With Everything I Am (The Three #2)(6)

She sighed at the sight, as she did every day from the minute it was decorated. Always returning home, turning the lights on then walking back out to get her mail so she could witness it and let the season shine down on her.

With regret, she reentered her house, took off her hat and gloves and carefully placed them tidily in the chest by the door. She hung her scarf on the hooks at the other side of her entryway with her coat.

She walked into her house, shuffling the post (mainly catalogues) in her fingers.

The inside of her house was decorated in a way that Gregor and Yuri approved but she’d done it only so they’d be quiet about it.

It wasn’t comfortable, countrified, farmhouse splendor.

Once you stepped through the wide entryway, the whole of the downstairs was one room, the walls torn down to make it open plan. Left and right were seating areas, fireplaces on each side, their mantels festooned with Christmas cheer. The back left was a dining room with another fireplace, ditto the Christmas festooning. The kitchen was behind the right area. No festooning in the kitchen but she did have Christmas kitchen towels and pot holders and red and green plastic ended pancake turners (which she never used as she didn’t eat pancakes) sticking out of her utensil crock. The red one had a turner the shape of a bell and the green one had a turner the shape of a snowman.

The walls all around were painted in coordinating tranquil light colors of seafoam (left seating area), green (right seating area) and blue (dining room and kitchen). The kitchen was state-of-the-art. The furniture was sleek, modern and, most especially, expensive and elegant. The minimal décor was carefully chosen to augment the furniture and paint.

It looked almost like her store Clear but with subtle hints of color.

Sonia loved Clear.

She detested her décor.

But she detested Gregor and Yuri complaining even more so she’d given in, which was once in enumerable times in her life that she’d done so since Gregor had become her guardian after her mother and father died.

She went to the kitchen and threw the mail on the counter. Without taking off her high-heeled boots, she poached a piece of fish, boiled some brown rice and steamed some vegetables.

She ate it standing up at her counter, thinking it tasted of nothing.

Bland and well, just bland.

Sonia loved food. Too much. In her teens, she’d started to put on weight, Gregor had noticed and commented, often.

This was a problem. Considering, even as active as she was as a child, she’d always been slightly plump. And even as careful as she was now, and she was obsessively careful with diet and exercise, she was curvy and nothing she did shifted a centimeter off her bottom or her br**sts, no matter what it was. And Sonia had tried everything.

Therefore, for Gregor and her own peace of mind (because Gregor could shatter it, something he did with great regularity) she was careful with her food and, once she became an adult, her drink.

She stood at her counter eating and flipping through catalogues, carefully folding down corners if she saw something she wanted to buy for Christmas for a friend, a neighbor or one of her shop girls. Next year, of course, as her Christmas shopping was well since done and wrapped for this year.

Once she was done eating, she tidied everything away and went to her office upstairs to check her e-mail and her Facebook page. She didn’t change her status. She never did. She had few friends on Facebook because she had few friends at all. This was because she knew was weird, not because people didn’t like her.

Then, as it was Friday and the cleaning lady came on Fridays and the house seemed fresh and lovely (and because she always did it on Fridays), she drew herself a bath.

Fridays meant facial, manicure and pedicure.

Every Friday.

Without fail.

Unless, of course, she had an appointment at a spa to have this done on a Saturday, which she also did, once a month.

This was because Sonia didn’t have friends who she went out to drinks with (very often) and Sonia didn’t date (anymore).

To get close to anyone, spend more than a small amount of time with them, meant they’d notice her gifts.

No matter how careful she could be, she’d always slip up. Friends or boyfriends had noticed in the past and it had been uncomfortable (to say the least).

So, Sonia Arlington spent most of her time alone.

Considering she was social, very social, this meant that Sonia Arlington spent most of her time lonesome.

As the bath was filling, she took off her clothes and put them away. She rubbed an exfoliating mask on her face and shaved her legs.

As her mostly-white, very clean bathroom filled with the fragrance of lavender coming from the salts in the bath, Sonia carefully body brushed every inch of her skin, even her back, with a handled brush. She settled in the bath and went through her extensive regime of different face masks, shampooing and deep conditioning her hair as she relaxed.

After, she alighted from the bath, toweled off briskly and donned her robe. Then she gave herself a manicure and pedicure.

All of this was done with practiced ease and precision.

When finished, she went to her medicine cabinet and pulled out the injection.

She had an extremely rare blood disorder inherited from her father. Every night of her life (and Gregor had done it until she was eleven when he patiently taught her how to do it herself), she took the injection.

She hated them but as her father told her, again, many a time, she could die without them.