Page 6 of The High Price Of Loneliness

Angelica’s drive home was like a blur. Her mind was whirling thinking about what had just happened. She was excited about the possibilities—and especially about seeing Edward again. It was like a dream come true. Is this why no one else had ever measured up to her imagination? How could she have dreamed of what it would feel like to meet a man like Edward Gray? She realized she was speeding on her way home because her heart and adrenaline were racing. Her excitement had manifested itself into the wind flowing through her long blonde hair, but wisely she decided to ease off on the gas pedal. She simply couldn’t wait to get home and text Edward, hoping for his phone call already. As she parked in her much more modest driveway, still sitting in her car, she texted him, “I’m home safe now…”

Her phone rang almost immediately. “Hello!” she answered a bit too anxiously.

His deep warm voice caused her to want to curl up with her phone in the car for a bit, just to hear him. It felt like a warm blanket around her as he said, “I am glad you are home safe. Where are you exactly now, Angelica?”

She grinned as she confessed, “Well if you must know, I’m still sitting in my car. I texted you as soon as I got home, just as you asked.”

She heard his next compliment come wafting through her phone, keeping her blissful energy rolling. “Good girl, I like that you are so coachable and followed my instructions,” Gray encouraged her. “You get a gold star every time you do that, Angelica.”

Playing off his energy, she kept the intrigue going just a bit teasing playfully, “Oh really? And what do I get if I collect a lot of gold stars?”

But her face changed when she heard Gray answer in his deep, gravelly voice. “You get everything you can imagine. A new world will open, but first, you must show me you can be a good girl and follow all my instructions. You will quickly learn that I will only ask you for things that are completely in your best interest—or ours together.”

Angelica liked the sound of this new game with Edward and asked with purpose this time, “Ok. I’m in! What would you like me to do next?”

She heard Gray’s voice go even deeper, and in his most sexy and slow tone, he said, “I want you—to go inside. Undress for me and get ready for bed. Do all the normal things you do when you are winding down for the day, and then text me as soon as your head is on your pillow. Would you do that for me, Angelica?”

She was already getting out of her car to rush inside as the eager answer came, “Yes, of course.”

Angelica heard his deep voice add, what would become, a secret key in their adventure, “One last thing, Angelica. When I ask you to do something for me, something that you are completely comfortable with, I would like it very much if you would agree to answer me with, ‘Yes, sir.’ Do you think you could do this for me?”

She thought about his request before responding. Compared to things other men had asked of her, and how she had often been treated, this seemed like a fairly minor request. But she paused momentarily, before she finally took a step into Gray’s world, saying, “Yes, sir” in her soft and playful voice.

“Excellent. When you say that, it is a sign of respect. And when someone treats you with great respect, it is natural to want to return the favor to them as well. And together, we start building deeper trust. But real trust takes time. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes, sir. Everything you’ve told me tonight makes sense and feels right. I’ll text you from bed in just a few minutes,” she said sweetly. Angelica raced inside to get ready. She wanted the next call with Edward, and she could hardly wait until she was ready for bed. She wanted more of Edward’s dreamy, sexy voice on the phone.

She had never hurried so fast to get ready for bed in her life. Brushing her teeth, turning off the lights, undressing, and leaving clothes and shoes wherever handy—she was in bed with her heart pumping hard in just a few minutes.

Finally, it was time to text Edward. “My head is on the pillow—waiting for you…” it read. But this time her phone didn’t ring right away. She waited. Her toes started “tapping” up and down, waiting and waiting for Edward to call. Her mind started to fill with doubts and worries. Had he gotten busy on another phone call? Had he lost interest in her already? Why didn’t he call her back right away like when she texted from the car? A million questions were running through her mind. Then she started worrying and hoped everything was ok with Edward, when the phone finally rang.

Angelica answered the phone and said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

There was a pause of silence on the phone before his deep voice asked, “Are you in bed like I asked, Angelica?”

She blurted out quickly, “Yes, I was waiting for you.” She tried not to let her frustration from having to wait a few minutes for his call be detectable, but no such luck.

Gray asked with his sure, steady confidence oozing through the phone, “Were you a bit… anxious waiting, Angelica?”

Her mind now turned inward, reflecting on her impatience as she felt the purpose of his question. “Maybe just a little…” she confessed.

She was surprised by his answer. “Good,” he said. “That is useful energy sometimes. But you must learn to control your anxious mind, Angelica. You will discover that absolute certainty gets rid of almost all of those negative and wasted emotions.”

She could listen to his voice all night. With her head now on her pillow, she got more comfortable under the sheets, and she egged him on to tell her more. “What do you mean by ‘certainty?’” She leaned in, drinking in her bedtime call from Gray, to hear his story.

His dreamy voice explained, “It is one of the four primal needs in every human. The need for certainty is number one. But when we humans get enough of it, then we want to shake things up. We want some variety and excitement, and that often is the start of our conflicts.”

Instead of counting sheep, Angelica found herself in bed counting primal needs as Edward shared them. She asked him to give her the others, injecting, “That’s the first two. You said there were four.”

Angelica waited for more as he continued, “Well, number three is love and connection. But if you are human and have lived for a while, you probably have fallen in love before and have been hurt. Almost everyone has had this experience, so that’s how we learn to build ‘walls’ around our hearts for protection—so that doesn’t happen again, or at least not to a level we can’t handle. Building those walls is the skill I am best at, but that also numbs us from what is possible.”

Angelica thought about it before asking, but felt cozy hearing Edward talk into the night and risked it, “Why do you do that? Build those walls, that is.” She waited for the reply that never came.

After a bit of a pause, he simply continued with, “Lastly, at number four is significance.”

Edward continued, back on a roll perhaps to cover Angelica’s unanswered question about the walls he so expertly builds. “Well, for example, many women meet a guy whom they like a lot but may not truly love deeply. But some believe if they marry and have children with him, they will gain numbers 3 and 4: Total unconditional love and babies and children to whom ‘Mother’ is the most significant human in the world. But even that doesn’t last forever. Just wait until they turn into teenagers. Maybe that’s why we love our pets so much,” he said laughing. “They will give us unconditional love no matter how things are going at work or even if you’re having a bad hair day or whatever. All they want is our love and attention.”

Angelica thought of people she knew growing up and examples just like Edward had described. She just hadn’t heard them framed up quite this way before. She added, “Yes. That’s true, I think, now that you describe it that way. Is that how you look at the world, Edward? Do you always psychoanalyze people?” Angelica giggled softly into her phone.

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