I don’t understand how some people can simply leave important things to be done at the very last second. Wouldn’t it be better to get it over with and have your mind free of that weight and responsibility?

Abby used to make fun of me for doing homework during recess, but after seeing how busy my life was and how, if I was done with it, I had more time and willingness to hang out, she soon was converted to my philosophy.

But what am I on about and why?

The short holidays we had after the school trip would end today, and on the previous night, Mathilda sent a text to the group chat for us all to gather and finish our reports before hanging out somewhere.

“What!? Am I the only one who’s not finished!?” she cried out once we gathered at my place. The guys were curious to know how Oliver was doing, so it was decided we’d be gathering here. I don’t know why visiting a cat is such a good reason for it, but whatever. It saved me the hassle of leaving the house for a bit longer.

“I haven’t done it either,” Mathew told her.

“Oh, shush! You don’t count!”

“What? You trying to start something?”

“You two, settle down,” Stephen said, pulling the two under his wingspan. “We are at Abby’s and Violet’s place, so let’s try to keep it reasonably calm, ok?”

Funny that he referred to the house as being both mine and Abby’s. He wasn’t exactly wrong, it was truly something that I found amusing. Less amusing was the fact they waited to get here before discussing what they had or hadn’t done yet.

“I’m mad about you too!” Mathilda told him, setting herself loose from his grasp. “How could you do your report without me!?”

“Come on, don’t be like that! You know I was busy helping dad around the job.”

“I know that! Still, you were supposed to use the report as an excuse to come spend time with me!”

“Haah, if you wanted that, why didn’t you say so?” Stephen sighed, putting into words the exasperation I too was feeling. Mathilda would be such a pain to date. Abby too can be a bit of a pain, but at least she makes it clear about her wants and needs. Even when she acts in a way that can be described as “a pain to deal with”, it more often than not becomes something I can chuckle at when in the future. That tantrum Mathilda was throwing? It’d just irk me all over again.

“You can’t expect him to read your mind,” Abby started saying. “Especially if he has been as busy as he says he is.”

“I know that, but—”

“But nothing,” Abby said, pausing to hug my arm. “If you tell your partner you want to spend some time with them, they’ll most likely find some to spend with you. It just happens sometimes for them to be so busy or worried about something that they unwillingly neglect you. I bet you also didn’t text or call him this past week, did you?”

Mathilda took Abby’s words to the chin, before pouting. Then, she pulled Stephen’s hand closer to her before sheepishly saying she had missed him. It was sort of an excuse and enough for him to forgive her.

I guess if she learned her lesson...

I’d like to say that I’d demand a full excuse, but knowing myself better than that, id Abby did the same, I’d forgive right on the spot.

Since the crisis was resolve, and tired of standing in the hallway, I told them to go inside and get themselves comfortable. I still stayed there with Abby before joining them, however. There was something I needed to be sure.

She giggled and pulled me down to kiss my cheek before answering my question. No, I wasn’t guilty of being neglectful of her in quite a while, she told me. Abby was, in fact, very happy with how I was carrying on about our relationship, and how I’ve been taking care of myself, earning me a second kiss.

I thought as much, but you can never be certain, can you? I mean, I suppose you can. I did read and see some stories where the husband thought he was doing everything right but was clearly missing obvious signs he was not. Then again, I think the fault lies with the two. The husband for being oblivious, and the wife for not having a sit-down and making clear how she feels.

Not us. Abby and I always talked about anything that was bothering us. A bit of a brag—ok, a huge brag—but it simply was something we were very mindful of. Something Stephen and Mathilda still had to exercise until it became second nature.

With Abby pulling me after her by our interlocked fingers, we walked inside our living room. Our friends were gathered around Oliver, all of them scratching and rubbing him all over, the cat seemingly having the time of his life, not at all bothered by the three sets of hands on him.

“I ought to get a kitty like this,” Mathilda drooled. “I thought cats were supposed to be a bit standoffish, but this one isn’t at all.”

There were times he was. Like when he asked for food but it was either too early for that or he had already eaten his portion, and we told him no. I guess that was more of him sulking, but whatever.

Mathilda asked if she could feed him some treats, and we told her to leave that for when it was time for us to leave.

There it is.

Oliver was staring at me and Abby like he was offended that we told Mathilda not to give him any food right away. Well, too bad. We were still the masters in this relationship. At least most of the time we were.

Mathew was the first to take a seat at the coffee table, soon followed by his friend and then Mathilda who was carrying Oliver in her hold. I didn’t think she needed any more distractions, but I kept quiet about it.

“Do you guys mind if we stay?” she asked while taking her things out of her bag while Oliver followed her hands with his stare. “The weather today is supposed to be kind of bad.”

My immediate worry was that it’d start raining before we noticed. Clothes were hanging outside to dry and with guests here, we wouldn’t be able to set the rope inside. It wasn’t just because I didn’t want to put that set-up on full display. I was far more worried about what would be on display. Especially in front of the boys.

...No, I’m including Mathilda too...

She’d probably make some weird comment about it. Or a whole lot of them. I kept on wearing plain underwear for PE so as not to attract attention and reserving the rest for Abby, meaning that Mathilda wasn’t aware of what other, more adventurous, things I wore on the other days. There were also some of dad’s boxers, but those barely came to mind.

Mathilda told us it wasn’t supposed to rain, but I still would keep an ear focused outside just in case the weather prediction was wrong. The sky was looking super grey when we answered the door to let them in.

“...What?”

“Did something happen between you two?”

“Nothing happened and focus on your work.”

“Fine,” she singsonged as she cast her eyes down.

We still haven’t told them that we were now engaged and were planning to do so at the end of our meet-up. In the meanwhile, we would act normal, but Mathilda could be unbelievably perceptive at the oddest of times and things.

I leaned a bit to the side, setting one arm as support, but my hand bumped into Abby’s as she was sitting in the same position as I was but leaning towards my side.

“Ah! Sorry.”

“Pfft, why are you apologising?” Abby giggled as she interlocked her fingers with mine.

It was stupid, but there was again a certain level of nervousness and excitement after proposing to her. It was like we were back in love for the first time and the thought of that made me turn all shades of red. Really, how stupid.

Seeing me flushing, Abby let out a second giggle and scooted over so she could rest her head on my shoulder.

“Seriously, did something good happen between you two?” Mathilda insisted, her attention again solely focused on us.

“Focus,” her boyfriend and cousin told her, averting their attention from the portable consoles they were playing with, leaving me with my mouth open as they stole the words right out of it.

She grumbled, but she got back to work, one hand holding the pen, the other scratching Oliver’s head as he rested it on the coffee table.

Mathilda worked, the boys were playing something together with their earphones on, and Oliver supervising what Mathilda wrote. Me and Abby?

Abby had her eyes shut, enjoying the closeness with me. Soul-healing, but I wanted more though. I wanted more, but I also didn’t want to cause any more distractions.

Oh, to hell with it.

Stolen story; please report.

If she got distracted again, I’d just tell Mathilda to focus again. Abby was far too irresistible to me. You put a piece of candy in front of a child, their favourite, and tell them not to eat it. See how long it takes for the candy to mysteriously disappear.

Abby opened her eyes when I pulled my hand away from hers, smiling and curious about what I was about to do. The hand I had previously connected with her went to rest on her hip for me to pull her closer. Abby moved a leg over and between mine before making the small gap between us disappear. I grabbed her hand with the one I still had free and was finally satisfied with our seating arrangement. She closed her eyes again and I joined her in.

I must have dosed off—either that, or time flew by way too fast—because when I realised it, I could hear some rain.

“The laundry!” I gasped.

“You stay there, I’ll take care of it,” Abby told me, kissing my cheek as she got up.

I was going to tell her not to bring it here, but she cut me off with I know exactly what you’re about to say. Because, of course she did.

In front of me was Mathilda, grinning as she leaned over the table, her head held between her hands.

“...Are you done gawking?” I asked, rubbing an eye.

“Never,” she chuckled, leaning back. “I’m done with my work though.”

She offered me her papers for me to read. With Abby away for the next few minutes, I thought I might as well give it a once-over.

As I took it from her hands, she asked once again if something had happened between me and Abby. Again, I told her nothing had happened, but she pointed out that we were acting differently than normal.

“How so?” I asked.

“How should I put it? It’s like you’re trying to hold back but at the same time there’s a new level of lovey-doveyness.”

I had no idea what she meant while also fully understanding her point. I was going to ask her to clarify it further, but that was cut short by the loudest rumble I’ve ever heard that shook the whole house, plates, glassware and windows.

I looked over my shoulder, already waiting to hear Abby crying out my name as she rushed towards me in tears, but she didn’t do any of that. She only appeared two minutes later, walking very quickly, with stiff and short steps, her knees rubbing and almost sending sparks flying, her arms moving back and forth just as franticly and unbendable. Once she got close to me, she got on all fours and crawled the remaining distance, hugging my waist and burying her face in my stomach. She let out a muffled screamy moan and flailed her legs against the floor as another thunder shook the house.

I did my best to muffle the sound with my hands over her ears, but it was futile. It was the kind of thunder that you can feel in your bones. “It puts the fear of God in you,” is what my grandma would say to describe it, apter words not crossing my mind.

Oliver stepped across the table and planted a single paw on her side, offering her some solidarity.

“Afraid of lighting, hmm? It doesn’t surprise me all that much, but still...” Mathilda hummed. She was sounding peppier than usual. Probably because she was with her friends after a whole week of not seeing them.

As for Abby’s astraphobia, I knew the cause but didn’t share it with the rest.

When she was about seven—at least I think that’s what she told me her age was at the time—her family went on a trip somewhere. I don’t remember exactly where it was and that’s not important, only that it was a place high up and forested. Abby was playing outside their bungalow when it started raining. Not wanting to go back inside, she got under a tree. As you might expect by how this is headed, the tree she took refuge under was struck by lightning, and not just once, but twice. Turns out, air isn’t that good of an electric conductor, and lightning travels through the path of less resistance, meaning that, if it struck one place once, it isn’t that improbable to hit it again. Abby happened to be right on that spot. She wasn’t hurt in both events, but ever since then, she gets scared out of her wit anytime thunder comes around.

“Don’t laugh!” she whined as she showed me her teary eyes.

“Sorry. I don’t enjoy seeing you so scared, but you’re also being so cute,” I chuckled as I combed the hair of my scaredy-cat bride with my fingers.

She pouted, looking even more adorable, before hiding her face again when another rumble shook everything.

Mathew asked if we were going to stay inside after all. Seeing how the weather turned bad, and Abby was too scared to do anything other than hide in my hold, that was the only possible solution.

I offered them a drink, Mathilda telling me to stay put with Abby while she fetched the glasses with Stephen, him being in charge of carrying the bottle.

We stayed sat around the coffee table, chatting about anything that popped into our minds, Mathilda leading the talk with what she watched in the past few days. With how much time she spent that week watching movies and other things, you’d think she’d make time to finish her report, but no, waiting for Stephen to ask her to do it together was better.

It was a good hour until the thunderstorm moved past us and Abby felt brave enough to emerge from her hiding place to join in the conversation. Her eyes were a bit puffy, and her body and voice were a bit shaky. Anytime she got scared, she got very, very, scared, there never being a midpoint. She was still huddled on me and would need lots of aftercare once we were alone. It made it hard to bring up our engagement to the others too. There was no reason for us to rush anyway.

With that said...

I felt butterflies in my stomach as I thought about their reaction once we told them. Mathilda would go crazy, I was sure of it.

“We should be going,” Stephen said once the conversation hit a lull.

“Already?” Mathilda asked.

“They have house chores to take care of and after hearing your complaints when we got here, I thought it’d be nice if we went somewhere together?”

Good on Stephen for taking the initiative. Although, in their case, that’s more or less of a necessity for things to work smoothly. I don’t know, I feel like Mathilda might have idealised what a relationship should be like based on the movies she watched.

“Now what?” Abby asked, once we were alone, staring at Oliver, who was trying to lick his rotund belly before settling for a nap now that he had his tummy full with Mathilda’s treat. Tired of the effort, he looked at us, expecting someone to give him a hand. With Abby gently pushing his back, he was finally able to reach the spot he was missing. It was a very amusing show to watch as I made up my mind about what we’d do next.

There was the laundry we needed to attend to, so we couldn’t really stay sat for Abby’s post-scare aftercare. It was a shame, but we had to get up and get it over with, me setting things up in the living room while Abby would hang the more “sensitive” articles of clothing in our bedroom, otherwise, the clothes could start to smell weird. I couldn’t wait for us to have our own place so we didn’t have to bother with this. I could also lose the rest of the shame that I have and stop bothering with what dad would think about some of our choices of underwear, but... if it was only me, maybe. A huge “maybe,” but a “maybe,” nonetheless. However, since Abby was part of the equation, that was completely out of the question.

“Violet? You there?” my dad called from the door the moment he walked in. He sounded very excited.

“Yes, yes, I’m here. What is...”

I shut up when I saw two men, one younger and substantially thinner than the other, coming inside while carrying a huge, heavy-looking box as I peeked over the doorway.

My dad thanked them, handed over a tip and turned to face me as I approached with a huge smile on his face while rubbing his hands together.

“Well? What do you think?”

“What do I... What even is that?”

“A dryer!” he proclaimed while slapping the box like a salesman trying to make a sale. “A clothes dryer! Pretty nice idea, isn’t it?”

“It sure is,” I agreed, looking back to the exposition of hanging clothes in our living room while wondering why was it that things like this always happened right after I was done with the chore. It certainly was a good buy, but there was just one problem, and that was where were we going to put it?

Ideally, it’d go right next to, or on top of, the washing machine. That meant it’d go inside the bathroom. The same bathroom in which you almost had to clip your toenails before entering so as not to bump into stuff.

Abby joined in on the discussion, saying that, even if it went to some other part of the house, it shouldn’t be an issue since we already had to carry the laundry outside anyway.

Her point was valid, and after a quick exchange, we decided on the kitchen. It was the one place we could still squeeze something in, even if it was adjacent to instead of really in the kitchen.

“Hmm... maybe I should have gotten one of those machines that do both the washing and the drying,” my dad grumbled as we all moved the machine to its place.

“Why?” I argued. “Our washing machine is working like it’s brand new and—”

“Oi, don’t jinx it!” Abby joked.

“—And those are probably far too expensive to justify us buying them in our current situation.”

“But we could afford it now.”

“Don’t go spending money needlessly, old man!” I grunted as I delivered the final push. “If anything—haah, if anything, why don’t you upgrade your PC? Didn’t you complain it’s been getting hard to work with it? How old is that piece of junk anyway?”

“...Eight years?” he said as he counted fingers. “Maybe closer to ten.”

“Gee, does it take floppy disks?” Abby snickered.

“Now, those were the times,” he chuckled. “Who needs a pen drive with two terabytes? Three megabytes floppy disks were the real deal!”

“Wait, only three megabytes!?”

“Oh yeah. I think some could store more, but those were probably huge and clunky. See, the thing is, the more storage you had, the bigger the damned things were.”

“Could we get this over with while talking?” I asked, instruction manual in hand and regretting not having Stephen around to help by just a few minutes. “I’d like to be able to walk freely around the living room without brushing my face against wet clothes.”

I might sound like I was being grumpy, but in actuality, I was very eager to give the machine a go. As a bit of a thank you, I’d cook dad one of his favourite dishes for dinner.

Dad and Abby tangled with it while I read out loud the booklet and so, in barely any time, we had the machine ready to work. What took longer in all this was finding out how long should the clothes be and what program to use for each type, but once we were done reading and watching videos on the internet, we finally got it running a batch of towels.

“Hmm, this will definitely speed up how long it takes to be done with the chores!” I cheered, rubbing a piece of cloth on my face to test the dryness and feel. “I’ll just have to not leave it for so long if I want to iron it afterwards.”

“Pfft, hehe. You really are living up to the housewife stereotype of being happy for being given a new house appliance.”

“Shut up,” I grumbled while feeling my face still warming up despite the hot cloth no longer being pressed onto my face. “Hmm? Where did dad go?”

To the gym while I was crouched down staring at the churning clothes in the dryer like a little kid. At least he could have said something before leaving so that I could say thanks for him getting us this.

No matter, I can just as well tell him that when he gets back.

Abby and I set up a proper workshop.

I ironed, Abby folded and run the dryer. Really, it wasn’t possible to work any faster than how we already were.

Still...

“I know that it’s super convenient, but... somehow, I think I prefer to let the laundry dry under the sun and wind. Something about the feel.”

“Scent too,” Abby said as she sniffed a towel. “The scent is different. Well, we can still hang them outside when the weather is nice. It’s more economical that way too.”

True, that.

“Fufu, no more mildew-smelling clothes during winter!”

“Hehe, such a housewife.”

I was playfully pinching her nose as I walked inside our bedroom, so I didn’t notice it right away, but once I turned my head back forward, I had one of Abby’s panties splat my face and sticking to my glasses, me having forgotten the underwear we had drying in there.

“...Tsk.”

“Sorry, I run out of places and hanged those by the doorframe,” Abby told me as she peeled off the panties from my face, setting them aside and proceeding to take of my glasses to dry them too. “I wasn’t expecting they’d be falling off if anyone opened the door, much less right on your face.”

And now it was too late to take care of it because dad would soon be back home, and it’d also be wasteful to turn it on for just a dozen or so small bits of fabric. It was better to just leave it as a weird, kinda perverted, deco.