Linda stared out across the tree-lined lawn of her apartment complex. She could see people walking their dogs and other jogging. A young mother was pushing her toddler in a stroller as he laughed and pointed to things. Linda felt the same poignant pang in her lower abdomen that she always did when she saw babies and young children. But a decade of trying for a baby had only led to more resentment and blame in her already tense marriage. It was another failure in a long line of them.
She should be working on her online classes but the words had all just blurred together. Even her morning coffee did not taste as sweet. What was she going to do? Her job was history. Even if she won her unfair dismissal claim, she was too traumatized after the robbery to go back there. She loved her classes but at her age who went back to college? Most importantly, what the hell was she doing playing these cyber sex games with someone almost fifteen years younger than she was?
Josh's proposal last night had shocked her. Another shock it seemed in a long line of them recently. Her husband's affairs. The divorce. Then just as she was rebuilding a life...the robbery and losing her job. It was almost too much. She felt as if she would snap at any moment. The very fact that she was actually considering Josh's proposal probably indicated that she already had.
Should she go? Should she actually visit her young cyber lover? Linda had spent a lifetime playing it safe. In high school, she had been the good girl. Saving herself until on prom night her boyfriend proposed. They had married right out of high school and she had worked as a waitress to support him through college and then law school. She had been the good and faithful wife.
No matter what he said about her weight, her inability to give him the son he craved, the tiny lines of life that showed in her face or the few strands of grey that began to dot her dirty blond hair. You could not even see them, not really. But he had seen them all and used them as an excuse to cheat on her with an intern at his firm. What's more he had compounded that sin by impregnating the girl. Then he had asked for a divorce so he could marry the woman-child before the baby was born. But she had survived that.
Then the robbery. She had done all that she could to save the lives of her staff. What was a couple thousand dollars when compared with the human costs of a half dozen innocent lives? But the owners had not seen it that way. She should have put up more of a fight, not simply handed over the cash. They had even intimated that perhaps she was inn cahoots with the robbers. She was shocked when they fired her. Even though a very big part of her never wanted to go back there again anyway.
Linda had done the 'right' thing by everyone else her whole life. She had sacrificed her desire to go to college for her husband's. She had even been willing to sacrifice her life for her employees. And where had it all gotten her? Where had being the 'good girl' led her? Divorced and fired...with only one real friend that gave a damn if she lived or died. And he was just words, pictures and video on electronic screens.
Didn't she owe it to him? Wasn't a short trip the few hundred miles to his college the least that she owed to Josh? He had been there for her through so much. Even the hot video sex aside, he had been a friend. He had been the one that she told her concerns to after a hard day at work. He had been the only one texting and bugging her that day when it all fell apart. He had been there for her through so much.
But was she ready for this? She was pushing forty and it was all down hill from here. She was divorced. She really ought to loose more than a few pounds. Hell, she had wrinkles and grey hair for goodness sake. And she was thinking about taking a twenty-two year old kid as her second lover. Only the second lover of her whole life. She truly had snapped.
Because before she could change her mind, Linda had brought up an app on her phone and purchased a plane ticket to the city where Josh went to college. She had added the optional three days at a hotel which boasted it was on the edge of the campus. She had even booked a rental car. The insanity was complete.
***
What was she doing here, Linda asked herself. It was the same question that she had been asking herself while she packed her suit case. While she took a cab to the airport. Through security. It was the question that repeated itself like a mantra for the whole two hour flight. She did not have to wait for luggage as she had packed only a single overnight case. But she had almost bolted during the brief wait at the car rental counter.
The tiny sane portion of her brain that remained begged her to forget this lunacy and take the next flight back to her safe, sterile world. Then the insanity asserted itself once more. What was there to go back to? Ever. No husband. No job. No real friends. Nothing. What honestly did she have to loose? The answer was a resounding...Nothing.
So she had thrown the overnight bag into the trunk of the compact rental car and driven the half hour across town in rush hour traffic to the chain motel that was as non-descript as her life. Nothing luxurious. Just a king size bed, a television and a few cheap lithographs on the wall. It lacked any charm or personality. Much the same as her life. Functional but sterile. As sterile as her womb.
After tossing her bag in the tiny closet by the door, Linda collapsed on the end of bed. She sighed heavily. What now? She was here. As far away from the safety of her unpredictable world as she could get. So what now? She had not managed to work up the nerve all day long to even answer a single one of Josh's dozen or more messages. She feared that he had finally given up on her since her phone had been silent for a couple of hours now. What if she came all this way for nothing?
Tears welled up in her eyes. Half of lifetime. She had wasted half of her life playing it safe. Doing what everyone else thought she ought to do. Not only had it not made her happy, she had not even been a success at it. A failure as a wife. A failure as a manager. Hell, she was such a failure as a mother that she had not even been able to get pregnant. If her ex-husband was to be believed her worst failure was as a lover.
