It’s just me and Nicolas.
And Dominic wants to fuck me. He wants my stepbrother to watch. He wants me to give him a baby. Not as some surrogate, but where he puts it inside me himself and only hasn’t because of Nicolas.
Like it has all morning, my pussy rushes with heat. My panties flood. My clit swells.
I have to shift on my stool to ease the pressure, only making it worse.
It’s the soft tinkle of the front door announcing a visitor that distracts my brain... my mom.
“Now, who on earth could that be?” Mom twists her fingers in a dishrag and starts in the direction of the door. She pauses briefly to glance back over her shoulder at me. “Stay away from the cookies, Isla. I say this with love, but you can really do without any more padding.”
I had no intention of touching anything. I know the rules. Even as a child, baked goods were for everyone else. But it never stops Mom from reminding me what a shitty metabolism I have.
My weight has balanced itself out somewhat the last year or so. I’m pretty comfortable in my skin finally, but I know how easily that can tip with the wrong food, stress, or even just hormones.
I’m okay now.
At least, I thought.
Still, baked goods hasn’t held any appeal since third grade when Mom brought my class a tray of fat, chocolate cupcakes with a thick layer of the most decadent frosting lightly sprinkled with tiny, sugar stars and announced to the room at large that everyone was welcome to eat as much as they liked... except me. I needed to lose some weight so I wouldn’t kill anyone when I collapsed the swing set.
For four years, I was called Swing Crusher. It stopped only when Mom met and married Walker and we moved to Piper Falls.
I think I was more excited than she was to leave that place. My room was the first one packed. Only, apparently, kids are just mean everywhere. Somehow, word got out about my nickname and it twisted from me simply being an overweight child to crude innuendos about my sexual preferences. Crusher vanished and it became Slutty Swinger. Hilarious because I’d been a virgin throughout high school.
But it wasn’t just the name calling that finally sent me running. It was the hands that would try to reach under my skirt.The boys who would corner me in empty stairwells and feel me up. It was the words carved into my locker.
Teachers were no help — kids will be kids. I should be flattered that the most popular boy in my class tried to put his hands inside my underwear. I should stop wearing skirts if I was self-conscious.
Mom took it as a personal insult that I was deliberately trying to ruin things between her and Walker. I was lying, making things up so I could go back to my dad.
I stopped telling people. I avoided deserted places. I skipped a lot of classes. Eventually, I just packed my things and ran. A few times.
But a teenager can only get so far on seventy bucks without paying by other means. I always came back and Mom never made me forget how I humiliated her.
So, no. I don’t want any cookies.
The shuffle of feet across the carpet has my head turning away from the cluster of unfinished dough to the two stepping into the kitchen.
Mom and a face I haven’t seen in a while. One that makes my stomach twist on the heel of my high school memories.
Stephanie Finley.
While other kids enjoyed watching my humiliation, Stephanie begged for it. With me as the new, shiny toy to kick around, everyone forgot about her. She was saved from their ridicule and abuse because it all fell on me.
I don’t blame her, honestly. I understand what it means to beg God to turn you invisible just to live one day in peace. But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven all the times I know she saw what was happening and turned away, or when she feigned ignorance when I tried to get help.
But we’re adults now. Holding a grudge is useless.
So, I offer a faint bob of my head when she steps in after Mom.
“Look who came by.” Mom plucks the steaming tin of freshly baked pie — rhubarb by the smell of it — from the other woman’s gloved hands. “And this smells delicious.”
Awkward with a pale face dusted with a million freckles, Stephanie stuffs her hands into her pockets. Bright, orange curls peek out from beneath a knitted, green hat stuffed low over her brow.
“Mom made it,” she mumbles into the collar of her pea green jacket.
The pie is set carefully on the stove with the trays of tarts waiting to go in.
