by Shay Savage
Krazy Katie didn’t look at me, and after all the bullshit she was spouting the other day, I didn’t even say hello to her as I leaned against the rail and watched ash fall to the ground below me. She didn’t say anything either though she kept making little huffing sounds out of her nose.
When I went back inside, Tria was done in the bathroom and sitting on the edge of the bed, wrapping her separated hair into braids.
“Hey, I was thinking,” I said as I scratched at the back of my head and looked off to the side of her. “Maybe it would be better if I was on the other side of the bed. I do think I prefer it.”
“Sure,” Tria responded. She used a little black twisty band to hold the end of her hair in the braid and tossed it over her shoulder.
She got in on the side closer to the window, and I got in closer to the door. The whole side of the bed still smelled like her, and I was already pretty sure it was going to work out just fine. That is, until Tria asked for her pillow back, and I reluctantly handed it over and accepted my own in exchange.
It still smelled like her a bit but not as much.
Rolling to my side, I faced the door and tried to hold on to the edge of the blanket as tightly as I could. I could feel Tria right behind me, situating herself into a comfortable position and tugging slightly at the blanket as she did so, but my grip did not falter. She let out a long sigh and went still.
For the longest time, I just lay there with my eyes open, watching the partially closed door to the bedroom and wondering what the fuck I was doing.
Only a few hours after I finally dozed off, I woke up warm, content, and surrounded by that heavenly scent. I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing and didn’t even to pretend to think I was dreaming.
The length of my body was lined up flush with hers, and my arm was wrapped around her waist. My fingers curled over the swell at her hip, and my thumb had found its way inside the hem of her shirt and pressed lightly into her warm skin there.
I opened my eyes, and her face was so peaceful and serene, it took my breath away. Her head was tilted slightly toward me so that her forehead was pressed into my shoulder. I had again managed to get my arm underneath her to complete the embrace and make it really damn hard to move away.
I didn’t want to anyway.
For some time, I just watched her. For the most part, she was still as she lay in my arms, but sometimes her fingers would twitch a little or her eyes would move under her lids. I watched her chest rise and fall and tried not to think about how easy it would be to spread my fingers and reach up to touch her breast.
To keep myself from even considering it anymore, I pulled my hand from her side and used it to brush off of her forehead a stray piece of hair that had escaped from the braid. With a quiet sigh, I dug my arm out from under her and rolled back to my own, cold side of the bed.
An hour later, I did the whole thing again.
*****
We fell into a routine. Tria had classes through the week and spent her evenings studying. Every morning she made breakfast though she made lighter fare than she had the first day. She told me she’d make pancakes on Sundays since I should have a couple of days to recover from all those carbs and syrup. I’d run daily, work out with Yolanda every other day, and fight Tuesdays and Fridays.
Tria didn’t come back to the bar to watch me fight again, but she was also claiming it was just because she had to study for midterms. I wasn’t surprised that she came up with the excuse, but I had hoped she might at least give it another try. Yolanda asked me about it, and I offered to take her into the cage to put an end to her questioning.
She glared but left me alone.
I was taking my morning run and swinging around the single tree Tria still hadn’t seen in a sea of concrete when I noticed a guy hauling a bunch of shit out of one of the buildings and tossing it up into one of those large industrial dumpsters. The contents of the large cart he was pushing caught my eye.
“Hey, dude!” I called out as I altered my course and jogged easily over to him. He had graying dark hair and kept coughing into his hand.
“Damn dust,” he muttered as I approached. “They don’t pay me enough for all this dust. Probably asbestos in there, too.”
He pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward one of the abandoned warehouses.
“You just throwing this out?” I asked him.
“Cleaning out the old ball bearings place,” he said. He looked me up and down and took a step back, appearing tense. “There isn’t much left in there, and they said just to haul out whatever was there. I ain’t stealing anything.”
“I just wondered if you were going to pitch the wood,” I said. “If you are, I was going to take it.”
His shoulders relaxed a little.
“It’s just going in the dumpsters,” he said. “Once it’s in there, it’s fair game, I guess.”
A few minutes later, I had several pieces of plywood and a two-foot section of a two-by-four over my shoulders. I didn’t head directly back to the apartment but took the alleyway over to Feet First instead.
It was way too early for the bar to be open, but I pounded on the back entrance until Stacy opened the door.
“Liam!” she scolded. “What are you doing out here?”
“Do you have a hammer and some nails around someplace?” I asked. “I want to build something.”
She looked at me skeptically, shook her head slowly, and opened the door wide.
“There’s a toolbox in the kitchen,” she told me, “but you can’t take all of that in there—there is no room for it. Take it to the locker room, and I’ll bring the box.”
I offered to go get the box myself, but she waved me off and muttered something about not being all that old. I shifted my load from one shoulder to the other and then hauled it all downstairs. I lay the pieces down on the cement floor and looked them over.
There were four decent-sized, mostly flat pieces of plywood, and the section of two-by-four was a little over two feet long. In my head, I tried to picture what a bookshelf looked like and thought about that Tangelos game my Dad used to play with me when I was a kid. You would get all these different-shaped pieces and have to fit them together into a certain arrangement, and you’d try to do it as fast as possible. Using scrap wood to make serviceable furniture wasn’t too different.
Stacy brought a large toolbox down the stairs, dropped it at my feet, and asked if I wanted lunch. I declined politely before I began to rummage through the box. Hammer, nails, a hack saw, sandpaper—I didn’t think I would need much more than that.
I spent the entire afternoon sawing, hammering, and sanding. I cut the two-by-four into eight small pieces to serve as feet and tops and then shaped the plywood into four similarly sized pieces. They weren’t perfect, but when I started putting it all together, it worked out pretty well. It at least stood up straight without wobbling.
It was definitely useful, but it didn’t look like much.
“I made you a sandwich,” Stacy said as she pushed open the door and dropped a plate down in front of me. “You’ve been down here for hours, and I know you have to be hungry.”
“Dordy’ll be pissed.”
“He’s not in yet, and I doubt he’s going to miss a couple slices of cheese and bread.”
I looked up at her and gave her a smile.
“Thanks,” I said. “I am kind of hungry, now that you mention it. What time is it?”
“Nearly four o’clock,” she replied.
I nodded and looked at my little project a bit more closely. It needed a lot more sanding.
“Are you taking up a new hobby?” Stacy asked, snickering. “Joining a book club?”
“Nah,” I said with a headshake. I was pleased that she at least recognized my creation for what it was supposed to be. “I got a roommate, and she’s got a lot of books. My apartment doesn’t have a bookshelf or anything, so they’re still in a couple boxes. I saw this shit…um…”
I glanced up at
the older woman, who had her hands on her hips as she stared down at me.
“Stuff,” I said, correcting myself, “in the dumpster. I thought I could make it into a place for her books.”
“Liam Teague!” Stacy exclaimed. She placed her hand over her chest. “Do you have a lady friend?”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head.
“Roommate, Stacy. That’s it.”
“Hmm…” she murmured as she turned around and headed back up the stairs. “I always wanted a boy who would make me bookcases.”
“You asking me on a date?” I asked, snickering.
“If I was thirty years younger, you wouldn’t be able to fend me off,” she called as she disappeared around the corner.
I laughed and wolfed down the sandwich before I went back to sanding. Stacy came back a few minutes later to collect my plate, and as she did, she handed me a small can.
“Not sure if there will be enough,” she told me as she walked back out, “but it’s a pretty color blue, and we don’t need the extra paint for anything.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled. I stared at the little can of paint in my hand before tilting it from side to side to try to determine how much was left. It was a quart can and maybe half full. I thought that would be enough to cover the bookshelf pretty nicely, but I’d definitely have to get it sanded down better first, which meant I wouldn’t be able to get it done today. Tria was going to be home from school within an hour, and she told me she was going to try some new vegetarian recipe she found in a book she got at the college library.
Tria did not cook just pancakes. She could make almost anything and had been trying out various vegetable-centered dishes to cook for me though I told her she didn’t have to. She continued to state that it was her part of the living arrangements, so she was going to learn to cook what I would eat.
I cleaned up the mess I had made and set the little bookshelf up in the corner farthest from the shower. I wasn’t sure if humidity would do anything to it or not, but it seemed like a good idea. I made it back to the apartment with about ten minutes to spare before the Hoffman College transportation van rolled up in front of the building.
“I have to run to the grocery,” Tria announced as soon as she got in the door. “I found this new cookbook at the library, and it’s perfect.”
She yanked the giant-ass, full-sized cookbook out of Black Hole Briefcase and flopped it down on the kitchen table. She flipped through the pages of the vegetarian cookbook and came to a recipe for Swedish Bean Balls.
“Bean balls?” I asked skeptically.
“Look at what’s in it. I think it might be good.”
I looked over the list of ingredients—kidney beans, rice, onions, breadcrumbs—and nothing sounded bad at all. The book said to put it all over mashed potatoes with some vegetarian gravy. I wasn’t really sure what it would all taste like, but I said I would at least give it a try. Tria wrote down a list of things to buy, bitched about me giving her the cash for it, but eventually relented and took the money.
I glanced over the recipe again and was glad I didn’t have to fight for a couple of days because it was going to be some heavy stuff. Yolanda would probably want to kill me if she saw me eating a big pile of mashed potatoes and gravy.
Since Tria was going to be gone for a while, I jumped on the opportunity to head into the shower and take care of business. I’d always had pretty regular daily jerk-off sessions, and having Tria living with me had certainly made that a little difficult. Waking up spooning her every night didn’t help, either.
What also didn’t help were the images in my mind whenever I took my dick in my hand.
It wasn’t even a matter of trying to think about her; as soon as there was flesh-on-flesh, her face was in my mind. The chick from my favorite porno getting a spit roast no longer did a thing for me. I only thought of Tria’s eyes, Tria’s lips, and Tria’s body as I ran my hand up and down my shaft.
I closed my eyes as the water poured down my shoulders and back. I curled the fingers of my right hand around the base and dragged slowly up and over the tip, while the left hand reached down to cup my balls. In my mind, I lay her down on the bed and lifted one leg up over my shoulder before slowly sliding into her. Her head was pressed against the mattress, and her back arched as she moaned my name.
“Oh yeah,” I mumbled. “That’s it, baby. Take it…”
My hand moved faster over my shaft, and the Tria in my head moved rhythmically with my thrusts against the sheets. I could see my hand reaching to caress her breast, stroke the nipple, and pinch it. I thrust faster. Tria cried out again, and my legs shook as the buildup exploded over my hand before being washed away by the shower stream.
“Fuck,” I muttered. Even standing there in the shower, I felt like I needed a shower.
After I got myself back under control, I washed my hair, which didn’t take much since it was nice and short, thanks to a coupon for a haircut Tria found for me at the grocery store. I turned around a couple of times to get all the soap off of me, then turned off the water and climbed out.
The line of little bottles Tria had on the shower ledge called to me—I really wanted to know which one made her smell so good, but I restrained myself. Something about sniffing her shower products seemed pretty creepy—tempting, but creepy.
Back in the bedroom, I poked around in the bottom dresser drawer, trying to find some clean boxers. The pile of laundry in the corner was now being shoved into a laundry bag Tria brought from her old apartment, but the clothes were starting to hang out the top. Tria had her dirty clothes in a plastic laundry basket. Since I had done a crappy job of putting shit away after the last laundry trip, I couldn’t find any boxers and decided to just forget it.
I turned to grab my jeans, which were already laid out on the bed. At that exact moment, Tria turned the corner and walked into the room.
“Oh my God!” Tria screeched as she simultaneously covered her face with her hands, turned bright red, and tried to get back out of the room without seeing where she was going. She banged into the wall a bit but managed to get herself out of there.
I had to laugh, not just because the sight was pretty damn funny but also in relief. If I hadn’t just jacked off, the knowledge that she was looking at my dick would have probably brought him to attention pretty quickly.
Moody little bastard.
I pulled my jeans up and buttoned them. When I walked into the living room, Tria was on the couch with her head in her hands.
“I am so sorry!” she cried without looking up. “I didn’t know you were changing. I wasn’t trying to…to…”
“Tria, relax,” I said with another short laugh. “Fuck, Yolanda’s always walking in on me, and she doesn’t even have the decency to look away!”
“I just…I mean…I didn’t know you were…”
I walked around her and sat down on the other side. I had spent way too much time in the cage being mostly naked to really be concerned about any chick seeing my cock, and I didn’t want her to be upset about it. There was also that distinctly porn-influenced male side of me that just wanted to yank it out and let her get to know it really well so she would know for sure that being looked at didn’t bother me.
That line of thinking was going to have to change pretty quickly, refractory period be damned.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “Really. No big deal. Shit like that is bound to happen when you live with someone, right?
“You aren’t mad?” Tria asked as she peeked at me through her fingertips.
“Not at all,” I said. “I would have closed the door; I just didn’t realize you were back already.”
“I just got here,” she said, and I was relieved to hear it. Hopefully that meant she hadn’t heard me in the shower with my dick in my hand. “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I repeated.
She dropped her hands but wouldn’t look in my direction. Her shoulders moved up and down a little as she tried to get herself toge
ther again. Eventually, she sighed heavily and then stood up.
“I’m going to make dinner,” she announced.
“Need any help?”
“No, I’m good.”
She went into the kitchen, and I just watched her. For the most part, we seemed to be comfortable living in the same space together, but there were definitely some things that caused a bit of tension. Tria kept her clean clothes in her suitcase, refusing all my offers to empty a couple of dresser drawers for her. It bugged me, partially because she was just so damn stubborn about it, but also because it made the whole arrangement seem more transient than I wanted to believe. Even in the short amount of time she had been there, I found myself enjoying the company. I had pretty much lived on my own since I left the house where I grew up, and having someone else around was pretty nice.
Our lives just seemed to…mesh.
She was a morning shower kind of person, and she got out whatever she was going to wear and took it to the bathroom to dress. I showered after running, and I would usually just change my own clothes quickly while she was in the bathroom. She made breakfast and supper on most days but was usually either in class or studying at lunchtime. That worked fine, too, since those were my usual workout times. We both kept late hours, and though she didn’t come back to watch me fight after that first night, she always waited for me to get home before she went to bed.
Every night, I woke up at least a couple of times to her warmth and scent surrounding me. Usually I would just watch her face for a while as she slept, and then I would shift back to my own side of the bed. No matter how many times I moved away, I ended up close to her again. In the morning, she was always up before I awakened and usually in the kitchen making something.
I loved watching that woman cook.
That thing I had always heard about guys looking for a woman like their own mothers is a bunch of bullshit. I was pretty sure my mother didn’t even know what part of the house contained the kitchen. I kept the TV on most of the time when Tria was cooking, but I always leaned way forward so I could watch her. She put a tray of little round things in the oven, and just seeing her bending over did weird things to the pit of my stomach. Every time she pulled a spoon out of a saucepan and used her finger to get a little taste of what she was cooking, my dick got hard.
