AllFreeNovel
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When you spent nearly all of your time in a space, I felt it was important to really put your stamp on it. Security deposit be damned.
The walls were all painted a light blue. As were the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves I’d managed to put together, move into position, and paint myself. My couch was one of my most prized possessions. It was a blush pink velvet oversized thing covered in several mismatched pink patterned pillows. The wall behind the couch was covered in a gallery wall of various prints from artists I found online, and mixed frames.
Maximalist, for sure, but in a cozy way.
Or, at least, it felt that way to me.
It, and I quote, gave my mother “instant migraines” when she visited.
In my humble opinion, she only had herself to blame for my very loud, colorful tastes, and adoration of all trinkets and personal touches.
My mom was a minimalist who thought that anything darker than the shade of “bisque” was tacky.
It had been a sad beige life until I was twenty.
I made up for lost time with my colorful style.
The kitchen was more of the same, with cabinets I’d painted pink, and colorful peel and stick backsplash tiles.
My bedroom, in my mother’s estimation, was my greatest design sin. With its elegant trim squares I’d put up myself,but had “ruined” by painting the entire room magenta. Ceiling included.
“What man is ever going to want to sleep here?” she’d asked, as if having a man in my bed was my ultimate life goal.
I could barely talk to men.
Having one in my bed was downright laughable.
It was also hypocritical coming from a woman who’d been single her entire adult life after divorcing my father when I’d been two.
Maybe she thought a man, like a dog, might “fix” me. Who knows.
I was just glad I was a solid six months away from my next visit from her.
Was that why I’d moved all the way from Connecticut to Florida? Yes, absolutely. Even if I’d literally cried the entire drive down here because I sucked at driving on busy roads, and that was pretty much all there’d been on the drive here.
“Alright. Let’s see what we have here,” I said to Frida, who was staring out the balcony doors, likely watching the seagulls. Which were the absolute bane of her existence. It was a long story.
I sliced open the top box, pulling out a pair of high-heel shoes I’d added to a wishlist ages ago. I didn’t even know what shoes were on there anymore. I’d easily added over a hundred pairs.
It wasn’t that I had a high-heel fetish.
But my subscribers often did.
And for the ones who paid for exclusive content, I offered the option for them to send me shoes to take pictures in. After extensively looking it up to make sure there was no way they could possibly figure out my address from said wishlists, of course.
The local charity shop was always chock-full of pretty high-heel shoes that had only been worn once inside my apartment where I could take pictures.
“Wow are these… a lot,” I told Frida as I turned the clear, chunky heeled shoe with its iridescent straps around in my hand.
I needed these shoes with a “lime green” nail.
That was what the subscriber wanted, and that was what he was going to get since he was paying top dollar for it. On top of sending me the shoes.
As a whole, there weren’t as many subscribers who wanted a woman in shoes. A lot of them preferred pictures of the bottoms of a lady’s feet for reasons I honestly didn’t even try to understand.
It was what they liked.
It paid my bills.
