Page 44 of Omega
I was hungry. Thirsty.
Tired.
And bored.
Did I mention bored?
I’m an active girl. I’m busy from six in the morning to past midnight most days—or I used to be. I’d worked two jobs and gone to school full time, plus I usually found time to swim for an hour every day between classes, and between shifts on the weekends. That was my dirty little secret, that hour of swimming every day. I scheduled my life around it, to be totally honest. I ate horribly, regularly pigging out on bacon cheeseburgers and milkshakes and pizza and boozing it up as often as I could. But, to keep myself from ballooning into a walrus, I swam. Hard. Every day for an hour, I’d do laps at the local pool, back and forth, as hard and fast as I could without stopping. I’d change my stroke every four laps: crawl, breast, back, butterfly. Fuck, those four butterfly laps were a bitch. But they kept me relatively fit. I mean, I’d never be a size four, much less a zero, but I had a pretty firm body for a woman with my build. Genetics did not bless me with anything approaching skinny, which is fine. I’m built like a brick shithouse, and an hour of swimming every day meant great muscle tone, low BMI, and provided a hell of a cardio workout. I just wasn’t skinny.
Again, I digress.
What was I thinking about?
Oh yeah, being busy. I never had down time. If I wasn’t working, or at school, I was studying, drinking, or fucking.
And yes, fucking counts as a workout too, especially if you do it right.
So to go from that to sitting around on Roth’s boat all day long, not doing dick? That was a hard adjustment. Fortunately, Roth made sure there was a killer gym on that Caribbean cruise liner he called a “yacht”, which I took regular advantage of. No pool, but plenty of exercise equipment, including a rowing machine. I avoid any exercise that involves excessive jostling: I just bounce too much. Running in particular is a special hell for me, so I avoid that. Stair steppers, treadmills, even exercise bikes are things I stay away from. I’ll lift weights, row, swim, anything with low or zero impact. No bouncing means no lower back problems from hauling the girls around. No bullshit.
God, I was so bored I was thinking about exercise? What the fuck?
Eventually the door scraped open, blinding me with sudden light. I cowered in the corner and hissed, shielding my eyes as a silhouetted figure leaned in, set a tray on the floor, and backed out, closing the door once again.
I smelled food.
My stomach went crazy, growling like crazy as I scrambled across the floor toward the tray. I smelled garlic, meat, onions…a gyro, maybe? I did my best blind-person impression, touching everything carefully in an attempt to figure out what was in front of me. Definitely a gyro, plus a bag of chips, and a can of something cold. Really? Was this a prison, or a shopping mall food court? Not that I was complaining. I cracked open the can and sipped at it, tasting cola of some kind. Diet; blech. I normally stayed away from diet soda because the stupid aspartame gave me headaches and diet cola was generally worse for you than regular soda. But beggars can’t be choosers, and I was very definitely in a beggar sort of scenario, so I drank the diet. The gyro, now…that shit was delicious. Roasted lamb cut thin, cucumber sauce, some crunchy red onions, tomatoes. I devoured that thing so fast I barely tasted it. The chips were kettle cooked, too.
A much better meal than I had been expecting as a kidnappee. I was honestly expecting to either not get anything at all, or moldy bread and smelly water. The fucking gyro basket tasted like it was from Athens Coney Island.
Turns out stuffing yourself that fast after not eating for who knows how long isn’t the greatest idea. Talk about sitting heavy in my stomach. It sat like a goddamned gut-bomb.
Also, I still had to pee.
* * *
After banging on the door for what felt like an hour straight, it jerked open, revealing a very pissed off Yuri.
“What the fuck you want?” he growled.
“I have to pee.”
He gestured at the floor. “So pee.”
I scowled at him. “Really, Yuri? I know I’m a prisoner but come on. Let me use a toilet. We’re on a fucking boat, where the hell am I going to go?”
He stared at me in silence. “Fine.” He jerked his head and I followed him around the corner and along a low, narrow corridor to a tiny bathroom. “Door open.”
I shrugged, shucked my thong and lifted my shirt, staring at him as I pissed. “You want to watch, then watch. I don’t give a shit. I’m warning you, though, it’s gonna be a long one. Like, you might need a book.”
The corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly, and he grunted in irritation. He didn’t want to like me, but he did. Hell, he couldn’t help it; I’m a funny gal. But he shut the door, so I decided to take care of some other business while I had the opportunity. Gut-bombs away!
And as a bonus, I saw a blue Papermate ballpoint pen on the floor in the corner under the sink, long forgotten. The pen is mightier than the sword, right? I mean, I’ve seen pens used as weapons on TV a bunch of times. Better than nothing.
Where to hide it, though?
It wasn’t exactly like I had any pockets, so you figure it out.
And, yes, I rinsed it off first.