Need a Little Company Ch. 09

She would wait, give the matter all due consideration. If she later decided that she would need to contact him to give him the news, she could always claim that she didn't know she was pregnant at the time of Karen's funeral.

The shower stopped and Marcy realized that their night together was swiftly drawing to a close. She reached over and switched on the bedside lamp to brighten up the room enough for everything to be clearly visible. She was about to get up and fetch her bathrobe from the counter, but quickly decided against it.

"I'll give him one last thrill," she figured, "let him see me naked again before he leaves." Marcy wondered how much of an effect the little exhibition would have on Paul. Was he leaving the motel completely satisfied, or would the sight of her body make him want to jump her bones all over again? Marcy kind of hoped it would actually happen. She wished this bubble of blissful ignorance they had made together would never burst.

The bathroom door whined as it opened. For a moment, the bathroom's fluorescent light flooded the back wall of the motel room, before it disappeared with a flick of the switch. Paul wandered into sight, dressed in the smart casual outfit he had worn to dinner the night before. He stopped and stared at her for a moment. He looked as if he wanted to say something meaningful. But in the end the only thing he managed to say was, "Well..." with a shrug.

"Yeah," Marcy softly replied.

She got up and nonchalantly strolled over to the counter just behind him, as if she were unaware that she was completely nude. Paul broke eye contact just long enough to drop his gaze over the full length of her body. The expression on his face changed. She saw admiration, perhaps even gratitude in his coy smirk. But not lust. Not enough to make a difference, at least. This was it.

Paul started slowly for the door as Marcy fetched her bathrobe, threw it around her back and tied the belt securely around her waist. She was right behind him as he opened the door and stepped out into the cold pre-dawn air.

He turned around on the threshold and met her doe-like, yet savvy gaze.

"Well... see you around, I guess," he said in a raspy whisper.

"Okay," Marcy said. "Thanks for coming," she added in a deadpan tone that almost completely concealed the sincerity of her words.

"Thanks for inviting me," Paul replied. It was practically an obligatory response. "This was a good idea," he told her in a moment of unguarded honesty. The second the words left his mouth, he wondered if he would still feel that way tomorrow or next week. But right now, he believed that he and Marcy had made the best of a bad situation.

"Yeah," Marcy agreed with a broad, thoughtful grin, "It was."

An awkward silence grew as the smiles faded. Without really thinking, Paul leaned in to plant a kiss on Marcy's lips and Marcy leaned forward to receive it. It was fleeting, closed mouth, but nonetheless firm and affectionate. Despite the far more intimate acts they had performed in the past hours, this kiss felt uncomfortably inappropriate for their otherwise casual friendship.

"I'll call you," Paul told her.

"Okay," Marcy cordially agreed, desperately hoping it was a bullshit promise he made just so she wouldn't feel like he had used her as an easy booty call. She watched as Paul turned and stepped off the concrete walkway and into the dark parking lot before closing and locking the door behind him.

She rested her back flat against the door and closed her eyes in anguish. Her heart sank into her stomach as the full weight of the world fell upon her shoulders. Her future started now. She had little concept of what she had entered in to, except that it seemed hard and scary and so very lonely. She felt like a bailed criminal who had been found guilty and had just entered the courtroom for their sentencing hearing. The only thing she knew for sure about what lied in store for her was that it would be something awful.

She wanted to make a last-ditch border run; to escape her punishment. But her heart would not hear of it. It was uncompromising in its need to make penance for her crimes in the cabin.

She walked over to the fixed wardrobe on the far side of the room. On the inside of one of its doors was a full-length mirror. Standing before the mirror, she opened her bathrobe and lamented the great body she'd been blessed with, which she was sacrificing for the sake of inner peace... and the friend she betrayed.

Marcy turned to the side and drew the sides of her robe back so she could see her entire body in profile. She tried to picture that sight with her currently flat belly distended 8 or 9 inches ahead of where it was now. She snorted at the ugliness of that image.

A hand that had been subconsciously caressing her belly slipped down until her fingertips were positioned in the borderlands between belly and crotch. This was the spot where she imagined her baby was. A brand new life that she had created; that was living inside of her, that was being nurtured by her. Her fingers began caressing the area in a small circle as she struggled with how surreal it all was.

But before long Marcy had to reign in fingers that were pressing into her abdomen with uncomfortable pressure. Part of her, a very large part in fact, wanted to squish this life-wrecking parasite like a bug and just be rid of it. She knew the meat of her womb was too secure a buffer for that to actually work, but it was cathartic to try.

She was haunted one last time by the image of herself grown large with child. She saw it reflected back at her and stared into the eyes of this woman before her, this frightened, broken woman.

"Shut up!" she bitterly snapped at the reflection, before dropping her robe to her ankles and stomping back to the bed to try to get another hour or two of sleep before she had to get ready for her flight home.