The Bellamy Harris Affair {Lesbian Short Story}✔

How We Met

It was a Thursday when I met her. I remember because I should have been at work. Instead, I was hiding out at my townhouse while the weather waged war on us petty humans with an unrelenting assault of rain.

The deluge had begun on Monday, and showed no intention of allowing the drenched earth a chance to be anything other than mud. A sudden downpour like this wasn't that odd for Alabama in July. At least it wasn't to me.

My cousin's birthday was in two days. Every year, without fail, a tsunami would converge upon Birmingham and drown any plans his mother might have made for an outdoor party.

This year, along with putting the kibosh on my teenage cousin's birthday celebration, the weird weather had decided to wreak havoc on my sinuses. Well, to be fair, the blame didn't rest entirely with the dreary climate outside.

A couple of my workaholic coworkers had come down with some crud, and decided their deadlines were more important than the possible spread of the germs that were inoculating in their phlegm-filled chests. They also seemed to have a severe aversion to Kleenex, hand sanitizer and personal space.

So yours truly had some hybrid flu, sinus infection, with a side of strep all because my overbearing boss "discouraged" the use of sick time. As if a cold could be wrangled into submission because you told it work was more important than its very basic need to infect a host and multiply.

Whatever this infection was had in no uncertain terms told my immune system to go fuck itself . . . hard. My eyes were watery and itchy. My throat felt like someone had taken a Brillo pad to it. And some wiry little hobbit had obviously snuck his way into my sinuses and wedged a vice grip in there.

When my phone heralded me awake at six a.m., I knew sitting at my soul-sucking job for eight hours would be impossible. After I'd rubbed the crust out of my eyes, and hacked up something that resembled an alien lifeform, I dialed my boss' number.

He gave me some bullshit about quotas and the proximity of my upcoming performance evaluation. I'm sure I sounded like Elmer Fudd after he'd had a few. And I coughed between every syllable I tried to pronounce. But from his tone with me that day, he didn't buy that I was within spitting distance of death's door.

"Bellamy," he'd said, all low and serious like we were discussing the future of the free world, instead of my desire to spend the day in bed. "I wouldn't want you to jeopardize your health. But I hope you realize the opportunity you have with this company."

Right. The opportunity. Another twenty years of cold-calling senior citizens, asking if they were satisfied with their Medicare Part-B health coverage, and I could be manager of the entire department. Two decades more, and I'd be on easy street. As easy as a fifty thousand dollar a year job would allow.

In the year that I'd worked that miserable job, I had never missed a day. And the one time, I called out with a legitimate excuse, he gave me a hard time. Any other day, I would have sucked it up and gone into the office. If he had been understanding, I likely would have done just that. But his suspicion did away with the sense of duty I felt to my job, even though I despised it.

As the ring in my ears gained bravado, I gathered my voice and told Mr. Opportunity that I would also be taking off Friday. When he rebutted that, in the nicest way my pounding mind could fathom, I informed him that he could go do to himself what the infection had done to my white blood cell count, and hung up the phone.

On the bright side, my affliction had reinforced my backbone. The people-pleaser in me was too sick to give a shit that I had just created a dissatisfied customer. I hoped that when Monday rolled around I'd feel better. And I'd still have a job.