![The last entry of my erotic series [OC]](https://preview.redd.it/nm05799kwb1h1.png?auto=webp&s=e21f7af4bd1d9f1646d99b6fa90eb8e463a32cf6)
In a rundown small-town grocery store, single mother Silvia endures a monotonous shift at the register, feeling invisible and trapped in her routine while hiding her full figure under a shapeless fleece. Suddenly, her former classmate Giada arrives with her goth boyfriend Riccardo, triggering an unexpected spark...
This story contains explicit language and descriptions of sexual activity. It is therefore intended for adult audiences only.
Any references to real people or places are purely coincidental.
All characters are 18+
Copyright © 2026 by Pamela O.
All Rights Reserved
___________________________
Brief Recap of Chapter 1: The Flicker
In a rundown small-town grocery store, single mother Silvia endures a monotonous shift at the register, feeling invisible and trapped in her routine while hiding her full figure under a shapeless brown fleece. Her former classmate Giada arrives with her brooding boyfriend Riccardo, triggering an unexpected spark: Riccardo is secretly aroused by Silvia’s natural, maternal warmth and hidden curves, while Silvia, unaware of his interest, becomes consumed by desire for him after a brief exchange with Giada and selfie. Alone in her car afterward, she masturbates intensely to his photo, leaking milk from her breasts amid guilt over her waiting son, believing all the while that her attraction is painfully one-sided.
___________________________
Beyond the rough stone blocks of the window, the broken towers of Wallachia rise against a purple sky, softened by the dense fog climbing from the Carpathians and by an ancestral scent lingering behind me.
On the threshold of the room, a shadow takes shape over the flickering glow of a seven-branched candelabrum.
Her.
Her heavy brown habit, monastic and coarse, extends past her hips, revealing only tall, worn leather boots, their dull brass buckles catching reddish glints.
Her steps float over the uneven floor of ancient stone slabs, while the flames cast dancing shadows on the walls and across her face, slowly shaping her smile.
She sets the candelabrum on the windowsill beside me. The candles surround her with an orange halo, igniting reflections along her body, now so close to mine.
Her fingers sink into the habit, grasp the lower hem, and lift it slowly over her head, as if shedding a suit of armor. Beneath it, a corset swells her breasts into two pale dunes veined with blue, caged under black leather woven with crimson velvet, steel boning cinching her waist into an hourglass. Along the edges run thorny rose embroidery and silver thread. The black cord laces are pulled tight, to their limit.
Her black-lacquered nails loosen the knots one by one, and with each lace that gives way comes a deeper sigh. The leather opens slowly, revealing strips of milky skin between the stays, then falls away, making room for two dark, swollen nipples, throbbing a hand’s breadth from my mouth.
“Riccardo…” she whispers, her voice spreading through the room like a gentle echo. “Do you want me to take care of it now?”
I nod, swallowing. She smiles again, unfastens my pants, and strokes me with one hand, gentle but firm.
A gasp arches my back and tightens my chest as my erection swells in her palm.
Then with her other hand, she brings her breast to my lips.
“Drink, Riccardo.”
Drink, Riccardo.
I pant. I moan.
I close my eyes.
And snap them open again, wrapped in the timid light of a dawn still forming, and in the cold that steals my breath.
Giada is still sleeping like a log, but my dick isn’t.
I really did dream… of Silvia.
I’d like to bite my tongue off, but all I can do is take myself in hand again, over my boxers.
I can’t turn on my phone to her photo or I’ll wake Giada… but I want to see her. I need to.
So I close my eyes again, but she doesn’t come back. Just darkness, and my cock hammering in my hand.
I pull my boxers down, grab a crumpled tissue from the nightstand, wrap it over the head, and start pumping, just like last night in the bathroom.
Silvia… I…
The rush of semen climbs my shaft, for my forbidden dream. My unreachable dream.
I’m sorry.
My elbow speeds up, thrusts… slips.
It hits Giada’s side.
Shit.
She whines like a kitten, rolls in her sleep, and flips over on top of me.
With my erection pointing at her stomach.
I have to… I have to cover myself.
She keeps mewling, eyelids sealed shut, her breathing reduced to a whisper, then her palm finds my cock.
And she jerks me off.
My heart locks up, like the instant before a crash.
And it only takes a moment, I was already at the edge.
Semen splashes her hand, her pajamas, the bed.
Then she turns back over, returning to her side.
I lie still. Helpless. Guilty.
Did she do it knowingly? Or was it just reflex?
And what if she thinks I was jerking off to porn…? That’d be it, she’d kick me out.
So I slip out of bed, strip off pajamas and boxers, wad them up like rags to clean what’s left, then once Giada gets up I’ll deal with the sheets.
I pull on my black fleece robe, sneak out of the bedroom, and stuff the dirty clothes straight into the washer. That too will be on me, before Giada notices.
I move to the kitchen, make myself some tea, and head straight into my crypt niche, facing a blank sheet of paper that’s been judging me for a week. I switch on the little storage-room light, take the dark pencil, and drive it into the page, stroke after stroke.
The rough stone, the seven-branched candelabrum, the brown habit lifting, the crimson corset…
The pencil glides across the paper like her hand on my cock.
And my erection throbs again, pressing against the edge of the table.
***
“Yes, Mom, sorry I got home late last night…” I sigh, glued to the receiver. “They moved my shift to the afternoon, could you pick Luca up from daycare again today?”
She launches into her usual tirade: I raised you all by myself, Silvia!
But she wasn’t a single mom.
Then she complains, complains that the music has to change, that last night it sounded like I had something completely different spinning in my head.
The thing I wish were spinning inside me is the one my old “friend” gets to fuck.
But my mother doesn’t hear my strangled laugh over the phone and goes back to throwing punches, accusing me of never thanking her.
“But I did thank you, I even asked you to stay for dinner…”
Thankfully she refused, because she’d have shot me the second I pulled the cutlets out of the freezer. Besides, there were only two, just enough for me and Luca.
At last she hangs up, leaving me staring at the little pot of milk boiling on the burner. If Luca still drank mine, there’d be no need to heat it, but the pediatrician nearly crucified me when I admitted I was still breastfeeding him at over three years old.
He has to get used to traditional food… He risks not developing psychologically… and blah blah blah…
All this rush, and then cow’s milk, which I don’t think he even digests properly… those rashes behind his knees. I’m sure it’s this fucking milk, which I also pay through the nose for, even though I still produce industrial quantities myself.
“Ma-ma, I’m… hungry,” Luca chirps from his little chair, not whining, just the call of someone asking for a scrap of attention while his mother shirks her duties in a burst of selfishness.
I pour the milk into the cup, set three cookies on the saucer, no, four, and serve my child breakfast.
He eats and drinks like he’s been starving for a century, and nothing I say about slowing down or not choking makes any difference. He dunks the cookies in the milk and mashes them into his mouth, his light curls bouncing on his forehead.
Silvia, why do you poison yourself when you’ve been given a creature this beautiful?
And I let myself be rocked by that cookie-smeared smile. It doesn’t matter if I have to bust my ass, it doesn’t matter if my job… It doesn’t matter if—
“Ma-ma…” he babbles, mouth full. “When’s Daddy coming back?”
The sound isn’t a sound anymore, it’s a piercing wave that tears through every muscle in my body.
Daddy, Luca, that asshole of a daddy knocked me up because, you know, condoms annoyed him, and he didn’t like pulling out either. Then he was shocked, shocked, that someone so careful could’ve made such a mess. He wanted me to abort because he was too young to be a father. At thirty. And so, poof. Arrivederci. Auf Wiedersehen. Au revoir.
“Daddy?” Luca studies me with his hazel eyes.
“Daddy’s on a long trip.”
A long trip to fuck off forever.
I wait for Luca to finish breakfast, drink my burnt coffee, take him to daycare. Then I go back to my grocery store, not to work, to shop. Vegetables, fruit, a couple bananas, then some chicken, ground meat, bread. Strangely enough, when my coworker Francesca is at the register, the old drunk never shows up.
As I hand her the money, a tall, dark figure dressed all in black catches the corner of my eye.
My heart jumps into my throat.
Is it… him?
“Hi Mom…” a voice booms behind me.
Francesca greets him, looking toward the automatic doors, where her teenage son appears, a messy fringe falling into his eyes, a black parka down to his thighs.
Silvia, you’re fantasizing about a friend’s boyfriend…
Not a friend. A bitch.
Okay. Silvia, you’re fantasizing about a bitch’s boyfriend.
A boyfriend who, on top of that, looks like a kid.
I say goodbye to Francesca, leave the store, and an awful impulse drives me to my bag, to my phone, to the gallery, to his photo, and mine, shamelessly screenshotted with my hands still dirty after masturbating.
I rush to the car because I want to do it again, right now, but a notification freezes my hormones.
Giada.
She wrote me.
How are you, Silvia? Sorry I was in such a rush yesterday and all that… I’d really love it if one of these evenings you came over for dinner… I mean, to our place. Tomorrow night okay?
Dinner at my place.
At our place.
What the fuck? Why me? Why now?
I stare at the screen until the letters blur.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard, then pulls back. I lock the phone, shove it into my bag, start the engine as if I could just drive away from the message. But two seconds later I pull over again, grab the phone, unlock it.
Tomorrow night.
I picture myself at their table. Giada perfect, polished, talking about her big marketing job, the house she inherited, her life that actually went somewhere. Me in my best jeans, the ones without stains, trying not to look broke, not to look exhausted, not to look like the girl everyone knew would end up exactly here.
And him. Riccardo. One meter away. Maybe passing me a bowl, his fingers brushing mine. Or worse: ignoring me completely, eyes only on her.
I could say no. I should say no.
I open the chat again.
Type: Sorry, I have to work tomorrow night.
But the store closes long before dinner…
Delete.
Type: That sounds nice, but I already have plans…
No, she knows damn well I never have plans.
Delete.
Type: I’d love to, but…
Delete.
My heart is pounding like it did in the parking lot yesterday. I want to go. God, I want to go. Just to sit near him. Just to watch him move, hear his voice, pretend for one evening that I’m not invisible.
But Giada will notice everything. She’ll see how I look at him. She always did back in school, she could spot desperation from a mile away, knew exactly who was crushing, who was losing.
And what if that’s why she invited me?
What if she saw it yesterday at the register, the way I blushed when he said hi, the way my eyes followed him? What if this whole dinner is just her way of proving she still wins, of putting me in my place all over again, twenty-nine years old and still the same pathetic girl?
I stare at the blinking cursor.
Just say no, Silvia. Just say no.
My fingers move on their own.
Sure, I type.
Then, before I can stop myself, I add the heart-eyes emoji.
Send.
The message turns blue. Delivered.
I drop the phone onto the passenger seat like it’s on fire.
LUCA! FUCK!
It hits me like a slap. I didn’t even think about Luca. Not once.
Now I’ll have to call my mother and beg her again. Listen to the heavy sigh, the I told you so, the endless list of sacrifices she made for me. She’ll take him, of course, she always does, but she’ll make me pay for it in guilt for weeks.
All this because I wanted to sit across from a guy who doesn’t even know I exist.
I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white.
***
When daylight bends, my studio shrinks into a crypt niche. I switch the lamp back on and drop the pencil onto the paper again. The scratch fills the four walls around me, while in the other room Giada is finishing her video call. I have a few minutes before her shift ends… but I want to keep going with Silvia. I need to.
I trace the edge of the corset again, then the compressed breasts, the light spilling over her shape. I swell them as if I could touch them, here and now, the tip moving fast, breathing life into the drawing. My cock lifts every time the pencil tackles her curves… I rub myself with my other hand, over my pants, like an appetizer for what I’ll do later.
I’ve been here for hours and still only sketched a rough outline of the face. As if I don’t know how to reproduce it, as if the image in my head twists into something unrepeatable. I even tried looking at the photo again, but the fact that Giada is in it too freezes me, makes my hand tremble. I barely sketch the smile, both gentle and teasing, then return to the breasts and hips, feeling my erection pulse again.
Then footsteps approach.
But I have to keep going. I have to—
“How can you draw in the dark?” Giada flips on the ceiling light, blinding me. My first reflex is to flatten myself over the drawing so she can’t see it.
But she does.
“Not bad…” she smiles over my shoulder. “Though you did exaggerate the boobs this time, I look like a cow…”
She thinks I’m drawing her, like in all the other drawings I do, the ones that keep me from living entirely off her.
“I get that you draw for wankers, but why sexualize the breasts? Don’t you think that’s a bit misogynistic?”
“I…” I murmur. “Maybe I overdid it. Sorry.”
She leans in closer, over me and the drawing. “You’ve been here all day and you haven’t even started the face… It doesn’t even look like me.”
Because it isn’t you.
“I’ll forgive you, just because you did the laundry this morning…” Then she plants her hands on her hips. “Now get up, we need to go grocery shopping.”
Shopping? But we went… yesterday.
“What do we need?”
“A lot. Pumpkin, potatoes, tofu, tons of vegetables… carrots, broccoli, zucchini, whatever looks fresh. Fresh turmeric if they have it, otherwise powdered. A can of almond milk. Onions, garlic. Soy sauce. Apples, at least 70% dark chocolate. And a handful of walnuts.”
“…Okay.”
“Get dressed, come on. Let’s go to the mall, there’s more choice.”
If I went alone I could— “I’ll go. You worked all day, relax.”
“You sure you’ll remember everything? Not mess anything up?”
“Vegetables, tofu, potatoes, pumpkin…”
“And turmeric, almond milk, onions, garlic, soy sauce, apples, chocolate, walnuts...”
I nod, leave the crypt, bolt to the bedroom, grab my clothes. I get dressed before she can change her mind, before she decides to come with me, but as I pull on my leather jacket, she hands me a slip of paper with the shopping list, fresh ink still drying.
“So you don’t forget.”
I won’t forget. Not this time.
I’ll see her face again. I’ll burn it into me, etch it deep where nothing can erase it, and then, finally, I’ll be able to draw her properly.
Along with Giada’s list is the credit card. Her credit card.
Which is good, because I won’t have to use my own money, but also bad, because I’ll be forced to go to the mall.
But maybe, if I’m fast enough…
I run downstairs, drive to the mall, find utter chaos slowing my plans, but not killing them. If I hurry, I can still make a quick stop at Silvia’s.
So I get back behind the wheel, gun it to the grocery store, and park.
She’s there, behind the register, bathed in the sickly flicker of the neon light that makes everyone look half-dead. But not her. She sparks under it, even in this place.
The brown fleece sweatshirt hangs on her, shapeless, faded, the same one from the selfie, the same one I turned into a monastic habit in my dream. And yet, under that thick fabric, two heavy mounds that have to be her tits.
A lump blocks my throat. But it’s her face that stops me cold.
It’s nothing like the vampiric goddess I never managed to capture in my drawing. Her chestnut curls are pulled back carelessly, a few strands escaping around her temples. There are faint shadows under her eyes and her skin isn’t porcelain; it’s real, a little dry at the cheeks, a small blemish near her jaw. Her mouth is soft, tired, the lower lip fuller than the upper, and when she forces that polite customer-service look for the unpleasant old man, while the belt carries its long parade of junk and alcohol, her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
I take a step toward her to say hello, but she doesn’t seem to notice me. Or maybe she does and ignores me.
Why would a woman like that notice me anyway? She’s everything and I’m nothing. If I told her I’d drawn her like a vampire she’d have me arrested.
I turn to leave, but then she looks up.
And sees me. Really sees me.
Her eyes drop reflexively, then rise, flick to the old man, then return to me.
She greets me with a half-raised palm, and I’m so frozen I can only nod, and maybe smile, because I’m not sure my facial muscles are cooperating.
She answers with an embarrassed smile, which might be interest but is more likely you’re scaring me, go away.
So I enact my insane plan, darting into produce and grabbing a bag of potatoes, turning it over in my hands until the old man leaves. While pretending to browse, I look for Silvia’s gaze. She flinches slightly, then moves toward me, but the moment our eyes meet, we both look away.
I don’t know who first.
I could stand here for hours, but I have to hurry. I walk to the register, set the potatoes on the belt… Maybe I should’ve bought more, but then I’d have to justify it to Giada, and—
Silvia gives another faint smile, scans the potatoes, looks up. “That’ll be two fifty.”
I pull out my wallet and exact change. When I drop it into her hand, my finger brushes hers and an impulse flares under my pants. Then I realize not using the card might signal immaturity, and I might lose points. As if I’d ever gained any.
She thanks me and slips the coins into the till.
When she hands me the receipt, she looks for my eyes as if she wants to say something, but doesn’t dare. And I don’t ask, because I can’t either. Then my eyes jump to her open bag beside her. Among dim objects, the fluorescent lights glare off something white, with a coiled tube.
A breast pump.
So she has milk. She really has milk, like in my dream.
It’s like being hit by a tornado. I assumed she had a partner, someone like her had to, but if she also has a child then… how could I ever have a chance?
But my eyes return to the pump.
Then to the brown sweatshirt, and to the bulges I now know for certain are her breasts.
Huge breasts… full of milk.
My mouth floods with saliva, then dries as I swallow, as I realize that if she has a child, she probably has a husband too.
I close my eyes, trying to dam the emotional wave smashing my skull, then she speaks.
“So… see you tomorrow night,” she murmurs, with a crooked smile.
I don’t understand. Is it a date? How? Where? My heart hammers and my erection throbs again, but the words don’t come.
“Dinner. At your place. Giada invited me.”
Giada invited her. Without telling me.
The groceries were for dinner, with Silvia, and probably her husband too.
That’s why she was embarrassed.
Not because she wanted me.
“Oh right, sorry…” I fake a smile that probably looks like a grimace. “See you tomorrow, then.”
I leave the store with the bag of potatoes in my hand, my heart shattering my ribs as I dump them into the bigger mall bag.
The dinner.
The milk.
She’ll be one step away from me, one chair away, but I’ll never be able to touch her.
Never be able to taste her.
_____________________
Thanks for reading,
Pamela
This story contains explicit language and descriptions of sexual activity. It is therefore intended for adult audiences only.
Any references to real people or places are purely coincidental.
All characters are 18+
Copyright © 2026 by Pamela O.
All Rights Reserved
___________________________
Brief Recap of Chapter 1: The Flicker
In a rundown small-town grocery store, single mother Silvia endures a monotonous shift at the register, feeling invisible and trapped in her routine while hiding her full figure under a shapeless brown fleece. Her former classmate Giada arrives with her brooding boyfriend Riccardo, triggering an unexpected spark: Riccardo is secretly aroused by Silvia’s natural, maternal warmth and hidden curves, while Silvia, unaware of his interest, becomes consumed by desire for him after a brief exchange with Giada and selfie. Alone in her car afterward, she masturbates intensely to his photo, leaking milk from her breasts amid guilt over her waiting son, believing all the while that her attraction is painfully one-sided.
___________________________
Beyond the rough stone blocks of the window, the broken towers of Wallachia rise against a purple sky, softened by the dense fog climbing from the Carpathians and by an ancestral scent lingering behind me.
On the threshold of the room, a shadow takes shape over the flickering glow of a seven-branched candelabrum.
Her.
Her heavy brown habit, monastic and coarse, extends past her hips, revealing only tall, worn leather boots, their dull brass buckles catching reddish glints.
Her steps float over the uneven floor of ancient stone slabs, while the flames cast dancing shadows on the walls and across her face, slowly shaping her smile.
She sets the candelabrum on the windowsill beside me. The candles surround her with an orange halo, igniting reflections along her body, now so close to mine.
Her fingers sink into the habit, grasp the lower hem, and lift it slowly over her head, as if shedding a suit of armor. Beneath it, a corset swells her breasts into two pale dunes veined with blue, caged under black leather woven with crimson velvet, steel boning cinching her waist into an hourglass. Along the edges run thorny rose embroidery and silver thread. The black cord laces are pulled tight, to their limit.
Her black-lacquered nails loosen the knots one by one, and with each lace that gives way comes a deeper sigh. The leather opens slowly, revealing strips of milky skin between the stays, then falls away, making room for two dark, swollen nipples, throbbing a hand’s breadth from my mouth.
“Riccardo…” she whispers, her voice spreading through the room like a gentle echo. “Do you want me to take care of it now?”
I nod, swallowing. She smiles again, unfastens my pants, and strokes me with one hand, gentle but firm.
A gasp arches my back and tightens my chest as my erection swells in her palm.
Then with her other hand, she brings her breast to my lips.
“Drink, Riccardo.”
Drink, Riccardo.
I pant. I moan.
I close my eyes.
And snap them open again, wrapped in the timid light of a dawn still forming, and in the cold that steals my breath.
Giada is still sleeping like a log, but my dick isn’t.
I really did dream… of Silvia.
I’d like to bite my tongue off, but all I can do is take myself in hand again, over my boxers.
I can’t turn on my phone to her photo or I’ll wake Giada… but I want to see her. I need to.
So I close my eyes again, but she doesn’t come back. Just darkness, and my cock hammering in my hand.
I pull my boxers down, grab a crumpled tissue from the nightstand, wrap it over the head, and start pumping, just like last night in the bathroom.
Silvia… I…
The rush of semen climbs my shaft, for my forbidden dream. My unreachable dream.
I’m sorry.
My elbow speeds up, thrusts… slips.
It hits Giada’s side.
Shit.
She whines like a kitten, rolls in her sleep, and flips over on top of me.
With my erection pointing at her stomach.
I have to… I have to cover myself.
She keeps mewling, eyelids sealed shut, her breathing reduced to a whisper, then her palm finds my cock.
And she jerks me off.
My heart locks up, like the instant before a crash.
And it only takes a moment, I was already at the edge.
Semen splashes her hand, her pajamas, the bed.
Then she turns back over, returning to her side.
I lie still. Helpless. Guilty.
Did she do it knowingly? Or was it just reflex?
And what if she thinks I was jerking off to porn…? That’d be it, she’d kick me out.
So I slip out of bed, strip off pajamas and boxers, wad them up like rags to clean what’s left, then once Giada gets up I’ll deal with the sheets.
I pull on my black fleece robe, sneak out of the bedroom, and stuff the dirty clothes straight into the washer. That too will be on me, before Giada notices.
I move to the kitchen, make myself some tea, and head straight into my crypt niche, facing a blank sheet of paper that’s been judging me for a week. I switch on the little storage-room light, take the dark pencil, and drive it into the page, stroke after stroke.
The rough stone, the seven-branched candelabrum, the brown habit lifting, the crimson corset…
The pencil glides across the paper like her hand on my cock.
And my erection throbs again, pressing against the edge of the table.
***
“Yes, Mom, sorry I got home late last night…” I sigh, glued to the receiver. “They moved my shift to the afternoon, could you pick Luca up from daycare again today?”
She launches into her usual tirade: I raised you all by myself, Silvia!
But she wasn’t a single mom.
Then she complains, complains that the music has to change, that last night it sounded like I had something completely different spinning in my head.
The thing I wish were spinning inside me is the one my old “friend” gets to fuck.
But my mother doesn’t hear my strangled laugh over the phone and goes back to throwing punches, accusing me of never thanking her.
“But I did thank you, I even asked you to stay for dinner…”
Thankfully she refused, because she’d have shot me the second I pulled the cutlets out of the freezer. Besides, there were only two, just enough for me and Luca.
At last she hangs up, leaving me staring at the little pot of milk boiling on the burner. If Luca still drank mine, there’d be no need to heat it, but the pediatrician nearly crucified me when I admitted I was still breastfeeding him at over three years old.
He has to get used to traditional food… He risks not developing psychologically… and blah blah blah…
All this rush, and then cow’s milk, which I don’t think he even digests properly… those rashes behind his knees. I’m sure it’s this fucking milk, which I also pay through the nose for, even though I still produce industrial quantities myself.
“Ma-ma, I’m… hungry,” Luca chirps from his little chair, not whining, just the call of someone asking for a scrap of attention while his mother shirks her duties in a burst of selfishness.
I pour the milk into the cup, set three cookies on the saucer, no, four, and serve my child breakfast.
He eats and drinks like he’s been starving for a century, and nothing I say about slowing down or not choking makes any difference. He dunks the cookies in the milk and mashes them into his mouth, his light curls bouncing on his forehead.
Silvia, why do you poison yourself when you’ve been given a creature this beautiful?
And I let myself be rocked by that cookie-smeared smile. It doesn’t matter if I have to bust my ass, it doesn’t matter if my job… It doesn’t matter if—
“Ma-ma…” he babbles, mouth full. “When’s Daddy coming back?”
The sound isn’t a sound anymore, it’s a piercing wave that tears through every muscle in my body.
Daddy, Luca, that asshole of a daddy knocked me up because, you know, condoms annoyed him, and he didn’t like pulling out either. Then he was shocked, shocked, that someone so careful could’ve made such a mess. He wanted me to abort because he was too young to be a father. At thirty. And so, poof. Arrivederci. Auf Wiedersehen. Au revoir.
“Daddy?” Luca studies me with his hazel eyes.
“Daddy’s on a long trip.”
A long trip to fuck off forever.
I wait for Luca to finish breakfast, drink my burnt coffee, take him to daycare. Then I go back to my grocery store, not to work, to shop. Vegetables, fruit, a couple bananas, then some chicken, ground meat, bread. Strangely enough, when my coworker Francesca is at the register, the old drunk never shows up.
As I hand her the money, a tall, dark figure dressed all in black catches the corner of my eye.
My heart jumps into my throat.
Is it… him?
“Hi Mom…” a voice booms behind me.
Francesca greets him, looking toward the automatic doors, where her teenage son appears, a messy fringe falling into his eyes, a black parka down to his thighs.
Silvia, you’re fantasizing about a friend’s boyfriend…
Not a friend. A bitch.
Okay. Silvia, you’re fantasizing about a bitch’s boyfriend.
A boyfriend who, on top of that, looks like a kid.
I say goodbye to Francesca, leave the store, and an awful impulse drives me to my bag, to my phone, to the gallery, to his photo, and mine, shamelessly screenshotted with my hands still dirty after masturbating.
I rush to the car because I want to do it again, right now, but a notification freezes my hormones.
Giada.
She wrote me.
How are you, Silvia? Sorry I was in such a rush yesterday and all that… I’d really love it if one of these evenings you came over for dinner… I mean, to our place. Tomorrow night okay?
Dinner at my place.
At our place.
What the fuck? Why me? Why now?
I stare at the screen until the letters blur.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard, then pulls back. I lock the phone, shove it into my bag, start the engine as if I could just drive away from the message. But two seconds later I pull over again, grab the phone, unlock it.
Tomorrow night.
I picture myself at their table. Giada perfect, polished, talking about her big marketing job, the house she inherited, her life that actually went somewhere. Me in my best jeans, the ones without stains, trying not to look broke, not to look exhausted, not to look like the girl everyone knew would end up exactly here.
And him. Riccardo. One meter away. Maybe passing me a bowl, his fingers brushing mine. Or worse: ignoring me completely, eyes only on her.
I could say no. I should say no.
I open the chat again.
Type: Sorry, I have to work tomorrow night.
But the store closes long before dinner…
Delete.
Type: That sounds nice, but I already have plans…
No, she knows damn well I never have plans.
Delete.
Type: I’d love to, but…
Delete.
My heart is pounding like it did in the parking lot yesterday. I want to go. God, I want to go. Just to sit near him. Just to watch him move, hear his voice, pretend for one evening that I’m not invisible.
But Giada will notice everything. She’ll see how I look at him. She always did back in school, she could spot desperation from a mile away, knew exactly who was crushing, who was losing.
And what if that’s why she invited me?
What if she saw it yesterday at the register, the way I blushed when he said hi, the way my eyes followed him? What if this whole dinner is just her way of proving she still wins, of putting me in my place all over again, twenty-nine years old and still the same pathetic girl?
I stare at the blinking cursor.
Just say no, Silvia. Just say no.
My fingers move on their own.
Sure, I type.
Then, before I can stop myself, I add the heart-eyes emoji.
Send.
The message turns blue. Delivered.
I drop the phone onto the passenger seat like it’s on fire.
LUCA! FUCK!
It hits me like a slap. I didn’t even think about Luca. Not once.
Now I’ll have to call my mother and beg her again. Listen to the heavy sigh, the I told you so, the endless list of sacrifices she made for me. She’ll take him, of course, she always does, but she’ll make me pay for it in guilt for weeks.
All this because I wanted to sit across from a guy who doesn’t even know I exist.
I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white.
***
When daylight bends, my studio shrinks into a crypt niche. I switch the lamp back on and drop the pencil onto the paper again. The scratch fills the four walls around me, while in the other room Giada is finishing her video call. I have a few minutes before her shift ends… but I want to keep going with Silvia. I need to.
I trace the edge of the corset again, then the compressed breasts, the light spilling over her shape. I swell them as if I could touch them, here and now, the tip moving fast, breathing life into the drawing. My cock lifts every time the pencil tackles her curves… I rub myself with my other hand, over my pants, like an appetizer for what I’ll do later.
I’ve been here for hours and still only sketched a rough outline of the face. As if I don’t know how to reproduce it, as if the image in my head twists into something unrepeatable. I even tried looking at the photo again, but the fact that Giada is in it too freezes me, makes my hand tremble. I barely sketch the smile, both gentle and teasing, then return to the breasts and hips, feeling my erection pulse again.
Then footsteps approach.
But I have to keep going. I have to—
“How can you draw in the dark?” Giada flips on the ceiling light, blinding me. My first reflex is to flatten myself over the drawing so she can’t see it.
But she does.
“Not bad…” she smiles over my shoulder. “Though you did exaggerate the boobs this time, I look like a cow…”
She thinks I’m drawing her, like in all the other drawings I do, the ones that keep me from living entirely off her.
“I get that you draw for wankers, but why sexualize the breasts? Don’t you think that’s a bit misogynistic?”
“I…” I murmur. “Maybe I overdid it. Sorry.”
She leans in closer, over me and the drawing. “You’ve been here all day and you haven’t even started the face… It doesn’t even look like me.”
Because it isn’t you.
“I’ll forgive you, just because you did the laundry this morning…” Then she plants her hands on her hips. “Now get up, we need to go grocery shopping.”
Shopping? But we went… yesterday.
“What do we need?”
“A lot. Pumpkin, potatoes, tofu, tons of vegetables… carrots, broccoli, zucchini, whatever looks fresh. Fresh turmeric if they have it, otherwise powdered. A can of almond milk. Onions, garlic. Soy sauce. Apples, at least 70% dark chocolate. And a handful of walnuts.”
“…Okay.”
“Get dressed, come on. Let’s go to the mall, there’s more choice.”
If I went alone I could— “I’ll go. You worked all day, relax.”
“You sure you’ll remember everything? Not mess anything up?”
“Vegetables, tofu, potatoes, pumpkin…”
“And turmeric, almond milk, onions, garlic, soy sauce, apples, chocolate, walnuts...”
I nod, leave the crypt, bolt to the bedroom, grab my clothes. I get dressed before she can change her mind, before she decides to come with me, but as I pull on my leather jacket, she hands me a slip of paper with the shopping list, fresh ink still drying.
“So you don’t forget.”
I won’t forget. Not this time.
I’ll see her face again. I’ll burn it into me, etch it deep where nothing can erase it, and then, finally, I’ll be able to draw her properly.
Along with Giada’s list is the credit card. Her credit card.
Which is good, because I won’t have to use my own money, but also bad, because I’ll be forced to go to the mall.
But maybe, if I’m fast enough…
I run downstairs, drive to the mall, find utter chaos slowing my plans, but not killing them. If I hurry, I can still make a quick stop at Silvia’s.
So I get back behind the wheel, gun it to the grocery store, and park.
She’s there, behind the register, bathed in the sickly flicker of the neon light that makes everyone look half-dead. But not her. She sparks under it, even in this place.
The brown fleece sweatshirt hangs on her, shapeless, faded, the same one from the selfie, the same one I turned into a monastic habit in my dream. And yet, under that thick fabric, two heavy mounds that have to be her tits.
A lump blocks my throat. But it’s her face that stops me cold.
It’s nothing like the vampiric goddess I never managed to capture in my drawing. Her chestnut curls are pulled back carelessly, a few strands escaping around her temples. There are faint shadows under her eyes and her skin isn’t porcelain; it’s real, a little dry at the cheeks, a small blemish near her jaw. Her mouth is soft, tired, the lower lip fuller than the upper, and when she forces that polite customer-service look for the unpleasant old man, while the belt carries its long parade of junk and alcohol, her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
I take a step toward her to say hello, but she doesn’t seem to notice me. Or maybe she does and ignores me.
Why would a woman like that notice me anyway? She’s everything and I’m nothing. If I told her I’d drawn her like a vampire she’d have me arrested.
I turn to leave, but then she looks up.
And sees me. Really sees me.
Her eyes drop reflexively, then rise, flick to the old man, then return to me.
She greets me with a half-raised palm, and I’m so frozen I can only nod, and maybe smile, because I’m not sure my facial muscles are cooperating.
She answers with an embarrassed smile, which might be interest but is more likely you’re scaring me, go away.
So I enact my insane plan, darting into produce and grabbing a bag of potatoes, turning it over in my hands until the old man leaves. While pretending to browse, I look for Silvia’s gaze. She flinches slightly, then moves toward me, but the moment our eyes meet, we both look away.
I don’t know who first.
I could stand here for hours, but I have to hurry. I walk to the register, set the potatoes on the belt… Maybe I should’ve bought more, but then I’d have to justify it to Giada, and—
Silvia gives another faint smile, scans the potatoes, looks up. “That’ll be two fifty.”
I pull out my wallet and exact change. When I drop it into her hand, my finger brushes hers and an impulse flares under my pants. Then I realize not using the card might signal immaturity, and I might lose points. As if I’d ever gained any.
She thanks me and slips the coins into the till.
When she hands me the receipt, she looks for my eyes as if she wants to say something, but doesn’t dare. And I don’t ask, because I can’t either. Then my eyes jump to her open bag beside her. Among dim objects, the fluorescent lights glare off something white, with a coiled tube.
A breast pump.
So she has milk. She really has milk, like in my dream.
It’s like being hit by a tornado. I assumed she had a partner, someone like her had to, but if she also has a child then… how could I ever have a chance?
But my eyes return to the pump.
Then to the brown sweatshirt, and to the bulges I now know for certain are her breasts.
Huge breasts… full of milk.
My mouth floods with saliva, then dries as I swallow, as I realize that if she has a child, she probably has a husband too.
I close my eyes, trying to dam the emotional wave smashing my skull, then she speaks.
“So… see you tomorrow night,” she murmurs, with a crooked smile.
I don’t understand. Is it a date? How? Where? My heart hammers and my erection throbs again, but the words don’t come.
“Dinner. At your place. Giada invited me.”
Giada invited her. Without telling me.
The groceries were for dinner, with Silvia, and probably her husband too.
That’s why she was embarrassed.
Not because she wanted me.
“Oh right, sorry…” I fake a smile that probably looks like a grimace. “See you tomorrow, then.”
I leave the store with the bag of potatoes in my hand, my heart shattering my ribs as I dump them into the bigger mall bag.
The dinner.
The milk.
She’ll be one step away from me, one chair away, but I’ll never be able to touch her.
Never be able to taste her.
_____________________
Thanks for reading,
Pamela