Chapter 4: Our Balancing Act

Before I met Katie, I was inhibited, mostly because I didn’t have much real experience with young women. There’d been one brief casual connection, and one long-term high school relationship. Unfortunately, I struggled, convinced that neither woman was very interested in being intimate with me.

When Katie and I met at college, I had hopes we might become intimate later, but I avoided any aggressiveness. Cautious, I didn’t want to risk messing up this new and exciting relationship.

At the end of our fourth date, I was hoping for our first goodnight kiss. But she smiled sweetly and kicked her apartment door open with her heel.

“You’re not leaving, Sam. Tomorrow, we’ll take my car to your studio, pick up your clothes and shit, and leave your keys on the kitchen counter.” She looped her arm through mine, hauled me into her apartment, then spun me around and pushed her front door shut by using my back and shoulders.

Then she moved us toward a kitchen chair. Her hands fumbled with my pants’ fly, and then she impatiently tugged everything down to my knees. She must have noticed my legs twitching. I was so surprised—so stunned.

“Relax. Enjoy. I’m taking care of you.” And then she was too busy to talk. Very quickly, I was on the brink and choked out a warning, which she ignored and took in my every dribble.

“Mm. How was it for you?”

Breathless, I managed, “Very best minutes of my ... whole life. Can I stay?”

“Oh, Sam—of course you can stay. I want you here, with me. We’ll go get your things, remember?”

The next morning, I woke with a lovely ache in my groin and the smell of bacon in my nose. Which is better than waking up with an aching nose and a bacon smell in my—well, never mind.

I found the bathroom, then had to go out naked because my pants were still out on the kitchen floor. Katie was at the stove minding the griddle with her back toward me. She wore only an apron tied around her waist, with her ass uncovered. I tried to slip over quietly and pick up my pants. She must have seen movement reflected in the metal backsplash. She spoke over her shoulder.

“Sam, you don’t need your clothes right now. I made our breakfast. Coffee’s ready, go put two mugs on the table.”

A few minutes later, we sat eating together while I was searching for the right words.

“At the risk of sounding like an idiot, I need to ask. Did you really say we’re going to get my stuff and move me in here with you?”

Katie answered casually, “Yeah, that’s right.”

That’s when I said the most profoundly stupid words of my entire life, and almost ruined everything for a stupid joke.