Let's Waste Time

The guys all decided they had to come home with me after finishing up their wild croc battle. They claimed it was because they needed to check my computer for viruses. I was pretty sure that was a lie, but they insisted anyway. So we all chipped in on a cab to get home. And just as if Chris knew we were coming, he happened to step outside right as we were trooping up the front steps. Then all five of us stood there staring at each other.

Chris looked torn between confused and amused. Amused to meet my friends. Confused about why we were all staring at him. He was way taller than us. Towering over us like a goddamn elf lord about to trash talk some hobbits.

“Hey,” he finally said to me with a nod. I nodded back.

“Hey,” I said. “Um—these are my friends. Doug, Todd, and Albert.” He nodded to all of them.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Chris.” They all nodded back.

“They’re here to debug my computer.” He nodded again, slowly this time.

“Good luck with the debugging. I have a meeting, so I should probably get going.”

“Yeah, okay.” He patted me on the shoulder, giving my arm a gentle squeeze before he left. There was a brief moment where we shared eye contact, and something passed between us that I’d never felt before. Like we were both simultaneously remembering what it was like to be in bed together.

But then he let me go and hopped down the steps two at a time. He strolled on long legs to his car that was parked on the curb. We were still staring at him. So when he looked over the car, we had another moment of eye contact. This time it ended when he smiled and slid into his car.

“God, he’s hot,” Todd whispered.

“He is, isn’t he?” Then I realized they were all having their own silent conversation behind my back. “Shut up,” I snapped. I shoved them into my apartment and got them back on track.

They scattered like roaches. Doug was the only honest one and actually went to my computer to see what needed to be done. Albert went right for the fridge. And Todd walked to my open bedroom door and looked in, hands on his hips, a smile on his stupid face.

“So this is where you guys did the do?” he asked.

“No, idiot. We did it on the floor.” He smiled wider as if my room was telling him a story.

“Our little Marley is so grown up.” He sighed. “Boinking baseball players.” I rolled my eyes and went to where he was standing. My sheets were still rumpled. I cleaned up, but I mostly just picked my clothes up off the floor and shut the drawer. But it was clear the sheets had been very well used recently. “So was he any good, or is that body just for show?” I sighed dreamily.

“He’s an athlete. The muscles are real. And he’s a goddamn magician.” He laughed and shook his head. Then he ruffled up my hair.

“Jesus, Marley,” Doug said from my desk. “When was the last time you defragged?”

“She defragged last night. All night long,” Todd sang. I smacked his arm.

The guys didn’t stay long since we all had work the following day. As soon as I hit the sheets, I crashed and didn’t wake up until my alarm went off. But the next night, I was back to not being able to sleep. I laid in bed for an hour thinking about everything that happened with Chris and Trent. Then I got distracted because I forgot I had chocolate-covered raisins in my bag.

I decided to just get up and try the cold medicine approach again. But after digging around my cupboards for a while, I couldn’t find any. So I settled on a mug of hot chocolate and hoped the warmth was enough to trick my brain into slowing down.

Yes, I’d been thinking about Chris. But the real reason I couldn’t sleep was because of Trent. I wasn’t sure what to do. He told me they were getting a divorce. He told me all the time. But she wasn’t collecting disability, and she would probably die without his insurance. She was still the mother of his child. So they held on so she could continue using his benefits. They were only supposed to be doing this long enough for her to get a kidney donor, and then they’d go their separate ways.

The issue is that I’d met Trent when I was eighteen, and there was still no word on when she’d get that donor. Now that she was pregnant again, I was feeling a lot worse about the situation. It was just like Chris said. Trent’s uncertainty meant that he and Sasha still had sex. I had no idea if she even knew about me. Trent always assured me that he wasn’t cheating on her because they’d mutually broken up. But sometimes—I wasn’t so sure.

Chris’s car pulled up along the curb while I sipped my hot chocolate. He must have had a late-game or something. He was still wearing dusty baseball pants with high socks. But he had a hoodie on over the top of it, and he was wearing chucks instead of cleats. He hauled his heavy gym bag onto his shoulder and headed toward me.

“Hey,” he said when he spotted me.

“Hey.”

“Not slipping back into drug use again, are you?”

“Nah, I’m trying to cut back.”

“Can’t sleep?” I shook my head and looked down at my melting marshmallows.

“No.”

“I got a few new movies. Do you want to come pick out the next one?”

“Sure.”

I stood up and followed him into his apartment. I was pretty sure this wasn’t actually an invitation for movies. Still, I headed over to his messy DVD collection anyway. He had them all scattered around his entertainment center. I leaned on my knees to look through them as he put his baseball stuff away.

“Don’t we still have to finish Star Trek?” I asked.

“Right. I forgot about it. Was a little distracted last time.”

“That’s fair.”

I stood up just as he approached. He set his hand on my hip and slid it around to my front. Chris and I had never really touched before the other night. So it was a little strange to be touched by him so openly, especially in a way that clearly crossed over from friendship into something else.

“How was it for you?” he asked. “I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“Emotionally. Are you good?” I turned my head just enough to see him from the corner of my eye.

“Yeah, Chris. I’m good. Are you?” His hand spread out over my belly. He was warm against me, and I could hear something change in his voice when he spoke.

“Yeah, Marley. I’m good.”

“Then we can—if you want to.”

“Just tell me when you’re ready to put a stop to this.”

I nodded, and he said nothing else. His lips went to the crook of my neck, and he worked on unbuttoning my jacket. Once he got it off, he trailed his hand back down the front of me, unbuttoned my jeans, and slid his hand down them. I dropped my head back against him and moved my hand into his hair.

It was a startling contrast between him and Trent. Trent had longer hair. Not so long that he couldn’t work as a pilot. But he liked it with some length. Chris’s hair was shorter, and he was taller. So even when I closed my eyes, I could feel that he was Chris and not Trent. I couldn’t even pretend if I wanted to. And the strange thing is that—I didn’t want to pretend. I liked Chris just as he was.

He was good with his hands, and my body was already rolling with heat. It wasn’t long before I yanked his hand out of my jeans and turned around to rip his shirt up over his head. Then I pressed my lips against his bare skin and pulled at the baseball pants. He said we were going to keep this equal. So I decided to pay him back. I slid my hand down the front of him until his breath caught in his throat.

He held his hands to my shoulders and looked right at me. Or maybe I was looking first. I don’t know. But it suddenly felt different. So much more intimate than I expected. It was just eye contact. But there were unspoken words in that look. And the moment he leaned in for a kiss, it dissipated like smoke. I immediately turned away and took my lips to his chest instead.

“Sorry,” he breathed out. “It’s a habit.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“Come with me.”

I let him go, and he pulled me into his bedroom. His apartment was built as a mirror image of mine, so everything was on the opposite side. He shut the bedroom door, and then we went for each other, ripping off clothes and kissing any skin we could reach that wasn’t lips. He didn’t even let me go when he went to get a condom from his bedside table. He just nudged me in that direction, kept his arm around me, and then knelt down to get what he wanted. Then he took my glasses off, tossed them onto the table, and knocked me onto the bed. I ran my hands down his back while he bit down on the marks he’d already left on my neck.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you,” he said.

“I know. I haven’t either.”

“I thought once we did it, it would go away. But it’s just gotten worse.”

“I know.”

He sat back so he could slide the condom on. I was, yet again, startled by how beautiful he was in the dim light. His apartment looked out onto the opposite street. So the green streetlight shone right in through the windows and illuminated him.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. I hooked my ankles around him.

“God, yes.”

And that was the last time we had anything to say for a while. We dove right in as if we’d fall apart if we didn’t. It was fast and rushed and still—spectacular. Even when he finished before I did, he didn’t call it a night, roll over and go to sleep. He just pulled away from me and buried his face between my legs again.

A few minutes later, we were lying flat on our backs, staring up at the ceiling fan.

“Fuck,” he said with a heavy breath. Because, like the time before, once he’d gotten me to do whatever it is he liked us to do, he’d jumped right back in for a second round.

My body was tingling. I didn’t want to move. I felt like jelly or a marshmallow or something. Something that was just going to melt right into his sheets and never come out again. But it was late, and my eyes were already growing heavy. I knew it would be weird if I slept at his place. So I slowly lifted myself up into a sitting position, legs sprawled out and half hanging off his mattress.

“I have to get out of here,” I said, rubbing the daze from my eyes. He didn’t get up. He also had his legs sprawled out, looking magnificent and languid.

“Alright,” he said.

I got up and gathered all my things. He stayed on the bed, watching me shuffle around his room in my birthday suit.

“I’ll see you on Sunday."

“Yep,” is all he managed to get out.