I have this second cousin, who has always been my nemesis while growing up. She was the proverbial mean girl and a major bully, she used to taunt and mock me when we were teens, put me through numerous humiliating situations, on occasion even resorting to violence when she didn't get her way.
As grown ups, we are obliged to be civil, more for the sake of the families, than anything else. It would have been hard staying cordial, had we actually been in contact for more than once every few years.
She has recently married a foreigner - yet another reason for her to be smug and flaunt the ring like Smeagol/Gollum.
Her husband is English, his name is Brian. They live in the UK but recently decided to buy an apartment in my city - her old hometown, to use as a summer residence.
My mom, ever the proper lady, insisted I go help, due to my knowledge in English and real estate procedures, so in the span of month and a half since they arrived, we've grown quite used to each other, no thanks to my cousin.
In fact, Brian is the total opposite of Maria.
While she seems to put on the airs of an angel in front of him, he is genuinely cool - with great sense of humour, patient, empathetic, and...not to mention rather hot in a tall, dirty blond haired, green eyed kind of way.
While I'm naturally communicative and I love to laugh, I have never before crossed the line, no matter how much of a crush I seem to harbor if the person is taken...
But the more time we spent together, the harder it became to deny the connection between us.
There have been many an occasion of us going out checking administrative stuff off the list, sometimes the three of us, but mostly just me and him, while Maria was busy with other tasks, and I had to accompany him and help with the translation.
Every time we were alone he was getting a tad flirtier, but not in a sleazy way - that would have simply annoyed me. The guy is just naturally charismatic and you know that feeling you get...thinking "damn, why is someone so amazing with a she-devil like Maria? How is that fair?"
I was quietly harboring my crush and letting myself enjoy his company, at some point even starting to think that maybe...just maybe Maria has truly changed while living abroad, that she was no longer the same person from my nightmares.
You see, unlike her, growing up I was never skinny, so she never let me live a day without using that as ammunition against me, even though I was hardly even plump back then.
Maria is still stick thin and very proud of that, in fact she is one of those people who openly express disgust for anything above size zero - no matter if flatteringly curvy or morbidly obese - it's all the same to her.
It didn't take long for her to show her true colors again, though.
It started with the cutting remarks disguised as "jokes", discussing celebrities or public figures, but drawing parallels of how ugly or unflattering it is to look like them, while giving me side glances.
I was irritated and hurt at times, as she triggered the child in me, back when she was the same fucking bully, but I reminded myself we're no longer children.
Moreover, I was growing rather amused, noticing that Brian seemed to harbor quite the opposite opinion to hers... In fact, the more attention I paid to the little signs and signals of his behavior and body language, the clearer it became, that he was very, very attracted to me, with sometimes blatantly obvious evidence in support of that.
A few times I noticed him trying to awkwardly adjust himself, so, to an extent, I felt vindicated.
I wasn't planning on doing anything at all, it's not my style, after all..
However, she crossed the line.
During a random and seemingly benign conversation, she said something really insensitive and humiliating to me, right in front of Brian, no less.
I was more than pissed off, in fact - I was contemplating distancing myself and never helping again.
But...somewhere on a very deep and primal level, a darker side of me reared its head and demanded her sweet revenge.
Next time I went to their place, I deliberately put a rather tight dress with a larger cleavage, something I've never appeared in before them - I normally wore sporty or casual clothes.
I went there in the late afternoon, and I had to bite my lips to suppress the grin after witnessing Brian's reaction when I first took my jacket off and he had a glimpse of my dress. Of course, Maria had something to say to my choice of clothes - she thought I was unnecessarily formal but I quickly fibbed I had a meeting later.
I loved the way he was staring at me, drinking me in, so I put up a deliberate show of moving, walking, sitting, stretching and sauntering just enough, to give him the best vantage points possible.
I noticed he was getting flushed pink, and on his normally pale complexion, it couldn't be more obvious.
He was wearing some baggy sports pants and a t-shirt, Maria was in jeans and blouse and there I was in my dark red tight dress with a cinched waist, setting off my best assets on display, growing intoxicated with the power I wielded with it.
I reveled in his obviously flustered state, while playing my favorite game - pretending to be oblivious, nice and innocent, yet ever so subtly teasing and sensually torturing him, so after a couple of hours of letting him simmer, I felt emboldened for the next step.
We were sitting around their dining table, sipping wine and looking at fabric samples for curtains and couches. Maria was annoyed, she didn't like anything, so she wasn't paying much attention, unlike Brian, who was sitting next to me and was very aware of all the samples I was showing him.
While I did so, I was also deliberately leaning closer, so that from his vantage point the side of my boob would appear to almost spill out of my cleavage.
