The Billionaire’s Full Figured Desire

She thought that people who picked color schemes to convey appearances and actively attempted to appear “classier” or of higher social prestige than they actually felt were snobs and people who owned glass decanters in their house were the snobbiest of the bunch, more likely than not. Fortunately, her choices in terms of her bedroom furniture weren’t so bad. A triple-paneled table mirror was set in the wall above her dressing table, the carpet was, instead of matching grey, pale cream-colored, a few shades shy of the tones of her own skin. The bedspread, however, was not so fortunate as to carry its own hue. It matched the matte grey of the walls to a tee, and not for the first time, Frida cursed her own razor-sharp attention to detail.

Frida felt Terrence stir beside her, and she drew in a sharp breath. After their…well…not argument, but slight disagreement last night, the last thing she wanted to do was get into another discussion with him this morning. Of course, that meant that she would have to simply lie in bed, as still as possible, until she physically could no longer and had to get up for work. A hefty price, to be sure, but one that Frida was sure she was willing to pay.

Was any price ever too high to pay to avoid confrontation? Frida didn’t know that such a number existed. Nor could she think of a situation or scenario where such a question would hold true. Avoiding confrontation was the secret to a long and happy life. Probably. She was only twenty-eight, hardly a testament or an icon that blazed the trail for others on how to defy the hands of time. No, Frida would leave that to women of far more seasoned years. As if the ordeal that she and Terrence had just been through wasn’t enough, Frida was becoming increasingly aware that she was approaching “the big Three-Oh”. Thirty really wasn’t that old, but then again, that was her logical brain talking.

And being afraid of reaching a specific age is really neither logical nor rational. Still, Frida hadn’t felt this way since she was nineteen years old, nearly ten years back! A lifetime away! And just as she had matured in some ways, her mindset had grown and evolved to the point where she found herself wondering, with increasing urgency, whether aging was simply a slow march toward an inevitable death. Thankfully, it was usually at this point where Rational Frida joined the proverbial chat and swiftly put those thoughts to bed.

Even so, Frida couldn’t help but wonder, if this was making her worry, what would she be going through when her fortieth birthday was upon her? That was a milestone that all men and women came upon eventually (if they were lucky), and only the wisest knew to fear. Frida had, on occasion, wondered if it wasn’t the ones who didn’t even make it to forty who were the lucky ones. Of course, deaths were always a tragedy, the young and premature ones even more so, and yet there was a silver lining to every cloud, wasn’t there? Those who died in youth would always be remembered as such; young and strong. They’d never know the horror of sitting in front of their mirror thinking “I used to have more hair here” or “this didn’t used to be here.”

Frida was far too young to speak from experience in this matter, but the day when the dreaded “these didn’t use to be so droopy” would pass her lips was a-coming. Not for the first time, Frida definitely envied the male gender as a whole for being free of so many of the worries and constraints that the womenfolk of the world faced and embraced every single day of their lives. Frida was way too early for a midlife crisis, and yet here she was, overthinking every single thing that was there to be overthought! She found it strange, and indeed, amusing in a twisted sort of way, how she’d had no worries about her ever-advancing age a few years ago.

At the age of 25, she was about as content with her age as it was possible for a human woman to be! And it was the abrupt change in her attitude toward the matter over such a short space of time that alarmed her, more than anything else. She’d gone from the happy-go-lucky “age is just a number” attitude to something entirely different in just three years! Something had happened in those eleven hundred days to make her all dark and moody in regards to age, like a female Edgar Allen Poe. It was all she could do to stop herself thinking about how each day continues the slow march toward the inevitable end that awaits each and every person on the planet. When she was younger, Frida just used to laugh at people who took life too seriously, now she was one of them!

Again, she should have expected it. That was the way of growing up, specifically the progression from childhood to adulthood. Nothing was as you expected it, and even less was as it seemed.

Sometimes, in quiet moments, Frida reflected on how much had changed since she herself was a little girl. If anyone who knew her now could see her back then, they would never believe little Frida and Grown-Up Frida to be the same person.

Little Girl Frida was positively a ball of inquisitiveness. Forever asking questions, and demanding answers that the adults around her didn’t want to give. Frida still remembered the time she’d first asked her father “where babies came from.” A simple enough question to answer for a child, and yet her father had crashed and burned and started babbling, and he’d been halfway through showing Frida how to put a condom on a banana before her mother came in and smoothed the situation over with a book called “Let’s Talk About S*x.”

Somewhere along the way, however, Frida had lost that. She’d lost the bright, bubbly, wide-eyed girl, and become something entirely different. Someone that she didn’t always recognize. And she couldn’t be certain exactly what had tipped her over that precipice. More likely than not, it was the stress of the job. Being a Head Chef, and following the path to becoming one, was certainly no walk in the park.

Frida turned her head slightly to glance at the alarm clock on the bedside table. The time read 6:45. Normally, her alarm would be going off within the next quarter-hour, but not today. She’d already disabled the alarm, on the back end of one of her many visits to the bathroom during her fitful and sleepless night. She didn’t need an alarm to wake her up, she’d always known that she was going to be up at the crack of dawn anyway, so what was the point? She hadn’t even gone to the bathroom so many times because she needed to use the toilet, it was merely something to do, some small sense of purpose beyond lying in a dark room, alone but for her thoughts and the gentle snoring of the man that lay beside her.