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to wake up being greeted by your … little friend .”
    Alex flashed those eyes at her again. “Come on Baby. The couch was stiff and lumpy. The TV was supposed to keep me company but the cable went out. So I got lonely and I missed you.”
    Alex smiled all too sexily and inched a little closer. Abby knew very well that he was completely naked under her green gingham, low thread count sheets. She leapt out of bed with the agility of a gymnast before he could get too close.
    “Oh no you don’t. Come on Alex. I thought we had a deal. If you can’t stick to it you should pack up your things and move into the gallery. I don’t care if there’s no shower and no TV. I don’t care if the whole place starts to stink from you and the buyers start running away. I can sell my work somewhere else. I sleep in the bed alone.” She took a second to catch her breath. “And stop calling me Baby.”
    Abby saw the look on Alex’s face and suddenly realized she was standing in front of him in nothing but a pair of red thong panties. She instinctively brought her hands up to cover her breasts.
    “Hot.” He mouthed the word with a mischievous look in his eye before breaking into a laugh.
    “Damn it,” Abby said under her breath then spun on her heels to run into the bathroom. She slammed the door behind her with a theatrical bang.
    “If you don’t get the hell out of my room I am coming out there to beat the ever living shit out of you with the heaviest object I can find.” Her voice was sharp and serious as she yelled through the door while simultaneously scanning for the nearest projectile.
    “Okay okay. I’m going back to my exile on the sofa. Don’t get those unbelievably sexy candle apple red panties in too tight of a bunch.”
    “What an asshole,” she mumbled then shouted through the door. “Shut up Alex!”
    Abby heard his muffled chuckle , listen ing as he shuffled around and pulled on his jeans. She could hear his belt buckle jangle loosely, clanging against his zipper as he walked through the bedroom door and shut it behind him.
    Abby leaned against the bathroom door and sighed. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Apparently Alex wasn’t going to make this easy on either of them. But she refused to give in to him and his stupid sexy grin. She didn’t love him and was done with empty sex . Forever.
    As a sign of her dedication to avoid the tempting man currently camped out in her living room, she made a silent vow to start wearing her ugliest baggy sweat suit to bed.

CHAPTER THREE
     
    Sunday, December 16th 2012, 2:14 pm
     
    D ays passed and Abby was beginning to think she couldn’t take any more. After experiencing the same extreme apocalyptic dreams night after night, and dealing with the enticement of her sexed up quasi ex - boyfriend being around twenty-four-seven , she was simply on the verge of breaking into pieces.
    She cursed herself every day for dumping her pills, but in the next second reminded herself that she was feeling things again and she was grateful for that. She was finally Abby again, un-medicated, slightly miserable, Abby. She told herself the misery was just part of being a person who could feel the full spectrum of human emotion and it would be worth it in the end.
    Some space and some time to think would make all the difference. There never seemed to be enough time in the day to get things done and she couldn’t remember the last time she sat down to watch TV or read a book. She was always moving, always running.
    And always making art. She was completely obsessed with painting and drawing all sorts of images from the dreams. Each one was different and the more she worked the more detailed the paintings got, revealing new parts of a story she couldn’t yet begin to understand. Every time she completed a painting she recorded her work by taking high resolution pictures of each canvas. Something other worldly or out of the scope of her everyday life was telling her that those