Desire Uncaged: An MMA Romance by Ina Anielka

Chapter 1
    Sara stared into the mirror of her bathroom, rivulets of water streaming down the mirror’s center, where her palm had passed moments before . She sighed, pulling her long red hair, dripping wet, behind her head. She was only partially awake, and her face maintained its tired appearance; eyes puffy and half-closed, skin red and irritated. Moments like these--and they seemed to occur with increasing frequency--reminded her that she was more than four years removed from the girl who had walked across the stage at her university commencement. She had been in the real world far longer than she had been in college, even though some days she felt like she had barely changed.
    But she had changed . She was almost 50 pounds lighter now than she had been when she donned the cap and gown. All the pictures in magazines and on websites had shown women that lost the weight had become trim; model-beautiful. She was still overweight, at least according the charts in the doctor’s office. But instead of a tight model body, her stomach jiggled with loose skin, her breasts sagged like an old woman’s. Most of all though, the women in the photos beamed confidence, security, satisfaction. They weren’t wondering where their time had gone. Or where their lives were going. They didn’t look in the mirror and see a women who was leaving her best years behind her, one day at a time.
    As much as she wanted to wallow in self-pity, she had to get to work. She finished throwing herself together and hurriedly shuffled down the stairs of her apartment complex to her car. The cold Midwestern air froze her breath as it came out of her lungs, even inside the car, her breath cast small clouds as she exhaled, hoping her car would turn over after the frigid night. It did.
    The cubicle farm, as Sara called it, was in a nondescript building in an office park. She handled shipping reports for a large publishing company. It was not her dream job—she had studied English in college and dreamed of being a writer—but it paid the bills and kept the lights on. The office was full of catty, middle aged bureaucrats. They loved gossip and cupcakes in the break room and office politics. At first it had bothered Sara. As time went on however, she found herself enjoying it more and more. She was an active participant in the water cooler gossip. Thankfully, however as a single girl she was rarely the subject of any salacious rumors. Her life just wasn’t that interesting, at least not compared to Tina’s divorce, Jay’s sick mom, or Cheryl’s kids’ latest DUI arrest.
    Sara typed away at her computer, situated amongst bare grey walls. Despite almost 3 years at the company, she never really had “moved in” , decorating the walls with pictures of memorabilia. Instead she kept her walls bare, citing “professional appearances”.
    Sometime around noon, Sara heard the echo of her boss’ voice across the room. She strained to hear what he was saying. It sounded as if he was introducing the people in the office. Moving from cubicle to cubicle. Stating names and some meaningless tidbit of information in a disinterested, monotone voice.
    Sara straightened up her papers, striving to appear a clean, organized little worker bee, on the outside chance this was some VP or a rep from corporate. She could hear her boss grow closer. She opened her computer to some technical project she could talk intelligently about. She briefly thought it strange that she was stopping her actual work to create the illusion of work, but this was life in a corporate office. Sometimes, you just had to bring out the smoke and mirrors. Her boss was only a cubicle away as Sara looked at her computer intently.
    “…and this is Sara, she handles shipping. I don’t think you’ll have much interaction with her. Or any of shipping, really.”
    Sara looked up. The boss was showing around a kid. Well, not a kid, but certainly not the VP or corporate rep she expected. It was some new man.