Chapter 4: Show Time

Alex talked to the guys, explained everything, and life returned to normal at the dorm. Finally, no more dirty looks, except from the guys in Room 408, but that’s another situation. Alex cleaned up the room this weekend, no more half-eaten snack wrappers or mountains of dirty clothes, he even took care of the collection of dirty underwear I kicked under his bed.

He told me the room was too quiet with me gone but said it was also good for him to spend time thinking. He admitted that he did want to talk to me on Friday before I left, but couldn’t get the words out, he just wasn’t ready. He knows he overreacted, but when the heart is involved, it can be that way. Gail was something extra special to him. That, I can totally understand because Abby is sure something special to me.

The breathing machine works wonders, no more snoring at all. I can finally stop using earplugs. He gets a much better sleep too and doesn’t seem to be sleeping till the last possible minute like he used to.

Alex said the guys in 408 struck again over the weekend with another can of Frank’s Big Can-’O-Farts under the door. Pissed off from being awoken, he opened the door and chucked the still spraying can down the hall towards their room. Looks like we’re gonna need to come up with another retaliation plan.

Abby told me she’s going to return to the Magic Club meetings and that she’ll tell the guys to call her Abby going forward. I’m happy she is getting back into it, she enjoys playing that game. She said I could come with her anytime I would like, maybe I’ll bring good luck to her.

Apparently, Belinda saw her emptying the trash can from her room, the one with all the used condoms - and, of course, razzed her about it. She said something to the effect of, wow, talk about a total fuck-fest that went on around here this weekend. My cum-filled condoms are being seen by all the wrong people these days.

Classes are pure hell this week. The professors are really dumping the work on us. I mean they always do, but this week is more than normal for some reason.

Mr. Eskins, my professor in Creative Writing, gave us a time extension on our assignment about moving from home to college - it’s due this week instead of last. I finally finish it and re-read it several times to edit and tweak wording issues. I enjoyed this assignment and I’m quite happy with how it turned out. I tried to include as many fun little details as I could without going overboard. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll write stories about my life.

On Wednesday night, Alex asks me, “Hey Kyle, can you wake me up when you get up? I want to work out with you.”

I’ve heard that one before, I think to myself. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I know I’ve asked in the past and never followed through, but I want to work on changing a few things in my life.”

“Okay, I can do that. Sometimes Rachel, Chad, and I go running, other times we work out in the Fitness Room.”

“I want to change some of my eating habits too.”

“Talk to Rachel, she’s a fitness trainer, she might have some good ideas about that.”

In the middle of the night without earplugs, I hear that some things never change. There’s that familiar fwip-fwip, fwip-fwip sound of Alex taking care of himself. I have an odd thought pop in my head - I sure hope he’s not thinking about Gail while he’s doing that, but I quickly put it out of my mind.

Alex is good on his word; he wakes up early and we work out with Rachel in the fitness room. She has him set up with a beginner routine to get him accustomed to regular exercise. By the end of today’s workout, he’s sore but feels good, and most importantly, he feels good about himself.

Following my afternoon Philosophy Class on Thursday, I got to thinking about how Renee and I had loose plans to get together one of these weekends. As we know, spending time with Renee usually involves us having sex, but that can’t happen - I would never do that to Abby, I’m not that kind of guy.

Renee wanted me to have fun with girls, her words were - what happens at school, stays at school. That works fine and well for casual encounters and nothing serious, but that doesn’t exactly fit my relationship with Abby. I’m going to have to let Renee know that I’ve met someone and hope she understands.

This evening Alex and I are both working on homework. I notice he’s had his nose in the books more this week than he usually does. He must have had more homework dumped on him too, or he’s putting more effort into it.

There’s a knock on the door, I get up to open it. Jay and Randy from Room 408 are here. They’re both holding a few cans of Frank’s Big Can-’O-Farts.

“Oh look, we have visitors, Alex,” I roll my eyes. What the hell do these idiots want?

“Look, we can keep this up,” Randy says, holding up a can, “or maybe talk about a truce.”

“A truce?” I ask.

“Can you tell us what the fuck you put in our room that stinks?”

“Getting pretty rank in there these days, huh?” I laugh.

“Yeah ... It ain’t funny either.”

“Actually, it is pretty funny,” I smirk. That bologna worked like a charm.

“Why should we?” Alex gets up from his desk. “You two started all this shit.”

“No, you two started it with all the shredded paper, we saw you laughing.”

“Pfftt ... So, I was laughing, big fucking deal,” I scoff. “I was walking by, saw it, and thought it was hilarious, doesn’t mean we did it. You’re the ones who made the wrong assumption it was us.”

“Whatever ... Look, we’ll stop if you stop, okay? Can you tell us what you did?”

I look up, down, all around, and take my time to hem and haw over it. “What kind of a ... guarantee do we have?”

“What do mean, guarantee?”

“Well, last time someone pranked you, you jumped to incorrect conclusions, blamed us, and here we are. How do I know if something happens again you won’t take it out on Alex and me?”

“And how will we know if you get pranked that you won’t blame us?” Randy shoots back.

“Somehow, I don’t see that happening. See, we tend to try to ... get along ... with the people around here.”

“And we don’t?”

“Not saying you don’t ... but then again, your loud music doesn’t always go over so well with everyone. Just sayin’...”

“Oh? And like you two are a couple of model citizens,” Randy taunts. “Don’t think we didn’t notice your roommate sleeping on the couch last week.”

“That has nothing to do with this.” I wave my finger between them and us.

Jay holds his hand up, “Look, okay ... you have our word, no more pranks.”

“I don’t know ... What do you think, Alex? Think they’re good on their word?”

“I guess we can see how it goes.”

“Can you please tell us what’s stinking up our room?”

I walk over to the heating/air conditioning unit under our window. “Open your vent like this and look inside.”

They nod and Jay says to Randy, “I thought it had something to do with the vent.”

I add, “Oh, and you might want to use a pair of rubber gloves.”

They leave and I think to myself, what a couple of idiots. If it was me, I would have at least investigated the vent by now.

At work on Friday, Mr. Curtis asked me to come back to his office. “Yes, Mr. Curtis, you needed to see me?”

“Have a seat, Kyle, I want to follow up on what we talked about last week.”

“Okay.”

“I would like to put you in charge of the baked goods and bread aisle. That would entail you checking in incoming stock, logging expired goods, and keeping track of what’s needed for orders weekly to the bakery. Because of your class schedule, I know your hours are limited so you’ll work together with Ted on this.”

“Sounds good.”

“I’m giving you a 50-cent raise, I know it’s not much, but it’s the best I can do.”

“Thank you.”

“When your time is not needed specifically in the bread aisle, I want you to keep busy performing your regular duties of assisting the cashiers, gathering carts, clean-up, etc., but your first duty will now be your assigned aisle.”

“I understand.”

“We would like to hire another stock/bag person, can you recommend anyone?”

“Yes, actually I can. My roommate, Alex, is looking for work.”

“Is he as hard of a worker as you?”

“I think so ... I’ve only known him since starting school last month, but I can talk to him.”

“Okay, I’ll take you on your word. I see your next shift is Sunday, get with Ted and he’ll show you everything we’ll need you to do in the baked goods aisle.”

“Thank you, Mr. Curtis.”

“You’re welcome, Kyle.”

This work will be so much better without having to check over my shoulder all the time to see if lines are forming at the check-outs; that’s what made it so difficult to set my mind on any specific task.

While I am on break, my phone bloops from a text, it’s Abby, “Hi Kyle, would you like to come over tonight? Maybe spend the night?”

“Sure! I’m off at 8:00.”

“Okay. Just to warn you, Bitch-Face is here, but whatever ... I want to see you.”

“I’ll grab a change of clothes after work and be right over.”

Abby sends me a mess of kissy-face emojis, I still need her to show me where those are.

At the dorm, Alex and Zach are deep in some medieval-looking war game on the XBox.

“Hey, guys. How’s it going?”

“Oh, hey, we’re good,” Zach says, fighting to slay some giant ogre-looking beast.

I change out of my work pants and shirt and throw a few clean clothes in my backpack, “Listen, I’m heading out and staying the night at Abby’s.”

Alex looks up and fist bumps me. “Okay, Kyle.”

Alex is pretty much back to his old self, but I can tell he’s still a little bothered over the whole Gail/Abby thing. I’m sure it doesn’t help that I’m off to spend the night with the very same girl he had his heart set on, but life must move on, and time heals wounds. In my heart, I know if he meets someone, it’ll go a long way in helping to put all of this behind him.

Abby lets me in, and we kiss. Belinda is sprawled on the couch watching TV again. She sure seems to have a lot of free time to lay around; I guess Wrestling Team members don’t have nearly as much homework as the rest of us.

Abby takes my hand, leading me to her room. “Come on, Kyle, let’s get started on our homework.”

“Homework, that’s a good one!” Belinda scoffs. “You’re not fooling anyone, Abs. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you two wanna play hide the salami.”

“Shut up, Belinda,” Abby mutters.

Belinda teases in a goofy voice, “See, here it is. Oops, now it’s gone! Oh my!” She puts her hands to her cheeks. “Where-ever did it go?” It’s actually pretty funny and I snicker as a disgusted Abby pulls me down the hall by my wrist.

“Have fun studying,” Belinda grins.

In a lot of ways, Belinda reminds me of Tiffany’s older sister, Bev; she pulled this same kind of shit. Although Bev knew when to quit, Belinda enjoys pushing people’s buttons too much to care.

Once we’re in her room, Abby quietly locks the door behind her. We sit together on the bed, hugging and kissing. “I’m glad you could come over, Kyle.”

“Me too.”

Abby giggles and quietly takes her clothes off, it’s not the noisiest task in the world, but if there is such a thing as quietly undressing, Abby just accomplished it. I take my clothes off as well and we lay together naked. Abby rolls on top, lying her body on mine, nuzzling my neck and we whisper in each other’s ears how much we love each other.

From outside the door, we hear faint munching sounds of crunching potato chips, then, “So ... has the foreplay started yet, or what?”

Abby sighs, “We’re just doing homework as I told you.”

“Yeah, riiight.” I can visualize Belinda eye-rolling to that comment through the door. “Then open the door, Abs.”

“Go watch your TV!”

“What the hell?” I whisper. “Is she camped out in the hallway with snacks waiting for us to start mating or something?”

“Mating,” Abby giggles, “that’s a funny word for it, sounds like we’re on the Discovery Channel.”

“We might as well be with her out there waiting for the show to begin.”

“I’m so sorry about her,” Abby whispers.

“It’s okay,” I sigh. “Maybe we should shove the furniture around like we’re having rock-’em sock-’em sex like she does and then she’ll leave us alone.”

“I know, right?”

“On second thought,” I add, “if we do that, she may break down the door asking to join in.”

“No, thank you,” Abby makes a disgusted face. “I don’t share when it comes to you.”

Our hands are wandering up, around, and all over each other. Her nipples are so hard right now; I like licking and sucking on them because Abby gets so –

“Please tell me you’re using a condom ... I hope,” we hear through the door.

“Belinda, leave us alone!” Abby shouts.

“Just making sure you’re practicing safe sex, that’s all. I’ll leave you to it now.” More giggling from her out there.

“What? Now she’s our own personal Public Service Safe Sex Announcement?” This is exactly why we didn’t try having sex last week with Belinda in the house, we knew something like this would happen.

A few minutes pass and everything has gone quiet, so we resume where we were. Skin to skin our bodies intertwine, her legs around mine, my arms around her. Our hips are pushed together sharing an intimate heat that’s beginning to get us aroused. Her lips and mine are locked in the throes of passionate kissing–

“Who usually cums first with you two? My money is on the kid, but I suppose it can be the other way around sometimes.”

Abby rolls off me getting visibly pissed. “Belinda! Will you please just leave us alone for fuck’s sake!”

“Sorry, sorry ... I just thought of it and was curious.” Definite snickering now. “I’ll just leave two to it now...” A pause, then, “ ... For real this time.”

“Kyle, there is no way we’re going to enjoy this with her here.”

“She’s just doing it to be obnoxious.”

“I know ... She can be so immature for her age.”

“When does she go to bed?” I ask.

“It’s never a set time, but one thing she always does is take a shower before turning in. We’ll have to wait till we hear that.”

“Okay.”

Abby hugs me. “I am so sorry. I was really hoping she would leave us alone.”

“It’s okay,” I kiss her, “we’ve got all night.”

Abby and I lay together, she’s tracing her fingers in wavy lines over my body and lightly pinching my nipples. Girls love to do that, don’t they? She giggles, “I think it’s so funny how your little nipples get hard when I play with them.”

“Yeah, something about playing with certain things makes them get hard,” I snicker.

“I know this sure does,” she says, reaching down to fiddle with my cock.

“Yup, that sure does!”

Abby brushes her hand on my cheek. “How often do you shave?”

“Not much, maybe once a week.”

She’s pulling a little noticeable growth on my chin. “You have some here.”

“Yeah, I haven’t shaved in a while.”

“I kind of like it, you have the beginnings of a little goatee. Have you ever thought about growing a beard?”

“I don’t have enough facial hair to grow a full one. What you see is about it.”

Abby sits up with her legs crossed Indian style, facing me. Her finger travels down my chest to land and tickles my navel. “Did you know you have a thin line of darker hair that goes from your belly button ... down to ... here?” Her finger travels down, past my waistline, and lands in my pubes.

“Yeah, it’s my Happy Trail ... or so it’s called.”

“That’s a good name for it!” she laughs.

“Could you help me with something?” I ask.

“Sure.”

“I need to trim myself up here,” I ruffle my pubes, “but I’m afraid of nicking myself.”

“You want to shave it off?” She looks dismayed.

“No, no, I just want to clean up around the edges.”

“Yeah, I can do that for you!” she hops up, finds her cordless shaver, and grabs a towel off the chair to lay under me to catch the trimmings. She goes right to it and cleans me up, being careful not to shave through my happy trail. She leans in and is extra careful when she gets near my balls.

“That’s the part that scares me about doing it myself,” I tell her. “I’m afraid of catching skin there.”

“Here, let me show you. It’s like this for me when I get near my opening. Pull the skin like this, so it’s taught.” She pulls my balls to one side and trims, then the other. “See? This way there’s no tiny folds to accidentally catch in the shaver.”

This activity is making me hard. Abby notices and laughs, “Does this feel good, Kyle?”

“Anything going on there feels good.”

“There we go, how’s that?” she says, fluffing my pubes.

“Perfect! Thanks, Abby.”