While uneventful in and of itself, the walk home allowed David time to relax and think about his day. The information dumps from training were fine, most of the information seeming more common sense rather than any procedure yet to be studied. It was really more to keep his mind off the encounter at the end.
Jesse. Jez.
Shaking his head as if to banish the thoughts, he stepped past the gate onto the porch and started fishing for keys. Not a moment later the door swung open. Prompting a jump, David closed the gate behind himself quickly and scowled towards the form who had opened it. His mother.
“You surprised me.”
“Sorry sweetie,” Helen, David’s mother, said with a bemused smile, “I’m just too damned excited to hear all about it!” Smiling at her enthusiasm, he none the less gave her a half hearted shrug and walked in past her.
Not to be deterred from the nonchalance of her child, Helen began following behind him.
“Sooooooo?”
“It was fun,” David set down his jacket and started rummaging through the kitchen for snacks “I guess. The management seem nice enough but today was all training and paperwork.”
“What about coworkers?”
“Yeah I got them too.” The return eye roll was belittled by her smile.
“Yeah no shit Shirley, I was asking how they were.”
“Okay I guess. Seemed like mostly long timers so I am now officially new guy… or new guy David, depending.” From the side eye she gave him, he figured that still wasn’t what she wanted to hear and was proven right a moment later. “And?”
“Annnndddd that’s about it. Met Aldo, Jez, Frisco, and Lena this morning, but I left before the evening crew made introductions.”
“Boringgggggg!”
With that, his mother walked over to the couch and sat while watching him still.
“Sorry?”
“Come on, it’s your first real job! Were they nice at least?” David thought about the encounter with Jez “Yeah, nice enough. I’m gonna go lay down for a bit.”
“Okay. You want to watch a movie tonight? I heard one of your comic movies dropped for streaming.”
“I promised the guys I would pop up online for a bit sometime this week and I’m surprisingly wiped. Rain check?”
“You know, get enough of those and you have to cash them out to pay for the flood you could have avoided.”
Waving her off, he started his walk to his room in the basement. “If it floods, I will be the first person to know down there anyways so I should probably hold onto them regardless. Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow. Tell your friends I said hi. And clean your room.”
Deciding to leave the comment hanging rather than answer, David found himself blissfully alone in the comfort of his room. A few spare plates and clothes aplenty made the room look like a disaster zone pre cleanup. Kicking some of the aforementioned clothes into a pile, he sat and polished off the remains of the food he’d brought down and took stock of his things. Maybe his mother was right.
The room was a bit much to bring over anyone and worse, some of the evidence of the last time someone had in fact been over probably remained hidden under piles of clothes. That thought killed every ounce of motivation that he’d brought forth. While the time and experience had been grand, the following ‘just friends’ speech in the weeks after, despite still coming around for the other stuff and them speaking with each other almost daily, had left a sore spot for him.
For all that he’d heard of men hitting and quitting it, he hadn’t expected one of his first real physically intimate relationships to end up basically the same way that he’d been reminded since finding out about relationships to never behave as. Not that she'd quit, but more like she'd found a loophole for the two of them to remain as was in a capacity the left her free.
Instead of cleaning, or hopping onto a call with his friends, he grabbed the notebook on the nightstand and turned to a fresh page clean of any and all doodles and wrote.
‘Jez- bathroom- encounter: Walked out and got aggressive after making eye contact with me. Otherwise seemed okay this morning. Weird experience.’
Despite being brief, David felt a bit better about the situation after writing it down. He closed the notebook and set it back down before fishing out his phone and messaging his friends with a fresh smile. It was time to slay some monsters, earn XP, and finish some quests.
______________________
Startled awake by the sounds of tapping at his window, the moment of panic and swiftly grabbing the knife he kept under his notepad by his bed gave him just enough time to locate the source of it. The spinning in his head and sound of his racing heart was slowly replaced by a series of calming breathes and the click of the knife back into its folded form.
He recognized the figure outside his window, now awkwardly staring at him with a mix of naked concern and slight amusement. Think of the devil. He got up and popped open the window just a crack, letting sound in and out but not more than needed.
“Hey.”
“What are you doing here? Dude it’s like….” Turning to look at the alarm, he made a grimace “3: 47. AM. What…” he trailed off as he really got a good look at her.
Her eyes, usually a brilliant mix of gray and green and sparked with something mischievous, were hollow in a way he’d never seen from her. She was wearing something pretty, a red and pink shirt with the words “Princess sometimes, Queen always” printed on it that cut off before navel, which had a new piercing in it and brought his eyes to the low cut jeans and hint of thong poking out. She was wearing open toed shoes with nails painted a mix of purple, red, and blue that made it look like a galaxy and had her hair brushed out and pulled back on the sides into a ponytail that showed off it’s dark coconut shell color the made her look all the more like something he had a wet dream about rather than an actual person standing right there. Meeting her eyes again, he caught her catching him and her smile was worth the red it brought to his face.
“Surprise! I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d come see you.”
“At 3. 47. AM. As in, in the morning. A time typically sleeping for a vast majority of people.”
“Yup. Can I come in? I forgot a jacket and it’s a bit cold.” Rubbing his face and eyes of weariness and tiredness, he unlocked the window more and she climbed in with the grace of a particularly talented one legged duckling and almost took him out with a flailing clothesline before he managed to catch her and they landed on a pile of clothes. “You falling for me isn’t supposed to be so literal, you know. ”
The cute but exasperated chuckle that came from her was telling, but it was what happened when he started extracting himself from her and she tightened around him like a vice that he realized she wasn’t shaking from just laughing. Tears came down, tiny ones that held floods far greater behind her eyes.
“Hey shit what’s wrong? Did you get hurt?” Shaking her head, she buried it into him and started laugh cry shaking hard enough to rattle his body and cause an unfortunate reaction from rubbing that he very quickly put out of mind, albeit with some amount of effort to do so.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Alixa, hey you gotta talk to me. What’s going on?” This turned it into sobbing and he gave up getting an answer for the moment, focusing on just being a comforting presence and rubbing her back in little circles. It took another five minutes of it all before she went from sobs to hiccups and pulled back to wipe her face with a tissue he handed her. Handing her a water as well, which she tried denying at first, he waited for the worst of it to pass before he went into it again.
“What happened?” After a swig of the water, she finally responded.
“I….. I didn’t know where to go. I’m not supposed to be out at all tonight and if I go home then my parents will know I went out and then I’ll be kicked out or they’ll send me to my aunts and I… I didn’t want to go stay in my car after and then Doug tried getting at me and wouldn’t stop following me for like an hour and I-“
“Someone was following you?” getting up, he peaked out of the windows and felt relief when he saw no vehicle besides her beat up old potato of a car.
“Not follow follow, he just kept showing up at every place in the party when I would leave and kept talking about how would treat me if I put out and it was just….. disgusting so I told him off and he kept doing it.” She had started shaking again but settled herself by breathing as David motioned to keep the breathing.
“So he followed you at a party? Not out of it?”
“No, he left off after someone else said something and I left after. He was being a freak.” David felt a laugh bubble up but kept it to himself as she went on and took her opportunity to fix herself up a bit while going on.
“He started messaging about how sorry he was for acting like that and how he just didn’t realize I wasn’t into it when I left and more but I stopped reading it and just kept driving. And then I ended up here.”
“Sounds like he let whatever he was taking do the talking. Who is the guy? A friend of yours, from him having your number?”
“No…. I mean I gave him it a year ago but blocked him. But he’s been finding ways to figure out how to message me and making new accounts on things to talk to me more.”
“That’s… that is actual stalking. What the hell Alixa!? How long has it been going on?”
“He’s not!” she looked up sharply at that and paused, but after a moment continued.
“At least he wasn’t. I talked back to him a few times, he seemed harmless. Look he just freaked me out and made me feel gross. I'm sure he just took something and didn't realize how he came off. Can I crash here tonight? I’m still a little off from the entire thing and the drinki-”
“If he was on one, that's worse. And you drove here drunk? Dude that was way too dangerous.”
“Don’t call me dude, jerk,” her spitfire reply came, “and between staying while a little drunk or driving, I made my choice. I’m not a damned child or in need of a lecture! Nor drunk!” At this point their voices had raised from a civil and quite tone to raised and angered.
“I didn’t call you a fucking child. And sorry, I call most everyone dude and start my lectures when it’s… now 4 AM and they tell me they did something dangerous and I, you know, give a single shit,” at this point she was looking down at the ground, avoiding his eyes, “you showed up here, not at home. I get to at least say a thing. And please, please don’t wake up my mother. She really hates it when she wakes up and makes that very well known.” She stood up, warring emotions cutting through the now smeared and previously unnoticed makeup that made her eyes look like they’d been struck.
“This was a mistake, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have bothered you or your beauty sleep. I’m going to go.” She only got a single step away before David stopped her by putting his hands up in a defeated gesture.
“No, I’m glad you came over. Fuck, sorry, at least you’re safe. I didn’t…. I’m sorry for getting upset. It wasn’t you, really. Stay.” Seeing more hesitancy, he followed up by pointing to the bed.
“All yours for the night. I’ll be real damn comfy right here. Just, please? Stay?” his voice grew gentler as he spoke, worry about her going back out winning out over being responsible about another person’s choices. He wasn’t, but that didn’t stop his foot from often finding a warm and comfortable spot in his mouth whenever someone did something concerning to themselves or someone else.
“You’re going to sleep on the floor?” Was her incredulious reply.
“It’s padded enough that it’s almost like the bed.” It must have been the follow-up shrug that broke her reticence, as she cracked a smile while looking around. The tension that had been building seemed to drift away like smoke out the still open window behind her.
“You really do have to clean this up sometime. I think I’ve seen the same pair of pants hanging off that lamp for a month now.”
“You know, my mother said something similar earlier. Of course, the other people who’ve assisted in making it a mess certainly don’t bother to worry about it either. Example A.” David said with a grin, pointing at her and letting his eyes drift to were they’d not long ago made a mess. Her blush told him that she got the comment.
“Oh shut up. You know, you used to be less smug.”
“I also used to be four feet tall, wore glasses sometimes, and had way more of a tan. And I’d hardly call being fond of a pleasant memory being smug. Your point being?”
“You’re an ass.”
“Yeah well…. Okay yeah. But at least I make it worthwhile? Besides I hardly have anything on the other asses running about.” She shook her head at his antics but smiled a much more genuine one than she had since she’d first crashed into his room. It faded a little as she stared at the bed.
“You don’t have to. I can take the floor, I’m the one who showed up in the middle of the night.”
“And I sometimes do anyways for my back. It’ll be fine, take the bed. Besides, you might wake up with my underwear or something on your face if you chance it. Or the thing under the bed might get you.”
“You are weird,” the smile was still there, “and a dork.”
“Yup. Come on, I have work mid day tomo…today and you’ve got to sleep off some of the crap you put up with tonight.” Silently, she headed to the bed and set about fixing it to her level of standards as he set about to make the spot on the floor the same. As she finished and sat on the edge, she looked over and watched him, shirtless and in sweats, moving about in the dimly lit room with an odd easiness to his body.
Cocking her head, she layed down and pulled up the blanket before she said anything more. “Hey, do you have that shirt I left here. The oversized one?”
“Probably. But it’s buried. There should be at least one sweatshirt in that drawer you can use.”
“Turn around, please?” Shrugging, he turned and sat in his new spot, hearing and trying not to think about the sounds of her clothes rustling or the way he could suddenly feel every hair on his neck from the tingle that the mere sound sent through him.
“I’m good.”
Laying down finally, he saw she’d put on the shirt and had covered the rest of her once more in the thick blanket he’d spent the night wresting with in his sleeping fit.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Just…. Next time? Hopefully there is none but next time? Call me and have me come there instead. I’ll figure it out.” She snorted again.
“There won’t be a next time. But sure.”
As the silence stretched and David settled in and started his usual process of sorting out falling asleep when she spoke again. “I mean it. Thank you David.”
Smiling, he let the moment pass and the emptiness of dreaming swallow him whole.
________________________
The later morning after his early morning was hurried and hectic in many ways. Waking up an hour later than he wanted, he left Alixa snoozing and set about making breakfast like he typically would on his mother’s workdays and made an extra portion that had he look at him quizzically until he said he was exercising again and made face at the thought. “How you can be my son and have such a love of fitness, I’ll never understand.”
“It isn’t love, it’s for work. If I can’t do fifty pounds at least ten times a day, I could lose the job from underperformance. Plus it’s GOOD FOR YOU.”
Scowling at him and the implication that she'd assumed he meant, she left for her own job not long after that and he brought the rest to his sleeping beauty in his bed. She hadn’t so much as tossed or turned since falling asleep, a snore he hadn’t known about before emitting itself from seemingly the bowels of hell.
Chuckling at the thought, his noise made her finally shift and she cracked open her eyes. At first, the look of tiredness was all there was. Then came confusion, understanding, and then the food.
“You do breakfast in bed here?”
Unable to help himself, David started laughing and had to actually set the plate and cup down to avoid dropping them. Her continued look of both amusement and confusion only made the laughter all the harder. It took a minute for him to stop, during which time she had swung out of the bed and grabbed her plate before digging in. It was also then that he realized she was ONLY wearing the sweatshirt, bare legs dangling off the side and swinging ever so slightly that it made the slim and light tone that was their outline shift along the hint of musculature and dance up and down. He stood for a second, not realizing he had been so openly checking her out until she suddenly cleared her throat and pulled down the blanket.
“Excuse me sir, my eyes and mind are up here.” Her face didn’t make her seem offended by the action but David still felt bad.
“Sorry, just caught me off. And don’t call me sir.”
“You’re fine, I was only kind of joking. And why not?” the teasing question was followed by mouthfuls of egg, cheese, potato, and a tiny amount of breakfast sausage.
“Because I said so.” His cheeky reply earned him a headshake but she was too busy eating her way through her plate to give a more in depth reply. Seeing her so ravenous made him wonder if he should have made more, but she stopped her campaign against full plates of food about half way through.
“That is really good but I can’t eat more.” She looked a little green suddenly. “I really don’t think I should have eaten that fast.”
“Probably not. The restroom is upstairs, first door on the right past the kitchen from here. Same room as the washer dryer."
Her rush standing told him that was the exact information she needed and wanted at that moment. Like a spooked deer she made for the mentioned destination. It was already going to be a hell of a Friday, he thought while watching her form disappear up the stairs. At least work would be easy, simple, and all about learning today.