“Yeah,” I admitted, “it is.”
“I’m going to help you get it cleaned up,” she said, and her tone left no room for discussion, and she hadn’t even seen the bathroom yet.
The bathroom.
Shit.
Were there cum stains on the tile in the shower? Did cum leave stains?
“Yeah, I could probably use a little help,” I agreed. “I’ll start in the bathroom.”
I shoved past her and closed the bathroom door behind me. I looked around apprehensively, feeling liked I’d never really looked at the condition of the room before. I quickly gathered up a pair of dirty boxers, a spare porn magazine, and a couple burrito wrappers. I had no idea how those had even gotten in here. I grabbed a washcloth and wiped down the sink, shower, and toilet to get rid of pee stains, stray hairs, and nail clippings. I shoved the stuff lying around on the sink into the medicine cabinet, realized she’d need some room for her own stuff, and pulled it back out again. I looked around for another place to stash razors, trimmers, and Q-tips so there would be a place for Tria’s things.
Leaning back against the sink, I looked around and decided there wasn’t anything worse to clean up. I swallowed and sighed in relief.
I was never one to be overly concerned with spotlessness, but I probably needed to clean up my act.
Chapter 10—Accept the Arrangements
“Well, I feel a lot less like a mooch now,” Tria said several hours later. We had completely cleaned up the kitchen, living room, and bathroom. The only place we hadn’t touched was the bedroom, but I had just done laundry, and there wasn’t much else in there. All the trash had been gathered up, the CDs placed back in their respective cases, and the dishes washed. Tria handed me the last of the plates, which I dried carefully with a towel before placing them in the cabinet where they belonged.
“I think I’m pretty much feeling like the waste of space so far,” I agreed. “I made the mess, but you cleaned up more of it than I did.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you trashed the place just to make me feel better!”
We both laughed, and then Tria poured apple juice into two clean glasses and brought them over to the sparkling clean table.
“I’m really sorry,” I said after I took a sip. “I guess I never really thought too much about how this place looked. I should have cleaned it up before you got here.”
“It was all kind of rushed,” Tria said. “Don’t worry about it. It really did make me feel like I was contributing.”
“I don’t think this place looked this good the day I moved in,” I told her.
“How long have you been here?”
“Quite a while,” I said. “I moved here not long after I dropped out of school.”
“Were you going to Hoffman?” Tria asked.
“No.” I shook my head. “I never graduated from high school.”
“Oh…um…I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “It was my own decision.”
“Why did you drop out?”
“That is way too long a story,” I said. “It’s late, and I have to train tomorrow.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I should have realized how late it was.”
“Well, we both keep pretty unconventional hours,” I said. “I do, at least. I try to get to bed at a decent hour when I know I’ll be training the next day. If I don’t, Yolanda will kick my ass.”
“I try to keep it normal so I can get to my classes,” Tria told me. “The earliest one doesn’t start until ten o’clock, at least.”
“That’s good.” I looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall. “We probably ought to turn in so you’re not late or tired or anything.”
We both stood, and Tria washed and dried the glasses quickly before putting them away. I had to smile because cleaning up wouldn’t even have occurred to me. On a good day, I might have put them in the sink.
I led the way to the hall and toward the bedroom door. As soon as we approached, Tria reached over and opened up the door to the closet, looking a little confused. That’s when a sinking feeling came over me. There was a major aspect of this whole arrangement that hadn’t even come to mind. Tria stopped and looked from one side of the hall to the other as she slowly closed the closet door.
“Ah…I…um…” Tria stumbled over her words. “I’ll just make up the couch, then?”
My arms felt like they were made of jelly as I realized what she meant. She had obviously thought the closet—which she hadn’t had in her apartment—was the second bedroom. Much like the mess, I hadn’t considered sleeping arrangements either.
“Take the bed,” I told her. I couldn’t believe how little I had actually thought about how this would all work out and was a little disgusted with myself. “I’ll stay on the couch.”
“No, Liam, no.” Tria held her hand out in front of her as if she was one of the Supremes and shook her head vigorously. “I am not kicking you out of your own bed. No.”
“I’m not letting you sleep on the couch,” I said emphatically. All I could think about was the stack of magazines I had hidden under there now.
“Why not?” She placed her hands on her hips, and I knew from the look in her eye this was going to be a battle.
“Because it’s a piece of shit,” I said. “It’s uncomfortable and nasty.”
And there’s a huge stack of porn underneath it.
“There’s no way I’m kicking you out of your bed!” Tria was equally emphatic, but I wasn’t going to budge on this one.
“You are not sleeping on the couch.”
“Well, what other options are there?”
Of course, there was really only one. I swallowed, glanced into the bedroom, and then back at Tria. After a long pause, I offered the only suggestion I had.
“It’s big enough,” I said quietly.
“Liam, I…” Her voice trailed off. She also looked from the small bedroom, which consisted of the bed and dresser, and then back to me. At least there wasn’t a shit-ton of dirty laundry around. There was only a small pile at the end of the unmade bed.
“I wouldn’t…” I started to speak but wasn’t sure how to end the sentence. I wanted to reassure her of…of what? That I wasn’t interested in getting into her panties? Because there was no way those words could pass my lips without having dead baby angels drop out of the sky.
She wrapped her arms around herself and continued to look from the bed to the couch over and over again. Her teeth gnawed nervously at her lip, and she rocked from one foot to the other.
“You’re not sleeping on the couch,” I said again.
“Neither are you.”
“That leaves the options a little slim,” I pointed out.
“True,” she whispered, “but…”
Her voice trailed off, and her fingers gripped her upper arms.
“I wouldn’t…” I started again, trying to come up with something I wouldn’t do, no matter how much I might want to. I eventually managed to spit out something relatively meaningful. “I wouldn’t…take advantage of you. You know that, right?”
“Yes, I know,” she replied. Her tone was off, and I couldn’t understand what her expression meant. It almost seemed like she was disappointed, but that didn’t make any sense.
“We could…give it a try.” It was lame, but it was all I had. We were both obviously too stubborn to let go this time.
“Give it a try,” she said quietly, and I wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question, but I swallowed past the lump in my throat and nodded.
“Okay,” I said a little louder. “I’ll…um…just…”
I had no idea what I was going to “um just” do.
“I’ll get my things and use the bathroom,” Tria said, saving me from having to come up with any additional plan, for which I was quite grateful.
Tria grabbed her purse and some clothes from her tattered suitcase and closed the bathroom door behind her. I went into the bedroom and s
hut the door partway while I tried to figure out what I was going to wear while sleeping.
Next to Tria.
Fuck, what had I gotten myself into? The single bedroom layout of the apartment hadn’t even entered my head before we were standing in the hallway. Tria was in the bathroom, probably changing into whatever her normal sleeping attire might be, and I usually slept either nude or just in my boxers.
Hey—it saved on laundry.
Fucking sue me.
Obviously I couldn’t sleep nude, and I didn’t own pajamas, so I dug around in the bottom dresser drawer and came up with a pair of sweatpants I usually wore jogging in the winter. I ripped off my jeans and shirt, pulled the sweats up over my hips, and tightened the string. Then I gathered up the majority of the dirty clothes and piled them in the corner on the far side of the dresser. I tried to straighten out the sheet and blanket on the bed.
Thankfully, I always masturbated into a towel, and the sheets weren’t nasty. I made sure said towel was buried under the pile of clothes.
Shit, what if I woke up with morning wood?
It was one more thing I hadn’t considered, but I knew I could not freak out now. If I did, Tria would get the wrong idea and decide living here with me was a bad plan. If she did that, she’d end up dropping out of school and going back to that place and those people, and it would be all my fault for not having my own shit together.
Fuck.
Back out in the living room, I sat down on the couch and wondered what else I hadn’t considered when it came to having Tria here as my roommate. The sleeping arrangements and the mess were probably the biggest issues we’d have to face. I rarely smoked in the apartment, so I could just take that outside all the time.
Fuck, what if she wanted to cook meat? The smell alone made me want to vomit. That was probably something we ought to talk about. What if she was insistent? I couldn’t tell her what she could or couldn’t eat, but if this place was hers as well as mine, I couldn’t force her not to eat it here.
Fuck again.
We’d definitely have to spend some time tomorrow evening talking about shit like this. The changes were all so rushed. I didn’t think either one of us had thought about the things that might be a problem. It would be best to work the details out in the beginning before they became issues.
A few minutes later, Tria came out of the bathroom in a pair of sweats and a T-shirt with a picture of a puppy on the front of it. I stood up from the couch, and we both walked into the bedroom together, stopping at the doorway as we tried to figure out who should go in first.
It felt just as fucking awkward as it sounds.
Once we were both in the room, we just kind of stared at the bed for a minute. Or at least, I stared at the bed. Tria was looking all around, taking in the room. It had been the least disastrous area of the apartment but was now the messiest since we had completely cleaned the rest. Still, it wasn’t bad. There were clothes on the floor, but they were at least all piled up in the corner and out of the way. I didn’t own a laundry hamper, so I had a decent excuse. The nightstand had a little alarm clock radio on it and a small lamp. The dresser drawers were mostly closed, and the top of it only held a couple of things.
“What are these?” Tria asked, noticing the line of trophies on the dresser.
“High school wrestling,” I told her, pointing out the largest. “I was all-state my junior year. The other ones are for Akido, kickboxing, and Tae Kwon Do.”
“Wow! You were really good back then, too?”
“I guess.”
“You probably would have been able to get scholarships for that and go to school,” she said.
I just shrugged.
“Probably could have,” I agreed. It just didn’t matter now, so I didn’t think about it.
“Why didn’t you?”
“None of that now.” I shook my head. “It’s late, remember?”
“Right,” Tria said. “So, um…what side of the bed do you sleep on?”
“Um…” I muttered and scratched at the back of my head. “I don’t know. I never thought about it. I get in on the far side, but that’s usually because I go out the window to smoke before I go to bed.”
“You smoke out the window?” Tria asked. “It’s the second floor.”
“The fire escape where Krazy Katie hangs out is right there.”
“Is she always there?” Tria asked in a low voice, as if Krazy Katie could hear her through the window.
“Usually,” I told her. “She’s supposed to go down and see her social worker or whatever on Tuesdays, but half the time she doesn’t go, and someone comes out here at the end of the week to check on her.”
“You seem to know a lot about her.”
“I’ve talked to her social worker a few times. Krazy Katie won’t go near a telephone, so the social worker will call me sometimes to make sure she’s all right if she misses her appointment.”
“That’s nice of you,” Tria said.
I shrugged again, and we were back to silence and awkwardly standing around near the mattress on the floor. At least I had pulled up the blankets so it didn’t look too bad, and I had washed the sheets recently during my trip to the evil land of coin-operated washers and dryers.
“I guess I’ll…um…I’ll sleep on this side?” Tria said, making it sound more like a question than a decision. She indicated the side closest to the door and away from the window.
“Sounds good,” I replied. My own voice felt strained as well.
We walked in tandem, moving our feet carefully on the faded, beige industrial carpet. We sat down on opposite sides of the bed with our backs to each other, and we both slipped under the blanket without looking in each other’s direction at all.
I just lay there with my eyes wide open, but Tria must have been exhausted after cleaning both of our apartments. I could tell by her breathing that she was asleep almost immediately. A few minutes later, I knew she was asleep because she rolled over, took the entire top blanket with her, and seemed to latch on to it with some kind of sleep-induced death grip.
A blanket hog.
I knew there was a reason I never slept with women I slept with.
Keeping thoughts of my past from my head was suddenly a difficult task for me. Though I usually had no problems in that department, having a woman so close to me as I slept felt strange and reminded me too much of the past. I squeezed my eyes shut, focused on the tension it created all around my face, and then opened them again, free from the memories. I sighed, pulled the thin sheet up around my shoulders, and eventually dropped off though not for long.
There were several things that made me think I wasn’t really awake. The main reason was the temperature—I was warm. It was always freaking freezing in my room, and I was positively warm all over. There was also this simply fantastic scent that filled the air around me. The scent itself seemed warm, too, and clean and calming and completely feminine.
That part didn’t make any sense unless I was having some kind of wet dream. I didn’t fall asleep with women after sex. Usually I would just get up and go home. Something about this felt different though—not quite as dreamlike but still surreal. I was on my left side, and running all the way down my body, I could feel the heat from another form.
My eyes opened slowly, and I was met by the serene, sleeping face of Tria.
Wrapped up in my arms.
Somehow, I had managed to roll all the way over to her side of the bed and snuggle up against her. One arm was up under my head, which was right above hers on her pillow, and the other was wrapped tightly around her middle, holding her body against my chest. I could feel the steady beat of my own heart right up against her side and the warmth of her skin from my shoulder to my ankle.
Shit!
I had told her I wouldn’t do anything like this, and here I was practically accosting her in her sleep. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying not to get lost in the scent that must have been coming from her hair. I remembered all the
bottles she had in the bathroom at her place that ended up shoved in her purse and wondered which of the contents made her smell so good.
Praying I wouldn’t wake her up in the process, I slowly pulled my arm back and rolled over to my own side of the bed. I lost most of the sheet when I moved. Tria’s fingers were wrapped around the edge of that now as well. I shook my head at myself, grabbed the slight edge of the sheet I could still reach, and stared at the window until I fell back asleep.
I had no idea how long it had been since the first time I woke up. I only knew I was warm and content again. The scent was all over me, and the soft body was turned toward me this time. There was a small hand pressed lightly above my beating heart.
There was also one additional complication. I had somehow managed to get my left arm underneath Tria. Now I had her wrapped up in both arms, and she was lying with her head resting against my shoulder.
Fuck!
Very slowly and carefully, I extricated my arm from underneath her and gently placed her head back on the pillow. I shifted away and quickly moved back to my side of the bed. I was instantly cold because the blanket was still wrapped securely around Tria, and both it and the sheet were pretty much inaccessible unless I moved back to her side of the bed again. I reached up with one hand and ran it over my face.
I was never one to overthink things, but how the fuck was I going to deal with this?
Chapter 11—Keep the Distance
No matter how many times I woke up and moved away, I ended up curled around Tria as soon as I fell back to sleep. Throughout the night and into the early morning, I seemed to be drawn to the warmth on the other side of the bed. I kept moving back every time I realized I was doing it, but as soon as I fell asleep again, I moved right back to where she was.
I didn’t know what to think of it.
When I woke up to daylight coming through the window, I was on top of her pillow but alone. My right arm and leg were splayed across Tria’s side of the bed with both fingers and toes hanging off the edge of the mattress.