Wonderlost

CHAPTER ONE

Cressida sat up in bed, clutching her heaving bosom. She was sure she had heard something. A shadow detached itself from the wall and approached her.

"Who's there?" she gasped, her gown sliding off her creamy white shoulders.

"'Tis only me, my lady," said a deep voice.

"You!" she warbled. "You villainous rogue, you've keep me waiting three days!"

"A pity, my lady, but it could not be helped. Allow me to make it up to you." She heard the whispered slither of leather as the highwayman undid his breeches, setting his throbbing manhood free.

"But you cannot possibly expect me to accommodate your immense girth," she protested.

"I'll be gentle," he promised, as he began to probe her moist furrow—

I slammed the book down. It sat next to me on the cracked orange vinyl couch in the staff break room. Someone had once tried to mend the cracks with plaid duct tape, but it hadn't made the couch any more comfortable.

I eyed the book with suspicion and pushed it with one finger along the couch until it fell back onto the side table where I had found it. Was this really what I had been reduced to? I was thirty-eight years old, about to be homeless, and I was spending my lunch break reading smut instead of searching for a new apartment. There was probably some deep-seated psychological reason for it, considering my boyfriend had recently dumped me for my roommate. My rich roommate, whose father had paid for the apartment and who had cheaply rented me her extra room for "party money", as she called it. Now that those two had ridden off into the sunset together, her father was no longer paying the rent, and I couldn't afford the rent even if I could scrounge up another roommate.

The eviction notice had gone up a week ago. I really needed to get serious about finding a place to live. I glanced at the clock to see if I had a few minutes to go online. "Oh, holy balls," I muttered, seeing the time. I was already ten minutes late getting back to the desk. I peered quickly into the small mirror on the wall near the door, making sure there was nothing untoward in my appearance, no blobs of mustard on my face or in my long dark hair, no spinach between my teeth, and headed back to work.

I slid behind the reference desk of the Hollygrove Public Library, where Caitlin was holding down the fort. She folded her plump arms, looked at the clock, then at me, and started tapping her foot. Being Caitlin, she couldn't keep it up and the dimples popped out in her cheeks as she smiled.

"Don't worry," she said, "Toni hasn't been looking for you." Toni was the library director, a terrifying creature with an acid tongue. "Did you find a place to look at, at least?"

I gulped. "Uh, no. Nothing."

"Well, you know you can always stay with us. And if that doesn't motivate you to find a place, nothing will." Caitlin and her husband Ben lived in a small two-bedroom apartment. The 'guest' bedroom was also the bedroom of their eighteen-month-old twins.

"I'm motivated. I really am." Caitlin shook her long black braids at me, her warm brown eyes stern behind her glasses. "I just...is this it? In thirty-eight years, it's been bad apartments, bad roommates, bad boyfriends, and job that barely pays the bills. What's the point?"

"Don't get existential on me. We just need to find you a nice boy who will give you nice babies." She ducked a swat from me. She knew how I felt about being around babies longer than an hour. And how I felt about nice boys, as mythical as unicorns.