Discovering Something New About Herself
Laurie lay in bed with the covers pulled tightly up under her chin. She was in 'one of her moods' as her friends might say, but she didn't care what others thought. Daniel had broken up with her, or at least she thought he had. The text had read "We need to see other people," and she knew what that meant. It was relationship speak for "I'm already seeing someone else": it was clear to her that the time had come to move on.
Daniel had always been a pretentious man. As they became more familiar with each other, Laurie had tried to call him Dan only to be corrected every time that his name was Daniel, not Dan. Laurie now felt that she should have seen that as a sign, but, at the time, she was enamored with him and just accepted the rules.
She began taking inventory of the "signs," as she called them: the signs that things weren't going to work out as a couple, which she felt she should have seen. "I guess I should learn from this," she said out loud to the empty room. Laurie was that way; after a burst of tears and questioning, she settled into the "Logical Laurie" that her friends always accused her of being, but that she had vehemently denied.
Crawling from her bed, Laurie wandered through her apartment to the kitchen. Filling a wine glass, she leaned against the counter; sipped and thought.
"I should have seen this coming. He was a lousy kisser." Laurie giggled a little at the shallow thought, but it was true.
She once thought Daniel was afraid to kiss, or that her lips tasted bad by the way his lips would tighten and by how quickly he would retreat from her. Now, she saw his actions as a flaw in him. She liked to kiss, he didn't; his loss. Laurie paced around the apartment.
"He was a neat freak, and I hate that," she said, bending to pick up her clothes from the day that were lying in small piles trailing to the bedroom. She tossed them onto the couch and kept strolling.
"And he was so . . . skinny." Laurie had always thought Daniel was an attractive man, but he was rather thin.
In the few pictures she had of the two of them, they made something of a "Mutt and Jeff" couple. Laurie wasn't fat, but she was "Rubinesque" at five feet six inches tall and a size 10. She had curves and liked how she looked, seeing no reason to change. Daniel, however, was nearly six feet tall and weighed no more than one hundred and fifty pounds. He was skinny. Laurie once joked that she liked his frame because it made "other things" seem larger by comparison. Daniel always reacted poorly when she would make those remarks; he was so damned conservative when it came to things like that.
Laurie placed the glass on the dresser and fumbled through the drawer a moment. She retrieved her digital camera and powered it up. Scrolling through the pictures of this birthday party and that gathering, she found what she was searching for, a picture of Daniel she had snapped one day as he was getting out of the shower. He didn't know she had taken it. It was one of the rare occasions he had left the bathroom door open. Laurie was feeling frisky that evening and, on a whim, grabbed the camera and waited in the darkened bedroom. As he climbed from the shower and threw the towel over his head to dry his hair, she waited for just the right moment and snapped the shot. Laurie stood at the dresser and stared at the picture for a long moment. She looked at the ribs that lined his chest, the pointed hipbones, and his cute round behind; she always thought that was his best feature. She looked at the rest of his naked frame.
"Yeah, it was a perspective thing," she thought before clicking the features button to find the delete button.
Just before hitting the button and sending the picture off to oblivion, she paused. With a little smile, she turned the camera off and placed it on top of the dresser without having deleted the picture.
Laurie wandered around the apartment for a few more minutes before refilling her glass and walking toward the sliding glass doors leading onto the deck. The apartment was one of two in the building. It would have been called a duplex if it was nicer, but, in reality, it was half of a ranch styled house out in the middle of nowhere. The other half had been vacant for a few weeks, and she had been enjoying the peace and quiet. There were no houses in sight, and the long drive that lead to the house allowed for a lot of privacy.
Knowing the other apartment was empty and the fact that it was well past the time of day that the landlord might show up, Laurie didn't bother to grab a robe before opening the doors and walking out onto the deck in the nude. The heat of the summer day was moderating into a cool evening. It wasn't dark, but the sun was hidden behind the ridges that surrounded the valley. Laurie walked around the deck a bit tentatively until she looked to make sure the other apartment was still completely empty. Once she saw that it was, she relaxed and strolled from one end of the deck to the other. She started to sit on one of her deck chairs until she felt how hot it still was from the day's bright sunshine. Instead, she just kept leisurely moving around the deck.
Smiling, she thought of how Daniel would have reacted to this. Laurie never gave much thought to being without clothes; as long as things were under control, she had no problem being nude. She admitted to him that she enjoyed the feeling of the wind and sun on her body. Daniel was just the opposite; he wouldn't even get undressed unless the room was completely dark. "Another thing I should have seen as a sign," she thought. He had once chastised her for wearing just a long tee shirt when she walked to the end of the driveway to get the mail. Now she was standing on the deck completely nude. She giggled. "He would have a heart attack."
Laurie placed the now empty wine bottle on the railing of the deck and stepped off into the yard. She walked out to her car and retrieved her cell phone. Purposefully, she had left it there after Daniel texted her, not wanting to see anymore words from him. Checking the phone, she saw that he had texted her twice more. Laurie paused a moment before deleting them without reading.
Closing the door of her car, Laurie walked out on the drive a few yards. She realized that she had forgotten to get the mail when she came in and started walking down the driveway. Laurie had enjoyed five glasses of wine and had been outside long enough to become slightly oblivious that she was nude. She stood at the mailbox, flipping through the handful of flyers and bills, when she became suddenly aware of that fact. Laurie glanced up and realized that she was more than a hundred yards from the apartment. In one hand she clutched a handful of papers and her cell phone, in the other was a half full glass of red wine. None of which would serve as adequate cover should a car come barreling down the road. Laurie took a few hasty steps up the slight incline of the driveway before slowing to a more normal pace. "The trees will hide me," she thought as she continued up the drive. The tall maples along the drive would have provided minimal cover, but just enough that anyone driving by would only have the passing thought of having seen a person walking up the drive, and they might have been scantily dressed. That was good enough for Laurie.
Back inside, Laurie tossed the papers onto the dinner table. She put the empty wine glass on the counter and crawled onto the couch. The rest of her evening was filled with fictional drama instead of her own personal drama. She fell into a deep sleep.
Over the next week, Laurie received 5 texts from Daniel, and she ignored every one.
"You screwed up, buddy. I am moving on," she said aloud as she drove home Friday night, deleting yet another message.
Sitting in her driveway, gathering her things, she heard her phone buzz to life once again. Looking at the screen, she saw the name of her girlfriend Brianna. Before she could hit the button to answer, the call went to voice mail and Laurie shrugged.
"I'll call her back later." Laurie put her purse on the table and put away the couple of bags of groceries she had bought.
Laurie walked out of the house to get the mail. Normally, she would have stopped before coming up the hill to the apartment, but her ice cream was melting and she had hurried by. Standing at the mailbox, Laurie looked around to find the source of the sound of a weed eater. She spied the oldest son of her closest neighbors trimming the grass around the end of their driveway. The young man was a hundred yards down the road from her but stopped and waved when he saw her looking. Laurie waved back and stared a moment before walking back up the driveway.
Sammy had been away at school and had just returned for the summer. Laurie was only three years older than Sammy but had always seen him as a kid. A few steps up the driveway, she stopped as he went back to work and reconsidered that position. Watching him swing the weed eater around, she stared as the muscles in his arms tightened and relaxed. His shirtless chest rippled with the movements, and his tanned legs flexed as he balanced on the slight hillside. Sammy was twenty three years old and was well on his way to becoming a lawyer.
