CHAPTER 14
LYSSA
All week Mike had been acting like I had a radioactive pussy and his fingers would become glow sticks if they came too close again.
He was avoiding me.
Dean had only stayed for one night. Once he was gone, we were marinating in awkwardness without him as a sexual tension buffer—or at least on my end it was sexual tension. I had no idea what was going on in Mike’s head.
Worst case scenario: I’d repulsed him so much he couldn’t bring himself to look at me. Best case: He had selective amnesia and had forgotten the entirety of Saturday.
Even that made me feel like that one ugly pair of mules left behind at an outlet sale.
Rejection sensitivity aside, the past few days in Woodville had been nice. Yesterday, I went out to Cilla’s and we had lunch in her garden. We ate little sandwiches and scones with clotted cream and swapped stories about New York. Afterward, I’d visited Lia at the bakery and helped her with the skirt she wanted to make. I was trying to be a better person by not thinking about time spent with friends as content opportunities, so while I had taken cute little videos throughout the day, I didn’t film every single moment.
All that said, my new angle was working. There were now nearly as many people in my comments talking about my charming New Zealand life as there were people who wanted to tie me to a stake and light it.
I should have been thrilled about my successful comeback, but all I felt was tired. Being online had lost some of its joy for me. I was pleased I’d begun to shift sentiment, but validation from internet strangers—something that had kept me afloat as a lonely teenager—meant very little to me now.
On Thursday, I’d been scheduled to film some content in the bridal boutique—April, the owner, had asked me for help with the shop’s social media—but she’d called to cancel as her son had Covid. Faced with unexpected free time, I decided Caroline was right and I should run a bath.
A Main Character Bath was a genius concept of mine.
First, you lit candles and filled a tub. Then you got into it wearing some kind of romantic dress—ideally a satin nightgown type thing, because anything with too much tulle could drown you. Then you should lie back and drink wine from the bottle while playing sad music and crying your eyes out. When your tears dried and your fingertips were wrinkled and white, you’d be on the way to feeling better. By the time you’d dried off and put on cozy sweats, it would be impossible not to feel better.
The theory behind a Main Character Bath was that romanticizing your sadness helped your brain process it as a single scene in your story.
Everyone knows the wallowing scenes in the Hollywood movies always cut to a glow-up montage. Feeling your feelings is just something you have to do until the scene changes. Despite my current low enthusiasm for content creation, I decided to film my Main Character Bath—it was deep rooted in me to think that effort was a waste unless I was also making content out of it.
It took ages to get Mike’s hideous tangerine bathroom camera-ready.
I didn’t harbor any great love for cleaning (even though I watched a lot of cleantok), but I tricked myself into getting it done by setting timers and celebrating with a silly little dance every time one buzzed.
There was a collection of lost items on the orange enamel sink. I imagined Mike emptying his pockets and shoving everything here before his shower. This was the same thing I did with my floor pile organization system. I didn’t have time to find where all his stuff lived, though, so I scooped the sunglasses, nasal spray, wallet, and balled-up receipts into a drawer so they would be out of frame.
By the time I was finished, the tub was gleaming, the surfaces were clear, and a row of lit candles was giving the room a romantic, dancing light. Noah Cyrus crooned from my phone, and after collecting my bottle of champagne from the fridge, I donned a slinky floor-length slip and pinned my hair in an updo.
Fully clothed, clutching the bottle of champagne by the neck, I sank into Mike’s oversized tub.
It was bliss. The water was warm and soothing. Steeping like a teabag, I filmed a short video explaining my Main Character Bath concept for new followers and encouraging them to reach out and talk to someone if the bath wasn’t shifting their sadness—by which I meant a friend or a professional, not me. That had been a lesson I’d learned early as an influencer.
After some consideration, I framed a few shots showing how good my rack looked in this slip dress and posted them before I could think better of it. I wasn’t showing anything that would get me banned, just enough to remind folks I was definitely a super sexy sex machine and it wasn’t unbelievable that a man would risk everything for me.
Even if @brosephjoseph341 said my teeth were too big and @kimigij11 said he didn’t get my appeal. I blocked both of them.
Thinking about sexiness, or my purported lack thereof, made me think about the Roadside Incident last weekend.
Tossing my phone to the floor, I lay back in the bath and replayed the memory.
I’d gone over it so much not a single detail had dulled.
My hands were roaming before I was aware of it, and then I was extremely aware. My nipples were two thumbtacks trying to pierce the front of my slip. I added more hot water to the cooling tub and a little more bath milk—organic, so it wouldn’t ruin my slip—and sank further down. Everything under my chin was submerged.
Usually, I thought of my body as a living hanger, with little function beyond fashion. But this whole thing with Mike had made my body feel like a body.
While my hands explored, I tried to see myself through his eyes.
I had long limbs with rounded hips and proud breasts. My skin was soft, and my flesh had strength and bounce in equal measure. My legs were definitely my prettiest body part; they stretched on and on. Experimentally, I lifted one out of the water, pointing my toes to the ceiling and watching rivulets of milky water run down my calf and thigh. I liked the little dips on the sides of my thighs too—there was something coy about the way the flesh dove down and reemerged.
