Roommates

THE SEXAHOLIC WAS IN THE BATHROOM, GETTING dressed and primping. She didn’t say much after we finished, and I was thinking I was going to have to get her number and put her on the very short list of girls - like Megan - that didn’t require a relationship to have sex, and were also worth a repeat.

Shepley’s phone chirped. It was a kiss noise, so it must have been America. She changed her text tone on his phone, and Shepley was more than happy to comply. They were good together, but they also made me wanna puke.

I was sitting on the couch clicking through channels, waiting for the girl to come out so I could send her home, when I noticed that Shepley was buzzing around the apartment.

My eyebrows pushed together. “What are you doing?”

“You might want to pick up your shit. Mare’s coming over with Abby.”

That got my attention. “Abby?”

“Yeah. The boiler went out again at Morgan.”

“So?”

“So they’re going to be staying here for a few days.”

I sat up. “They? As in Abby’s going to stay here? In our apartment?”

“Yes, buttmunch. Get your mind out of Jenna Jameson’s ass and listen to what I’m saying. They will be here in ten minutes. With luggage.”

“No fuckin’ way.”

Shepley stopped in his tracks and looked at me from under his brow. “Get your ass up and help me, and take your trash out,” he said, pointing to the bathroom.

“Oh, fuck,” I said, hopping to my feet.

Shepley nodded his head, his eyes wide. “Yeah.”

It finally hit. If it pissed America off that I had a straggler still here when she arrived with Abby, it would put Shepley in a bad spot. If Abby didn’t want to stay here because of it, it would become his problem—and mine.

My eyes focused on the bathroom door. The faucet had been running since she’d gone in there. I didn’t know if she was taking a shit or a shower. No way was I going to get her out of the apartment before the girls came. It would look worse if I was caught trying to sweep her out, so I decided to change the sheets on my bed and pick up a little bit, instead.

“Where is Abby going to sleep?” I asked, looking at the couch. I wasn’t going to let her sprawl out on fourteen months of body fluids.

“I don’t know. The recliner?”

“She’s not sleeping on the fucking recliner, assclown.” I scratched my head. “I guess she’ll sleep in my bed.”

Shepley howled, his laughter spanning at least two blocks. He bent over and grabbed his knees, his face turning red.

“What?”

He stood up and pointed, shaking his finger and his head at me. He was too amused to talk, so he just walked away, trying to continue cleaning while his body shuddered.

Eleven minutes later, Shepley was jogging across the front room to the door. He made his way down the stairs, and then nothing. The faucet in the bathroom finally shut off, and it became very quiet.

After a few minutes more, I heard the door bang open, and Shepley complaining between grunts.

“Christ, baby! Your suitcase is twenty pounds more than Abby’s!”

I walked into the hall, seeing my latest conquest emerge from the bathroom. She froze in the hallway, took one look at Abby and America, and then finished buttoning her blouse. She definitely wasn’t freshening up in there. She still had makeup smeared all over her face.

For a minute, I was completely distracted from the awkwardness by the letters W, T, and F. I guess she wasn’t as uncomplicated as previously thought, making America and Abby’s unannounced visit even more welcome. Even if I was still in my boxers.

“Hi,” she said to the girls. She looked down at their luggage, her surprise turning to total confusion.

America glared at Shepley.

He held up his hands. “She’s with Travis!”

That was my cue. I turned the corner and yawned, patting my guest’s ass. “My company’s here. You’d better go.”

She seemed to relax a bit and smiled. She wrapped her arms around me, and then kissed my neck. Her lips felt soft and warm not an hour ago. In front of Abby, they were like two sticky buns lined with barbed wire.

“I’ll leave my number on the counter.”

“Eh . . . don’t worry about it,” I said, purposefully nonchalant.

“What?” she asked, leaning back. The rejection in her eyes shone bright, searching mine for something other than what I truly meant. Glad this was coming out now. I might have called her again and made things very messy. Mistaking her for a possible frequent flyer was a bit startling. I was usually a better judge than that.

“Every time!” America said. She looked at the woman. “How are you surprised by this? He’s Travis Fucking Maddox! He is famous for this very thing, and every time they’re surprised!” she said, turning to Shepley. He put his arm around her, gesturing for her to calm down.

The woman’s eyes narrowed, on fire with anger and embarrassment, and then she stormed out, grabbing her purse on the way.

The door slammed, and Shepley’s shoulders tensed. Those moments bothered him. I, on the other hand, had a shrew to tame, so I strolled into the kitchen and opened the fridge as if nothing had happened. The hell in her eyes foretold a wrath like I had never experienced (not because I hadn’t come across a woman who wanted to hand my ass to me on a silver platter, but because I’d never cared to stick around to hear it).

America shook her head and walked down the hall. Shepley followed her, angling his body to compensate for the weight of her suitcase as he trailed behind her.

Just when I thought Abby would strike, she collapsed into the recliner. Huh. Well . . . she’s pissed.

Might as well get it over with.

I crossed my arms, keeping a minimum safe distance from her by staying in the kitchen. “What’s wrong, Pidge? Hard day?”

“No, I’m thoroughly disgusted.”

It was a start.

“With me?” I asked with a smile.

“Yes, you. How can you just use someone like that and treat them that way?”

And so it began. “How did I treat her? She offered her number, I declined.”

Her mouth fell open. I tried not to laugh. I don’t know why it amused me so much to see her flustered and appalled at my behavior, but it did. “You’ll have sex with her, but you won’t take her number?”

“Why would I want her number if I’m not going to call her?”

“Why would you sleep with her if you’re not going to call her?”

“I don’t promise anyone anything, Pidge. She didn’t stipulate a relationship before she spread-eagled on my couch.”

She stared at the couch with revulsion. “She’s someone’s daughter, Travis. What if, down the line, someone treats your daughter like that?”

The thought had crossed my mind, and I was prepared. “My daughter better not drop her panties for some jackass she just met, let’s put it that way.”

That was the truth. Did women deserve to be treated like sluts? No. Did sluts deserve to be treated like sluts? Yes. I was a slut. The first time I bagged Megan and she left without so much as a cuddle, I didn’t cry about it and eat a gallon of ice cream. I didn’t complain to my frat brothers that I put out on the first date and Megan treated me according to the way I behaved. It is what it is, no sense in pretending to protect your dignity if you set out to destroy it. Girls are notorious for judging each other, anyway, only taking a break long enough to judge a guy for doing it. I’d hear them label a classmate a whore before the thought ever crossed my mind. However, if I took that whore home, bagged her, and released her strings-free, I was suddenly the bad guy. Nonsense.

Abby crossed her arms, noticeably unable to argue, and that made her even angrier. “So, besides admitting that you’re a jackass, you’re saying that because she slept with you, she deserved to be tossed out like a stray cat?”

“I’m saying that I was honest with her. She’s an adult, it was consensual . . . she was a little too eager about it, if you want to know the truth. You act like I committed a crime.”

“She didn’t seem as clear about your intentions, Travis.”

“Women usually justify their actions with whatever they make up in their heads. She didn’t tell me up front that she expected a relationship any more than I told her I expected sex with no strings. How is it any different?”

“You’re a pig.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been called worse.” Regardless of my indifference, to hear her say that felt about as good as her shoving a two-by-four under my thumb nail. Even if it was true.

She stared at the couch, and then recoiled. “I guess I’m sleeping on the recliner.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sleeping on that thing! God knows what I’d be lying in!”

I lifted her duffel bag off the floor. “You’re not sleeping on the couch or the recliner. You’re sleeping in my bed.”

“Which is more unsanitary than the couch, I’m sure.”

“There’s never been anyone in my bed but me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Give me a break!”

“I’m absolutely serious. I bag ’em on the couch. I don’t let them in my room.”

“Then why am I allowed in your bed?”

I wanted to tell her. Jesus, did I ever want to mouth the words, but I could barely admit it to myself, much less her. Deep down I knew I was a piece of shit, and she deserved better. Part of me wanted to carry her to the bedroom and show her why she was different, but that was also the one thing that stopped me. She was my opposite: innocent on the surface, and damaged deep within. There was something about her I needed in my life, and even though I wasn’t sure what it was, I couldn’t give into my bad habits and fuck it up. She was the forgiving type, I could see, but she had lines drawn that I knew better than to cross.

A better option popped into my head, and I smirked. “Are you planning on having sex with me tonight?”

“No!”

“That’s why. Now get your cranky ass up, take your hot shower, and then we can study some bio.”

Abby’s eyes stared me down, but she complied. She nearly shoved her shoulder into me as she passed, and then slammed the bathroom door. The pipes under the apartment immediately whined in response to her turning on the water.

She packed light: only the essentials. I found some shorts and a T-shirt and a pair of white cotton panties with purple stripes. I held them up in front of me, and then dug a little further. They were all cotton. She really didn’t plan to get naked with me, or even to tease. A little disappointing, but at the same time it made me like her even more. I wondered if she had any thongs at all.

Was she a virgin?

I laughed. A virgin in college was unheard of these days.

A tube of toothpaste and her toothbrush, and a small tub of some sort of face cream was packed, too, so I took them with me down the hall, grabbing a clean towel from the hall linen closet on the way.

I knocked once, but she didn’t answer, so I just walked in. She was behind the curtain, anyway, and she didn’t have anything I hadn’t seen before.

“Mare?”

“No, it’s me,” I said, setting her stuff on the counter beside the sink.

“What are you doing in here? Get out!” she squealed.

I laughed once. What a baby. “You forgot a towel, and I brought your clothes, and your toothbrush, and some weird face cream I found in your bag.”

“You went through my stuff?” Her voice went up an octave.

The sudden laughter caught in my throat and I choked it back. I brought in Prudezilla’s things to be a nice guy, and she was freaking out. Not like I was going to find anything interesting in her bag, anyway.

She was about as naughty as a Sunday school teacher.

I squeezed some of her toothpaste onto my toothbrush and turned on the faucet.

Abby was strangely quiet until her forehead and eyes popped out from behind the curtain. I tried to ignore her, feeling her eyes burning a hole in the back of my head.

Her irritation was a mystery. To me, the whole scenario was oddly relaxing. That thought caused me to pause; domesticity was not something I thought I’d enjoy.

“Get out, Travis,” she growled.

“I can’t go to bed without brushing my teeth.”

“If you come within two feet of this curtain, I will poke out your eyes while you sleep.”

“I won’t peek, Pidge.” Actually, the thought of her leaning over me, even with a knife in her hand, was kind of hot. More the leaning over part than the knife.

I finished brushing my teeth and then made my way to the bedroom, smiling the whole way. Within minutes the pipes silenced, but it took forever for her to come out.

Impatient, I poked my head through the bathroom door. “C’mon, Pidge! I’m gettin’ old, here!” Her appearance surprised me. I’d seen her without makeup on before, but her skin was pink and shiny, and her long, wet hair was slicked back away from her face. I couldn’t help but stare.

Abby reared back her arm and chucked her comb at me. I ducked, and then shut the door, chuckling all the way down the hall.

I could hear her small feet padding down the hall to my room, and my heart began to pound in my chest.

“Night, Abby,” America called from Shepley’s room.

“Night, Mare.”

I had to laugh. Nightmare was right. Shepley’s girlfriend had introduced me to my very own form of crack. I couldn’t get enough, and I didn’t want to quit. Even though I couldn’t call it anything but an addiction, I didn’t dare sample even a crumb. I only kept her close, feeling better just knowing she was around. There was no hope for me.

Two small knocks brought me back to reality.

“Come in, Pidge. You don’t have to knock.”

Abby slipped in, her hair dark and damp, in a gray T-shirt and plaid boxer shorts. Wide eyes wandered about the room as she decided different things about me based on the bareness of my walls. It was the first time a woman had been in there. That moment wasn’t something I had thought about, but Abby changing the way the room felt was not something I expected.

Before, it was just where I slept. A place where I’d never spent much time at all. Abby’s presence made the white, clutter-less walls obvious, to the point where I felt a lesser version of embarrassment.

Abby being in my room made it feel like home, and the emptiness no longer seemed right.

“Nice pj’s,” I said finally, sitting on the bed. “Well, come on. I’m not going to bite you.”

Her chin lowered and she raised her brows. “I’m not afraid of you.” Her biology book landed beside me with a thud, and then she stopped. “Do you have a pen?”

I nodded to the night table. “Top drawer.” The second I said the words, my blood turned cold. She was going to find my stash. I readied myself for the impending death match that would quickly follow.

She put one knee on the bed and reached over, pulling open the drawer and fishing around until her hand lurched back. In the next second, she grabbed the pen and then slammed the drawer shut.

“What?” I asked, pretending to scan over the words in the biology book.

“Did you rob the health clinic?”

How does a pigeon know where to get condoms? “No. Why?”

Her face twisted. “Your lifetime supply of condoms.”

Here it comes. “Better safe than sorry, right?” She couldn’t possibly argue with that.

Instead of the yelling and name calling I expected, she rolled her eyes. I turned the pages of the biology book, trying not to look too relieved.

“Okay, we can start here. Jesus . . . photosynthesis? Didn’t you learn this in high school?”

“Kind of,” she said, defensively. “It’s Biology 101, Trav. I didn’t pick the curriculum.”

“And you’re in calculus? How can you be so advanced in math and behind in science?”

“I’m not behind. The first half is always review.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Not really.”

She listened while I went over the basics of photosynthesis, and then the anatomy of plant cells. It didn’t matter how long I talked, or what I said, she hung on to every word. It was easy to pretend that she was interested in me and not a passing grade.

“Lipids. Not lipides. Tell me what they are again.”

She pulled off her glasses. “I’m beat. I can’t memorize one more macromolecule.”

Fuckin’ A. Bedtime. “All right.”

Abby suddenly looked nervous, which was curiously soothing to me.

I left her alone with her nerves to take a shower. Knowing she had just been standing naked in the same spot made for some arousing thoughts, so for the five minutes before I got out, the water had to be ice cold. It was uncomfortable, but at least it got rid of my hard-on.

When I returned to the bedroom, Abby was lying on her side, eyes closed, and stiff as a board. I dropped my towel, changed into my boxers, and then crawled into bed, flipping off the light. Abby didn’t move, but she wasn’t asleep.

Every muscle in her body was tense, but they tightened even more just before she turned to face me.

“You’re sleeping in here, too?”

“Well, yeah. This is my bed.”

“I know, but I . . .” she trailed off, weighing her options.

“Don’t you trust me by now? I’ll be on my best behavior, I swear.” I held up my index, middle, and pinky finger, affectionately known by my frat brothers as the “shocker.” She didn’t get it.

As much as being good would suck, I wasn’t going to run her off the first night by doing something stupid.

Abby was a delicate balance of tough and tender. Pushing her too far seemed to garner the same

reaction as a cornered animal. It was fun to walk the tightrope she required, in a terrifying, driving-at-a-thousand-miles-per-hour, backward-on-a-motorcycle kind of way.

She turned away from me, karate chopping the blanket around every curve of her body. Another smile crept across my face, and I leaned into her ear.

“Good night, Pigeon.”