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Dear Paris:
The Dream Man Next Door
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Copyright © 2019 - Laura Paulsen
All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
Sharon made herself comfortable in her fluffy pink house suit, with a plate of chocolate muffins and a cup of Capucchino, with lots of whipped cream on it, on her cozy couch in the living room. Criminal Minds, one of her favorite series. Today she had already seen "News 24", a few soaps and "The perfect dinner" and after the crime thriller the celebrity magazine "Red, stars and lifestyle" would follow.
It was a perfectly normal, average day in Sharon's life. Television consumption today was limited. She had repeatedly taken TV breaks and in the course of the day cleaned the apartment, washed laundry and had been shopping. But there were other days as well. Days on which she sat down in front of the television for breakfast in the morning and only switched it off in the evening to go to sleep. Only interrupted by toilets and kitchen corridors.
Tomorrow the annual "Jungle Camp" would start again. She was really looking forward to it. It was always fun for her to watch the more or less prominent participants arguing, passing disgusting exams or just talking. Even though it was trash TV, a television program with little level, she had her pleasure in it. For her it was good entertainment that sweetened the evening she spent alone in her living room on the couch. Why shouldn't I?
What else did she have to do but sit in front of the TV? Of course she took care of her household, and that even very neatly, and she went shopping. After all, people do not live by watching television alone, they also have to eat something. Whereby the "eating something" with pleasure degenerated into regular eating orgies. She lived alone, was single for four years. So there was no one with whom she shared her life and who could tell her about her and their eating orgies. Someone who did something with her and maybe even kicked her in the ass in a friendly way if she was so phlegmatic and let herself go. Although also the parents and her sister Melanie made some remarks about her appearance and her inertia from time to time. But how she really lived, sitting in front of the TV all day, she didn't tell anyone. The contact to her family was not very close, especially not the contact to her parents. She saw and spoke these only sporadically.
Sharon had never been the slimmest. She had always been a little overweight. Even as a child she had been a little dumpling, which earned her one or the other bad remark of other children already at that time. Now that she was unemployed and no longer had a regular working day, she had gained even more weight within two years due to the little exercise and her unrestrained desire to eat. She was now at a weight of 122 kilos with a height of 1.65m. She even understood it when she was not seen as the ideal candidate for a new position in sales. In the meantime, she had applied for about 250 positions. Ten applications per month were mandatory. It was in her integration agreement with the job center. Of course there were not so many vacancies in bakeries and she was obliged to apply as a salesperson in other areas as well. She had already applied to discounters, snack bars, delicatessens, beverage stores and boutiques. But also as a kitchen aid and for serving food in schools.
No one had wanted to hire her. Sometimes she cheated a little, and in her application list for the job centre she also mentioned a few companies where she had only copied the address from the Internet, but had never applied. Finding ten vacancies a month that matched her was not easy, especially after such a long time. She couldn't have to the same companies she had already applied to.
From tomorrow, however, there would be a change in their daily routine for a short time. From tomorrow she had to go to application training, to which she had been ordered by the job center. They called it an "invitation", but if you stayed away from the "invitation", you had to reckon with sanctions, which meant that part of your unemployment benefit was cancelled - for up to three months. So she bit the bullet and would take part in these five days of application training starting tomorrow. Although she didn't think it would get her anywhere. What she lacked was no knowledge of the competition but a handsome figure. Surely nobody expected a bakery saleswoman or a saleswoman in general to have model measurements, but also not to look like a walrus.
At least the application training would make sure that she got out of her apartment and among people. For a long time she left the apartment almost exclusively to do her shopping. Sometimes she would visit someone. That was usually her sister. Or there used to be an appointment at the job center. But otherwise she avoided going out since she got fatter and fatter. So she didn't have to listen to stupid comments about her looks or endure the disparaging glances she kept meeting.
But she also knew that if things went on like this, she would gain more weight and at some point she would hardly be able to move. She already noticed that climbing the stairs was more difficult for her and that her joints were aching and that she was very tired very quickly when she walked a little bit. She was out of condition - and that at just 32 years of age! What if she should actually get a job? How should she manage the work with her overweight and her current bad condition at all? The work in sales was physically exhausting, because you could hardly ever sit down, at most in a short breather when there was no customer in the shop or during lunch break. But these thoughts she pushed aside with pleasure, just like again tonight.
She bit off one of the chocolate muffins with relish and licked the chocolate crumbs from her mouth.
"Yum!"
Freshly baked, still lukewarm inside and peppered with chocolate chips. If she could do anything, then it was bake and cook.
Well, at least something I'm good for, she thought and put the rest of the muffin in her mouth. Also the other five muffins on her plate had to believe it on this television evening. For