Realisation

"How are the tablets going? Side effects clearing up now?" Amy waited for the lull in conversation to bring up what she was most anxious to know.

"Fine, they've mostly disappeared," Elena replied with a sigh, now they had got onto this topic. Taking them felt like she had failed at life. Why was it so easy for others?

Amy ordered another glass of wine and Elena joined her. "Are they helping you feel better, El?"

"I don't know if that's their job," she argued. "I think they're just supposed to dull things to make them more manageable." Seeing Amy's concerned face, she quickly added, "and they're doing that well. I feel better equipped to manage life; I promise."

They shared a smile and Amy reached out to squeeze her best friend's hand affectionately. "Is there anything I can do El?"

"Amy, you've done enough. Getting me to go on these has pretty much changed the trajectory of my life," she assured her. "You, and Jack too, you've both been great."

Not three months earlier, Elena's life was heading for the abyss. It started with work, where she'd invested so much time and energy, to the detriment of much else, and seeped into the rest of her life. Why cook at the end of a long, shit day? Why shower before bed? Why get up in the morning? What's the point?

"You're my oldest friend and you'd do the same with me. Hell, you picked the pieces up when I was a spiteful, man-hating divorcee," they both grinned at the way she enunciated the last word with an upper-class accent.

"Look at you now, engaged again. You'll be tying up with Ross in no time and leaving me in the dust," Elena quipped. They'd spent the weeks after Amy's breakup on Elena's sofa, watching Friends re-runs and now quoted it almost endlessly, especially around Jack, who was irked by it.

Amy grinned and looked at Elena with raised eyebrows. "Oh shit, here we go," Elena sighed dramatically.

"You brought it up!" Amy teased a little too loudly. She quietened and leaned over her dessert. "That was the deal: I don't mention your dating life unless you bring it up." The black-haired woman stayed quiet, though her tanned cheeks caught some colour as she blushed at the incoming inquisition. "When are you going to get yourself out there?"

"I'm not, I've got too much on," Elena replied stiffly. "I can't expect someone to take this on either." She indicated towards herself with a weary flick of the hand.

Amy looked aghast. "Take what on? You're a kick-ass professional who runs a marketing team for a charity. You're funny, you're kind and you're gorgeous." She moved her hand up and down in the air towards Elena, as if pointing her out in disbelief.

"I'm old," Elena reminded her friend.

"You're 36!"

"I've got Freddy," Elena joked.

"I swear to God, I will be calling Pet Protection if you say that again," Amy warned, with her hand hovering over her phone. "Now, stay exactly like that," she added.

She took her phone and snapped a picture of Elena, spoon in hand, midway through eating her brownie. She'd timed it well as barely a second later, Elena moved to cover her face.

"This is a great one, look at it." Elena glanced over and saw herself as she was moments ago. Her black hair was tied into a bun, her face naturally tanned due to her distant Greek heritage, flawless skin bar the occasional mole which actually added to her attractiveness, and beautiful full lips. To most people, she was a looker.

All she saw was thick eyebrows that always needed threading, tired eyes that never had enough sleep, and lines on her forehead as well as her eyes, showing the years of stress she had put herself through. The tablets had made her put on some weight so the dress, which had once fit comfortably, was tighter to her. She'd been stick thin once but that was in the past. She was still slim but the change in her body shape had upset her. She needed new jeans, and things that used to emphasise her lithe frame didn't work as well with a bigger ass and deceptively large breasts.

Amy had talked her into agreeing to join a dating app that coming weekend, by picking out five photos she felt Elena should use. She'd even started her off with a biography for her profile to reduce the obstacles she knew her friend would put in place.

"Good men are out there, just look at Jack," she'd reasoned.

With Amy's point still ringing in her eyes, Elena made it home a little after 10pm. Freddy was waiting at the door for her.

"Hello, my handsome man," Elena cooed, picking up the American Shorthair and kissing him. He wriggled free and ran off to the kitchen. Elena kicked her heels off and followed him. "But you've not even eaten today's food! I've never known such a fussy cat. They said your breed was easy-going."

He just looked at her expectantly. She'd grown up with a dog and he'd have been a lot more vocal about his displeasure with the food. Freddy was her first cat. Her first pet, actually. She'd got him for company, which was the same as saying she'd got him because she was lonely. Freddy was the only male that had been in her apartment in the four years she'd lived there, excluding Amy's ex-husband and then Jack.

She replaced his food and changed the sachets from beef to turkey, leaving him to munch happily. Her feet were warm as she walked on the wood floor - the benefits of underfloor heating set to a timer - towards her bedroom. A built-in wardrobe held her clothes, running across the length of one wall. One side held her professional attire, the other wardrobe held her leisure and casual. A tv sat in the space between both wardrobes with shelves above and drawers below. When she had viewed the apartment, the set-up was one of the reasons she had gone ahead and bought it. The whole apartment was designed for professionals who wanted easy living. The shelves, the drawers, the well-organised hanging space, left her little excuse to simply chuck clothes on the floor at the end of the day.

The only downside was the mirror, which spanned the length of one of the wardrobe doors and couldn't be avoided when she took her clothes off or dressed for work. She pulled her hair out of the bun, shaking it out, and pulled her long navy Wallis dress over her head, messing her hair up as she did so, to save her from unbuttoning and re-buttoning it again.

She stood before the mirror in just her high-waisted knickers and a matching black bra. Both were functional, not intended for anything else. The bra did a good job of dampening her breast size, which made that item a go-to when the dress was more flattering than normal, like the navy dress was. But she was going for dinner with Amy, and she knew the kinds of topics that were coming her way, so it was just easier to look like she felt better in her own skin. Even if she didn't.

She pulled her bra off, her breasts spilling out and lobbed the bra into the wash basket. Her bottoms followed. She trudged towards the bathroom, by which time Freddy was sat waiting in the hallway for her, and flicked on the shower, closing the door behind her. The antidepressants were definitely working, as the thought of getting into the shower didn't seem so insurmountable.

Maybe I'll treat myself and wash my hair, she thought.

Thirty minutes later and she was freshly showered, with her hair still damp. She'd gone as far as trimming her mound and shaving her legs and armpits.

"What do you reckon, Freddy, have I earned a treat?" The cat looked at her blankly, and she detoured back to the kitchen, finding a treat for him to chew on while she went back to the bedroom and loaded up the laptop. The last thing she needed was a meowing cat disrupting her. Again.

She only treated herself to porn when she was in a good mood and not flustered. The reason for that was straightforward: the pain of deciding what to watch. If she was already tired, flustered, or otherwise in a bad mood, the endless choice of deciding what to watch would drive her to insanity, and she'd close the website off in a strop, then head to bed in a mood. If she was in a good mood though, she'd settle on what she wanted quickly and spend glorious time edging herself until she ended with a toe-curling orgasm and a deep sleep. But that was rare.

For once, she already knew the type of video she wanted to watch before bringing up the website. There was a vast difference between what she liked to watch and what she had experienced, or ever expected to experience. She grabbed her bullet vibrator from the drawer whilst she opened promising-looking videos in different tabs. She had to see herself in the videos, even abstractly, for them to have any impact on her arousal.

She always started with oral sex. Always the woman performing it on the man. Preferably on her knees and not laying across the sofa or across the bed. It was lazy work to do it that way to a man, she'd always thought. It also never did anything for her if it was a man doing it on the woman.

Of the four men she'd been with in her life, only two of them had done it to her. Neither of them had been any good. The third man didn't believe in oral sex at all, which had slowly driven her mad when she couldn't give him it, and the fourth was a one-night stand that had been the catalyst for Amy's intervention. If she never received oral sex again, she'd be glad. Not being able to give it was a different matter.

She clicked along at random parts of each video, determining pretty quickly which were good enough to make her shortlist. The focus that night was slim women riding their man. She kept the ones that had the woman front-on, with their breasts bouncing towards the camera.

Elena tried not to acknowledge that the desire for such a video had entered her head when she had pulled off her bra and her D-cups had bounced out of their cage.

Quickly shortlisting down to 4 videos, she got started on the first one. It was a studio-made one and too fake. Nope. The second one was jackpot. 'Providing him my service'.

Weird name aside, it showed promise. It had the feel of homemade but probably wasn't. It was of a brunette woman, busty with a fuller body than Elena had, and a man who ticked Elena's unusual type, almost box-for-box.

He had the frame of a man that used to work out or play sports but no longer did. There was the start of fat in place of muscles which she preferred. Overall, he was probably of average build but with the hint of weight and above-average amounts of body hair. Elena saw what she considered to be a proper man. She pictured the stoic, firmer type. Not so much Clint Eastwood or someone emotionally lacking, but someone nevertheless self-assured and masculine.

The video started with the woman on her knees between his legs. This is it, she thought, watching with interest and forgetting about the other two on her shortlist. She watched as the woman moved down from his cock, still untouched, and started at his feet. The woman kissed the man's foot slowly and with intensity, then swapped to the other one. It was some kind of erotic worship that she had never seen or even thought about before.

"Uh, that is so hot," Elena whimpered as she said it, turning the bullet up immediately. It was so unexpectedly erotic that her arousal shot up ten-fold, and she was close to an orgasm before the woman had even got started on his cock.

The woman worked her way up by planting kisses on his legs, swapping and repeating when she got to each thigh. When she finally got to his cock, she licked his balls and then kissed up to the tip. By that point, Elena was shamefully soaked, with the vibrator pressed firmly against her clit and her legs writhing on the bed. She watched as the woman took the man's cock into her mouth, engulf it with saliva and then start to push it into her throat without delay or build. Just like that.

At that point Elena came.

She couldn't take her eyes away from it until the intensity of her orgasm forced her eyes closed before they watered. Riding her orgasm out, her imagination took over and she allowed herself to picture being in that position. She'd never have even thought about something like that before, but the way it symbolised their relationship had got to her. So hierarchical. Her eyes flicked upwards to the title.

She re-focused after settling herself and skipped forward, keen to see the part she had initially shortlisted the video for. She jumped forward a little too much, as the woman was then riding the man with passion and enthusiasm. Elena had been hoping to build up to that part as she knew she had enough in her for another orgasm - a further rarity.

Before she could skip back, the man moved from laying back and enjoying it, to taking his hands onto the woman's hips and starting to dictate the speed of her movements. Elena's hand paused and after giving it a couple of seconds to develop, moved her hand away from her laptop to her nipple. She started to play with it slowly, enjoying how hard it was under her fingers as she watched intently. The man took charge and started to use the woman's body to dictate the fucking. "That's enough," he told her firmly. He'd grown tired of her dictating the pace and made her give him what he needed. The idea of that took Elena back to the headspace she was in and back to the level of arousal she'd just left.

She came again, more quickly than the woman did.

Elena moved her hand blindly until she found the laptop and clicked pause, where the sounds of the woman's moans and the man's grunting suddenly fell silent. She heard her own panting in its place and the little whimpers as her sex pulsated.

When she calmed down enough, she cleaned up, favourited the video and packed away. Freddy was waiting for her and bounced in happily onto her king-sized bed. Elena went to the bathroom and joined him for a cuddle, deep in thought.

Why did that get to me so much? Amy's right, I need to date. My fantasises are getting weird.

She resolved to think nothing more of it because she knew what she could get like when she overthought, and instead downloaded the dating app Amy had suggested. That ought to preoccupy my thoughts sufficiently.

She was right. She drifted off thinking about the dating app and filling it out the next day, as opposed to the newly-unearthed feelings that video had brought about. Freddy slept soundly, as always.

***

"Morning Elena, good journey in?"

Elena's heels announced her arrival, she assumed. Either that or Sophie had a sixth sense for her boss. Elena wasn't the tallest woman in the office at 5'5, so she doubted her head had been spotted over the desks.

"Not bad, yours?" Before giving her PA a chance to reply, she added, "have they sent the material for the print campaign yet?"

Sophie took it in her stride. She was some 5 years younger than Elena, but they had been together for four years - since Elena had joined the charity. She knew Elena well. She'd even had dinner at Elena's house a couple of times and been to her small housewarming party.

"They have, and I've printed the drafts for you as always," her PA smiled knowingly.

"You're a star and when you eventually leave me, I'll be ruined," Elena smiled back, walking into her office in an even better mood.

Sophie half-shouted something back that sounded like "not while my boyfriend keeps getting promoted," but Elena was already looking at the drafts while taking off her long coat.

An hour later she was in the conference room with her lead designer and the campaign project manager, giving shit to the agency.

"Louise, you need to listen to me," the friendly, professional tone was wearing thin with the dressing-down. She might have paused to regain her composure were it not for Louise and Mike, the number two at the agency, constantly interrupting and making excuses. "We absolutely cannot have a picture of the earth on fire if we want them to support our charity. They'll think it's pointless the second they see the poster."

"It is," Dante muttered, though not quietly enough given the look Elena shot at him.

"Let's go back to the brief, I've asked Maya here, our lead designer, to clear her time to help you come up with some concepts before close of day."

"We can't -."

Elena sighed and Maya grimaced sympathetically. She knew her boss.

"Mike, Mike, you're going to say you haven't planned for it today and that'll mean you'll have forgotten I spent three years at a creative agency, which I told you when you won the contract. We all know you'll have kept today free for adjustments, which is why I asked for it to be sent to us on the Thursday, giving you Friday to work on it."

There was silence, for the first time. Elena waited for the no-doubt frantic conversation on mute. She briefly imagined them making a scene on the train, but they should have known she was pissed when she insisted a phone call would be fine in place of a video call. "We'll have a few revised concepts to you before 4pm."

"That's great, really appreciate the willingness." Elena reverted to the person they'd met when they won the contract. "I'm free at 2pm for a video call if you want to run anything by me, otherwise I expect the new concepts in my inbox by 5pm ready for me to review this weekend.

She hated having to lay things down like that. The stress of the job was already making her neck hurt again. She made a mental note to book an appointment with her chiropractor. Another weekend with work involved. She sighed audibly and Dante looked awkward after they'd rung off.

She nodded at them in thanks and went back to her office. Dante sent her a private message not 5 minutes later.

Dante: That was really impressive work boss, I learned a lot from you there. Sorry for the inappropriate interruption.

Elena: That's no worries, and thanks.

The blunt reply might have read harsh, but it was deliberate. He'd taken a liking to her; she was sure of it. Amy would come to the same conclusion, but Elena had neglected to tell her that one of her subordinates had taken an interest in her. She'd stalk his social media, see how good looking he was and try to talk her into pursuing it.

Elena had less patience nowadays with the reasons she provided for not pursuing certain men, compared to in her twenties. Now the response would be: he's too pretty and not rugged enough, we work together and that's inappropriate and most of all, he's my junior. She was not about to switch off at the end of the day around someone more junior than her, it just wouldn't wash. She wouldn't have the same professional respect for them. Whether Amy or her family liked it or not, her romantic interest was built around a man's career and whether he could relate to her life. Amy would have all sorts to say about that, so she kept quiet about Dante and closed off the chat.

_

At 4.24, the email from the agency arrived and she could start thinking about the weekend. Sophie printed off the different concepts for her - all a lot more draft than she'd seen that morning - but all with plenty to offer, and there was enough between them to put into the mix. It needed to be finalised by the middle of the following week, so she'd make sure there was feedback in their inbox before Monday rolled around.

When she got home, Freddy was waiting for her again, though he looked tired. Rose, her cleaner, had been in and Freddy had no doubt taken an interest in the hoover again. She picked him up and nestled into his black and silver swirls. "So soft, aren't you baby?" He meowed happily and she put him down, walking off to the bedroom with him on her heels. The clothes landed on the floor this time. Freddy looked up at her. "Don't judge me, it's been a long day."

She made dinner, despite aching for a food delivery and sat down with a glass of wine. Flicking through channels trying to find something to watch quickly drove her insane. Choices.