No place to hide
It's seriously getting out of control. I've been living with these feelings for almost a year. I'm adaptive, I can take any pain. I'm used to seeing her ranting about me, mocking me, accusing me.
But those videos are getting different. Intense. And I'm not able to keep my composure. Where to find a safe place to see the next video at 9a.m.? Such a humiliating degradation, really. At first, while hunting down Wickham, I was able to wait till the evening and see them at home. My mind was spinning around her all day, I was working for her. It was like serving her and getting my reward in the evening during my well deserved rest.
Rest? Come on, I should not fool myself. There are two kinds of nights. The ones spent half-asleep with sweet however disturbing dreams. Or the ones in complete oblivion, after a couple of glasses of wine while fantasising about her sharing different moments of my wretched life. She's like a baby, she's an adorable tyrant, the centre of my universe who's due a standard amount of attention every day. There's no escaping. More frightening even, it seems like a life long engagement. Not that I mind.
So. Where to hide? Over are the days when I could tell my personal assistant that I needed 10 minutes undisturbed. I would watch the video, take whatever she has to say, cheer about it or die quietly but emerge from my office as a phoenix and do my business as usual until finally evening comes and I find comfort in my solitude to muse over subtext, gestures, glances. And rewatch them until my eyes get red like rabbits'.
No, 10 minutes would not do anymore. I need time to pull myself together, considerable amount of time. Public coffees equally out of the question, since I tend to give unearthly noises, hissing, grounding teeth, snorting, moaning. Or worse still, inhaling like a suffocant after holding my breath for 5 straight minutes. So those days are also over when I was conscious not to schedule meetings for Monday and Thursday morning and would just simply arrive late to the office.
My closest staff noticed my queer behaviour anyway. The closed office door, the late arrivals, the sudden departures and re-appearances without any indication of availability or time of return. The suspicious habit of taking up swimming during the day. Not using my car any more but coming to work on bicycle, regardless of unforgiving hills or dress code. Setting up a garde-robe in my office, coming to think of it. Starting at 5a.m. working like crazy till they arrive at 9 to find tons of e-mails in their mailboxes with enough tasks delegated for the whole day. Then I would disappear after saying hello, to be popping in and out during the whole day and resuming work at 5p.m when everyone is leaving.
I wonder if Gigi or Fitz told them something because they bear it rather patiently. No excuses are due to Fitz or my sister, they are fully aware that I'm working all day long on something Lizzie-related and I'm dreaming awake all night of something completely else, still Lizzie-related. The obvious choice would be to ask one of them to let me sit in their office for a couple of hours for the video. The drawback is that then they would know how insanely I behave just because of 5 minutes of digital presence with her.
God help me, I'm completely waisted. I know I should endure only a couple of more days and I could go to her the moment I got rid of that stupid porn production company. It turns out it's damn difficult to do legally but unnoticed. And everybody please excuse me if I don't want to lose money on it. Not that I care about money but I have principles. That evil bastard Wickham got an astronomical sum out of me when he seduced Gigi. At least this time he won't get anything. He knows my Achilles' heel, manipulative psychopath as he is. He knows way too much about me and my family. Now about Lizzie's family too which is just as bad. A whole bunch of attorneys are brainstorming night and day on how to prevent him from doing anything similar to anybody else. But I know this is a Gordian knot. We don't need legal action there, we need a convoluted plan.
Oh, idea. Back to Lizzie and the video. I can go to the screening room and see the video on the big screen alone in the darkness. Door can be locked. Perfect. Just booking it for the next two hours. Here we go.