AllFreeNovel
Share Us
1
JOSIE
There are three types of showers that I take. There’s the in and out: I soap and scrub for as little time as possible while leaning forward so as not to get my hair wet. Then I hop out and towel off before my hair starts to frizz in the steam.
This is the type of shower I take when I’m running late for work—or when my mother calls to announce that she’s in town and wants to swing by for a visit.
Judging by how often I’m pressing the snooze button in the mornings, it’s probably the type of shower I take most often.
Then there’s the lather and shave shower: I shampoo and condition my hair, bending in awkward ways to reach everywhere I can with a razor. In spite of my best endeavors, I almost always cut something.
Finally, there’s the goddess shower: I dust off all of my self-care tools, like the long-handled brush with bristles made of sandpaper which scrubs off the top two layers of my skin.
Other self-care tools include my body mask, jar of mud, and Himalayan salts. When I’m feeling particularly joie de vivre, I’ll light a candle or two as well.
Then I embark on a powerful journey of equal parts self-love and self-destruction as I scrub, shave, steam, and soak in an attempt to turn my almost-thirty-year-old body into that of a high school cheerleader.
The goddess shower is so time intensive I only get into it when super special occasions come up.
Like today, because I’m going to dinner at the Ritz with Todd—my long-term boyfriend.
This is it.
There’s only one reason a boyfriend of three years suddenly invites his girlfriend to a place as grand and luxurious as The Ritz.
A proposal.
Just the thought gives me butterflies.
Finally, all of my feminine wiles have charmed the rich bachelor into making the move.
That makes me sound like a money grabber.
I’m not.
I like Todd a lot. He ticks all of the boxes.
He’s handsome—his angular face sticks out in all the right places, strong jaw, nice cheekbones. Dimples.
He’s funny—he often takes me to fancy dinner parties at work and has the whole room laughing with his dry wit.
Kind—Yes, he’s rich and successful, but he never lets any of it go to his head. The other day, I saw him giving flowers to Margery, the newly-widowed neighbor in the first-floor apartment of his complex. He listened to her talk about her late husband until he was late for a meeting.
On second thought, maybe he’s going to ask me to move in with him tonight.
I suck in a nervous breath at the idea.
Moving in with Todd sends my Type-A brain into overdrive. Without the commitment of marriage, how can I be certain where we’ll end up in three months? Six months. Nine years!
If I don’t make a solid plan now, I could end up sitting on the sidewalk with two luggage bags and nowhere to call home in the future.
Sure, people get divorced. Marriage isn’t without its risks. But the idea of selling up my apartment and going all-in without some kind of assurance that he’s not going to run off with the secretary at any given moment makes me sick to the stomach with anxiety.
I’m the kind of person who needs to know what is happening, and I need the big relationship stuff to be in writing before I make any major moves.
There’s one person to blame for my obsessive mindset. Logan.
He lured me in and knocked down all the barriers around my heart. Oh, how I swooned over that man! He was my high school sweetheart. Then he became an NFL player and… dropped me faster than a millennial giving up on their new year resolutions.
