Her fingernails are painted a deep, bright blue.
She stands in the kitchen, butt to the counter, giving the cat a look of suspicion.
She's housesitting. A gig she gets every third weekend. Two dogs, three cats, one bird, and an overweight goat.
She's waiting for water to boil and she suspects the cat has been into her grated cheese.
Her index finger and her middle finger are scratching a private part of her body. But since no one is home, she doesn't care. And because she's distracted with lunch and the cat, she's not conscience of it.
This housesitting gig began several years ago. The homeowner travels to the opposite coast for business reasons largely unknown. So for several years now she has her own private, well-paying, retreat.
It started as a reading retreat, then turned for several long months as a recovery retreat after she turned away from her felonious fiancΓ©. In the summer months it's a tanning retreat. In the winter months it's a chic-flick retreat. And also for many, many months now it's kind of turned into her alter-ego retreat.
One thing had led to the next.
The tanning led to fewer and fewer clothes in the summer months.
The chic-flicks led to romantic notions and feelings.
The reading led to ideas of writing things of her own.
And a single social media post led to things going over the hill and down the other side.
She saw a post from an old professor. A kind of dorky, cute, confident, quiet kind of professor. So with fewer clothes and certain notions and with eager fingers she created a false account to see if she could anonymously flirt with him.
She was successful. Quiet successful. He took the bait. And as she reeled him in, he didn't fight one bit. He all but jumped into her boat.
And that led to a few more flirtatious opportunities. And that soon led to posting a few photographs. And that led to posting a few more photographs of higher quality and more exposure.
So she stands in the kitchen eyeing the cat, waiting for the water to boil, scratching a private part of her body. She has no clothes on and again she is not aware of how or where she is touching herself.