It was about three weeks SFM (since first memory, as Nicole began calling it and using it to track time,) when Jack told her that he needed to go into work for the day. He mentioned it to her the night before, at dinner, and she felt some sort of fear at him leaving her all alone. She didn't really understand it, but she was scared for him to go.
"Am I allowed to come with you?" She surprised herself with the question that popped out of her mouth. Her face immediately turned red and she looked down at her plate.
"No, Nicole. You can't come with me. It's kinda..." he poked at his lasagna with his fork. "Security protocols and whatnot. I can't bring visitors in. And besides that, I need to do some hands-on type stuff in the lab, I'm not just going to be sitting in an office at a computer."
She lifted her eyes to look at him but didn't dare ask the question about what it was that he did. She was a lot more self-conscious about the questions she asked since that night she spent tied up. He mostly avoided her the following day and then things seemed to return to the way they were before, for the most part. He hung onto that reprimand of spanking her when she made a mess with the blow jobs, which was almost every time.
"How long are you going to be gone?" She asked instead.
"All day. I'm gonna have to leave at about 6:30 in the morning and I probably won't be back until like seven or so at night," he told her.
She didn't know what she was going to do with herself, alone, for that long. Yes, Jack did spend a good deal of the day, every day, in his office working. But he was around. He came up for lunch, he called her down to use the gym equipment, sometimes they went for a jog outside in the early afternoon. And then of course there were the constant sex breaks that he took. Every couple of hours she was either on her knees in front of his office chair sucking him off or bent over his desk or couch. Every day for the past three weeks she just took it as the normal flow of the day. This was just what happened. She didn't have any strong feelings about it. She neither looked forward to it nor did she dread him calling her down to his office for another round.
In between, she read the books and watched the movies on Jack's living room shelves. The reading didn't come super easy at first. She started a book called The Alienist but had the hardest time getting through it. She found herself rereading sentences, again and again, trying to grasp what they meant. Nicole tried to remember whether she ever enjoyed reading, whether it was something she'd ever done for fun, but she wasn't sure. She watched Jack read on an e-reader and he seemed to fly through pages. Her own reading went really slowly.
"I think you started with the wrong book," Jack told her as they sat out on his deck one Sunday afternoon, both reading. Nicole sighed, frowning at him. "I don't want to insult your intelligence, I just think you're a bit out of practice and it's not like... a starter book." Jack got up and went inside, leaving her there. He came back a few minutes later, taking the book out of her hands and placing another one in them. Artemis Fowl, the cover said. She flipped the paperback over and read the blurb.
"This is for kids," she looked back at him skeptically. Jack smirked, shaking his head.
"You are literally a teenager," he reminded her. "And anyway, I read this in my twenties and enjoyed it. I have the whole series. I think you should give this a try." She made a face. "Humor me. Read the first three chapters and if you don't like it, you don't have to finish it."
She liked it. She managed to finish it by the next evening. It was definitely a lot easier to read and she flew through it, then the rest of the series as well. Jack had to take the book out of her hands and turn the lights out to make her go to sleep. After the eight Artemis Fowl books, she started reading the Night Watch series, which she really enjoyed too. She was on the third book, Twilight Watch, by the time Jack announced that he was going to need to go into work.
She could spend the day reading and watching movies and maybe even cook or bake something. She'd tried her hand at both a few times and it had turned out ok. The chocolate chip cookies she made were actually more than just ok, they were delicious. But there was some crazy sort of unease about being alone in the house without Jack. He told her she wasn't allowed to go outside, as per usual, but that he was also going to set an alarm on the house, to make her feel safer, he said, so that no one would be able to come in either. There was some sort of comfort in not being alone, in having him around though. It was all complicated by the fact that she couldn't remember herself ever being alone before.
"You've been alone before," he assured her. "You've actually..." he hesitated, as he always did when he was about to divulge some sort of information about herself and he wasn't sure whether he should tell her. "You are actually a very independent person and you've spent a lot of time on your own before."