Heat

Chapter 1: Ella

Beep...Beep...Beep...

Ella slowly opened her eyes as she heard the annoying noise once again ring in her ears to remind her a new day had started. Unfortunately, it was the worse noise she had ever heard so starting her morning off happy was not exactly in her mind at the moment. She finally hit the off button on her phone and the alarm stopped letting her mind wake up on its own rather than forced into acknowledgement before anything in her body was ready. She always set her alarm an hour before she had to get up because she knew she had never been a morning person and it took her a good hour to get her ass out of bed.

Her husband on the other hand could sleep for 20 minutes and be worth awake ready to play hockey for six hours straight never feeling an ounce of exhaustion. Where as she felt exhausted standing up brushing her teeth. That was the one of the few things she couldn't stand about her husband Robert, Rob for short. There wasn't many things she did not like about him, but the few things always stood out to her everyday. After 10 years together, Ella knew it was common for married couples to fight more and not get along or even ignore each other more rather than resolve any problems. But she was lucky and she knew it. Robert made her happy and helped made their life comfortable. He was a good man who always put his family first no matter how much energy it took from him. She knew while looking into his eyes on their wedding day he would be the best husband and father any wife could ask for and she told herself she would never forget that.

Ella finally decided to slowly roll herself out of bed and make her way to the bathroom. It wasn't a very big house so it wasn't hard for her to cross the hallway to the bathroom to begin with. She knew she was the biggest baby when it came to waking up in the morning, but somehow she always found a way to do it. She wiped the sleep from her eyes when she looked in the mirror to see her auburn wavy hair flying everywhere from her nights sleep. She always showered the night before because it gave her more time to sleep in in the morning. Unfortunately, she was too lazy to actually blow dry it before she went to bed so she woke up every morning with this crazy hair do. If only I woke up looking like a model. She thought to herself again this morning as she thought every morning. She wasn't horrible looking and she knew it. She just didn't think twenty-nine years of age would make her look so....different. Again, she knew everything would change after she had their baby girl, Afton, two years prior. She heard all the talk from other moms about your body being different and your eyes always looking tired because you will always be tired, but something else changes. Something changed in Ella that she could never put her finger on. She knew she was different on the outside and on the inside, but something had changed completely with her and she never knew what it was. As she looked at herself in the mirror like she did every morning after doing her hair and got dressed for the day's work, she always tried to figure out what had changed so much and who was the person she had become?