Page 2 of Breaking All The Rules
Sugar, Bea. Sugar.
She reached for her dove-gray fleece-lined hoodie that had been discarded in a heap at the end of the bed and shoved her arms into the sleeves. It matched her sweats, which used to matter last month, but not so much now. Glancing down at her white T-shirt with its designer black-paint-splatter pattern, she noticed a stain down the front. Was that coffee, soy sauce, or beer? She pulled it out and gave it a sniff.
Beer.
She tried to remember when she’d put it on. Her sweatpants were clean yesterday, but the shirt…? Lifting her right arm, she sniffed at her pit. It seemed odor-free, but she should probably still change it. And also put on a bra. She wasn’t that well-endowed, but her boobs had been roaming free for a couple of weeks, and she was sure they’d already dropped a little.
Screw being thirty-five.
No…she took that back. Screw bras, keeping women all constrained and strapped in and…imprisoned. She was never wearing a bra ever again. She’d just let the girls do their thing. From now on, she was going to wear what she wanted, eat what she wanted, and say what she wanted.
She’d spent fifteen years working hard, dressing the part, keeping her head down, following the rules set by her father and her grandmother—lest she turn out like her mother—then more rules set by various men who sat at the upper echelons of corporate power, and where had that gotten her?
Well…no more. And screw what anyone else thought.
She made a mental note to throw her shirt in the wash with the underwear, after she’d eaten all the sugar, and zipped up the hoodie with a vicious yank. Squatting, she delved through her handbag, which was lying discarded on the floor at the foot of the bed, and located her wallet, grabbed a fifty, and stuffed it into the pocket of her sweats. There was a hair band in the same pocket, so she pulled it out. Considering she couldn’t remember the last time she brushed, let alone washed, her hair, putting it up was probably best.
Bea stood, scraping the layers of brown—like, a truly unremarkable mousy kind of brown—on top of her head and gave them a quick twist before tying the band around. Some of the layers made an immediate escape, which, given how fine Bea’s hair was at the best of times, was unsurprising despite their current state of lankness.
God…all those useless, wasted years of product and messing around with it to give it body and pizzazz. She’d been such a sap!
Well, screw hair product, too.
Her gaze fell on her paused laptop screen and the frozen image of Sam and Dean Winchester deep in conversation, in all their Hottie McTottie hotness.
“Catch you later, guys,” she said. “Mama’s going to be right back.”
She sighed. It was a pity to have to leave them even for a short foray, especially when she’d honestly thought she’d brought in enough supplies to last her the entire fifteen seasons. But obviously she’d miscalculated, considering she was only midway through season fourteen.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Then she laughed hysterically, which might have been from the lack of sugar or, more likely, the yawning gulf between what Dean Winchester, Demon Hunter wouldn’t do compared to her, Beatrice Archer, Advertising Executive.
Former Advertising Executive.
Or it could be the ridiculousness of talking to somebody not real living in a not real universe… Still—Team Dean forever. And screw the corporate world for depriving her of the delight that was the Winchester brothers for so long.
Bea wasn’t sure she’d ever forgive Jing-A-Ling (or herself) for that.
She grabbed the apartment keys out from under more discarded paper towels she’d been using as napkins and several empty boxes of animal crackers littering the coffee table, then tromped down the narrow staircase to the door at the bottom, which opened to the small parking lot behind Déjà Brew. Sunlight flooded all around her, burning her eyes, and she shut them tight and almost hissed like one of those vampires the Winchester boys hunted.
Keeping her head down and shading her forehead with her hand, she waited for her frying retinas to recover before allowing her eyelids to drift slowly open. The sight that greeted her—two fuzzy bunny slippers—was alarming. Or at least it would have been prior to ditching LA. She wriggled her toes in them, and the bunny ears flopped, and she…laughed.
She actually laughed.
Clearly not alarmed at all. In fact, she tried valiantly to summon one single fuck but came up empty.
There was a certain liberation in being new to town. Apart from Jenny and Wyatt Carter—Jenny had handed her the keys to the apartment, and Wyatt had helped her move her stuff up the stairs—Bea didn’t know another soul in Credence. Which meant she could strip naked and parade down the main street in total anonymity.
If she wanted to.
She could certainly walk to the diner and back in her sweats and slippers. It would take her thirty minutes max, and there was still quite a nip in the air despite the bright sunshine, so who cared if she looked like she’d just rolled out of bed? She had just rolled out of bed. And she was done with expensive hair volumizer treatments and bras and egg-white omelets for breakfast. She was over midnight deadlines and getting up at the crack of dawn to work out on the elliptical to stop her ass from sagging. Over the pressure to get Botox and lip fillers.
She was done trying to conform to seriously screwed-up societal expectations of women in corporate-landia and the insane pressure to be on top of everything all the damn time and never, ever complain lest she came across as a shrill bitch who couldn’t cut it with the big boys.
Her stomach growled, and Bea swore it actually roared, Sugar!!!
Obeying as if her life depended on it, Bea and her bunny slippers hurried around to the main street and across the way to Annie’s. A couple of cars passed her, but other than that, the sleepy little town was pretty much dead. Hmm…maybe it was Sunday? But Annie’s was definitely open, and that was all that mattered.
Bea was inside within a second. A blast of warmth and the aroma of baked carbohydrates hit her at once, making her forget all about her appearance as saliva flooded her mouth, and she practically sleepwalked to the display cases brimming with pie. She pushed her hood back and unzipped the hoodie as her eyes found the selection of flavored ice cream beside the pie cabinet.
