A. L . MILLER - ATTACHMENT

A.L. Miller is a mother or two, an animal lover and vegan. She lives near the Rocky Mountains and enjoys being alone or with her children. This is her first published work.

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ATTACHMENT

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1. How Coffee made me a Liar

​This was how she really became a sneak. This was how she really became a liar. It was coffee. Just coffee. She really couldn't believe what her life had become. 'Wasn't I somewhat of a strong woman before?" she would wonder sometimes. Every morning she would drive her daughter to school. They would listen to music. It was a special time. She would try to push aside the constant tension she felt in her belly for these few minutes a day. She would tell her daughter, "I want you to know this is not right, this is not okay, but I'm going to change it."
 
Sometimes she would bring the dogs and they would go to the park in the morning. They would run so fast and they were so happy, she couldn't help but feel their happiness. One time she brought the dogs with the intention of going to the park, but it was too wet and cold. When she got back home, he said to her, "figures, you never do anything you say you're going to do."
She tried to stay away as long as she could. Tried to stay out of the apartment until he would be gone. She would go grocery shopping many mornings. On the other days she would rush home and go up to the gym and stay there until it was time for him to go to work.
 
But every single morning, she would stop and get coffee. At the gas station, or at the Starbucks in the grocery store. When she got home, she would wait for him to go to work, wait a good half hour to make sure he didn't turn around, then she would go out into her van and get her coffee and bring it upstairs. She always kept it hidden by her desk just in case. After she finished it, she would walk it to the dumpster so he wouldn't find the empty cup in the home trash can.
 
She remembered the moment she put her coffee maker into the box for goodwill when they were moving. She knew he would never allow for it. A month before he had come to her place and saw she had a cup of coffee. A fight ensued with the result of him tearing hair from her head once again and bending her finger so far back she believed it had broken. She tried to tell him it was wrong of him to be upset with her for drinking coffee. That she had always been a coffee drinker. What started about coffee then turned to diet..."look at your bad habits and what they do to you. Look at your thighs, look at your stomach. You mean to say you think you know the proper way to live? Look at your dim teeth. How could you intentionally consume something you know will detriment your looks?" He himself would make a big show of wiping his teeth with a towel after consuming something that could possibly stain them.
 
She knew it was wrong to live this way, but she could not take a stand against him. He was too viscous, and he had hurt her too badly. She was truly terrified of him by now. There were brief moments of tenderness where she would sometimes question everything, but no matter how tender, she still knew it was wrong. She still hated that she had come into this situation willingly, knowing it would be bad, yet still surprised at how terrible it actually was. It was so much worse than she could have imagined.
 
She was making kale salad. A relatively simple, healthy recipe. He was watching her. She poured too much oil on top. "I am not eating that...” he said. He criticized the oil. She sighed. He backed her into a corner. "I don't ever want to hear your fucking sighs again. All these little cheats of yours, you think it's healthy just because it's a salad? You just poured 500 calories of oil on top of it. You better hear me, you better not ever fucking sigh like that again."  He had a friend over, a young female, ex-student of his. Because of this, she was able to leave the house without further argument. She, of course, heard plenty more lecturing on it, until she finally relented and apologized for sighing.
 
One early afternoon she took a break from work to walk the dogs. She still hadn't gotten her coffee from the van so walked the dogs then went to get her coffee. When she walked back into the apartment he was there. Sitting on the couch. Her heart raced. He was home early. She thought of leaving her coffee outside the door, but he would definitely see it if he went out there for any reason. She had no reason to back track without him questioning. No way to make it to the dumpster. Her heart thudded. She quickly ducked into the laundry room to remove the dogs leash's, looked for a place to hide the cup. He would find it, he would smell it. With terror overwhelming her entire body, she grabbed the cup, held it to her side, and walked casually into the bathroom. He did not look up at her. She hid the cup in the bathroom cabinet. The chances of him going into that bathroom for anything were very slim, but she was still very nervous.
Crisis averted, for now. Tension on every inch of her body. Belly aching. Mind numb. Yes, she was now exactly what he thought she was, exactly what he thought every woman was. A sneak and a liar.

2. ​Hills Like White Elephants II

Get the operation, he said.
Yes, I will, I want to, I want it for myself, she replied.
Why don’t you just admit that you’re doing it for me?
Because you don’t love me so I have to make it about myself.
Well, that’s right, I don’t love you. But if you did it I might want you again, and that might at least make it a little more bearable to be with you these next ten months.
You don’t think you’ll love me if I do it?
No, not really. Lust can lead to love but there’s no guarantee. We have too much history.
She turned away. She looked out their apartment window. It was nearly fall. This was supposed to be their season. This was supposed to be the time they held hands in the open and walked the dogs together. The afternoons were to be spent sneaking in a movie while she was working and nights cuddling on the couch. It should have been so much simpler than what it was.
I’m getting the operation. I already have it all set.
He didn’t look up or react, continued to stare at his computer screen.
She walked out onto their balcony overlooking the foothills.
Look outside, honey, look at the snow on the mountains. 80 degrees outside and we can still see snow. Looks like great white elephants out there, don’t you think? Everything will be okay. I am happy about this. We will be happy.
Here, he said. Get it like this. He showed her a picture from his laptop.
She looked at him. She turned away. She knew she wasn’t going to get the operation.
 

3. Nooner

 
He walked into the apartment, exhausted after a seemingly long day, long week, long month. He was so tired and did not want to confront yet again the poor decisions he had recently made. But there she was, sitting as always at her desk, belly rolls spilling out, her dimpled thighs and saddle bags hanging out of her trashy cut offs. He noticed her quickly try to adjust herself so that she didn’t look such a mess, try to smooth her stringy ass hair down, wipe her smeared make up from under her eyes, pull her shorts up over her stomach rolls and pull her thigh fat to the inside of her legs. “Hi,” she said meekly, in her whiny, high pitched voice. All of this just pushed him to the brink…this bitch should not have to be adjusting her fucking fat rolls for god’s sake. Why didn’t she just actually do something about it? “I want to continue our conversation,” he said. She sighed. Sighing infuriated him. “Listen, bitch,” he said. “You are a loser. I do not associate myself with losers. My job is to elevate you; you are not to drag me down to your white trash level. Do you understand?” She didn’t answer. “Look at me,” he said. She quickly glanced his way and then looked down. He could see she wore the same expression she always did when he tried to talk to her, pursed lips, beady eyes. God she was fucking ugly. “Look at me you stupid fucking cunt!” He yelled now. Now she would look at him. Now the fear was coming back to her. This was how he liked her, terrified. Then he knew he was in control. “Do you know how disgusting you are? You have aged 10 years since I’ve known you, all those little veins popping out in your face, all the damage smoking has done to your skin…all that peach fuzz all over your face. Lip, jaw laser bitch, it’s what I told you. That is all I see when I look at you. Your fat fucking thighs… go find someone else who wants to lie between them. Your wrinkled stomach hanging down onto mine when we fuck, that is all I see, makes me sick!…did your doctor tell you that you couldn’t get a tummy tuck? Why can’t you get a tummy tuck? Your fat dimpled ass bouncing up and down on my cock…YOU made me see that, don’t you understand? You are nothing that I want in a woman. You are not fit, you are not voluptuous. I want to be with a fit chick. You know how embarrassed I am being seen at the pool with you? Looking back over the years, I’m embarrassed I was ever seen with you at all. Do you know what it’s like to come home every day to this raggedy ass girl, sitting there in your space, with all her fat just plopping out of her? And her fucking dog that is such a pain in the ass to walk and has no personality, and her two cats that keep me up all fucking night and get hair all over my fucking house, and your whiny ass, spoiled daughter.  THIS IS MY FUCKING HOUSE! This is my space! You pay a third of the rent and there are five of you. I wish you would just fucking disappear, just disappear.” She was now crying. She whined, “But honey, I’ve been trying, I’ve been working out every day and drinking the shakes…I need your support to get to where I should be, I need your love.” “You’re not going to get my love,” he said. “It’s dead, it’s gone. You disgust me. The only hope now is to make it so I can stand living with you these next 10 months, but there will never be love again. And there will be other women, you’re going to have to learn to deal with it. No more banging on my door in the middle of the night trying to get a woman out of “your” bed. That is not your bed, that is not our bed, that is MY bed. No more being rude to the girls I bring home. I am not yours. I do not love you. I hate you, I wish you were dead, I imagine you dead, I imagine you falling off a cliff.” Just then her work phone rang. What a pain in the fucking ass she was, all this shit she brought into his life. “Thank you for calling…” she said. “Thank you for calling!” he mocked loudly in a whiny high pitched voice, just like hers. He continued to mock everything she said in the same way. God he hated her, he hated her voice, her smell, her presence, even her laugh that he once thought he longed to hear every day, everything that she brought into his apartment, he hated her. 
 He went into the bedroom, pulled up pictures of his ex-wife sucking cock, and jerked off.
 
 

​4. Buffalo 66

​Buffalo 66 is a Valentine’s movie because the boy buys the girl a heart shaped cookie at the end. She wondered if they lived happily ever after. She never saw part two.
This was the first movie she watched with him. They had been invited over to watch a Valentine’s movie. Afterwards she thought it was quite cute that he deemed it a Valentine’s movie because of the cookie. (She also came to find that any movie that had a Christmas tree in it at some point could be called a Christmas movie, and so on).
She paid close attention, it seemed important to him. She didn’t quite understand yet how important it was to him to show movies to people he cared about, but over the years she came to understand, and they watched many, many more movies together, and it became important to her as well.
He thought Cristina Ricci was pretty. She had never really paid much attention to her or thought much of her, but really looking at her through his eyes, she saw how beautiful she was. He loved the dress she wore in the movie, and the way she did her makeup, the sparkly blue eye shadow. He liked sparkles. At the time, she thought it was kind of weird for an adult woman to wear sparkles. And she hardly ever wore a dress.
Her character, her personality, reminded her of herself…and she wondered then if it was possible he looked at her in the same way a little.
A few weeks later, at the makeup store, she considered all of the eye shadows. She would be going out with him tonight (and her boyfriend) so as she sometimes did while at the mall decided to put on her make up there. There was a deep blue sparkly shadow. It was something she would normally not look twice at and it was close to the same one…but it was too obvious. She could not suddenly show up wearing eye shadow like that. Would anyone else remember that he said out loud that he liked that? She decided on the purple sparkles. She reasoned that should be less obvious because it was not blue. She put on three layers of the eye shadow and looked at herself. She wondered if he would notice.
At the bar that night, he exclaimed, “Hey, you’re wearing sparkly eye shadow just like from the movie!” He smiled at her, and stared a little. She felt humiliated, and thrilled. She wondered if he had any idea she had put it on just for him and wondered if she even wanted him to know. He must not have known, because then he would not have said anything out loud. Or maybe he thought about it after and realized what she had done. Or maybe he just assumed that she wore sparkly eye shadow sometimes. Or maybe he never thought of it again. Whatever it was, she thought about it too much.
They should have watched the movie again. She should have remembered…that no matter what he ever said to her, it would all be okay. That it would all be worth it, just to lay down with him and hold him and to know that no matter what he did or said to the contrary, in the end she held his heart.