Too Good Girl

by Eleanor Lloyd-Jones

  The view from the kitchen window was less than desirable. We lived in a small terraced house, on a street full of small terraced houses, with no garden to speak of. The alley between us and next door was full of wheelie bins, and as I stared at them—wishing everyone would line them up the same way—the kettle clicked.

  I slid back to the floor to fill my cup. My shift was due to start in two hours, and I intended to spend the time leading up to it curled back under my duvet with a hot drink.

  ***

  “You look like shit.”

  “Fuck you very much.” I rolled my eyes at Suzie, one of the cashiers, as I walked through the doors of the twenty-four hour supermarket. “Who’s on?”

  She batted her heavily laden eyelashes and pouted in my direction, indicating that the duty manager for the day was the ‘swoon-worthy’ Liam Sheldrake. I gave her a knowing look and headed for the back to dump my bag in the staff room. Suzie had been trying to catch Liam’s eye for months. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I’d fucked him several times a month for longer than that, and that he wouldn’t touch her with a barge-pole. He wasn’t really all that swoon-worthy either. He was tall, muscular, blonde and male. That was it. I think she was attracted to the power—whatever little power a supermarket manager had, at least.

  I was attracted to the fact he was attracted to me.

  He was one of the newer managers, and it hadn’t taken me long to work out that he found me sexy for whatever reason. It hadn’t taken me long to work out that he didn’t care about the fact he shouldn’t fraternise with staff. It hadn’t taken me long to work out that he was happy to fuck me in his office, over his desk, up against the warehouse wall... whenever and wherever I needed it.

  Today, I needed it.

  Most days, I needed it.

  As always, it wasn’t sexual release that I craved.

  I required a release from my mind—my ever complicated, emotion-filled mind that thought its job was to keep me locked inside to be tortured. It was my only release, and that one fact kept me going back for more.

  Jack didn’t know about Liam.

  But Jack knew about me.

  He knew I fucked men for my own bizarre pleasure.

  He knew I was riddled with grief and that the grief had lasted six years so far.

  He knew most facts about me—except Liam.

  I wanted to keep Liam to myself, because of all the men—the strangers and the not-quite strangers—he was the one who seemed to help me forget it all the most. I couldn’t really explain it, but the way he treated me like a toy, something he could pick up and play with whenever he chose, gave me this thrill of emptiness that hadn’t quite been achieved with anyone else. He made me feel worthless in the best possible way. He made me feel like a whore, and not because he called me one like Gavin did—that had hurt—but in the way he spoke to me and the way he owned my body like it wasn’t mine. I needed Liam in ways I didn’t need any of the others. The others filled the Liam void when he wasn’t available. Of course, the thrill of emptiness wasn’t a sexual one. Quite the contrary. I remained numb throughout every encounter.

  Dumping my duffle bag on the table in the middle of the breeze-block-walled room, I opened my locker and pulled out my badge and storeroom keys.

  “Alright, Johnson.”

  I turning my head over my shoulder, I saw Andy leaning against the doorjamb. “Morning.” I gave him a tight smile before shutting away my bag.

  “You’re in the storeroom with me today. Hope you’ve got your thermals on.”

  I moved silently towards the door he was still blocking and looked up at him. His eyes were a strange grey colour, and as I stood there, I noticed something flash in them. I’d worked with Andy for six months and never picked up on any clues before, but standing so close to him, I could see it. “I haven’t got any underwear on at all.” I pushed at his chest and watched him stumble backwards with a little smirk on his face.

  Only half an hour later, I was bent over the toilet in the ladies’ with him thrusting into me from behind like a man possessed. It didn’t last long, but it took me out of my head long enough for me to make it through to lunch.

  And yes, I was careful. Working in a supermarket meant I had access to as many condoms as I liked.

  As we manhandled a crate full of boxes of crisps, I heard Liam’s voice across the shop floor. He was barking orders at one of the new girls—a pretty little thing with huge tits—and I stood back to watch the exchange. She was nervous and I felt sorry for her. Liam’s voice was loud and venomous at times, but he wasn’t to be feared. I decided to step in and grab his attention before the poor girl ran out crying. “Hey, Liam.”

  At the sound of my voice, he stopped his lecture and turned to face me as I walked confidently across the floor, stopping next to the young girl and smiling at her.

  “Hi. I’m Syra.” I turned and jutted my chin at him. “I need you in the back a minute. We’ve had an order and I’m not sure it’s correct. Can you—” I cocked my head in the direction of the warehouse. “Come help me a minute?”

  He smirked before heading off with me in tow, and I winked at the girl as she mouthed a ‘thank you’ at me.

  “My office. Five minutes.” Liam took a left, and I watched him disappear through the door to the back. I nodded and helped Andy unload the crate.

  “What’s that all about?”

  I ignored him, crouching down and ripping open a box of Walkers.

  “Johnson?”

  “What?”

  “What does Liam want?

  Shrugging, I pulled the multipack bags of crisps out, shoving them into place on the bottom shelf.

  “Bullshit.”

  I glanced up at him and frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You went over there and now he wants to see you in his office. Did you piss him off?”

  I sighed and continued to stack the shelf before standing up and walking away. “Laters, Barnes.”

  He shook his head, and I could feel him watching me as I headed towards Liam’s office and what promised to be half an hour of dirty, painful forgetting.

  ***

  I’d never really been able to figure out how my body managed to shut off during sex. The things Liam was doing to me were surely enough to make any woman buckle at the knees and weep for more, but for me, it was all part of the necessary rigmarole in order to get by. I pretended to love the feel of his tongue circling my nipples as I arched my back against the wall. I gripped the hair on his head, panting his name as he pushed his fingers inside me, and I swear I would have won an Oscar had someone filmed it, but if I were to lie there, completely unresponsive, I couldn’t guarantee he’d ever have wanted me a second, third, fourth time…

  According to him—to all of them—I was loving every filthy second.

  He picked me up and carried me over to his desk, his mouth crashing against mine as he continued to fuck me with his fingers. I focused on the feel of them inside me and wondered what other women got out of it. He was rough and desperate with his movements, and I closed my eyes, wincing as one of his nails caught my flesh.

  Laying me down on the empty surface, he pulled away from my lips, his mouth moving to my ear. “You’re such a filthy bitch, Syra. You make me so hard with your dirty, sexy mouth and tight little pussy. You love this, don’t you? Tell me you love it when I fuck you with my big fingers.”

  I swallowed and bucked my hips to meet the thrusts of his hand, telling him silently what he wanted to hear.

  He growled like some kind of zoo animal, shoving inside me even harder, and I almost willed my body to respond as it should, just for a moment, for a change—to see what it felt like and to find out if I was actually normal after all. But I was so desperate for him to use my body that my performance was all I could focus on, and I wondered for a moment if it was perhaps it was the show I put on that kept me empty of anything else.

  I
wasn’t sure I’d ever find out.

  Syra

  Forgettable by Project 46 & Olivia

  I CONTINUED TO stare out of the window, my eyes glued to the way the waves tossed a small fishing boat around in the wind: a tiny vessel in the vast, murky waters. The able seaman and his crew steered and hauled, keeping them and their precious cargo, their catch, from sinking into the unknown—from sinking far from reach.

  “Syra.”

  “Hmm?” I turned my head lazily to Christine, blinking back to the present and the huge office filled with greenery and plush cushions.

  She tapped the end of her pen on her bottom lip and smiled kindly. “I asked if you’d heard from your mother this week.”

  I dropped my eyes to my fingers as I twisted them in my lap. “Nope.” A long pause stretched out in front of us: unbearable for me, deliberate for her. She always did this waiting thing. Sometimes I wanted to scream at her and tell her to push me for more, to push and push until I cracked, but she never did. She would sit silently for the whole session if I let her.

  “You insist on asking this when you know as well as I do she barely even remembers that I exist.”

  Christine inhaled. “I’m sure that’s not true. I’m sure she loves you ver—

  “She loves getting high more. I barely get a welcome when I go round these days, despite what I do for her.” I snorted and squinted back out of the window, my voice dropping to barely a whisper. “She seems to forget I lost him too.”

  “So let’s talk about that.”

  I swallowed before running my sleeve under my nose and smiling coldly at her. “Time’s up, right?”

  “Not quite, but you’re free to leave whenever you choose.”

  I sat back in the huge armchair and curled my feet underneath me. “No. I’ll stay. Besides, it’s warmer in here than it is at our place.”

  We exchanged small smiles and I reached out to pick up the photograph of her children that always sat beside me. I ran my finger down the glass over their little smiling faces. “It’s Niamh's birthday soon, right?”

  Christine nodded. “And yours.”

  I filled my lungs noisily before placing the frame back down carefully. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Always manage to turn the conversation back to me?”

  She laughed. “It’s my job. I don’t get paid to talk about my life.”

  “Not every week at least, huh.” I stretched my legs out and pointed my toes, wiggling them and noting the hole in my sock. “I slept with Liam again yesterday.” I glanced up at her unwavering, neutral expression. “I don't know what it is about him.”

  “Does he make you feel good?”

  I stood, wrapping my arms around myself as I moved towards the huge window, pressing my forehead against the cool glass. “They all make me feel good, Chris, because the alternative is this. The alternative is being filled to the brim with the pain I can’t escape. They all make me forget for a little while.” I closed my eyes and squeezed them tightly. “I can’t ever get relief from it, and I’m scared I never will.”

  I heard the scribble of her pen on her pad before her the lilt of her soft voice. “Well, we need to work on that together don’t we. We need to search for strategies that will allow you the peace you’re looking for. It has to come from you, though, Syra. I can’t force you into anything or tell you what to do. But I am here. Okay? Always here.”

  I turned around and smiled at her, pulling my jacket from the back of the chair and slipping into it. “I know. Thank you. I mean it. Same time next week?”

  She nodded. “Same time next week.”

  ***

  “My treat.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t want you to treat me.”

  Jack paused before he spoke again. “Don’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “You know what.”

  I didn’t reply because I did know what. He was referring to the way I was fiercely protective of my independence and how that meant I was stubborn in ways I didn’t need to be, or so he said. I didn’t need anyone’s help, though. I’d accepted the offer of somewhere to live because, well, I’d have been utterly stupid not to, and Christine was different, but the rest… well the rest I was going to do on my own. I didn’t want to be indebted to anyone. I didn’t want to have to lean on anyone, and I certainly didn’t want to become reliant on anyone because being reliant on someone only led to disappointment.

  “It’s just Chinese, Sy.”

  I sighed into my phone. “Fine. You want me to pick it up?”

  “No. I’ll call and get it on my way home. What do you want?”

  “Surprise me.”

  We hung up as I entered the house, and I locked the door behind me, hanging my coat and running upstairs to get changed out of my work uniform.

  By the time I heard Jack come in three hours later, I’d washed the dishes, bleached all of the kitchen surfaces, vacuumed all the carpets, cleaned the bathroom, changed my bedding and scrubbed the kitchen floor. As he entered the living room, he almost caught me staring at the photograph of my dad that I kept on the mantelpiece above the fireplace.

  I’d worshipped the ground he’d walked on.

  He’d been my world—my hero.

  I was thirteen when he died but almost ten when everything had gone wrong and my life had started to crumble beneath me. I’d had to run so damn fast to remain ahead of the destruction at my heels. Some days, when he’d been able to sit up in bed, when he would turn his head and smile at me as I peered around the door, I’d been able to slow down a little. I would creep into the bedroom when he held his arm out for me, curl up next to him and rest my head over his heart to listen to it thudding in his chest. On days like that, we’d watched old black and white movies until our eyes stung from staring at the screen for so long; he would swoon over Judy Garland and teach me to whistle like Bogart. We’d sung along to musicals and recited lines from classics. Sometimes, if he’d been feeling up to it, he’d sit on the edge of the bed as I stood facing him, and we would hold each other like ballroom dancers pretending we were Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. On those occasions, the room would ring loudly with our laughter.

  They’d been the days filled with hope.

  But climbing those stairs every day had been like Russian roulette: I’d never known what I would be faced with.

  On the bad days, Dad had slept. He hadn’t wanted to dance or sing. Instead, he’d shrugged me off him and waved me out of the room, and Mum had shouted at me to tell me I was in the way.

  Running my fingertips down the glass that would keep him encased and smiling for eternity now, I clenched my back teeth to try kill the emotional tirade that was forcing its way out. I wanted to smash the frame open, shake him and scream at him for being so fucking stupid—for being so goddamn selfish and for ruining my life. But most of all I wanted him to hold me and tell me it was all okay. I wasn’t sure what ‘it’ was, but either way, it had to be better than the constant war in my head and my heart that I had to deal with on a daily basis.

  I hated him and loved him in equal measures, but most of all I wanted him back.

  Swiping at my cheeks to get rid of the tears, I put the frame back where it belonged before Jack popped his head around the door.

  “Hey.”

  I smiled tightly and folded my arms around my middle. “Hey. Need a hand?”

  He held my eyes for a few seconds longer than was comfortable. “No it’s fine. I’ll bring it in.”

  He could read me like a book. It was most irritating at times. I’d been homeless when he’d found me two years previous. I’d run away numerous times after Dad died—a dangerous and stupid move on my part, but when you lose your dad to a drug-induced, debilitating disease at the precise moment puberty kicks in, the rational side of your brain doesn’t tend to get a say. Everything had tipped out of my control: Dad’s death, Mum’s demise, the revelati
on that they’d fucked everything up from the inside out and that I’d had no clue… It all snowballed into a giant sphere of pressure that finally exploded, and as soon as I turned sixteen, I left for good.

  “Special chow mein?” Jack came through the living room door with two plates in his hands, and a lopsided grin on his face. I nodded and smiled back, taking the plate from him and sitting with my legs curled underneath me in the corner of the tatty old sofa. Slumping beside me, he reached for the remote control, flicking through the channels before settling on the news, and we ate in silence until he put his fork down and turned his head to look at me.

  “I have to go back out tonight.”

  Closing my eyes, I huffed out of my nose. “Tell him no.”

  “I can’t tell him no. You know I can’t. It’s my job.”

  I leaned forwards and put my still half-full plate on the small, wooden coffee table in front of me. “Tell him you want a different job. He’s not going to kill your dad, Jack. First of all, he needs him, because without him, he doesn’t have you. Second of all, he’s just a wide boy with a string of henchmen and a loud voice. He’s all mouth. He wouldn’t.”

  Jack shook his head and let out a chuckle. “You don’t know the half of it, Sy. Don’t be fooled by his flash suits and Colgate smile. He’s dangerous and dirty, and he plays even dirtier. I wouldn’t put it past him at all.”

  I sighed and leaned my head back against the cushion. “A car?”

  He nodded.

  “A specific car?” I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, watching the muscle in his jawline tick.

  “Yup.”

  “For fuck’s sake.”

  He shovelled another forkful of food into his mouth, talking with it in the well of his cheek. “Your concern is gratefully received, but you don’t need to worry. I’m good at what I do.”

  “I know you are. I’m not worried that you’ll get caught by the owner. I’m worried the cops will get notified and you’ll have to try to outrun them. It’s ridiculous, Jack.”