There had to be something seriously wrong with me.
“Ready to eat?” Tria called, startling me from my 1950s television show fantasies. She was smiling and wiping her hands on a towel, and I had to excuse myself to “wash my hands” before we ate.
After we were done eating Swedish Bean Balls, I still had no idea what they were, but they tasted fantastic. Conversation with Tria during dinner was also easy and flowed without effort from one topic to the next. We talked about her classes, technology, the landlord, politics, and the state of the neighborhood where we lived until the leftovers were cold, and I had managed to down about four beers. We even cleaned up in sync with one another, and by the time we finished, it was late and time for bed.
The only thing that was still weird and awkward was getting into bed together. It was likely just in my own head because all I could do was think about how I was going to wake up with her in my arms at some point. I’d watch her sleep for a while, and I was fairly certain I had her face completely memorized.
That night was no different.
I woke to my nose pressed lightly to the back of her neck and my arm wrapped around her stomach, holding her back against my chest. Somehow, my hand had actually slipped underneath her shirt, and my fingers twitched, aching to stroke softly over the bare skin of her belly.
Inhaling, I closed my eyes again, basking in the scent from her hair and skin and realizing that if I splayed out my fingers, the tips of them could touch the curved undersides of her breasts. I had to stifle a groan as I spent a moment being overwhelmed by the combination of the fragrance in my nose, the soft feeling of her skin on my fingers, and my engorged cock pressed tightly against her backside.
Shit!
I had to grind my teeth together to keep from screaming the word out loud as I quickly extricated myself and rolled over to the other side of the bed. My feet swung over and touched the floor, and I quietly launched myself out of the bed, out of the room, and into the bathroom.
My hand was down the front of my sweats before I could even get the lid to the toilet up. Inside my brain, the scenario from the bed continued with the added memory of feeling her skin and the pressure of her ass on my cock. My real hand gripped and pumped at my cock while the one in my imagination moved up, caressing her breasts as my lower body shifted to push inside of her from behind.
Semen coated the edge of the toilet seat and part of the underside of the lid. I braced myself against the tank for a moment as I tried to catch my breath, then wiped the junk off with a piece of toilet paper. My fingers dug into my eyes and rubbed for a moment while I realized that little bit of clean-up wasn’t going to be good enough. I found a washcloth and doused it in water and soap, cleaned the toilet off more effectively, and tossed the cloth onto the corner ledge of the shower.
This was all so fucked up.
I was never one to get worked up over a particular girl, but this was getting ridiculous.
Chapter 14—Seize the Opportunity
“The color looks perfect.” Stacy made the remark as I checked to make sure the paint had dried on the bookshelf.
It ended up about three feet high, two feet wide, and a foot deep with four shelves for Tria to house her books. It wasn’t pretty by anyone’s standards, but the paint brightened it up, and it would at least do the job for which it was made.
“I think it turned out all right,” I said, tapping the back of one of the shelves with my fingers. “It seems to be pretty much dry now, too.”
“Are you going to carry it home?” she asked.
“Not much of an option there,” I said with a crooked smile.
“How about you put it in the back of my car and I drive you?” the cook suggested. “I’m done here until this evening. I have the time.”
“Really? That would be sweet! Thanks!”
I put some newspaper down on the back seat of Stacy’s beat up old Ford and placed the bookshelf on top of it. I climbed into the passenger seat of the musty smelling car and rolled down the window.
“So tell me about this roommate,” Stacy said as soon as the car started moving. “What’s her name?”
“Tria,” I replied.
“Is she pretty?” Stacy asked.
I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“And do you like her?”
“For Christ’s sake,” I growled. “How many times do I have to tell people it’s not like that?”
She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye as she pulled out into the street.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “It’s just that everyone keeps assuming I’m doing her.”
“I didn’t assume anything,” Stacy stated. “I just asked if you liked her.”
I huffed out my nose.
“You did make her a bookcase,” she pointed out. “You must not hate her.”
“I like her fine,” I replied.
“Well, tell me about her, then.”
I reached up and scratched the back of my neck.
“She’s smart,” I said. “She’s studying economics.”
When I didn’t say anything else, Stacy prompted me for more.
“She’s a great cook. You’d like that,” I told her.
“You don’t eat my cooking so much anymore. I noticed that.”
I laughed.
“That would make living with someone easier,” she said with a nod. She turned the wheel and headed down the street and around the block. “Have you ever had a roommate before?”
“Not really,” I replied with a shrug. “I mean, I lived with Yolanda for a couple weeks when I was kicked out of my apartment, but that was temporary, ya know?”
“That’s when you first started working for Dordy, right? When you first started fighting?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Well, getting paid for it, anyway. Yolanda got me the job. I don’t think it would have occurred to me that I could beat people up for a living.”
“You were living on the streets for a while there, weren’t you?”
“For a bit,” I said with another shrug. I swallowed hard and stared out the window.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Stacy said. “I spent quite a bit of time living out of my car back in the day.”
“Oh yeah?”
“When my husband walked out, I didn’t have a job. No education, no experience—I thought I would always be a housewife. I couldn’t pay for the house anymore, and he was just gone, so I took the kids to live with my parents in the country while I looked for work here. It was a while before I found something that would let me actually pay for a place. Dordy took a chance on me, just like he did with you.”
“Whatever pays the rent, huh?”
“Oh, I like what I do well enough,” she said. “My kids are all grown and moved off now, but you lot make good substitutes. My kids stayed with my parents for some time while I was working things out. They deserved better than I could give them then.”
I nodded, and Stacy turned the last corner and parked in front of the apartment building. I jumped out and lifted the bookcase from the back seat.
“Pie in the sky blue! Sky blue!” Krazy Katie started screaming from the fire escape.
I rolled my eyes and shook my head.
“Ignore her,” I said to Stacy. “She’s a nut.”
I gently placed the bookshelf down on the walkway and turned to thank Stacy for the ride.
“Don’t you worry about it,” she said. “It was my pleasure.”
“It made the trek home a lot easier,” I said with a smile. “I’ll see ya tomorrow night.”
I turned to pick up the bookcase and drag it up the stairs, but she stopped me.
“Oh, and Liam, dear?” Stacy reached her arm out the window as she called back to me. I walked back to the car and leaned against the roof with one hand. “You deserve better, too, you know.”
She patted my arm and then drove away with me standing there in the street and watching her go. I let out anoth
er big sigh, picked up the bookcase, and headed inside.
I had to move the stand that held the television over a bit to make room for the bookcase along the wall. Once it was situated, I opened up the first box of books and tried to arrange them in some kind of order on the shelves. Most of the books were fiction—a few classics, a couple of romance novels, Terry Pratchett, and some Stephen King. It was kind of a weird combination, but none of it really looked like crap.
Well, except for the romances.
There was some non-fiction mixed in—all stuff for her classes or whatever. I put those on the bottom shelf since they were bigger books and the bottom shelf was a little taller than the other two. For the most part, I just arranged them by size.
I sat back when they were all on there and admired my work. With the books on it, it really didn’t look too bad. The paint made all the difference, and I was going to have to thank Stacy for it again.
I was just standing up and dusting off the top of the shelf when I heard the door open and Tria come in. She noticed the bookshelf immediately, and her eyes widened in surprise.
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
“Around,” I said with a shrug. I couldn’t help but smile as she walked over and inspected it. “It’s not very pretty or anything, but at least you don’t have to dig around in those boxes anymore.”
“It’s perfect, Liam!” she exclaimed.
Before I knew what was happening, she had turned and thrown her arms around my neck. A moment later, I felt the light press of her lips against my cheek, and I was relatively sure all the organs in my body had turned to liquid and congregated in my feet.
“Thank you so much,” she said softly as she pulled away. Her cheeks had flushed, and I found myself clenching my fists to stop myself from jumping her right there and fucking her on the floor. My tongue felt thick, and it was hard to take in a breath. I could still feel the coolness of the moisture her mouth had left against my skin.
“No problem,” I finally managed to say after swallowing a few times.
Tria smiled, then turned and knelt down in front of the small shelf. She started poking around at the books and talking about how much easier it would be to find what she was looking for, but I didn’t hear a word of it. I just stepped away until I felt the back of my knees hit the couch, and then I sat down heavily. As soon as my head stopped spinning, I went outside for a smoke so I could get myself back together again.
I lit the cigarette and rubbed my eyes. Krazy Katie was up above me, hollering out across the street at the guy who was waiting at the bus stop. Apparently, she was pretty sure he was her mother because she kept talking about being inside of his womb.
Fucking nutcase.
Then again, who was I to judge? Considering how nutty Tria was making me, I might have been about ready to join Krazy Katie and start screaming at the neighbors.
I was fucked.
*****
Deep water kind of warmth and heaviness covered me as I slowly regained consciousness without actually opening my eyes. The feeling was familiar but in a way I found slightly disturbing, like I was doing something horribly wrong. My backside was chilled, and I was pretty sure Tria had rolled over on the blanket again. The front of me was nice and warm though, so I knew I was pressed up against her body in a totally inappropriate, inexcusable, and completely delectable way.
I didn’t want to wake up and roll away from her, especially considering there was no way I would be able to get the blanket back from her again. Once she got a grip on it, it was a death grip, and I would sooner go into her purse looking for Tic Tacs than try to get it away from her. Besides, both my arms were around her again, and it was damn hard to get the right one out from under her when she was asleep. I had no idea how I managed to get it there in the first place, but about half the time I woke up, that’s where my arm would be.
I took a deep breath and tilted my head up a bit, skimming the tip of my nose over her temple and into her hair. If I lived with her for the rest of my life, I probably still wouldn’t understand how she could smell so good. My breath rushed out my nose, and I pulled back a little so I would be able to look at her face at least once before moving to my own side of the bed. I opened my eyes, and I found myself staring into the bright brown irises of the woman in my arms.
Even the warm parts of my body chilled.
For a long moment, all I could do was look at her and try to comprehend. I knew something was very, very out of place, and I knew I had ultimately been caught with my hand in the cookie jar, so to speak, but I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do about it now.
Oh yeah—apologize and make it look like an accident.
“Oh…shit,” I mumbled sleepily. “I’m sorry, I…”
I started to pull my arm out from around her waist but paused when I saw Tria smile and felt her grip my forearm. In the moonlight from the window, I was pretty sure I could see the flesh around her cheekbones darken, and the sight halted the beating of my heart.
“It’s okay.”
“I didn’t mean to…um…” I started pulling my arm back, and my fingers grazed over her stomach, but I stopped again when I felt Tria tighten her hold on my arm and shake her head in quiet laughter. My eyes drifted down to where her fingers coiled around my arm and then back up to her face.
“Liam, you do this every night,” she stated.
Tensing again, I tried to determine what the best course of action would be at this point. I wasn’t awake enough to be thinking clearly at all, and I wasn’t coming up with any kind of grand plan, that was for sure. What I did manage to get through my thick skull was that she did not seem to be upset at all.
“I do?” I responded softly.
“Yes, you do.”
“Shit,” I muttered. I didn’t know if I should confess at this point or not. “I wasn’t trying…I mean, I didn’t mean to—”
Tria shook her head slowly before turning her eyes back to me. She looked at me through her long lashes, and her cheeks tinged with her blush.
“I don’t mind,” she said.
“You don’t?” God, I sounded like an idiot. I wondered if I had completely lost the ability to form a coherent sentence. I hoped she would realize I wasn’t normally a brain dead moron in bed.
God, I wanted to show her what I could be like in bed.
I looked back at her face, and what I saw there stopped all such thoughts. Her eyes were tight, her jaw clenched, and I could feel her hand trembling slightly against the skin of my arm.
“When I first moved here,” Tria said in a whisper, “I couldn’t sleep at all.”
Her fingers gripped my arm a little tighter, and her eyes moved to the window for a moment before she turned back toward me and seemed to focus on the top of my arm.
“The noises outside—the car alarms, and the sirens, and the…the…”
She took in a sharp breath and shifted forward a little, pressing against me more.
“The shots.”
I glanced at her, and my brow furrowed at her expression until I realized what she meant.
There were a ton of gangs only a handful of blocks away, and they were always going at each other. Sometimes they had all out fucking wars, but a lot of the time, they just took potshots at each other, usually around four in the morning. When I first moved to this apartment, the gunshots would wake me up as well. After so many years, they only woke me up now if there was a shooting in the building, and that hadn’t happened in a while.
Tria took several more breaths, and I felt her fingers relax. She glanced at me, but then quickly looked away again.
“Since the very first night I moved here, I hadn’t been able to sleep,” Tria continued. “I probably didn’t sleep more than half an hour the first night I lived in this neighborhood and probably never slept more than three hours total any of the other nights. I just couldn’t.”
Her eyes still didn’t move back to me but remained trained on my upper arm. Her finge
rs moved over the edge of the muscle there.
“It was even worse after that night we met,” she said. “I don’t think I closed my eyes for days. I kept seeing them closing in on me.”
She finally looked back into my eyes.
“I was too scared to sleep,” she admitted quietly. “But with you…with you holding me, I feel safe.”
Without hesitation, my arm wrapped back around her, and my fingers took their place against her side. The arm underneath her lifted slightly so I could pull her a little closer against my chest. Her hand slid farther up my arm and held tight to my bicep.
“You are safe,” I stated simply.
I was never one to cuddle, but I wasn’t about to let go of her now.
Chapter 15—Toe the Line
The shit just got weird after that.
During the day, things went on just as they had been. Tria cooked and went to school. I ate and worked out. The nights when I wasn’t working, Tria usually made dinner, and she would study while I pretended to watch television but really watched her.
Then we’d go to bed.
Things would start feeling really tense right before our usual bedtime. Tria would gather up her homework or books or whatever and shove them into Chewbacca’s Carry-on so they’d be ready to go the next day. I’d go out on the fire escape for a smoke and then sit around on the couch and act like I had something to do. Eventually we’d look at each other, and one of us would mumble something about it being time to go to bed.
Tria would take her sweats and a T-shirt into the bathroom while I’d change in the bedroom, then we’d be all awkward and tense as we’d get into our respective sides of the bed. She’d usually smooth the blankets evenly across the bed—as if I were ever going to touch them again. I would turn off the light, and we’d both lay back on the pillows for a minute.