Three weeks into January, it was gone, all the weight from Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. I was eating oatmeal and yogurt every morning. I had two new clients with good names. In the afternoon, I'd watch NBA highlight reels with Tom.
Nights were quiet now that Gina and I were done. I was re-watching The Sopranos from the start, or it was Apex Legends if I could stay up late enough to catch Pat after work in California. My pants fit again.
On a jog one Monday morning, I saw my breath before me in the cold and thought that I might like to do all of this again for forty-five more weeks this year.
And that's when I thought about Shyanne. Later, I messaged her: hey, how are things?
Ross seemed relieved somehow when I told him I wanted a few days off, and after work that Wednesday I was on my way down. At dusk I saw wind turbines looming over frosted stubbled corn fields, and I wondered why they spun yet stayed in one place. By the time I crossed the Ohio, it was dark and freezing, and I pulled up in front of a brick rowhouse standing against the streetlight with chipped pastel yellow paint.
The girl I saw when the door opened had blunt bangs whose ends refracted out of the top of some chunky clear-rimmed glasses. They looked almost like a second set of eyebrows. She said, "John, oh my gosh!" and hugged me.
We never used to greet each other like this, but this is what you do with anyone once enough time has passed. "Good to see you, Shyanne," I said.
I walked into a space that could have been a living room, but the only things in it were a papasan chair and faded red sofa. "I'm sorry I'm late, Shyanne--shit, it's nearly midnight. You must have to work tomorrow." I sat in the papasan chair, and she brought me a glass of water.
She eased into the sofa across from me and said, "Yeah, but I'm closing, so I don't even need to be there until 4:00. Really, I don't even sleep until 2:00am most days anyway."
"Oh, closing," I said. "So you work at a restaurant?"
"It's a bar, yeah. Special Runoff. All the beer/shot combos are named after politicians who died in office. The Zachary Taylor's $18."
I should have been in bed an hour ago and my foot hurt. But she was smiling at me. "And what's in that one?" I said.
"That gets you the Colonel E.H. Taylor bourbon with cherry milk stout. And it might be interesting to know that Zachary Taylor died from eating cherries and milk."
"That's a pretty good bit," I said. She sounded like she had each word rehearsed. "Well shit, okay, then you must have the JFK, right? Which one is that?"
She shook her head. "They don't make that anymore."
"What, why?" I said.
She popped her eyes at me, pursed her lips, and just shook her head again.
"Oh--um, anyway, before I forget, I brought you something." I put my glass down on the ground and got a shoebox-sized package out of my duffel bag. "Just a little thank-you for hosting me."
"Oh, wow, what is it?" she said. She opened it and took a stack of blue and white cups out. She gave a huffy laugh. "Oh my gosh, what? Here? They sell these? How'd you get them?" she said.
"You don't think I could have just been taking them home and cleaning them?" I said. She took one off the stack and turned it about in her hand. The same cheap plastic cup with He's Not Here printed on it, from senior year.
She said, "This is sweet of you, John, thanks. We could get some PBR in these and it'd be like old times. I'll--"
The front door opened. A thin man walked in. He had a wad of closely curled brown hair poking out of a hoodie.
"Oh, John, this is my roommate Josh," she said.
"Hi, Josh!" I said, waving.
But his back turned as he took his shoes off. I heard him take a big hit off his vape. He started for the bedrooms. He turned his eyes to us as he passed. "Hey." His bedroom door closed.
Shyanne looked at me. "Don't worry, he's always like this. Anyway, you seem tired. We should get you in bed, huh?" she said, rising from the sofa.
"Yeah, um, you want to get that air mattress set up for me out here?" I said.
"Honestly it's really uncomfortable, you can just sleep in my bed," she said as she walked through the kitchen to her room. I felt my hands gripping the rattan rim of the papasan chair. It had been four years since I'd seen her. That's a medium long time. And there were times when we'd been drunk in each other's arms, even when Kevin was around--he knew it was nothing. But sleeping in bed with her, is she...? No, ridiculous. She's like my sister. Well, sort of--aren't there some situations you just don't want to be in, though?
I got up and followed her. It would be protesting too much to insist on the air mattress. We brushed our teeth, and I brought my pajamas to the bathroom so I could change. When I walked back in, only the nightstand lamp was on, and she was sitting against the headboard under the covers scrolling on her phone. She didn't look up until I got in next to her.
"Are you sleepy?" she asked.
"I was really tired like an hour ago but now I've kind of looped back around, you know?" I said.
"You want to vape a little before bed?" she asked.
"Like, weed, you mean?" I said.
"Yeah, weed," she said. She got a vape pen out of the nightstand.
As she passed it to me I noticed her nipple through her shirt. I pulled, and as I held my breath in, I thought about the time I'd seen her naked.
Five years ago, I guess it was. For some reason, the blinds weren't drawn in her bedroom that day in the basement of our apartment building, and she'd just gotten out of the shower and was brushing her hair. I only looked for a few seconds, but I couldn't forget the image. Her waist was wide in a way that made her lower half look boyish. Her tits were close-set and bell-shaped. They were what Kevin liked best about her. She would always complain to me that he wanted to tit fuck her every week and that would mean getting cum out of her hair.
I exhaled, and passed the pen back to her. Of course, I thought. Who sleeps with a bra on?
"It's good to see you again, John," she said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "How you been, anyway? Are you still seeing that girl, Gina?" she said. With her glasses off, I could recognize her better. Freckles, hazel eyes.
"Oh, that's a good memory, but no. It's--I had to call it off," I said. "She wanted the princess treatment. Dinner always on my card, it's a problem if I don't open a door for her, you know. Honestly, I found it kind of endearing at the start, but I felt like I was dating a child." The last few words rang in my head. I was delirious by now between the late hour and the weed. But Shyanne didn't seem fazed.
"Damn, sorry dude," she said. "It's tough finding someone."
I thought about asking her what she had going on. But I didn't, as I never had after we moved out of our old apartment. First because she was tucked away somewhere in the Delta for two years and I knew there was nobody for her there, and then because I could hardly get a hold of her for the year after that. I had worried about what the answer would be, and I was worried now.
"I'm sorry this is the first time I'm visiting you since we graduated," I said a couple moments later. "God knows EY's paying me enough for me to drive or take a plane to see you every now and then."
"No, no, come on now," she said. "Wasn't anything for you--or me, really--in Hallstown, and, well..." She paused for a moment. "I was happy to get out of Cambridge."
"How did you, um," I started, realizing I shouldn't have spoken without my words planned. She'd still told me so little about it. "I..."
She pulled and blew into the air. "It's alright, John." She exhaled, and when she spoke, her voice was steady. "Basically, I left the program because I was sick of being a specimen."
I tried to consider what she might have meant by this. Quite possible she had been the only student in the Harvard Ed School who'd grown up in a double-wide. "You mean like, people coming up to you and saying how much they loved Hillbilly Elegy?" I said.
She shook her head, eyes closed. "'I think it's so amazing you made it here with your background,' 'You are such an inspiration.' Even the Mary-Catherines at UNC knew better than to lay it on that thick."
"That's really out of touch," I said.
"You remember how we'd look at girls sometimes and say they're working on their Mrs. degree?" she said.
"Sure," I said.
"These girls from the northeast, the program was like a finishing school for them. One of my roommates, Sarah, I'm pretty sure I was the first person she'd lived with who didn't have a trust fund. One day, she told me she thought I really ought to fix the spelling of my name before I get it printed on my degree." She paused. "A few other things happened after that, but yeah, that was when I reached my limit. So I left. That was in February."
I said nothing and looked at my feet under the thick comforter. I was a little confused. Sure, Harvard's Ed.M. is not home turf for a girl who grew up around gas stations that cash checks. But couldn't she have closed out the program and taken up a job someplace normal?
And then I thought, she must have tens of thousands of dollars in debt built up. I was truly high now, and I was convinced that the amount must be well above $50,000. I thought it might be higher, too, and saw the digits spinning as if on a slot machine in my eye. $60,000, $70,000, ...
I don't know how long this went on. Eventually I came to and remembered it was my turn to speak. "I'm sorry, Shyanne, that sucks."
"Don't be, John," she said. "I'm exactly where I want to be." She was also looking straight ahead, at her feet.
I'm exactly where I want to be, I'm exactly where I want to be. These words echoed in my mind.
She turned off the light soon after that and we went to bed. We were both lying on our backs. I could feel the warmth of another body in the bed.
"Good night," she said, turning on her side to face me and closing her eyes.
"Good night," I said. I also turned on my side to face her. She was perfectly still, and as I looked at her face, I wanted to stroke her cheek and tell her she'd been put in many unfair positions. I curved my legs back a little so our toes wouldn't touch.
***
We didn't wake up until 9:00, when I got up to go to the bathroom. She made Pop-Tarts for us, and we had them in bed with coffee. We sat at the head and the foot, facing each other. I kept my cup on the floor and had to grab it every time I wanted a sip.
I asked her about some friends we both knew from college and whether she'd kept up. It seemed like she hadn't talked to any of them in over a year. "I think she's in Charlotte now?" she said when I asked after Nina.
We were both sitting cross-legged. I still found it strange to see her nipple poking through her shirt--she'd always worn at least a sports bra around the house when we lived together. Her arms looked thicker, too. She must have gained around 15 pounds, I thought. I watched her finish her Pop-Tart.
Eventually, one of us got up and we both walked over to the living room without thinking much of anything. We both knew there was nothing to do, really. It was cold outside, and she didn't have a TV or anything. I settled back into the papasan chair. Just a bit of light came in through the living room's only window, which faced north, and fell on the blank and pockmarked drywall on either side.
Moments passed. I said, "Remember how we'd perch like this after going out and you wouldn't let me sleep until I drank my water?"
She was lying with her back on the sofa and turned her head. "Oh yeah. And you remember what I'd say?" she said.
"Well, yeah," I said, before raising my voice: "Hydration required!"
Even before I finished saying it, she joined in, "Hydration required!" She flicked her fingers at me, like she used to, to sprinkle me with water if I fell asleep before I finished my glass.
"You got pretty good at getting me out by senior year," I said.
"Oh, but of course!" she said, twisting a curl of her hair. "Remember the time you were going to stay in on a Thursday to study for your Monday midterm and we ended up sending you home with," she contorted her voice and lay a flat hand below her chin, tilting her head, "Helen Mackey?"
I winced. "Good Lord, I'd rather not."
"She would make eyes at you during recitation even when she was at the blackboard," she said, laughing.
"Looking at someone is not a sexual act," I said, but honestly, I think she was right.
"Well, she looked at you well enough to know you deserved an A+ for recitation even when you skipped half of them," Shyanne said. She was twirling her hair again and smiling as she did when she was dishing. "Wasn't but two months later when sis scooped you up at the radio party."
I knew she was bidding me to continue. "And I got the pleasure of having her vomit all over just outside her door. Yep. Finally got out of there at like 8:30am, after I was done putting baby to bed. And remember how she came up to me at the Starbucks a week later and gave me her number?" I said.
"I remember everything poor Helen did trying to get into your pants," Shyanne said. "I'm sure she was drinking so much because she wanted to work up the courage to talk to you."
"There is such a thing as being too bold, I guess," I said. "You know, when I got her back into bed, I had to take her shirt off, too. She'd vomited all over it. She got some action in the end, I guess," I said, looking her in the eyes.
Shyanne cupped her hands over her mouth and laughed. "Oh god, John, you're a sicko. Did you take her bra off, too?"
I shifted in my seat. "Dude, you know what? I guess I never told you this. Actually, yeah. It was soaked and she was out cold. I really doubted myself in the moment. For obvious reasons. But yeah man, like, it was the good thing to do, right? And I just slipped her into a tee after that."
Shyanne's jaw grew slack as she thought. "Really? Yeah, I mean, on merits, I'm with you. Don't think you had to, don't think you shouldn't have." She looked back up at me. "Were they nice, though?"
"They?"
"Her tits," Shyanne said lowly.
My face flushed. "Oh come on, I--you're asking me this?" I said.
"Come on, both things can be true. You were doing a good deed, and you saw some titties," she said. She twirled her hair again.
I was boxed in. "Yeah, I mean, you know her--they were nice. Looked like a handful. If only she hadn't been so drunk. She did try to kiss me when I started making for the door the morning after."
I saw my chance to change the topic. "Yeah, wow. Anyway. It was a few months into TFA when you and Kevin broke up, right? I guess I don't know, did you try to date at all for the rest of it?" I said.
As I spoke, Shyanne was splayed on the sofa and had a hand on her forehead, like she had fainted. She scrunched her face and said, "Oh, no. I mean, for one thing, everyone placed in the county except Greg was a woman, and he was gay. And I didn't think I'd be putting down roots dating a townie." She paused and seemed to still be thinking.
"It was fucked how that went down with Kevin," I said.
"Yeah, yeah. I expected more than a text, at least," she said. Her eyes lingered on her feet. "But it's good that he did what he wanted to do."
I couldn't quite tell what she meant by this. We lazed around like this reminiscing for a while longer. I never heard a peep out of Josh the entire time and wondered if he was home.
Eventually, we got sandwiches at some joint called Lenny's. It was another hour of this and that about college. I told her a bit about what went down with Gina telling me I didn't have enough initiative. I was waiting for her to share more about her life in Louisville, but I didn't get very much.
She set me up to go to an art museum, and the plan was for me to hang out at the bar at Special Runoff after I got done. I saw this one painting of a horse. The brass frame looked like it weighed more than a German Shepherd. A black horse and a black groom in a red ascot. Both stood before what looked like a brick garage painted a steely gray, but this must have been done before there were cars. The groom was approaching the horse from behind holding a saddle, and I couldn't tell whether the horse had noticed him yet.
I looked below. "FAIREST OF NUBIA, 1862, GIFT OF MR. AND MRS. JAMES CLARK," a plaque read. This horse must have won a race or something. Overall I thought it looked kind of unnatural. I thought it would have looked nicer on a green field or whatever, maybe with the saddle already on. The groom had this kind of nothing-face that I can't remember. But the ascot he was wearing was bright red and reminded me of a tie I'd worn for Halloween. I went off to find the bathroom.
***
Special Runoff was one room deep and narrow, with a high pressed tin ceiling painted over so many times it almost looked flat. A tall mirror stood behind the center of the bar, and on either side, dead men of many eras hung from the cheap wood paneling.
Walking in, I saw one guy by one end of the bar. Black leather bomber, Chicago Bulls hat. He had both elbows on the bar, leaning over. It seemed like he must not have sat since he got here.
"--and that's what I said to him," he said as I approached the bar. "That's what I said, and he ain't have nothing back for me."
"He didn't," Shyanne said. She had a rag in her hand and wasn't wiping anything. It was 4:40pm on a Thursday, and there was still hardly anyone in the place.
"He did not," the man said. He nodded gravely and took his glass up to his hand and sipped.
Shyanne looked up. "John! There you are." She had a heavy apron on. "Come on, let me fix you up."
I took a seat one stool away from the man. "James, this is John," she continued. "He's an old college friend of mine, and he came all the way down from Chicago." It felt like as soon as she said the word 'college' James started staring at me. "John, this is James, and he's here all the time!"
James looked friendly, but he didn't say anything at first. He started with my shoes, and worked his way up. I didn't know what to do, so I smiled.
"Chicago," he said.
"Yeah, the Windy City," I said, hamming it up a bit.
"Tell me, Chicago John, what do you do up there?" James said. He stroked his chin with his right hand, the other on his beer.
"I'm a consultant," I said.
"Consulting, yeah. Alright, alright," he said, bobbing his head at the pace of a boil, like I'd confirmed something for him. "Yeah, mm-hmm, I knew that before y'all sat down."
"Oh," I said.
Shyanne set a bottle and a shot glass in front of me. She inflected her voice as she said, "May I acquaint you with U.S. Senator Alben W. Barkley, who died in office saying that he would rather 'be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty.'" She leaned against the back of the bar and added, "It's Very Old Barton and Little Kings."
I figured out which was which shortly--the Little Kings was this tiny green beer bottle, a cream ale. "7 FL OZ," it read. I looked up, and Shyanne had a shot glass for her and James, as well.
"To dead guys," Shyanne said. We all drank, and I was the only one who chased it. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had whiskey and beer in one sip. It must have been college. Shyanne went off to handle a couple of guys who'd just come up to the bar.
"So John, tell me now," James began. "What is it that you do your consulting on?"
"Tax mostly. Structuring."
"Structuring. Structuring." James leaned back and stroked his chin. "Okay, so you're the guy who tells them where to put it."
I wasn't sure if he was trying to make a joke, but he sounded serious. "I do usually know where to put it," I said.
He looked at me for some moments. He seemed confused, but I couldn't tell. "Let me tell you what I do," he said. "I can read people like books. I ain't tryna brag, I just know who I am and what's good is good and knowing what's good is good is good, you feel me?"
"That's good," I said. I looked around. The few odd folks here all seemed to be people who left the office a bit early. Other than Shyanne, of course. I looked at her chatting with the two guys on the other end of the bar. Then I saw two people on the other end of the room. "Alright then, James, that couple over there at the high top, what do you think their deal is?"
He kept looking straight at me and said, "Chicago John, your eye's been stuck on that woman since you walked in. You two together?"
I put a leg up on a rung on my stool. "Well, we go way back, you know, we were roommates in college," I said.
"Roommates in college. Hm, isn't that interesting?" James said. Shyanne glanced over briefly and smiled as she talked with the two guys. "Roommates. That's all?"
I felt my face flush. Who was this asshole? "Yeah, just roommates. She had a boyfriend the whole time, actually," I said.
"Ain't nothin' ever happened?" James said, peering at me.
"Nope," I said.
"Alright then, I guess nothin' ever happened." His voice grew graver. "But man, I tell you, consider yourself lucky. This boys and girls living together type shit, unless y'all dating, won't lead to nothing but trouble. My brother Fred, his girl had her roommate move out and some other brother named Phil moves in. Whole time, Fred's telling her, find a woman to live with or we are done. No good, Phil moves in, and I tell Fred, you gotta be done with her. But he says, I love her too much and this n' that, and you know how she repays him?" he asked.
"What, James?" I asked, though I knew the answer.
"That's right, one time Fred's stopping by and finds all his shit in a duffel bag on the porch," James said as he nodded his head slowly.
This upset me even more as he continued speaking. How many had he had? But I tried to think of something to say. "That's really interesting," I began. "You know, James, I think it's understandable that Fred felt threatened by this. And of course we know how it all ended. But I want to ask you: in principle, don't you think a man and a woman could be roommates and not want in each other's pants?"
"Shit, maybe with a chaperone," he said with a smirk.
"You know, I met Shyanne when we were in a class together. Shyanne was kind of the teacher's pet and I knew she had great notes. So I went up and asked her if she could send me hers for a lecture I had to miss. Anyway, point is, you know Confucius?" I said.
"Yeah, sure, Chinese dude," he said, tracing a long mustache with his pinched fingers.
"He had this idea called--well, basically, that society could only go on if everyone would stay in their lane, basically. Like, fathers need to run their households and discipline their children. Children need to obey their parents. Army commanders need to provide firm leadership. That sort of thing," I said.
"Yeah, that seems reasonable enough," he said. I noticed his leg was fidgeting.
I said, "Anyway, I guess the idea's like this, it's not like we're just making up the rules with people as we go along. We have a name for every relationship: 'parent,' 'teacher,' 'roommate.' And the question is 'how do I fill this role and not any other?'" I continued, "So I don't know what was going on in Phil and that girl's head, but maybe they needed to remember that, before anything else, they were roommates."
"You can say that again, man," he said. He had much more of a monotone now. "So is that what you and Shyanne did, then?"
"Well, it all started at the end of freshman year. You need to figure out your apartments way ahead of time in our college town, and we were late. Shyanne was betting everything on joining a sorority, spent all fall trying to study up on being Miss North Carolina. But it didn't work out. 'Oh honey, are you here for open house?' they would keep asking her at the door, like she was lost, she told me," I said.
"So anyway," I continued. "Yes, we did. We lived together as roommates. We were both in a situation where we needed each other, and we made it work." I turned to James and gave a great smile.
"Well then, I read you wrong," James said before he patted me on the shoulder and got us both another round.
***
Somehow I'd left the bar at around eight without paying for a single drink. I had the morning to myself, since Shyanne hadn't gotten back until four. I did a run along the river. It was a little less cold than in Chicago, and I wondered whether Shyanne thought this place was home or just another stop.
I brought back some bagels. I heard Josh come out to use the bathroom at one point but I don't think he realized I was up, and I didn't say anything. A stack of mail sat unopened on the kitchen counter, and I looked at it. Shyanne Gentleman, read the one on top. The Harvard seal sat on the top left corner. I wondered if it was about her loans.
She was up and had showered by one and she had her bagel while I ate a Pop-Tart standing over the kitchen counter. It was her friend Lizzie's birthday, some girl who used to work at Special Runoff and went to another bar, and everyone was going out. Industry people, she said, so nothing would start until ten. She spent a long time doing her eyeliner in the bathroom, and I did the big stack of dishes in the sink while I waited.
When she came out, I had two of the cups from He's Not ready to go. "Haha, alright, let's go!" she said. I put a cup in her hand and she sniffed it. "Wow, you got some PBR, didn't you? Is that where you went this afternoon?" she said.
"You got me. Cheers!" I said. We both instinctually chugged the entire thing. It's hard to explain. It was like we knew how to mark this moment. I certainly hadn't chugged a beer like that since college. I looked at Shyanne already making for the fridge to get another round, and I felt sad I had to go back to Chicago on Sunday.
In that way, it felt like old times, but she'd changed, too. She had black leggings on, and a black knit sweater with a deep v-neck. It wasn't like her failed pastel sorority phase, or her overalls indie girl phase. I didn't understand why she seemed to have given up on color. Her skin was pale, and I thought this made her look almost sickly.
Josh heard us and came out of his room. He hardly looked at me and started talking to Shyanne about who was going to be there tonight. He sipped from the He's Not cup Shyanne gave him and often gave a "heh-hegh, heh-hegh" kind of dumb laugh as she was talking. I couldn't tell if he was high or if this was just how he always was. "Yep, yep," he'd also say.
A couple more beers, and we were off to Lizzie's place closer to downtown. It was a studio, so three of us crammed on her mattress, she sat at her desk, and I was on the floor. She made all of us Kentucky Gentleman Manhattans with fluorescent red maraschino cherries. Lizzie Ericson's hair was platinum blonde, and her septum was pierced. Next to Shyanne on the bed were her boyfriend, Matt Willis, and one of Lizzie's coworkers, Pete Mills.
I couldn't really follow what they were all talking about since there were so many names I didn't know. Mostly just who'd hooked up with who and what the most ridiculous firing of the week had been. Apparently, Jason Marion had gotten into an argument with his head chef about whether eggs were dairy, and the chef had him fired for not washing his hands after using the restroom or something. I sat there sipping with my legs crossed. Later on, Lizzie asked me what I was doing in Chicago. I just said I worked in an office, and she turned back to talk to the others.
We joined the rest of the birthday crowd at High Horse, and even though Lizzie was all of 5'3" or so, she held court at one corner of the big bar. I was standing next to Shyanne and I couldn't even really hear her when she spoke. At one point for some reason she reached over and felt Matt's bicep. She made a face and everyone laughed. Jason Marion walked in later and the guy behind the bar somehow produced an egg and asked him what it was. Everyone erupted in laughter. When I didn't know what to do, I just sipped from my glass, and before I knew it, I was four beers in at that place alone.
The crowd moved on to a couple more bars like this, thinning steadily as the night went on, and Lizzie, Shyanne, and I ended up back at Lizzie's place for a nightcap because she had forgotten that her mother had gotten her a birthday cookie cake and that she needed to eat it with someone on her birthday. As soon as we were through the door, I saw it was 2:30am. Lizzie promised she'd cut us slices after "a little nap," but she hit her mattress and it was lights out. Shyanne and I thought she seemed fine, just tired, and put a blanket over her before we left. It was then I realized she must have been into her mid-thirties, and I couldn't think of a time when I'd tucked in someone so much older than me.
"Hey, thanks for coming out with me," Shyanne told me in the car back to her house. "People in the industry like to talk about life inside their world. I hope you still had a good time."
"No, it was great, Shyanne, Lizzie's a great girl," I said. Honestly, I was a little pissed. It wasn't Shyanne's fault. She'd tried to include me in various conversations but nobody knew what to say to a consultant from Chicago. Her coworker Gregory Peters offered some of his coke to me, and that was about the only concern from anyone else I felt I'd received.
I looked back at her. I saw the profile of her nose in the streetlight filtering through the car--a precise triangle. She had a calm about her that you wouldn't expect from a girl who'd just been pounding Jameson shots with men twice her size. She reminded me in that moment of those old-timey silhouette portraits you'd find on some old farmstead.
I slumped onto the sofa after we stumbled in. This room was silent and my ears rang. I closed my eyes. With the way my stomach felt, I knew I'd be hungover tomorrow.
"Hydration required," came a soft voice.
I opened my eyes, smiled, and took the He's Not cup full of tap. "I used to be able to drink way more than you," I said. "Look at me now." I chugged the cup as she watched and gave it back to her.
"Well, you know. It's a lifestyle. A tolerance might not be something to be proud of," Shyanne said. "Hey, do you want to smoke a little?"
I could barely understand the question. It must have been past three by now, but wasn't this what I'd come for?
"Sure," I said.
"Alright, let me just change," she said, walking to her bedroom.
When I walked in, she was wearing a cream cami and some plaid sweatpants. The blankets were over her legs, and I could see the edge of her bellybutton. She smiled at me as she took a pull from the vape. Without thinking much, I took my jeans off right there and got into bed next to her and took a pull. I closed my eyes and leaned against the headboard as the weed took me away, and I was sure I'd fall asleep in moments.
"Can I ask you something, John?" she said.
"Sure," I said.
"Why'd you want to be roommates with me?" she said.
I was awake again. I opened my eyes and gathered my words. "You know why," I said. "I thought your notes were great and you were fun to be around, too."
She laughed. "You roomed with me because of my notes?" she said.
"Well, you know, what I mean is, I just didn't know anyone else who drank so much, and read so much, and was so, I dunno, you hung out with boys a lot, you know? You were just one of the guys," I said. I was drunk enough to say all this, but not so drunk I couldn't appreciate that this was the rawest I'd ever been with her.
She started laughing even harder. She took another pull. "Yeah, just one of the guys, I guess. You know, James told me about how you said a guy and a girl can live in the same house and not want to fuck each other," she said. "I guess we did manage that, John, but did you ever think about it?" She flared her eyebrows as she said it.
I snickered and looked at my feet. I was too tired or drunk or high or cozy to demur. "I mean, not really. You had Kevin, you know?" I said. I looked her in the eyes as I continued, "One time, though, and you know. I probably should have told you about this. Your windows, your windows were open and I saw you naked."
She raised an eyebrow and looked back at me before she said, "Oh. Yeah, the blinds were broken at one point." She smiled and let a moment pass. "Well? What'd you think? Better than Helen Mackey?"
"No, God, no," I said, laughing. "First, anyone but her. Second, your, you've got very nice tits," I said. Had I said it? The room felt like it had a thin white haze in it now. I looked at her, and looked back down.
"Do you want to touch them?" I heard her say. I looked back at her. She took my hand, studying my face. She finally put my hand on top of her tit. The air seemed to grow still, and I could feel my dick getting hard.
"Wow," I said. "This is, uh. You know, I only saw them for a bit, but I liked their shape," I said. Continuing to talk was all I thought I could do. "It reminded me of the tip of a mango. The way your nipples and boobs looked."
She took her hand up to my cheek and grinned. She said, "You're so wasted." Next, my other hand was around her waist, and she scooted closer to me.
"It's very pretty, a very pretty shape," I said. I could smell her conditioner--jasmine--and gently pinched her nipple between my fingers as we pressed our foreheads together.
"Let me remind you," she said before she pulled her cami off over her head.
They were like I remembered them, but they seemed even bigger, and I could see the soft green trace of a vein or two in them now. I couldn't take my eyes off them. I put both of my hands on them. I could feel a drip of precum on my briefs, and I wondered how all this had happened in just a few minutes.
"John," she said. She was nearly whispering. I looked back up at her. We locked eyes, and she continued, "Kiss me." She put one hand on the back of my neck and I put one of mine on her hip. It was time. Our lips met just briefly at first. She pecked me and pulled back, looking at me with her eyes narrowed.
"Shyanne," I said. I leaned forward and squeezed her hip on my way down to her ass. I could taste her on my lips, and I wanted more.
"What?" she said lightly, keeping herself away.
"That's not fair," I said. "Come here." I pulled her in and gave her a deeper kiss, and she stopped resisting. She pulled my shirt off. We became a mass of limbs and saliva. As I kissed her neck and her breath quickened I thought about all the times I'd looked at her ass as she was in front of the sink in our old kitchen and thought about what it would be like to feel her pussy gripping my dick. I had no idea if she'd ever thought of me.
I put her on her back and kept working my way down from her neck and worked my way towards her tits. I kneaded her left tit and kissed her right tit, taking care to avoid her nipples for now. Just a moment ago I'd been ready for bed, and now some energy filled me. I looked up at her. "Did you ever think of me like this, Shyanne?"
She had her left hand in my hair and opened her eyes. She smiled faintly at me for a moment, and as I lay atop her I felt like the whole of my being was sitting in between her breasts, in her care. "John, I..." she said. She stroked my hair and tilted her head a bit as some moments passed. I wondered what she was thinking, but it didn't seem like a mistake to ask this.
I finally started teasing her nipple with my tongue, and her head jolted back with halting gasps. I started sucking her nipples hard, and she gripped my hair tightly, bucking her hips. "John, John," she said sharply at points. I could not believe that her tits were finally mine. Her nipples were pink, a shade like you'd find on a peach, and I wanted to bite them. I held one between my teeth and thought it felt just like a Milk Dud. But then I felt a hand under my chin, and she brought my head back next to hers.
We kissed again, and I ran my free hand all up and down her as we did. Finally, I reached a hand into her sweatpants, and I felt smooth skin, and then the slickness of her pussy already on her outer lips. "No panties?" I said, running a finger up and down the edge of her pussy.
"I like it this way," she said, breathing deep and unsteadily now. I'd only ever heard her remotely like this when she was back from a jog. She took her sweatpants off, and just as I was about to take my briefs off, she took my wrist and put me on my back. She kissed me again and straddled me. My dick was rock-hard and pressed against my briefs, and she started grinding on it slowly. I put a hand up to her cheek, and she pressed her face against it, closing her eyes. I could feel her juices seeping through the fabric onto my cock. I felt like it was the most feminine I'd ever seen her.
After what felt like an hour, though it must have only been two minutes, I already felt like I was ready to burst, and she slipped off me and took my briefs off. I felt fingers on my shaft next, and all I could do was dig my head back into the pillow and groan.
"Is that good?" she said. She was using this voice--it was breathy, high-pitched, coquettish. I didn't know she had that in her. I couldn't focus. It felt like there was a ball of rubber bands bouncing around in my forehead. She kept stroking me slowly, until at last, I felt something warm close over my head. She caressed the bottom of it with her tongue, and kept rubbing me slowly with her hand.
I was nearly nonverbal, but something inspired me in that moment. "Will you let me tit-fuck you and cum on your face like you did with Kevin?"
She laughed, and it was her normal laugh, and she spoke in her normal voice as she pulled her mouth away and kept stroking me slowly, "You really remember me complaining about that? Anyway, no." Her other voice returned, "But I think you'll be alright." She put her mouth back on me again, and started going deeper. I lost all awareness of every other part of my body as I felt more and more of her tongue against the base of my dick. I'm not the biggest guy, but it was the most anyone had ever taken of me. My legs bucked, and I grabbed a tuft of her hair and held on as if I were about to fall off the bed as her lips sealed around the base of my dick and I emptied myself into her mouth. One, two, three, at least four pulses of my cum were safe inside her mouth.
My mind went blank, and the next thing I was aware of was her spitting into a rag she'd gotten out of the nightstand. She lay down next to me and kissed my cheek, tucking herself in against my arm.
"Oh my god, Shyanne," I said. It was all I could think to say. My dick was still rock hard.
She said nothing, and pressed herself harder against me. She put a hand back on my penis and held it like a baton. "Was that good?" she said. I turned my head to kiss her, and I thought about how I had worked to get her to warm to me when I'd sit next to her during recitation and talk to her before it began.
"John, do you want to do me now..." she said as she wrapped one arm around my head and pressed lightly, sticking her tongue out.
"Yeah, obviously," I said. I got her head back on the pillow, and I kissed her again, wondering how her pussy would feel. As I kissed her, I thought about what it would have been like to fuck her over the kitchen counter. I wanted to feel her tits as I did it.
As I reached a hand down to angle my dick for her pussy, she seemed surprised, and said, "Oh--John, I don't know if--I have a condom if we need it."
"Right, of course," I said. I paused for a moment, motionless. My dick ached.
"You know, I have an IUD," she said, finally, still looking at me. Her hand was on my neck.
"Are you saying...?" I said, and I felt a huge grin sweeping over my face.
She said nothing, and took her hand to my chin and drew me closer. She kissed me again, forcefully, and ground her teeth against my lips. "Fuck me, John," she said, finally, pressing her eyebrows into an arch.
I know it's bad form, but I was so worked up that all I could do was slip my entire length into her pussy all at once, and she gasped, like someone does when they plunge into ice-cold water. "Oh my god," she whispered, between sharp exhalations. I started pumping and put one hand on her tits. She was so wet that I felt like I hardly had to move at all, and she slipped her right hand down to her clit and started working herself. Her cheeks were flushed, and she whimpered. I could feel her squeezing my cock, just like Gina would do, but she would only do it after I finished.
We were on our course, and finally, I said, "Fuck, Shyanne, I'm getting close."
"Yes, John, fuck. Cum inside me, John. Cum inside me," she said, and I saw her moving her finger even more quickly. "Oh my god," she said. "I'm going to cum. I'm cumming, I'm cumming."
She threw her free hand up and beat the pillow with it and thrashed her neck as I kept fucking her. I wanted to cum with her. "Fuck, Shyanne," I said. I wasn't quite there. I quickened my pace, and I was still going as she opened her eyes again.
She looked into my eyes, unflinching, and took her left hand and dug her fingernails into my forearm. "Cum for me, John. Cum inside my pussy," she said. As if that was all it took, I thrust as deep as I could go inside her, and let go. I felt her hand on my waist as I wound down. I stayed inside her for a moment, and she moved her hips and squeezed her pussy, as if she wanted every last drop.
I was spent. I collapsed next to her, and she pulled the covers over both of us. I kissed her, and then she turned the other way so I could spoon her. I played some more with her tits, but I could feel myself fading. She got up to use the bathroom, and her thighs were cold when she got back under the covers.
She was facing me again, and my hand was on her waist, my eyes closed. I had nothing left. As I was nearly falling asleep, she said, "John... I have to tell you something." Her voice was so faint I could barely register it. I opened my eyes briefly, and saw that hers were closed.
"What is it?" I muttered.
"John..." she said.
***
It was still dark when I woke up, except the hallway light we hadn't turned off was filtering through the bottom of the door. My temples were pounding and my mouth was dry. Somehow there was a He's Not cup on the floor, and I put my briefs on and went to the bathroom to fill it with water. I checked my phone, 6:24am.
I drank a full cup, and I heard Josh cough in his room. I wondered why he was awake, or maybe he was just sick and couldn't sleep. As I pissed I realized how filthy I'd gotten, and I washed my dick in the sink before I washed my hands.
I saw the rag on the nightstand as I closed the bedroom door. Shyanne was sleeping on her belly, her face turned towards my side. I kept my briefs on as I got back in. I could smell alcohol on my own breath, and the whole room still smelled like sex. Cum inside my pussy, she'd said. How often did she say that? I thought of Josh going "yep, yep" as I lay on my back trying to sleep again. I kept my legs apart from hers.
I woke up to a hand on my cheek. I turned my head to her. She was just looking at me. It was light out, and at this angle I could see all the furrows and nooks in her irises. I hadn't looked so closely before. They were like fjords in some Martian Norway. You can know as much as you care to about anything if you look at it long enough, I guess.
I felt like I ought to put my hand on her hip, which I did under the covers. We pulled closer together again, and we kissed. She still didn't have her panties on. We said nothing, and she turned around again so I could spoon her. She ground her ass against me a little and sighed as the mattress creaked. I lay quite still during all that. I didn't want to disturb her. We fell asleep again like that, her head on my arm, my other hand on her ass. It had gotten bigger.
Finally, a little past eleven, I felt her get up, and a few minutes later she came in with coffee and more Pop-Tarts. She had a tee and her sweatpants back on. I sat up, and she put a single plate between us and handed me my coffee. I held it with both hands as she said, "Late night, huh? How you feeling?"
"My head's pounding," I said. "Don't think I'll be of much use for anything today." I took a sip and said, "You?"
She was sitting cross-legged on her side facing me, and took a bite of her Pop-Tart. "Yeah, I'm feeling it," she said, looking out the window. "But I had a good time last night," she said. Her voice grew thin and she looked at me as she spoke. "It was long, but full of nice surprises," she said. She took a sip of her coffee.
We started talking about whether eggs are dairy again and started rehashing some moments from the bar crawl. I was glad she didn't talk about the sex. I watched her take the Pop-Tart up to her face and looked at how much thicker her upper arm had gotten. At least an inch, probably. I remembered how I'd kissed her and sucked on her tits. At one point, she was going on about how Lizzie had a habit of making messes sleeping with her coworkers, and I interrupted, "Do you mind if I take a shower?"
I ran her bar of soap under the water for maybe half a minute before I started washing myself. I washed my arms, and my chest, and I thought about how she'd taken my entire dick down her throat, and that strange voice she'd used. Shyanne was good at anything she set her mind to. As I rinsed myself, I looked my dick over. Nothing seemed unusual.
As I got dressed, I decided to start putting things in my bag as well. I walked out to the living room with it, and saw Shyanne sprawled in the papasan chair. I put my bag next to the sofa and sat down across from her.
I saw her eyes tracking the bag, and she asked, "So what do you want to do today? We could bake some focaccia."
"Shyanne, listen. I'm so glad we got to see each other again, but I've just been bent out of shape about this one client we have, and... I just feel like, I'd better get back to Chicago," I said. I looked at her feet on the floor the entire time I spoke. Her nails were painted robin egg blue.
"Oh," she said. She sat up and pressed her legs together, leaning forward with her hands folded. "Yeah, of course, John. Do what you need to." There was silence. "You want some coffee for the road?"
"Sure," I said.
She brewed some coffee and dumped half an ice tray into the pot, and when it got cool enough she put it in one of the He's Not cups for me.
I put my bag in the car first, and came back to the door with just my empty hands. I stepped back in and looked at the pile of shoes by the door as I spoke. "I really enjoyed myself, Shyanne, let me tell you. Chicago's a big city, but I don't get out much. Thanks for showing me a great time." I looked back at her after I spoke.
Her gaze on me was unbroken but not intense, and she said, "Anytime, John. I mean it." She shifted her weight onto one leg and looked down for a moment. She looked back up. "You're a good friend." She took her free arm around my waist, and I hugged her around the shoulder. She put the cup in my hand, and I went out and I was on my way.
Back in Northern Indiana, I felt good to be moving on an open road I knew. I saw the turbines again. They were spinning even more quickly now. I took a sip of my coffee and held the cup out so I could see the label. She loved these, I thought. But I wondered what I would do with this one.