out a deep exhale instead, turning away from me.

"Say it!" I snapped, walking over to stand in front of his face.

"Say it! You don't have to be lenient. I don't have a say here? I don't have any power here? What other words?" I snarled in his face.

My stomach twirled in anger, and my body stiffened to impatience.

The ground beneath me felt unstable - I found myself digging my toes hard to hold my balance.

My body was trembling to the thoughts I was trying so hard to numb, at least, for the week I was here.

The truth is, nobody forced me to be here. My father sent a couple of mails to my box, but none was a threat.

Another truth, I still believed that, aside from my father wanting to force a life I didn't enjoy on me, I still thought he wouldn't have listened to me when Eddy pushed Lola into marrying him.

I had scores to settle with him, and I had to pull myself together if I wanted to get to the bottom of this.

I shut my eyes tight and inhaled deeply, my body loosening to the tension as I slowly exhaled.

"I didn't think you'd come," Gregory adjusted in his position. "You have a season coming up soon." He spoke like he truly controlled the energy in the room.

"F*ck!" I swore under my breath, running my fingers through my hair.

"Pre-season. There's a difference." Swiftly, I turned, letting my emotions fold back up into somewhere inside of me, safe and useful for later.

Slowly, not defeated, I walked back to the bed and let myself sink into it.

I had my eyes down for a couple of seconds, but by the time I looked up again, Gregory was staring me dead, a smile playing invisibly against his lips

"Edmond's wife," he said, lowering his gaze, "Lola."

My fingers stiffened against the sheets, but I kept a steady expression.

"What about her?" I said.

"You both seem to know each other well?"

"I don't know her," I replied without thinking.

His gaze returned squarely to my face, with an expression of something that sat between assessment and amusement.

"She's a very particular kind of woman," he continued.

I kept my face neutral. "Is she."

"The kind that makes a house feel different." He paused. "You notice that?"

The back of my neck was warm. I was suddenly aware of everything - the particular way I was standing, the distance between my expression and whatever was going on behind it, whether my father, who had made a forty-year profession out of reading people, could hear last night in the way I was breathing.

"I notice she seems unhappy," I said. "But that's Eddy's business."

"Unhappy women are everybody's business eventually," he said with the confidence of a weather reporter that had been long in the job. "Unhappy women in beautiful bodies especially."

Something moved through me in that moment - quick and cold, like a blade drawn fast enough that you feel the air before the steel. 

I looked at him. His expression was void of any message. Still easy. Still giving me absolutely nothing to grab hold of.

"I'm going to get breakfast," I said, standing up and hurrying to the wardrobe for a pair of pants.

"Of course." He stood up.

"Freddy," he called from behind me.

My fingers paused at the handle of the wardrobe.

"It's good to have you home," he said.

I nodded once. Then listened to his footsteps receding, the door swinging open, the gentle coldness of the outside air he let in and the door jamming shut finally, all of these with the controlled stride of a man who is fine, who has nothing on his mind, who did not spend the night in his brother's wife's bed and did not just watch his father describe her the way a man described something he intends to acquire.

"Unhappy women in beautiful bodies especially."

I closed my eyes.

The way he had said it. Not like a man making an observation.

Like a man making a reservation.