It had been almost three weeks since you'd seen Lee. Well, actually no. You'd seen him out and about the small town, catching moments of his time, but never full conversations or rendevous in private. So yes. It had been almost three weeks since you'd seen Lee.
The distance between you two was agonising. At all times, he was never more than a few towns away; sometimes less. His re-election campaign was in full swing and he needed to charm the majority of Ross County if he wanted to be Sheriff again. But that meant long working days and little time to visit you. You knew deep down that Lee could find the time (or make the time) to see you, but you tried to ignore that thought. Lee was just busy.
You'd only been dating for a few months and thought he was close to proposing, but his job was important to him. He'd worked hard to progress up the law enforcement ladder over the years. To him, he was worthless as a deputy and he felt people only respected him because of his role as Sheriff. Especially you. When you moved to Knockemstiff, Lee was already Sheriff. If you'd met when he was still a deputy, would you still want to be with him? Lee wasn't willing to risk losing you. Why would you want to be with an unloved ex-Sheriff who was now a deputy or worse yet, a civilian?
So he'd chosen to focus on his re-election, even if that meant distancing himself from you.
Without Lee keeping you company, you became easily bored during the evenings after your shifts. It wasn't like you needed him around all the time, but this newfound freedom was painstakingly dull. There was nothing to do. Your house didn't need cleaning that often, as it was only you living there, and there were only so many times you could dust the pristine mantlepiece. There was only a limited number of books on your shelves, all of which you'd read. After listening to it almost every second of the day, even the radio began to sound repetitive. You needed to find something constructive to do.
Walking through your front door after another excruciatingly long shift, you wandered over to your small, almost quaint, kitchen and placed the paper bags onto the countertop. You hadn't meant to bring this much home, but your manager had insisted. The little grocery you worked at had been significantly less busy than usual, which did nothing to reduce your boredom, and now the unbought stock would have been thrown out if you hadn't taken it. So now you had more flour, sugar and apples than you knew what to do with.
You didn't cook that often, and when you did, it was usually just a small one-pan dinner, which required little to no effort. When you were a teenager, your mother had tried to teach you how to "provide for your husband", as she put it. These lessons were just hours and hours of insults and patronising comments, as you failed to make even a simple loaf of bread. For years, baking was used to control and suppress your independence. Every cake and casserole reminded you of the housewife skills you lacked. Once you moved out, it was easier to remove those reminders. So now you didn't cook. Unless it was for yourself.
If you ever married Lee, you knew he'd expect you to cook for him. He worked long hours, and more often than not, had to eat at the diner as he didn't have time to cook for himself. Once you moved in, it was the natural thing for you to become a housewife. But no life sounded worse than that to you. You would not do that to yourself. In the months that you'd been dating, you had never cooked for him. Instead, you both opted to eat out or not eat at all. That sounded perfect. If Lee tried to force you to be at his beck and call, you'd refuse.
But now you were standing knee-deep in baking ingredients.
"Fuck you universe," you cursed.
If it wanted you to bake, so be it. There had to be a recipe book somewhere in your house.Indignantly striding over to the bookshelf, your eyes darted over the spines. Wuthering heights. No. Dracula. No. The Hobbit. No. It took you until the last book to find something relevant. All the others were fantasy and fictional novels. But the last one. Oh, the last one.
