The Brutal Truth

by Lee Winter

When Maddie arrived at work the next day, there was a new PA sitting next to Felicity—a fearful young woman with legs up to her chin and the balance of a day-old kitten.

Someone once said: “Be yourself; everyone else is taken.” Surely this is the hardest advice ever offered.

We don’t want strangers to know we’re secretly nervous or shy or intimidated or cowardly. That we’re not brave enough or smart enough or well-off enough or that we’re barely coping. So we fake the ease and perfection of our lives.

You never truly know what’s under anyone’s mask until you take one corner and start to peel. It awes me that anyone would allow another human to do this to them. To willingly say, hey, this is me. Do you still like me?

“when the world gets too overwhelming and things feel too big for us to fix, just change your little corner of it”.

Poverty had its own smell, she’d often thought.

And she finally understood. Madeleine was not her friend. Not like Perry. It wasn’t normal to feel this way for a friend. It wasn’t normal to want to dust your fingertips over a friend’s body and map it the way she suddenly had a burning urge to do to Madeleine’s. She savoured the sight of her. Her Madeleine. The woman she…felt deeply for.

This was not friendship or passing attraction. It was something alive. It burned hot and deep.

Maddie crawled off the plane at Sydney Airport, looking like a rumpled blanket.

Elena’s lips parted, her eyes fierce and full of desire. Another groan reverberated, low, dirty, and raw, and it was Elena’s.

Elena was not a cuddler in her sleep. Nor did she spoon, Maddie discovered. Oh no. She conquered. When they had been too tired to do anything more beyond crawl under the sheets, Elena took up most of the bed, two-thirds of the pillows, half the blankets, and all of Maddie, like some sort of post-coital corporate takeover.

Isn’t that what a relationship is? Knowing who someone is behind the mask and wanting to be with them in spite of it?”