After a long hot bath that went a long way towards calming her nerves, Andrea took a couple of sips of brandy after slipping on her pajamas for bed.
Curling up under the covers and switching off the lamp to her right, as soon as the room went dark, the deep and foreboding angst about the Montclaire case slipped back into the forefront of Andrea's thoughts.
"You've got to get some sleep... you've got to get your mind off the case... even if its just for a few hours... it'll take care of itself... whatever the outcome," Andrea scolded herself as she fidgeted under the sheets.
Desperate to get her mind off the pending trial, even if just for long enough until she could fall asleep, Andrea's eyes inevitably locked onto the picture on her nightstand of her ex-husband, Chuck.
"SHIT... You would have to be sitting there smiling at my misery," Andrea exhaustedly moaned as if Chuck were actually kneeling there beside the bed.
The fact that Andrea Bell still had a portrait of her ex-husband beside her bed despite the reality of being divorced for almost 2 years was something she wasn't particularly proud of.
"I keep it there so my son doesn't forget what his bastard of a Father looks like," Andrea would frequently tell herself even though the only two places she had pictures of Chuck was in her bedroom and on her desk at work, two locations her son Cody, rarely saw.
It was, instead, a clear and defining insight into what made Andrea Bell tick. Having struggled for everything she had accomplished in her short life, Andrea had become use, almost addicted to conflict. It was why she decided to go to law school. She had discovered somewhere along the way that she felt a vague emptiness inside of her when there wasn't something amiss. That feeling of emptiness was punctuated when she made the final step of dissolving her marriage.
She knew deep down that keeping the picture of Chuck there to see before she fell asleep every night was, in a way, to remind her that she had made the right decision to leave him, that behind his smiling facade, that behind any man's smiling facade, lies the heart of a liar and a cheat.
Still, as she laid there trying her damndest to ignore the lure of Chuck's dark haunting eyes, Andrea could feel her willpower gradually sliding down a slippery slope.
"Close your eyes... and go to sleep," a distant, almost inaudible voice begged inside of Andrea's head.
"In a second... " she whispered like a mesmerized child. " I will... in just a second."
That's when Andrea's delirium from a long day of work combined with her biting inner demons, causing her to lapse into a moment of pained but predictable delusion. The hazy but unmistakable image of the blonde secretary her ex-husband had stolen away with filtered like a radioactive glow inside Andrea's minds eye.
Nancy Minton was her name and if it wasn't for the fact that Andrea had an ounce of self control when she discovered the affair, she would have scratched the witch's ocean blue eyes out a long time ago.
Grazing her fingers, first across the smooth skin of her waist, then through the soft but dense wisps of her chestnut brown pubes, Andrea's index and middle finger slipped into the buttery and boiling cauldron of her womb.
"MMM... PPHHAAHH," the 31 year old attorney moaned bitterly. "I... aah... ahh... just need to take the edge off."
"No way I can fall asleep unless I get rid of some of this damn tension," she rationalized as her right hand churned between her pale, trim thighs.
"Its just to help me fall asleep," Andrea lied as she watched the hallucinogenic interplay between Chuck and his blonde mistress, at the same time she burrowed her hand like a spade into her foaming crotch.
"Its just a stress release... that's all... just to help me wind down from a long day," a self loathing Andrea tried convincing herself, knowing internally that these attempts at gratification would play out many times over, in the months and years to come, if she didn't find a way to rise above it.
Squinting her eyes in the dark, trying her best to focus her sight on the fuzzy image of Chuck and Nancy embracing to her right, Andrea swirled her energized fingers like talons through her cunt until the moist vibrations of her lewd act echoed wetly through the room.
"MMMM... yeahhh," Andrea hoarsely whispered, seeing Chuck's hazy shadow cast her a sneering gaze while Nancy continued to lick and bite at his neck.
"You sonofabitch," Andrea hurtfullly spat at him. "I know your fucking her tonight... I just know your fucking that BITCH... And I'm stuck here... having to do this myself... FUCK YOU...... FUCK... YYYOOUUU!"
Keeping her eyes galvanized on the photo, Andrea wrenched her wrist wildly as the foggy image of Nancy making love to Chuck took on a 3 dimensional quality.
"Goddammittt... ahhh... ahhhh... aaahhhhyyeezzzzzz," Andrea cried out, helpless to watch the imagined coupling as her knees started to flap like butterfly wings under the covers.
"You're with her tonight... I know it... and I know what your doing to her... dammittt Chuck... ahhh... aaahhmmmmmmmfuckkk," Andrea hissed, thrashing her hips off the mattress manically as she pictured her Ex fucking the Hell out of his blonde mistress, each of them now naked, their bodies intertwined on Andrea's former marital bed, on the same flannel sheets she and Chuck picked out a few months after they were married.
"NOOOO," Andrea winced, her entire psyche filling with shame as the wasps of her depraved lust planted their stingers up and down the length of her twisting spine.
"NNNOOOOOOOOAAAAHH... CANT STOP MYSELF... FFFFFUUCCKKKKKKKKIINN CCCUUUMMMIIINNNGGGGGG," the 31 year old, hapless divorcee screamed out, biting her teeth down hard on the pillow beside her as the acid stained image of Chuck injecting his scalding seed into Nancy's cunt played like an Imax film inside Andrea's tortured mind.
Her hand still wedged between her thighs, less than 5 minutes after her bone crushing and guilt-laden orgasm, Andrea Bell was dead to the world. After reaching over to the nightstand and turning the picture of Chuck face down, she had immediately fallen asleep, safe in the knowledge that at some point the next morning she would turn the picture of her Ex back up, only to repeat the process again and again in the nights to come.
* * * * *
The brisk breeze of late afternoon chilled Andrea to her core as she rubbed her goose pimpled flesh to keep warm. Walking the streets of one of Colorado Springs' less picturesque neighborhoods for her scheduled meeting with a now 19 year old Carlos Vargas, Andrea knew the only way to win the case would be to prep him as best she could.
Fighting the constant gusts that rippled in from the North, a visibly anxious Andrea kept her left hand down against the hem of her knee length business skirt, praying the wind wouldn't cause it to ride up with so many down-on-their-luck onlookers watching on.
Double-checking the scrap piece of paper she had written Carlos's address on, Andrea let out a deep sigh of relief when she came upon the graffiti laced building Carlos lived.
"I hope he's home," Andrea mumbled as she hurried inside, not wanting to spend a minute longer in the rundown complex than she had to.
After making her way up the litter strewn staircase to Carlos's second floor apartment, Andrea knocked on the door three times waiting for a response. She was sure she could hear someone scooting around inside as she alternated lifting her heels off the floor, hoping they wouldn't get stuck on the strangely sticky surface below.
