A Box For Lydia - Sex Stories

A Box For Lydia

Lydia stepped out of the shower cubicle, leaving the foaming traces of her day to drain and dissipate in the humid silence. She wound a wide, white towel tightly around herself and moved through to her living room, leaving glassy footprints behind her on the dark wood floor. The letting agency had described the apartment as ‘cosy’. Lydia would have described it as claustrophobic. She found it funny how two people could view the same space so differently, depending on perspective or, of course, motive. Lydia felt like she was a space. Lydia’s parents would have described her as ‘responsible’. Her employer at the small firm of accountants where she had worked for the past eighteen months would describe her as ‘reliable’. Her college tutor had described her as ‘diligent’. Her friends describe her as ‘dependable’. Those who met her for the first time would probably have described her as ‘shy’. The pastor at her church once described her as ‘faithful’. Everyone had a box for Lydia. She walked over to her walnut display cabinet, pulled open a drawer and removed a long box, the colour of cold coffee, which contained her CDs. Running her fingers purposefully over them for no other reason than she liked the small, rattling sound the slim plastic cases made as she did so, she then pulled out the one she had been looking for. She opened the thin, cracked case, took out the disc and slid it into the portable CD player that Michael had given her for her last birthday. Lydia had that ...

... ‘bright red feeling’ as words and music began to fill space. Outside the window a heavy sheet of Pennsylvania night began to fill space. She left the curtains open to share the moment with the diaphanous ghost of herself which was held within a pane of glass. On the tenth floor nobody can see you. Someday, she thought, the thin, opaque reflection of the girl in the glass would be born. Lydia returned the box of CDs to its space in the drawer. On a shelf above the drawer was another, much smaller, box. She had put it next to a photograph of her and Michael which was displayed tightly within the four corners of a plain, pine frame. It was taken at some church event or another when they were both eighteen. She picked the small box up and held it in her fingers for a moment before opening it carefully. Inside, she saw once again the diamond solitaire ring, held fast within a tight slit in a black, velvet-lined box. Michael had given it to her three months earlier when he had ‘proposed’. “Do you like it?” he had asked. Lydia had nodded. “The thing is,” he continued, hesitantly, “we should probably wait a while to make it, well, public, don’t you think? I mean, not for very long, just until.....” His voice had drifted away into space. It was Friday night again. Lydia went to her wardrobe and pulled out the black dress that she always wore on Friday nights when she visited Michael. ‘Puritan chic’, she would say to herself. She laid it on her bed, next to the letter with the Denver ...