My Boyfriend is a Bigfoot?

Chapter Three

'By The Seaside' emanated raucously from my phone where it perched on the nightstand, battery full, 6 in the AM sharp. I rolled over in slow motion to the other side of the bed, stopped the alarm, and stumbled zombie-like to the adjoining bathroom/closet at the rightmost end of the bedroom. Exfoliate, tone, moisturize, *in that order*, brush the teeth, brush the hair, and finally evacuate my fuzzy pyjama chrysalis and metamorphose into my no-business-all-casual work attire.

As had become our custom, I joined Darla and Maggie in the basement suite kitchen for breakfast. Maggie was a student still relying predominantly on her parents for most amenities, barring what she paid for with the funds she scraped together working weekends at an alternative bookstore. Despite the insignificant portion of her work that actually involved face-to-face customer service, she made a point of donning an intricate twenty-first-century gothic witch getup before she left for each shift. Weekdays were much the same, if slightly subdued in theatricality. She was already in full hair and makeup as she took her place at the table beside Darla. She'd be out the door around the same time that I was.

Darla, meanwhile, would be off in minutes to her childminding business at a gym daycare: one of three jobs she jostled between in the course of a week. The bulk of the effort that went into her professional uniform was finding a pair of pants with a zipper to go beneath her company-logo tee.

I put on a piece of toast and opened a can of sardines. The usual.

"How you holding up, Blair?" asked Maggie. She hadn't been witness to any of the events that had transpired the night of my tumble, nor the subsequent hospital stay. She had an uncommonly warm affect about her, exuding a soothing miasma of genuine compassion whenever those around her were stricken with misfortune, melancholy, or malaise, no matter the caliber. I often caught myself wishing we were better friends, despite that in practice, I typically found I was only able to withstand such gushy, unrelenting empathy in small doses.

"Pretty okay," I replied.

She took a sip from her astoundingly purple smoothie as I retrieved a fork from the cutlery drawer. "Work go okay yesterday? How're the headaches?"

I leant against the countertop, waiting on the toast. "Oh, I uh, didn't get too many actually, since the first night. Work was fine."

"Oh good! Good. Let me know if you need anything, though. Really. You had me pretty worried." She looked up at me and smiled, placing her smoothie back on the table.

Darla lifted her cereal bowl to her face and slurped the remaining milk in one long gulp. She wiped her mouth and scooted out of her chair. "Blair," she said curtly. "Maggie." She put her dish in the sink and found her way to the door.

"It's been a slice, Dar."

"Back at 'cha, Saffron." Maggie waved goodbye as she slid out of the room.

Darla and I had arranged the night before to start carpooling, though only on the way back from work. I took a seat across from Maggie. She gave my fishy toast the briefest look of disdain as the plate met the table. As we ate and drank respectively, I proposed making our way to the bus stop together, "just to be safe," I said, meaning, "as to maximize my own peace of mind."

"Of course!" she replied, expectantly cheery.

As we made our way alongside the woods later that morning, I couldn't ignore the allure of mystery that had begun to call me forth to the dark recesses beneath the pines. I was torn between this haunting pull and the deep-down fear that repelled me from going so far as the driveway's end on my own. Maggie and I barely exchanged a word the whole walk down, though her anxious expression betrayed what must've been countless unspoken questions, barricaded in silence by my standoffish demeanour.