It was Grant’s night with Celia, but I hadn’t seen her hair yet. Grant told me about it but it just didn’t make any sense in my head. I waited for her to come home after her shift at the library and hid from her. When she went to walk up the stairs, I leaned out from the kitchen to have a look at the back.Okay, not too bad. I tried to lean out to have a better look, but my sock-clad foot slid on the polished, hardwood floors and I fell. I quickly got up and knew I was caught. I ran to the pantry door, slipped inside and quietly closed the door.“Hey?” she called out as she came back down the stairs. “Are you down here, Keith?” “Celia, are you home?” I heard Grant call from the living room. “Sorry, I knocked over a plant. How was your day?” “People like my hair, apparently. I’ve had some stares, some compliments, and someone slipped me a number. Which I promptly threw away.” I heard her kiss him and knew I was saved. I came out of the closet and went through the other door to the b
I wanted to run away. I wanted to never leave. Conflicted, that’s how I felt as I stared across the bed and through the glass wall. It was so… hot. But at the same time, so weird. I didn’t know where to look and my eyes moved from place to place.“It’s okay for you to look, Celia,” Keith whispered. “That’s why they’ve left the curtains open, so people can watch.” “Any people?” I whispered back; afraid they could hear me. “Sure, anyone the club lets in. And they don’t allow just anyone in. The only reason you’re here is that I brought you with me.” “I see.” But I didn’t. I thought we were going to a club, get drunk, and dance the night away. This was better, worse, a nightmare, but a fantasy too. I groaned and put my hands over my face. People did this?“What’s wrong? Is it too much?” “Do you want… that?” I gulped around the lump in my throat, shocked by what I saw, by what was happening. “Only if you do. That’s why I brought you here, Celia. So you can explore. I know I was your
“Celia, I really need to talk to you and a phone text isn’t the best way to do it. Would you please answer your phone?” I listened to the message Becky had left for me on voicemail the next morning and groaned.I’d avoided her for so long. She didn’t seem to be happy that I was with Keith and she’d texted me a few times to ask me to come to the diner with her. And every time I wanted to reply to her I felt like a naughty little schoolgirl, who would be told off by their mom for doing all the things that I did with Keith. Especially after last night. Becky and I had made up, sure, but I didn’t want to constantly have to defend my relationship with Keith to her. This was mine, all mine, and I wasn’t about to let anyone take that from me. Even a really good friend like Becky. I rolled out of bed, sore from my exertions of the night before, and headed for the shower. I had class and so did Keith. He was already up but in his own shower downstairs. I stepped into the hot water and let it
“Where the fuck did you take her last night?” I asked Keith when he came home later that day. “She caught me here when she came home early, and I had no idea what she was talking about.” “I took her to the club. That club.” His grin told me all I needed to know about which club he’d taken Celia to last night. Well, that and what she’d said. I’d suspected it was the club, but I wanted to be sure and couldn’t exactly ask her, now could I? “You need to tell us this stuff, Keith. It’s my day today, I needed to know what you did last night. Luckily, she kind of told me herself but if she hadn’t, I would have been clueless. Then she’d have figured out something was wrong.” “Relax, Colin, I was going to tell you, I just didn’t have time to yet. By the way, she’s into it if you were wondering.” He had that smirk on his face, the one that made me want to punch him sometimes but this was good news. It meant we could tell her our secret when we were ready and maybe she wouldn’t freak out so m
The next day, I got up and my nose was stopped up and I could barely think straight because my head hurt so badly. I went into class anyway, because I didn’t want to miss a day but by the time I got to my English class with Becky, I wanted to just go home. She cornered me as the class ended and dragged me down to the diner. “I need to talk to you. It’s important.” She’d hissed the words in a way that told me she wasn’t just trying to get me to go eat with her. She really had something she needed to tell me. “Listen,” I said with my head over the cup of coffee I’d ordered. I let the steam roll up onto my face and into my nose. It didn’t help, but it didn’t hurt either. “I feel like complete shit, so I’m sorry if I don’t seem interested. I am. I just don’t feel well.” “I’m sorry, but I need to talk to you. I don’t know who else I could trust with this.” Her eyes welled up and she leaned closer to whisper. “It’s about Mike.” I looked around but didn’t see the waiter anywhere. “Is he
The next day, I got up and my nose was stopped up and I could barely think straight because my head hurt so badly. I went into class anyway, because I didn’t want to miss a day but by the time I got to my English class with Becky, I wanted to just go home. She cornered me as the class ended and dragged me down to the diner. “I need to talk to you. It’s important.” She’d hissed the words in a way that told me she wasn’t just trying to get me to go eat with her. She really had something she needed to tell me. “Listen,” I said with my head over the cup of coffee I’d ordered. I let the steam roll up onto my face and into my nose. It didn’t help, but it didn’t hurt either. “I feel like complete shit, so I’m sorry if I don’t seem interested. I am. I just don’t feel well.” “I’m sorry, but I need to talk to you. I don’t know who else I could trust with this.” Her eyes welled up and she leaned closer to whisper. “It’s about Mike.” I looked around but didn’t see the waiter anywhere. “Is he
I had that miserable cold for a week before it finally started to go away. I missed a couple of days of classes and work, which worried me, but there was nothing I could do about being sick. Keith took very good care of me, and once I thought I’d made him sick too because I heard a faint sneeze but he was fine when I saw him. Now, the sneezy, snotty, achy everywhere sensations were gone and my head was clear again. I got out of bed and got ready to go to class. By the time I made it to work, I’d started to feel tired but I knew I was a whole lot better than I had been. I’d even lost my voice at one point, but now everything was much better.I met Keith at lunchtime, and he surprised me with news that we were going to a Halloween party that evening. He’d bought a costume for me and he had everything planned. I would be a Viking Valkyrie and he would be a pirate. It was just like my fantasy, only it sounded so much better. I got home that evening and took a shower quickly. I did my ha
Becky drove us to her warehouse apartment, and we took the elevator up to the floor where her apartment was. I saw that it was mainly one room, with a closed in space for the bathroom and the bedroom. There was also a loft, which was where Becky slept on a mattress on the floor. A bohemian life for a girl a that wasn’t sure she wanted to be a true bohemian.Yet, I thought ruefully, I’d wanted the conservative life and had ended up being the bohemian one. I was numb for a while and didn’t say a lot. Becky, on the other hand, wouldn’t shut up. “I’m so sorry, Celia. I didn’t know how to tell you, and I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to make accusations that weren’t true, but I knew Keith was a player and that he and his brothers were fairly… kinky. I thought maybe you knew. Or that Keith had gone straight, finally.” She paused, dug out a bottle of scotch and poured two glasses. I gulped it, hungry for the delirium it gave so many. I wanted to pass out and forget the terrible words that Ra