And not only did he take the blanket, but his sleeping posture was a disaster.
In the first few days, I woke up to find myself tangled up with a man over six feet tall, like he was an octopus, nearly tossing him out of the bed.
Afterward, I resigned myself to waking up to his soft breathing, slipping out of his arm to start the day.
It turned out that getting used to something could be a terrifying thing.
Before I met him, my life was a complete mess, and everything was falling apart.
But after meeting him, I started having expectations.
Like on my way home from work, I’d pick up his favorite fruit cake.
When I passed by a store, I’d wonder if he had run out of painting supplies.
During that time, I actually began to feel happy.
When I smeared whipped cream on the tip of his nose, and he looked at me, helpless, I laughed so hard.
I laughed so much that I even surprised myself.
–
But such is life.
Smooth sailing was always a fleeting fantasy for me.
At some point, rumors started circulating at work that I was the daughter of a mistress.
At first, it was just a few coworkers whispering to each other behind closed doors.
But soon, even in the cafeteria, people would point at me.
It wasn’t hard to figure out who was behind it—my “wonderful” stepmother.
She had already spread lies about me more than once.
Back in high school, right before my college entrance exams, she had even showed up at the school gate with a banner calling me the child of a mistress.
In fact, she was the mistress, and my father had married her less than a week after we buried my mother.
Yet she insisted on pinning that label on me.
I thought about defending myself, about clearing my name.
But when she and my father appeared, walking hand in hand, looking like a picture-perfect couple, everything I said seemed like an empty lie, and all I received were judgmental stares from others.
