She knew the message had sunk in -- at least for now. Sara had had to give This One the same lecture twice already. After a short, pouty silence, she listened to him put on his clothes and shoes. Sara had just finished pulling on her leggings when he departed the dorm room. She heard, "Fucking bitch," as the door swung shut behind him.
Don't ask questions you don't want answers to, Sara thought mildly as she laced up her sneakers. She grabbed her student ID, AirPods, dorm room key, and Yeti water bottle off of her sink and departed for the rec center.
So far, this Saturday was going exactly as intended, Sara reflected with satisfaction as she left the rec center an hour later. Coasting on the endorphins of her three-mile treadmill run, she stepped onto the broiling campus sidewalk. AirPods sat in her ears but were silent, there simply to discourage attempted conversations from strangers -- which was easy; Sara was one of only a small number of students left on campus to attend summer classes.
The Boy was no intellectual titan, but he did the job and kept her satisfied if she motivated him properly. It wasn't a big task. He could be needy at times, but once Sara had had her fill for an evening, all she needed to do was keep him on ice for 48-72 hours before texting him again. Same routine. "You busy? No? Come over." Whatever perceived indignity he had felt the last time would be forgotten. And she wasn't selfish -- She always let him stay the night. And she was never a morning sex person, but took the initiative to suck him off the morning after before telling him to hit the road.
It was beyond her why he couldn't just let it be simple.
Next on her list was to cruise by the student union to check her mail and have lunch, then back to her dorm to smoke a bowl and watch Love Island. She breached the air-conditioned foyer of the student union and headed for the mail center, thinking about her orgasm the night before, and the way it had squeezed around the warmth of the Boy's dick as he pumped cum inside of her... She always timed it perfectly... Kept him on edge until she reached climax... It's what always kept him coming back.
Sara walked to the food court with her mail in hand, rifling through the expected. Student credit card statement, university newsletter, coupons for the nearby co-op... Huh?
A chattering campus tour group brushed past her and she looked around at them dazed, not realizing that she'd stopped walking. Then she looked back down at the envelope.
A blue logo in the shape of The Pentagon was printed on the top left corner of a plain white envelope. Sara's own PO box address was visible through a rectangle of polystyrene film.
Fully suspecting a mail scam, she nevertheless turned the envelope over and ripped it open, letting her curiosity get the best of her. Her eyes scanned back and forth across the letter inside, brow scrunching ever more severely in disbelief the further she got. "...The fuck...?"
She flailed awkwardly for a purse or pocket on her body that might contain her phone, then remembered she'd left it in her dorm. And so she turned away from the food court, any notion of lunch forgotten, and marched back outside in the direction of her dorm, thoughts racing.
Sara's footsteps were amplified in her own ears by the silent AirPods, playing a frantic heartbeat soundtrack to underscore her thoughts: What now, Ellie?
She and her older sister hadn't spoken in several months, and Sara wasn't quite sure which of them was maintaining the silence. The two had never had a deep connection. Sara seemed to have always pushed Ellie away with her brash demeanor. Whereas Sara found it a waste of everyone's time to talk around delicate topics or hide her opinions, Ellie seemed always to have found refuge in unoccupied space -- of which she took up as little as possible.
The difference this time around was that Ellie, to Sara's knowledge, hadn't spoken to their parents in as much time either.
It was uncomfortable to watch Ellie spiral in the weeks preceding her alienation. Sara had never thought much of Ellie's ex-fiancee Peter, and certainly didn't think he was good for Ellie. He was undoubtedly the worst kind of douchebag: Pious and vain in equal measure. The worst aspect, by far, was Peter's refusal to sleep with Ellie, and Sara was never silent (away from her parents' prying ears) about her opinion that one thing Ellie needed desperately was a good dicking. The poor girl was so tightly wound that Sara inhaled second-hand Type A just being near her. This, of course, was another way of explaining why the two never had a close bond. And unfortunately, when Sara called out the obvious after Ellie finally left that piece of shit -- that it was because he wouldn't fuck her -- Ellie took offense. It was the last time they had spoken.
I'd have left too, Sara thought to herself on her walk back to her dorm. Don't know what the hissy fit was about.
But Sara wasn't in the business of forcing people to associate with her. Ellie might reach out in time, or maybe Sara would take the initiative if enough time passed... That was the loose plan, at leas until Sara had received this bizarre letter.
Her hungry stomach grumbled, forgotten, as Sara took the stairs two at a time back to her dorm room. She keyed into her dorm hastily, crinkled her nose at the lingering smell of her overnight visitor, and grabbed her phone off of the sink.
No missed calls or texts from her parents.
So. They must not have received the letter. They would have most certainly checked the mail -- it came early, and Sara's dad was as reliable as Big Ben, shuffling down the front walk in his bathrobe at 6am sharp to sneak a cigarette and poke around the mailbox.
Sara dialed her father, who was more efficient -- and pleasant -- at getting through a conversation than her mother. She waited.
The letter didn't compute with Sara. Ellie hadn't been open about the goings-on in her life since her broken engagement, so Sara supposed she could be up to just about anything. But the letter clenched in Sara's fist was still so bizarre, so out of character, an absurd non-sequitur, a violation of the reality of everything she knew about her sister. And she hoped her parents had answers.
"Hey, sweetie." Mom's voice.
Damn, she thought. Her mother was a Venus Fly Trap.
