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"Hello, dear." Stan greeted as Karen walked into his office the next day. "What are you doing here?"
"We haven't seen each other in almost a week and you ask me what I'm doing here?" she asked. "I just wanted to see if you were still alive. I guess you are so I'll see you next week." She said before walking towards the door.
"Stop being so dramatic, Karen. What do you want?" he asked as he stood from his desk and walked over to her. He leaned down and kissed her cheek, moving to her lips and kissing her coldly. She barely kissed back, almost perfunctorily. It didn't feel right. She pulled away.
"I just wanted to see how you were." She lied. She had actually come to confront him about his affair, but she cowardly decided not to.
"You want to know how I am?" he asked as he leaned in to suck on her earlobe. "I'm horny." He said, running his hands over her breasts.
"Stop it. I'm not." She said as she pushed him away. He took hold of her wrist and ran his fingers up and down her arm.
"You have such beautiful skin, darling. It's flawless. Now, if it weren't for the extra weight..." He said, trailing off as he continued to caress her arm. She pushed his hands away. "I love you." He said, leaning down to kiss her cheek once again. She just faked a smile and left. He didn't even seem to notice that she didn't return the blank sentiment. He didn't care that she left. All he did was go right back to working on his computer.
Karen was enraged. How could he expect her to want him when he was fucking some other woman? She had a newfound hatred for him. She didn't even want to be around him. She walked into her bathroom and pulled a bottle of vodka out of her husband's mini-fridge.
She took a long drink and locked the door behind her. As she sat on the side of the bathtub she replayed Stan's words. 'You have such beautiful skin,' 'it's flawless,' 'if it weren't for the extra weight.' He made her feel sick.
She threw the emptied bottle across the room and heard it shatter. She started a bath and stripped off her clothes. She looked in the mirror at her naked body and cried. Her skin may have been flawless, but her body wasn't what it used to be. She was very thin when she got married, but she gained a lot of weight soon after. She was finally thinner, but she had never completely gotten her shape back.
She wiped her tears from her eyes, climbed into her steaming bath, and washed her body. She spread some shaving cream on her leg when she suddenly got a thought. She looked at her razor and paused for a moment. What would it feel like to look less than flawless? She answered her question by taking the razor across her wrist.
She gasped at the sting of the blade cutting her wrist and became angry with herself. 'Who does that?' she thought to herself. She wiped the blood off of her wrist with a washcloth and finished her bath.
After wrapping herself in a towel she got another cloth and made sure the blood would stop flowing. She realized how stupid she was acting and decided that she would never result to physical self injury. That just wasn't her thing. Instead, she decided to take a few pills and go to sleep. She was ready to try and face a new day. It was all she could do.
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"You're getting married?" Will asked incredulously as Grace held her left hand up in front of her face. Jack and Karen both froze. They had all gone out to eat together because Grace said she had a surprise. And what a surprise it was.
"Yeah." She replied, smiling. "He asked me last night. I'm so excited."
"Isn't this a little soon, honey?" Karen piped up. "I mean, you've only been together for a month."
"No, I can just feel that its right." She replied. "You know how that feels, right? Didn't you have that with Stan?" she asked. She wanted her friends to understand how she was feeling. She knew that Leo was the right man for her. She had never been so in love. But Karen seemed to tense up when Stan's name came into the conversation.
"Yeah, honey, of course I know." She said with a quick look to Will. He was the only one who knew what was going on with her and it killed him to know that their friendship was too awkward for him to help. He could have hit himself for lacking self-control a month ago. If he would have just kept his pants on, they would be able to talk about her problems. They were closer that they appeared before their little incident.
The four friends toasted Grace's engagement and were stunned to learn that the wedding was on the weekend, three days away. They warned her that she was moving too fast, but she just smiled and shared how much she loved Leo. They just hoped she wasn't making a mistake.