The Roommate

I was almost relieved when I got home to find Cassidy wasn't there. I was pretty sure I didn't want her to catch me in my work clothes from the day before. And I felt like I needed time to think things over before I tried to talk to her. Some wet dishes in the kitchen sink made it look like she had eaten dinner in the apartment, but there was no sign of her.

Over the course of the day, like a typical coward, I decided to see how things went that weekend between me and Cassidy before I tried to have any talk about what was going on between us, and definitely before mentioning anything about Kristen. I was being passive, but it seemed like the best thing to do.

Other than making a quick run for groceries and then stopping to pick up lunch on the way home, I was home all day. Cassidy wasn't. I went to bed that night wondering again where she was, but determine based on our last interaction that I didn't have to worry about her.

The next morning I did make a proactive decision. I called Kristen.

"Hey Kristen?" I asked, when she picked up the phone.

"Yeah?" she responded.

"It's Kevin," I informed her.

She laughed, a light chuckle. "I know."

"Well... I was wondering if you might want to hang out some time this week," I said, trying to sound as casual as I could muster with my heart pounding a deafening drumbeat in my ears. "Maybe we could grab dinner together or something on Wednesday."

"Are you asking me out on a date?" she asked. I thought I could hear some teasing in her voice.

"If you're okay with it being a date, then yes," I responded, trying to keep my voice steady and even.

"Aren't guys supposed to wait three days or something before calling a girl?" she asked.

"You definitely don't know much about guys, do you?" I teased right back.

That drew a hearty chuckle from the other end of the line. "I'd love to," she responded. "Anyplace you have in mind?"

"You want to talk about it at work this week?" I asked. "There's some places near the office that I like, but I'd be open to picking a place depending on what kind of food you're in the mood for."

"Sounds good to me," she replied.

"Great, I'll see you tomorrow," I said, ending the call. I couldn't stop smiling for a long while after that call.

The smile was totally forgotten when Cassidy finally got home. It was almost 2:00 in the afternoon, but she walked in the door looking a little rumpled and wearing a tight little dress she often wore when going out dancing.

"Hey," I called out as she came into the living room, trying to sound casual. "Crazy night?" I asked.

"I really just want to take a shower," she told me over her shoulder as she headed to her bedroom. "You mind if I do that first?"

"Of course not," I replied, confused by her response.

The sound of the shower ran for twenty minutes, but it was another twenty five after that before Cassidy emerged from her room. I pretended to be too engrossed in the tv show I was watching to notice. I didn't want her to feel nervous around me, or appear too interested in where she had been all day. But I was surprised and apprehensive when she quietly began preparing some food in the kitchen without saying a single word to me. She didn't even say hello, or ask how I was doing.

Some time later the noises in the kitchen stopped and Cassidy quietly came to sit with me in the living room. When I looked over at her, she was absently stirring a steaming bowl of food with a pained expression on her face.

"I have something I have to tell you," she said softly without looking at me.

"Go ahead, shoot," I said, muting the television.

"I've been avoiding saying it because I don't know what you're going to say," she continued, still not looking at me.

I tried to make a joke in responding, "All the things we've done together and you're afraid of just saying something," but she didn't even crack a smile. That made me really nervous. A thought flashed through my mind that maybe she was pregnant, and that terrified me. So I added, "Look, you're the one who kept telling me that if I wanted something I should go ahead and ask for it. So tell me what it is that you want to say."

Finally she looked up at me with those sparkling blue eyes. There was an unfamiliar emotion behind those eyes, maybe fear? Maybe sadness? But then she said, "I met someone."

The silence hung between us, stretching onward painfully. I was pretty sure what she had meant, but I had to ask anyway, "What do you mean you met someone?"

She sighed, eyes dropping back down to her food. "I'm seeing someone. I met a guy and we've been seeing each other... you know, going out and stuff... doing things together."

It felt like someone had stabbed me through the heart with an icicle while the ground suddenly dropped out beneath me. And I was falling, no sense of where I was, no bearings, just tumbling inside.

Cassidy continued quietly but steadily, as if once she had started talking there was no stopping the words. "I kind of felt like I hadn't been doing anything new in a while, so the weekend after the wedding I went out with some friends and they introduced me to this guy. And we hit it off pretty quickly, and I don't know really how it happened but... we've been spending a lot of time together."

She looked up at my face and then winced. Before I could even realize that my mouth was hanging wide open, she went on, "Us at the wedding got... kind of intense for me. And I didn't plan things to happen this way, they just did. And I knew you were going to be upset about it, so I didn't know what to say, and then the longer it went on the harder it became to say anything. I hope you know that I didn't mean to hurt you."

How had she not known it was going to hurt me?! What was all the stuff we had been doing before?! Why had we done so well and everything gone so great, and then all of a sudden this? Those were the thoughts that leapt to the front of my mind, but somehow I didn't want to say anything. I just wanted to curl up into a ball in my room by myself and never go anywhere.

So the silence stretched between us again, until Cassidy finally said, "Do you want to say anything?"

Somehow what came out was, "Are you happy with him?"

"Yes," she replied without hesitation. A few more seconds crawled by in silence before she said again, "I'm sorry," and then took her bowl and went into her room.

I turned off the tv, went into my room, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling. All night I lay there, trapped alone with my thoughts, feeling as if someone had replaced my beating hear with a bundle of razors that was cutting up my insides. I tried at first to go back through my thoughts and justify to myself that Cassidy wasn't really going to stick with this guy. She was going to come back to me. We had too much fun together and the sex was too good.

Then I tried to rack my brain to see if there had been any clue that this was coming. I accused her in my thoughts of deceiving me. But the more I thought about it, the more concerns did come to mind. There was her cool reception after the wedding. There was the guys she flirted with at the bar. There was the fact that she had never wanted to be openly affectionate with me when we were with other people.

I barely noticed when the dim light of morning began to spread across my ceiling. I still felt like I was falling inside, tumbling down a hole with no bottom. I felt a little like crying, but tears wouldn't come out.

Sometime around mid-morning, still lying on my back on my bed, another painful truth dawned on me. I thought that Cassidy and I were in a relationship, but at the same time I had happily fooled around with Kristen. I wanted to be the one who decided what was going to happen between me and Cassidy, but I didn't really want it to end. Slowly, over the course of the day, I clung to the thought that maybe I had known all along that Cassidy wasn't going to stay with me, and maybe I wanted Kristen. The idea that I might be better off with Kristen felt like the only thing that kept me from going insane that night.

Heading into work Monday morning was tough. I had eaten just a bowl of cereal since Saturday night, and not slept much Sunday. The worst part was feeling like something had died inside of me, but the world continued on. Happy people passed me as I headed to my office, people going about their lives, even though I was hurting because part of my world had ended.

I thought that seeing Kristen would cheer me up, and it did, but not as much as I hoped. She greeted me with a smile when I walked in, while we both played it coy and hid the fact that anything had happened between us. Somehow I stumbled through the next couple of days, the brightest moment in my week coming on Tuesday when Kristen and I were alone and she said, "I'm looking forward to dinner tomorrow night."

I saw Cassidy once during that time, as she walked from the front door into her room on Monday night, without saying anything to me.

----------

At first, dinner on Wednesday was like a band aid on stab wound. It held me together but barely did anything for the pain. After we had ordered but before the appetizers arrived, Kristen shook me out of my melancholy.

"What's wrong?" she finally asked. "You've been kind of down all week. Is it something to do with your roommate or are you disappointed that you asked me out on a date?"

I was so startled by Kristen's question that I almost hit my knees on the underside of the table. "What do you mean my roommate?" I asked.

"So it is your roommate?" she responded. "That's a relief I guess. I was starting to be sure that you regretted asking me out."

"No, of course not," I replied emphatically. "I'm really happy you agreed to this dinner." I decided to be a little honest with her. "Honestly, I'm really glad I've had this to look forward to, it's been helpful. But why do you think it has to do with my roommate?"

Kristen searched my face skeptically, as if she was trying to decipher if I was telling the truth that my depression had nothing to do with her. Finally she responded, "You used to talk about her all the time, and tell everyone stories about funny things you two did together or that she did. If I didn't know you better and know that you would have told me that something was going on between the two of you, I would have thought that you two were dating or something. But in the last few weeks you've barely said anything about her, ever since you got back from that wedding out of town. And this week you haven't mentioned her at all."

Women could be frighteningly perceptive sometimes, and Kristen scarily so.

"It's a bunch of things," I lied, "But us being roommates is one of the bigger ones, I guess. I don't know if we're going to work out as roommates after all," when I said it then, it was the first time I had seriously allowed myself to consider that possibility, "We haven't been getting along. And that kind of makes me sad, I thought we were going to be good roommates."

It was close enough to the truth that it seemed to have convinced Kristen. "I'm sorry to hear that, really," Kristen said consolingly, "She sounds like fun. Do you want to talk about it."

"Not really," I told Kristen, "I rather talk about happier things, like finally getting a chance to get to know you outside of the office."

It might have been bald faced flattery, but Kristen's smile told me that it had worked. Deciding to focus on happier thoughts also helped with me. By the time the dessert arrived I was laughing for the first time in several days, and Kristen and I were having a great time together.

I swear, I didn't plan for anything to happen that night. I had gone into the evening in such a sad funk that I told myself I'd be pleased if Kristen and I both left smiling at the end of the night. But we walked out of the restaurant laughing, her arm around my arm. And then I was walking her home. And then I was going up to her apartment for a drink to cap off the night. And then we were making out again on Kristen's bed.

Other than sitting on the bed in her room instead of the living room, it was a remarkably similar set up. We were both still wearing our clothes from work, and she was sitting on my lap showering me with very soft and precise kisses. I loved the feeling of her soft, full lips pressed against mine, the feel of the tip of her tongue brushing wetly against mine. I loved the feel of her soft breasts in the palm of my hand, even if I was searching for the nub of her little nipples through the covering of her bra and shirt.

This time, Kristen's shirt draped loosely over her midsection. As our lips pressed insistently against each other, I ran my hands down the side of her firm, young body and easily slipped both beneath the bottom drape of her top. My hands found her skin beneath her shirt to be smooth and warm, and I slid my hands slowly upwards over that soft skin.

Kristen broke our kiss just as my fingers made their way to the tantalizing bottom edge of her bra. "No sex tonight, okay?" Kristen asked, her dark eyes looking seriously into mine from just a few inches away.

"Sure," I said, "If I do anything you don't like, you just tell me and I'll stop. Okay?"

After another couple seconds staring searchingly into my blue eyes, Kristen seemed to decide that was good enough for her because she went back to kissing my face again.

It didn't take long after exploring the surface of Kristen's lacy bra for my eager hands to get bored. I moved quickly to Kristen's back and appeared to have her bra unsnapped even before she realized what I was doing. Though she let out a little squeak into my mouth as the clasp sprung free, she didn't stop kissing me and lifted her arms to help me get the bra straps over her shoulders.

That may have been a mistake by Kristen because I lifted up with both hands and she soon found her bra and her shirt both going up over her head. Her beautiful, firm breasts popped into view just in front of my face, and as soon as I spotted her dark, little nipples, I was leaning forward to suck one into my mouth.

"Ohhhhh," she moaned as my hot, wet mouth closed over the top of her teat, and the tip of my tongue found her rapidly hardening nipple. I sucked a little harder around her firm tit flesh as I ran the length of my tongue over her nipple tip, eliciting an "Ohhh God," from Kristen.

One of my hands, now free of her clothes, reached up to grasp the full, firm breast in my mouth. As I suckled on her nipple and swirled my tongue wetly all over the smooth top of her breast, my hand filled with the firm but yielding fullness of Kristen's tit.

Kristen responded by pulling the back of my head against her firm bosom, and her hips began to grind downwards against me again. I switched my mouth to her other breast, grasping that boob with my other hand and guiding the excited little nipple into my warm, sucking mouth. While I slathered my tongue all over the new nipple, my hand squeezing the firm, smooth flesh further into my mouth, I grasped her other breast firmly in my other hand and rubbed her wet nipple back and forth with my thumb. This brought another deep moan from Kristen, who started furiously grinding herself downward against my leg.

I was a little tired of being grinded against, with no attention to my penis, so in a fairly fluid motion I lifted up my hips while simultaneously grasping Kristen and spinning her in a turn. We landed as I had hoped, with her underneath me and her bare breasts against my chest, my growing cock squarely between her legs. My manhood was still confined in my pants, but as I began to thrust my hips downwards against Kristen's body, she quickly got the idea. The length of my dick was now rubbing against her pussy through her pants, and she was quickly grinding her hips back up against me.

I kissed my way up Kristen's bare chest, my fingers now toying with both of her wet nipples, as my soft lips found the underside of her neck and began kissing and licking her wetly there. Kristen went wild, shoving her hips upwards against me as I tried to ride her body while grinding back against her.

Eventually, Kristen's hands pressed against my shoulder, and she pushed me upwards a little so she could look me in the eyes once again. Her hips never stopped moving up and down against my body as she said somewhat breathlessly, "You promise, no sex, right?"

"I promise," I said, smiling broadly as the feeling of my penis pushing against her had gotten my dick up to full size.

"You promise," she repeated. "No slipping it inside of me or anything like that?"

"I promise," I repeated, wondering where this was going.

"We can make it feel a little better than this," she said, as she quickly slipped her hands between us and began to unzip her work pants. "Take yours off too," she instructed, as she hooked her thumbs under the back of her pants and began to slide them off of her pale, round ass.

I was so excited, I had everything off only a heartbeat or two after she had tossed her own pants aside. My shirt, belt, pants, socks, underwear- it was all gone. I looked down at Kristen's completely nude body, her legs were slightly spread apart with her feet planted on the edge of the bed, and her slightly moist pussy was completely shaved. She was skinner than Cassidy, less toned but also less curvy, and yet she had all the right curves in all the right places. Seeing the slight apprehension on her face, I spoke the truth to her. "My God, you're beautiful," I said. She smiled widely in response, flashing her pretty, white teeth.

As I settled my body atop her, I noted that she was also much shorter than Cassidy. "Stop comparing her to Cassidy," the voice in my head feebly complained, but this time I did not care as much. The shaft of my full, hard cock was nestling between the folds of her soft pussy lips, and that was all I cared about at the moment.

"If you slide it up and down against me," Kristen began, looking at me with eager but uncertain big doe eyes. But I didn't need instruction for this. I slid my hands behind her shoulders for leverage and began firmly and rapidly pushing the length of my cock up and down over her pussy lips. Kristen's legs flew out to the side as she spread herself wider for me, and her hands gripped my shoulder as she moaned again, "Oh God."

I had done this before, and it was the exact same hip thrusting motion as fucking. The only difference for me was that I also pushed my hips downward so my hard, thick cock slid along Kristen's soft pussy lips, which were rapidly growing wetter. And since I wasn't inside her, it was just the underside of my shaft being rubbed by her wet skin. For Kristen, I made sure that my cock head and the bottom of my shaft both ground against her little clit, and with the right stroke my whole shaft would rub over her very sensitive spot.

I had been humping against Kristen for less than two minutes, my most sensitive skin rubbing against her most sensitive skin, when she started whimpering, "Oh God... Oh God... Oh God... Oh God!" I looked down and her face was flushed, and she was biting her lower lip.

"I think I'm going to orgasm," she warned as my full, hard cock slid up and down over her wet little clit, her juices now dripping out of her pussy and coating the length of my eager, throbbing rod.

"Good," I told her, looking down into her excited brown eyes as my hips thrust downwards against her little body. "Cum."

"Ungh!" she moaned, closing her eyes briefly, "If you want to do anything else before..." her voice just trailed off.

I was struck by how sweet she was trying to be, she wanted to make sure I was enjoying myself too before she came. "Just cum for me," I told her gently. "Don't you like feeling my hard cock sliding across your pussy?" I teased.