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So, my special friend has left for boot camp. We would spent our days and nights on the phone. Now, I am in a state of detox since he has been gone. I needed a distraction tonight and turned to writing this. A lot of miniature details in this story are true. There is a man that comes to the bakery named Mr. Ken. He does order the same thing for his wife. And he is usually alone. That is all I know about him. From that, I derived this story. So bear with me. 




Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.


The bakery was first opened fifteen years ago. It wasn't a known bakery, but that soon changed. A swoop of Yankees had decided to come down and populate the growing neighborhoods that were being built within a ten mile radius of the bakery. I was one of them. I was born in and raised in Maine. My winters were spent chucking snow than playing in it, while my summers were spent at Sebago Lake. There was nothing like Sebago Lake, where girls went for their first kiss, and guys went for their first time. I knew, because I was one of them. Fell in love with who I thought would be the love of my life. She had a widow's peak, with brown hair cascading down to her waist, because that was the style back then. Her eyes were the deepest silver one had ever seen, with a splay of freckles littering her nose and cheeks. And that's what had got me, those freckles. To me, they gave her a sort of innocence, one that I was fascinated by, but could never comprehend.

It was my sixteenth summer at Sebago Lake, but only her fifth. For the past five years, upon meeting her, I had been dragging her back to the lake to replay her first time, and make her remember why we were in love. Because that's where I fell in love with her. And that's where I wanted to ask her to marry me. My hands had been sweating upon asking her daddy for her blessing, but I was more than grateful for the approval I saw in his eyes. I wasted no time in asking her. It wasn't a big public thing. I didn't even bother to get down on my knee. She was there, she brought me happiness, and it was the perfect moment, so I asked her. The ring was back at the wagon, hidden behind car registration papers and old peppermints. But she said yes. And within five minutes we were out that lake and humping each other against the tree, the only thing difference being there was a new shiny rock on her finger. If only that shiny rock still meant something.

"Mr. Ken?" I snapped my head to look at the bus girl hovering over me. Her expectant eyes glanced down to my empty plate sitting atop the table and I apologized. My gaze had been lost to the rain falling from the sky, making the evening sky look more like the approaching night.

"How are you doing Cara?" I smiled at the Asian girl. Each night I came in here she was usually running around helping the bustling customers. I always sat in the same seat, at the table aligned along the wall so that I could peer out the window.

"Good. Thanks. Busy as usual. Wish I could stay and -" I heard another customer call her name and nodded in understanding. She grabbed my plates, muttered me a good day, and walked away.

I usually came here every night, but more for my wife than me. She loved the cheese almond danishes that they sold. The inside was filled with cream cheese, while the top was sprinkled with almonds. There was a time when I couldn't stop myself from licking the cheese from my wife's lips. Now, I never experienced those lips. And when I did, they usually came in a form of a snarl, with rants being sung like a chorus from her mouth. She hated me now. She hated me now. I sighed at the thought of going home. To our perfect, suburban house, with the fake green grass, and the flowers that were planted outside that would be dead right now if I hadn't hired somebody to look after them. That use to be her job. Never had to work for anything. I never wanted her to work for anything.

The summer after I proposed to her, we finally got married. Her parents rented a house up in the Hamptons, and we got married on the beach. It was expensive, and simple, but was all worth it. I was twenty-two years old at the time, and she twenty. Her parents didn't care about her education, and actually, nor did I. I was just offered a job as an engineer down in North Carolina, and I had a pretty girl on my arm with my seed in her belly. Had no problem at all. Before her stomach could get too big, and her health become much of an issue, we packed up that same wagon with the belongings we had and moved down first to Raleigh, North Carolina. Our house was nothing fancy. It was a two bedroom house, with a half of a porch, and driveway out front. She was happy. She enjoyed being at home and taking care of Bud, our eldest son. Or at least that's what I thought. I would work hard all day, with the smarts God blessed me with, made money, and then came home to my doting wife.

Ten years of the same routine. That's a long time to do something. It's also a long time, enough time, to allow darkness to grow in your heart. And that's exactly what she did.

The wobble of the music stand to my left had my attention snapping back to reality. My eyes glanced towards the stand and saw a two year little boy holding on to it for support. I smiled down at him and got up to stop its shaking. His stroller was parked beside him and his mother was in front of the glass that separated the retail associates from the customers. It wasn't busy when I had come in, but now, with thirty minutes from closing, people were bustling in to get breads and next morning's pastries at the last minute.

"Hi there." I tried to make my deep voice a bit on the chipper side. So I sounded more like a Sesame Street animal and less like the hulk. The widening of his eyes and smile that graced his face gave me indication that I succeeded.

I held up my hand and waved to him. His mouth widened, dropping his pacifier on the ground. I glanced up at his mom's back, to see that she still had not given him any recognition in the past two minutes. I sighed. I stooped low, hoping my aging back would not give up on me. He fit snuggly in my arms, and for a second I was thrown back twenty years ago, when I would cradle Bud in my arms. His pacifier hung loose in my fingers while I walked towards his mama. She was there, watching the retail associate intently, as if the associate was trying to steal the bread instead of actually giving it to her. I chuckled against the baby's head. It was only here in the South that people could act more ridiculous than what was necessary.

Upon hearing me, the mother's eyes glanced behind her, acknowledging me with a side glance before she saw I was holding her pride and joy in my arms. She quickly turned around and made a show of reaching desperately for the child. Without hesitation, I handed him over, along with the pacifier.

"He was over playing by the music stand." I gestured behind me to the three pound music stand that held fifty plastic menus atop it. Her eyes never left my face, didn't even thank me for saving her child from being smashed if he were to make that music stand fall. Instead, she snatched the bread from the associate's hand and moved past me, brushing my arm slightly. I bent my head, shook it slightly, and laughed. People these days.

"She is always like that." I hadn't recognized the voice. Not in the years that I had been coming here. My eyes traveled from the floor and up to the round eyes that were peering at me. They were a dark brown, reminiscent of coffee. They seemed to be doe-like, and hidden behind a show of eyelashes. Her cheeks were plump, forced up by the smile that was gracing her face. She blinked at me, and I could only think of one thing to say.

"Huh?" She nodded her head towards the door, and like a fool, I took a moment to look out it. The mother was standing outside the door trying to strap her baby in. Her soft voice brought me back to her attention.

"Every time she comes in here, she is grouchy." I slide my hands into my pocket and nodded at her. "Yea, doesn't mean she has to act like that." I watched her smile falter, then roll her eyes up towards the ceiling and sigh.

"Yea, doesn't mean she has to, but I like to think there is a reason for everything." She looked back at me then, into my eyes, as if trying to force me to understand. I stepped closer to her, brushing against the small table that separated me from her.

"And what reason would that be?" I put her on the spot. I hadn't meant to, but I wanted her to talk more. I watched her shrug and divert her eyes away from gaze, but I still stood there, with my hands in my pockets and my glasses sitting haphazardly on the edge of my nose. I waited.

"There's a reason that you come in here, order the same thing, and sit in the same spot, isn't there?" The lilts in her voice drew me closer. She definitely was born and raised in North Carolina, but not from around these parks. Her accent sounded more like a dialect, where consonants began and vowels ended to form new words in her sentence. But I had encountered enough southern people that I could detect what they were saying.

I swallowed hard, watching her watch me. She was right. There was a reason. It was the same reason that I had not answered her question. Instead, I bought my cheese almond Danish, zipped up my jacket, and was out the door. The same reason I left home, was the same reason I didn't want to go back.

I sighed, and for a few seconds, within the confinements of my car, I watched the short, black girl walk around the bakery. Greeting the customers with her white smile and chubby cheeks. Her words had been imprinted in my mind, and the whole drive home, as I inched closer to the lonesome house, all I could think about was the fact that she was right.

 

She was born Mildred-Janey Hargrove. Growing up, they had called her MJ, but approaching the delightful years of puberty, she dropped the childishness and demanded to be called upon the likes of an adult. I liked MJ better, but her frown dissuaded me from liking anything other than her given name. With the change of her name came a new identity. No longer was there the girl who roughed with the boys and cursed like a sailor. Out of nowhere, emerged a woman who paid more attention to her looks, with her lipstick being just right just so that she could walk around the house and throw words at me from a copy of the 1898 Webster dictionary that she had stumbled upon. The change was gradual, almost like a kid growing from the age of one to twenty. But before my eyes, I watched my wife turn into a different person. It had me curious and bothered at the same time.

I was confused. I wasn't sure if I had brought on this change or had she decided to do this for herself. Either way, I didn't like it, and one too many times I tried to accept the new her. There were times that she would hop into the bed with me purely naked, with me feeling the brush of her nipples on my skin in the dark. Then she began dedicating her nights to powdering her face with that makeup shit, and wearing nightgowns to bed. I once asked her did I do something wrong, is that why she changed her appearance? She only laughed and pushed my shoulder, as if I had told an embarrassing joke. No silly. That was her response, to calling me silly. That same night, I went to kiss her, even with that cherry red lipstick on her face and the toxic fumes of the hairspray suffocating me. But she refused my touch, claiming she was tired, and turned away from me.

I was never a suspicious person. Nor did I have reason to be. But I took it that she was tired. She had begun to teach at the kindergarten Bud went to down the street, so I figured she was tired from running around with the kids all day. I held no resignation towards her for the dismissal. The next morning I awoke to her lips wrapped around my dick with the cherry red lipstick smeared across her face. I smiled, fuck that lipstick.

That's what our marriage had turned into. Her raising our kids, and me working to keep the roof over our heads. It was ten years ago that she had asked for a new house. We were living in a cramped, rented two story house in Durham. The company I was working with had given me a promotion, and with this promotion came an increase in pay. But being an engineer had me going back to school, which meant that money had to somewhere be cut. Bud was almost ten, Luke a year younger, with Georgina coming close behind them. Many nights we were yelling at each other because gone were the fifty dollar hair salon visits she went to and drug Georgina with her. 100 fucking dollars. Down the drain, especially when Georgina liked to go outside and sweat out all the hairspray that the hair salon just charged to put in there. The shopping sprees for just her once a month were gone. The trips out every weekend with her friends were gone.

By the end of each month I came to a sudden realization that she was sucking me dry. Especially when I was trying to get a better education so that I could get a better job, with more money. But she didn't care. Often complained that she was never satisfied, and often reminded me why she even said yes in the first place. Because she thought I would give her everything her heart desired. And I had promised that to her, when I had her pinned beneath my body and her moans gave me more life than my promises did. Yet, she was my wife, and I loved her. So within the next year, we had moved into our third home. It wasn't any different from the second house. It had more square footage and the rooms were a bit bigger. Shit, I hadn't seen a difference in it, but it had made her happy. Which made me happy, because I was back to familiarizing myself with her red lipstick.

She was gone again. It was something I was use to now when arriving home. I walked in through the side door that led into the grand expanse of our kitchen. The kitchen that I paid for to be remodeled, so that it could accommodate Mildred's growing interest in cooking and baking. I obliged. Because I still loved her back then, when her cries and whines were too much to bear. It was a damn nice kitchen, I would agree. Too bad it never got used anymore. The only time anybody set foot in this kitchen was when the kids got hungry enough to feed themselves or Mildred met a new friend that she wanted to show off her nice assets to.

"Georgie!" My voiced boom throughout the house. And damn was it a nice house. Mildred did a good job of using my money to create a fashionable sense of home décor. It looked like something that could be featured in the first pages of Southern Living. I waited for footsteps, or even the slightest hint of sound that would announce that my daughter was home. With her being the youngest, she was the last to get out of the house and go off to college. Bud and Luke both attended the same college, UNC Chapel Hill, while Georgina decided to follow in her father's footsteps. Wolfpack for life.

"Georgie!" I called out again.

The pastries and mail that I had retrieved had been set down on the counter top, so that when Mildred did finally decide to make an appearance, she would have it. It was a quiet house. A beautiful quiet house, and many a night I came home for the past five years I also regretted it. The boys had grown out of playing basketball in the backyard in exchange for loose girls and liquor. It was something I wasn't fond of, but Mildred encourage it. Said it was better for them to get it out of their systems now than never. She had been there more than I had, so I let her rule the children however she saw fit, with me often taking her side when arguments arose and eyeballs started rolling. She was always right, and I could not argue with that. Not when I felt guilty for not being there for her and them. It was something I dealt with every day. The guilt that ate me raw because I chose to work long, hard hours and busted my ass for promotions just so my wife and kids would never want for nothing. Even to this day I fed money into their banking accounts when they all held jobs. A parent's job was never done, that I will tell you.

I moved slow and easy up the wounding steps, slow and easy. I was only forty-three years old, but it was catching up to me. The sleepless nights from spitting out codes, to the negotiations that ran through my head, to my wife, to my children. It was all too much sometimes. Just too damn much. Especially her. My loving, passionate, caring wife. Yes, she was all those things, but she wasn't all those things for me. Hadn't been since Bud was about to enter junior high school, almost eight years ago. It was when Georgina finally learned just to handle her period and feed herself, leaving Mildred with more time than activities to do with it.

My eyes scanned the bed. It was a ritual, always. I inspected it as if somebody had been murdered in it. I was searching for any hint of hair, and sniffed it out for any trace of musk. I always came up empty. But just because I came up empty doesn't mean she wasn't good at hiding it. I knew my wife, and after eight years, I had become to know her game.

Satisfied, I moved past the bed and to the bathroom, flicking on the light as if to find something new. There was nothing new, except for the fine wrinkles that were becoming more distinct at the edges of my eyes. I blinked, my blue eyes staring back at me, admiring the man that I had become. I laughed at the word. Man, such a funny word. More like pussy. I felt like goddam pussy. The smile that formed on my face had turned into a slow grimace. In that instant, I smelled it. It was the faintest of scents, but I recognized it. Chanel No. 5 was the perfume. The fuck me perfume. That perfume held more significance to me than it should. That meant she wasn't coming back home tonight. I sighed again. The girl was right. She would always be right. And a part of me hated her for it.

 












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Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.