Synopsis
Becky comes out of a depression with a hunger for life and an ambition to live large that her husband can't satisfy. Joining a gym where boxers train, she meets people, men and woman, who love life and rough sex. As her eyes open to the possibilities, Becky finds herself and gets her husband a new home.
~~~~~ PG Excerpt ~~~~~
Odd, she thought, that unexciting Tom had given her the space and time she needed to recover. In the same way, a workload of rather unexciting work for clients had given her back herself. She could have done without the work sometimes, though.
Still, the bills did not yet pay themselves and she needed to earn some money. Tom had a good job, but keeping her independence meant that she had to earn her share; that, in turn, meant getting about the dreary business of settling into the dreary rhythms of a new work week.
She sighed. Just the thought of turning on her computer and checking for emails about work nearly exhausted her. Some of that was her own fault. The last assignment she had accepted had been boring and frustrating and she should've known from the start. If that hadn't been bad enough, now the company she had done the work for was stalling about paying. Somehow that had decided that she was the solution to their cash-flow problems. Just the idea of trying to extract the money she had earned from those creeps left her feeling unclean in some odd way.
With no active jobs in the queue, starting her work day meant the tedium of composing emails that alerted former clients to the exciting fact that she was available for work. Begging letters, one of her freelance friends called them. Everyone hated sending out begging letters. But former clients were the most likely source of new clients and they tended to forget about a freelancer they had used. So you sent them short reminders. Begging letters that kept you in mind for the next job.
The second part of finding work would be sending out emails to new companies, potential clients. She would attach her CV, links to work she had done and her rate sheet. She wondered, somewhat wistfully, if putting in a note that offered a free blowjob with every assignment over some dollar amount would get better results or at least interesting replies. Unfortunately, a lot of the people she worked for were women; besides it was hard to give blowjobs over the internet.
Worse was her realization that she wasn't even sure she was ready to commit to a major project, even if it was offered. A serious restlessness, one that tied in directly to her sexual frustration, had crept into her bones and it kept her from focusing her thoughts or knowing what she wanted. It permeated everything. Something needed changing.
"When you get down to it, I'm one hell of a mess," she decided, saying the words out loud to her image in the bathroom mirror. The image stared back into her eyes as if trying to figure out the person on the other side. No one present disagreed with her observation; no one patted her on the back and told her she was simply going through a bad patch, seeing a bit of the dark side. No one suggested that things would get better.
She sighed again and went to the kitchen to satisfy a different hunger.
She found a piece of leftover pizza in the refrigerator. Tom disliked cold pizza that was a blessing for her as it was her favorite breakfast. This one had pepperonis on it and she ate it, savoring the tang that the tomato sauce developed while she made coffee in the French press. When the coffee was ready and its heady smell filled the kitchen, she poured a steaming mug and took it out on the balcony where she could sit in her wicker chair and watch the morning as she let the coffee do its magic.
