Desire

Sandy sat down on the small walkway in front of, what was now her, small motel room.

Men, she thought to herself, always demanding things from her. So what if she left him alone for three days? He had come looking for her after all. She didn't owe him anything and if he got his heart broken, it was his own fault.

She liked being the object of desire. It felt like a deliciously warm liquid being poured over her. The interest, always seeming to be on someone else, somewhere else, was on her. The heat that would normally have required some release now sat within her, content.

What's more is that she now understood how to control this facet of herself. No longer would she consider giving in to someone else's needs before her own. The only thing in the world, her world, was her. She could still picture him, sleeping on the ratty couch, looking at her. How pathetic.

She thought about her ex-husband for a moment. The drunk. The womanizer. She wondered if he really meant to tell her he wished she was like some other women that he had seen or that he wanted all of them more than her. Perhaps he had let it slip to try and force her to do kinky things with him, if so it didn't work.

He fantasied about them, she knew. He would whisper their names in bed with her. He would spend long hours out chasing after them and come home, half drunk and sexually needy and she would take it all in. It was like she was a balloon in some ways, taking all the nasty parts of him into herself. Unlike the a store bought balloon though, she hadn't popped but just stopped after a while.

After the needy period ended she suspected he was having an affair, which didn't bother her as much as she thought it might. They moved to separate corners of the house and eyed each other warily after that. All the unspoken things between them became a bleak wall and in the end, neither of them wanted to create a door there.

She felt stupid now because she had asked permission to divorce him. How laughable was that? She had left, finally, when he had drank himself nearly to death one night. All she could think about was what would she do if he had died and blocked the door so she couldn't get out. Touching a dead body was the worst thing she could imagine, even if it had belonged to a man once loved.

Men were replaceable, that was easy to see. Easy to push aside when they demanded or wanted something more than they deserved.

Now, staring after someone else, she laughed as well, imagine him thinking there was something left between them after 20 years. All that she had now was a middle aged body and a tired heart. That heart ran on anti-depressants now, the modern cure for growing older.

The only thing remaining was desire and need. The only that mattered was how these two twins could help Sandy along her way.