"Her Well Being" | We-Write! I write...You write!

in #freewrite5 years ago (edited)


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We-Write! I write...You write!


@freedomtowrite

begins the story here:

"Don't you care about my well-being?" Sophia asked.

"Of course," Derril said with a grin. He stood in the grocery aisle butter pecan ice cream in one hand, his cell phone in the other. "My only question, sweetie, was how I should keep the ice cream frozen while I run across town for the french fries."

Sophia sniffed loudly into the phone. "I...I suppose it's not very practical is it?"

Derril tried to cover the laugh that was building in his chest. His wife of four years sat alone in their apartment, five months pregnant with more cravings than hours in the day.

"No, it's not..."

She let out another wimper.

"But it's fine! I will drop this off at home, and..."

"Derril?" Sophia asked, but the line had gone dead.


Derril didn't mean to kill the phone, but it fell to the floor and skidded under the bin full of watermelons when he saw the neighbor lady, Cat. "Cat" was old, possibly approaching age fifty, but an old cat lady she was not. She had taken up burlesque, unbeknownst to her husband, surely the most clueless man on the planet. With boobs the size of two cantaloupes she stood there watching him so, yeah, he kinda sorta dropped the phone.

"Derril," she said. "Let me guess. Sweetie Pie is trying to send you off on another wild goose choose."

He had trouble focusing on Cat's dark gray eyes with the long black lashes because his gaze was drawn to her incredible boobs swelling from a black tank top under a button-up blouse, and if those buttons ever closed over those boobs, flying buttons might take an eye out.

Sophia would say he had it coming.

He never saw it coming, the things women said. Like this:

"You poor, dear man."

Cat was shaking her head at him. Her cart was loaded with healthy shit like broccoli and quinoa, "keen-wah," Sophia would remind him, she with the crazy cravings for junk she wouldn't let him eat but she'd expose their baby to it. There was no accounting for the rationalizations of a woman.

Derril swallowed. The ice cream was definitely warming up as he stood there slack-jawed staring at Cat. Would it be too smarmy of him to return it to the freezer case and swap it out for a new one?

Yeah. There was the solution. Put the ice cream back, go get the fries, then drive back to buy Sweetie Pie, er, Sophia, her ice cream.

"Derril, Derril, Derril." Cat struck that womanly pose that women love, hands on hips, bosom thrusting upward with a suggestive air of authority. "I shouldn't be the one to break this to you, but nobody else has the balls to do it. So. Here goes. If you drive home right now, you'll see that Sophia is not home alone. You'll see Kyle Mason's red Mustang parked a block away, across from my house, which seems to happen every time she sends you to the store at this hour to satisfy her cravings."

Cat paused, apparently aware that her face needed to shift from outrage to sympathy. Derril was too stunned to feel anything but the stickiness of ice cream in his hand.

"I'm sorry, Derril, I have my share of womanly graces, but I got missed when tact and diplomacy were passed out." She cocked her head at him in that sympathetic way his yellow lab Quincy had.

Words continued to elude him. His best friend Kyle was with Sophia right now?

"I just couldn't handle seeing you on the phone," Cat said, "hearing how you cater to that skinny little bitch..."

She bit her tongue, so to speak, bent over, and groped under the watermelon bin. Damn, her backside was as tightly inflated as her front side, and when the hell had fifty-ish started looking so good? He was half this woman's age. Maybe all that quinoa and the deprivations Sophia imposed on him had started giving him a new appreciation for voluptuous. A beer and pizza kind of woman. A sudden litany of words flash-banged inside his head. All the shit Sophia said. All the ways she controlled him, from what he ate to who they hung out with.

The startling view of Cat's stretch pants shifted as she faced him, phone in hand. The exertion, apparently, caused her face to flush, just a little, and her breath to catch in her throat.

"Red Mustang," was all he could say. Words had finally come to him. "You telling me Kyle Mason has his Mustang parked outside my door at this hour?"

"No." Cat's wispy black hair fell around her face and one of her movie-star eyebrows, arched and well defined, cocked up as she leaned closer to him. "I said he parked it outside my door, honey lamb, but he parked himself inside your house after going through the back door."

"Shit."

He pictured his hands around Kyle's neck, and the ice cream container was suddenly crushed in his grip, dripping a sticky, icky, whitish ooze down to his shoes.

"Shit. Damn." Every lame expletive he'd ever learned lined up like cattle cars in his brain, but he slammed on the brakes and pulled himself together. No public meltdowns.

The ice cream was speaking for him--a major meltdown in the produce aisle.

"Here." Cat guided him to a nearby trash can and raised his arm for him. Sophia's butter pecan ice cream, mangled, dropped down into the garbage.

He was shaking. He was replaying in his mind a million scenes that suddenly looked different now.

Cat materialized again with paper towels, some of them soaking wet, and he just stood there letting her perform some kind of first aid on his sticky ruined self.

"Derril, I'm sorry. I oughta mind my own business, but something snapped in me, seeing you grinning into that phone, bending every which way to accommodate that scheming, lying little bitch. Damn. There I go again. "

He stared at the cellphone in his other hand. Dead. Like his heart. Or turned off, more likely, when it fell to the floor.

At this hour, the store was pretty quiet. Thank heaven for small miracles.

He finally made eye contact with crazy Cat, the burlesque lady down the street, and he felt like shit for having laughed with Sophia who couldn't imagine anyone wanting to look at a well-fed woman dancing. Why did he laugh with her? What a schmuck he'd been. Making fun of a woman like Cat who'd never had anything but a kind word for him and an occasional chocolate chip cookie when he walked Quincy past her door.

"Cat. You have nothing to be sorry for." He wanted to offer her an apology, but that would require more words than he could choke out at a time like this.

That husband of hers didn't know what he was missing if it was true he didn't know this woman was going to burlesque lessons, not yoga or Pilates. Everyone in town knew, except her husband.

Hell. There was a pattern here. How could he have been so blind?

Cat pulled a workout jacket from the cart, slipped her arms into the sleeves with more chutzpah and panache than he'd ever seen in Sophia, and, her eyes never wavering from his, she tugged up the zipper. Slowly.

"Derril, this is a bit premature, but there are women your age in my, uh, dance class. Maybe to take your mind off things, you can come to our show next week."

Gawd, he'd been looking for the wrong things in a woman.

"I can help you with the paperwork to order a paternity test," Cat said. "And if you decide to pass the grocery runs over to Kyle for the next four months, I know some really good lawyers." She indulged in a little wink. "I meet a lot of doctors and lawyers and businessmen, in my new line of work."

"Uh... thanks." Derril wondered if she flirted this much with all men.

"You need anything, you know where to find me," she said. Then, as if reading his confused thoughts, she gave him a motherly smile. "Now don't take that as something I don't intend. You're a good man, Kyle. And I'm still a good wife. But men like to look, and so do I. You're a cutie pie, and a sweetheart, and you deserve someone who treasures you, and only you, until the ol' death-us-do-part."

With more grace than he ever expected or noticed before, in a woman old enough to be his mother, she turned and rolled her cart up to the cash register.

Sophia was going down.

He was kinda surprised at how unsurprising this was proving to be. Like a dying man he saw his married life flashing before his eyes, things he'd seen through a glass darkly until Cat came along and rubbed the glass clean.



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He was wounded, and yet he was free.

He'd fill that cart with beer and pizza, and when he came home without her icecream and fries--

The baby. Derril did some calculations on his way to the beer cooler and figured the kid had to be Kyle's. A paternity test would confirm it.

Instead of beating up Kyle, he might have to thank him. The ultimate punishment for that back-stabber would be to end up at the beck and call of that scheming, lying, pouty-lipped, no longer sexy to him, bossy little Sophia.

Derril would survive. He had a good neighbor.

And the freedom to go to a burlesque show.


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Thank you for the fun prompt,

@freedomtowrite, and thanks to everyone at @curie and @freewritehouse for sponsoring freewrites!


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That finished too soon! My mind's going crazy wanting to know if Derril catches her out with Kyle or whether maybe Cat is playing games with him...
A great twist to the story!

This is a very nice twist to the story, very unexpected. The way that older lady is showing interest in him, I wonder if there is not something hidden behind her words. It would be nice to see how the story would continue further.

Great writing and finishing the story. Thank you for sharing!

Thanks for reading ad commenting!
The neighbor lady does spell it out: men like to look, and so does she, but she's still a good wife. She flirts. It doesn't mean she's going to sleep with every guy who looks cute and needy. :) But the reader can put a spin on it he wishes, eh?

Well, dang, here I go again:
Voting power: 81.49%, full in 22 hours
Too many good things to upvote every day!!!

Yeah, voting power go down too quickly! :)

Hi carolkean,

This post has been upvoted by the Curie community curation project and associated vote trail as exceptional content (human curated and reviewed). Have a great day :)

Visit curiesteem.com or join the Curie Discord community to learn more.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!! I I LOVE YOU GUYS!!
This is the boost I needed - I was on the verge of giving up as a writer - but #freewritehouse and @curie have come to my rescue. Now, to pay it forward!

Nice turn around. However, I noticed you seemed to mix up your character at some point. Or is it me that didn't get something?

""Uh... thanks." Kyle wondered if she flirted this much with all men or if he was target practice, or what."

I think from that point what seems like Derril was intended was instead replaced by Kyle. Easy pissy fix, I suppose.

I loved reading it.

Ohhh man, the name thing. THANK YOU. At least I always call my husband "Tim." :)
Thanks for the kind words!

very kewl!
I was expecting another saccharin sweet entry. But I should know to expect more from you. Great piece.

Thank you so much!!!

No wonder it was ice-cream one corner and fries the other
She craves for the dirty with his friend too
I wonder if he made it home to catch her ....

Congratulations on being Curied :)

You got it!! I didn't spell that out in the story, and if all our readers were as astute as you are, writers wouldn't do so much "tell" vs "show." One lesson fellow writers had to remind me of, often, was "Use a feather, not a hammer" - trust the reader to get it - don't explain everything. When I tried that, however, too many readers called my writing difficult, even "fiercely obscure" (that one will smolder in my mind all the way to my grave). I try NOT to make the reader work too hard; for me in college, Faulkner was too hard, and Joyce, and I was overly fond of "brain popcorn." Easy reading. After graduation, I took up YA novels for the sheer ease of reading (and how nice and SHORT the book were). But I digress. Thank you for getting it, @kaerpediem, and for commenting!

Wow! Well, that was an unexpected ending to what started as an innocent, pregnant-lady-craving story. :)

I didn't see that coming! And from the looks of it, he's not all that great at commitment either. Thanks for finishing the story!

Thanks for the comment - you made me realize I didn't intend for him to be a cheating kind of guy, just a guy with an eye for a good looking woman, so I've revised with your input in mind. Readers matter! I value everyone's input.

I liked the revised version. Derril has a lot more depth now!

I have you to thank for that! (And for the prompt!)

Hi @carolkean, I'm @checky ! While checking the mentions made in this post I noticed that @freedomwrite doesn't exist on Steem. Did you mean to write @freedomwriter ?

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