Polaroid of a Girl [George Daniel]

Careful, Love

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That evening would be a heart-pounding blur of Mary Jane walking up the street several times, in hopes she would see her tall and handsome neighbor outside smoking, but led to no avail. Instead, she had walked back home and ignored her boyfriend Mike's phone calls, and touched herself in the bathtub to thoughts of George fucking her hard on wet, green grass in the moonlight.

George had went out for a few beers with his friend Jesse, intentionally staying away from home to avoid bumping into her. When he had arrived home, his wife Charis was curled into a ball, in a blanket cocoon on the couch. He had carried the woman he'd made vows to up their staircae and put her in bed. But he caught himself, still, glancing into Mary Jane's window, a heavy and guilty hope that she would be naked again.

Charis and George didn't have sex all of the time anymore. They both didn't really discuss it, because it wasn't necessarily a problem. The daily throws of passion that once existed in their relationship was now toned-back to a more practical, normal once or twice a week incident. Since moving into their new home, actually, they'd only ever had sex on their bed. Until the following morning, when George was in a particularly lustful mood and had made love to his wife shortly after their alarm clock had woken them. It was harder than Charis preferred, her husband's hipbones crashing into her own over and over, but she liked to see him so excited about her. He'd been off the past couple days.

The morning had otherwise been a fairly typical one for everyone who lived in the Chicago suburb, on the street of old Victorians that was Aster Lane. Frank Brand had three cups of coffee and an omelet, and had given his wife Helen a kiss before work, and his stepdaughter a pat on the shoulder and an uneasy smile.

Charis Daniel was working on redecorating a mid-century modern about forty-five minutes away, and had told her husband she would be spending a lot of time at work the next few weeks. George had told her not to worry, that he would spend his time finishing the attic and repainting some of their guest rooms.

Mary Jane was still like a fish out of water in her own home, adjusting to the more laid-back freedoms from Madeline Walker. There, she was made to follow the schedule strictly. Wake every morning at precisely seven, and spend a day like clockwork eating her meals, attending individual and group therapies, participating in daily exercise routines and the lot. She liked her roommate Betty Yu, who was half-Chinese and fucking insane. Poor Betty had severe depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, and had a particularly nasty habit of biting herself and ripping her own hair out. Betty wore lots of long-sleeves and knit caps, but she listened to all of Mary Jane's problems and was just as fascinated by her as everyone else was.

She missed Betty, and had planned to meet with her in the city where she lived in a few weeks, after her eighteenth birthday. Since Mary Jane and her long-time best friend Holly had a falling out of sorts, Betty was her only friend. Betty knew the real her; not the girl she wanted to be, not the girl she pretended to be, not the girl she used to be. Just Mary Jane as she was.

"Does Betty live with her parents?" Helen had asked her daughter as the two of them washed the dishes they'd dirtied during their breakfast.

"Yeah," Mary Jane had said.

This made Helen nervous, to let her daughter go to a big city. But Mary Jane didn't really care about her mother's feelings, since her mother only seemed to care about her daughter's feelings when they interrupted her own.

"And you'll stay for a weekend?" she asked her.

"Mmm-hmm," Mary Jane nodded, eyeing a casserole dish on the counter-top she didn't recognize. "What's that?"