Mr.Cater's Maid

A Sleepless Night

It didn't take long for me to get out of this club. I called an uber, and thankfully there were plenty around. So I was in a car and home before midnight.

Getting home was an easier task than expected. However, going to bed tonight was much harder than I thought it would be. I knew I was tired, and my body yearned for sleep, but my mind didnt give in.

After a panic attack, I usually slept. When your body experiences all the feelings, bad feelings, all at once, it has no choice but to give up when it's done. I was hoping for that when I got home. I was hopeful when I had no energy to change into my pajamas that it would lead me into an unbroken, long, restful sleep.

I was wrong. I tossed and turned. Feeling any creases, my bedsheets made like they were tiny needles poking into my skin. I got up and started to smooth them over by pulling my sheet towards the edge of the bed. I flipped my pillow and fluffed it up for good measure. Still nothing. I had no other solution. It got to the point where lying in bed made my body feel more tired. So I decided to give up.

I clicked on my phone to do what I usually do, scroll mindlessly through my social media but watching other people live their lives, being happy, or social didn't help my mood. So I decided to click off and try an old school method...TV.

Unfortunately, there was no TV in my room, but that meant I had an excuse to get out of bed. So that's what I did. I crept down the stairs, using my phone's flashlight to lead me.

I used the light to first find the control and then the couch. I let the bright light of the tv replace my phone flashlight and turned the volume to a level only I could hear. A soft whisper.

I watched a channel that advertised a home workout DVD. The host enthusiastically screamed at the few people following him as he moved his body eccentrically to the house beat. The ridiculousness of the moves he was doing and the expectation that people were supposed to follow him along at home made me laugh. Finally, a distraction I was looking for.

It didn't last long. One of the girls in the back was bouncing along perfectly to the beat, her hair flowing along with her. Pin straight and blonde, just like Chloe's.

The guilt started back up again. How could I have done this to her? She was too perfect to ever have a boyfriend, no fiancé, cheat on her. She was too lovely. Why was she so nice?

Well, she never had to know. I wasn't going to tell her, and I would bet my life that Adam never would either. So this was not going to be an issue anymore. I...we...stopped at the right time. We were never going to be together again.

Never?

I thought back at the person I was with Adam. If someone told me that I would be in a situation like this with him, I would laugh straight in their face. But, he was a passing thought in my head. The last time I thought about him was probably when he was home a few Christmases ago. I had come home from college and came to visit my mother. He said Merry Christmas to both of us, which was the end of our conversation, but he and my mother kept talking. From what I remember, she was asking how things went with his dad. He had stopped coming home during his college days because they were constantly fighting. I felt terrible briefly, but then I forgot about him.

That was who Adam was in my life. Someone I knew who probably had to re-remember me every time he saw me. Was I wrong about that?

I wasn't the one who initiated this "relationship." He was!

This realization led me to another one. I was having sex with someone I didn't love, at least not in the beginning. Someone I had no intention of being with. How could I be so stupid? If I got pregnant, I would have no one by my side, including my mother or maybe not even my father. So many things could have gone wrong! I shouldn't have done it! I should regret this, right? So why did thinking about him makes me want to talk to him?

I grabbed my phone from the couch and started to look for his name.

Why hasn't he called me yet? I thought. Was he glad to be rid of me? No, how could that be? He told me he didn't love her. He said he was almost in love with me. So why hadn't he broken first and called me? He was the one getting married, not me. I tossed my phone back on the couch.

"What am I doing?" I said out loud. It felt odd to hear my voice in this quiet. I felt crazy.

Texting him didn't feel like an option, but more than that, going back really can't be either. I had to stop this. He was getting married, and it didn't matter who we were to each other. It didn't matter how much I missed him at this moment. It didn't matter how much I loved...

I stopped myself from going down that path, but the word love was rolling around my head since I left the club. I was very close to admitting that I was in love with him. But I wasn't sure if this was the same kind of love I wanted, the kind of love I understood. Actually, I wasn't even sure it was love. It felt like it, though. They say you do crazy things in love, and the last few months have felt crazy. Nice but crazy.

If this was love, it was going to be left incomplete. Without any closure or end. Without any clear answer.

I imagined seeing him years later with his wife, family, and kids. How will that feel? The thing was, even the thought of this possible future was hurtful. I wanted to cry, but I just couldn't, so I sat with this fake story in my head. Tried to act out how I would react. I will be married by then too, I am sure, maybe with kids of my own. We would have both forgotten each other by then. The pain increased.

No! I shouldn't cry. All I have done is cry over him. Now I get some freedom from that. I should be happy about this. This was the last time he could hurt me! I was free. Why wasnt I happy?

Confusion flooded my head as I tried to make sense of these new feelings. He really did make me cry a lot. He didn't mean to, and I wasn't entirely blameless most times. He was always upfront about his intentions. I was the one that got attached. If I balmed just him, I would dub myself a helpless, foolish girl who gets talked into doing anything. I was not unhappy with him, just always unsure about my standings with him. And he was always guarded around me. Was anything we had even real?

I took a deep breath, hoping that would rewire my brain to think of something else. It didn't work. Tomorrow I would have to face him for the first time as someone not sleeping with him. I had to talk to him like a waitress and not someone he would take out to dinner or pull into bed. We had to be strangers on so many different levels. How was I going to do that?

I could just call Natasha tomorrow and tell her I was not feeling good. However, I knew it wouldn't look good to do this the day of, and they might reconsider hiring me full time if I did. I knew that was a long shot, but it made me nervous to say no to the people who could fire me. So I decided against it.

Tomorrow will be a test to see if we could go back to being strangers. It was necessary, even if it was painful. If I could not get through tomorrow, I would quit as his maid. But, till then, I did not want to let that connection go.

With that final thought, I started to lull myself into sleep as the host of the gym show shouted, "That's it, hold on just a little bit longer. You're almost done!" to all the people behind him, posing in a squat position.