Pink Lemonade #12--"Talking"
Author: leiamoody
Title: Talking
Rating: PG
Challenge: Pink Lemonade #12, “Between the sheets”
Story: Maybe December
Summary: One invitation to one guy’s apartment.
Word Count: 465
“Come over to my place already.” Jamie’s request was a gentle prod designed to shatter all shreds of caution and force Allyson into willing acceptance. She was curious about his living space; prior conversations revealed his apartment was the converted attic spread out on the Unicorn and Rose’s top floor. One small bedroom, a kitchen, bathroom, and spare corners that functioned as gathering and storage spaces made up Jamie’s home in Harbor Neck.
“Are you hiding some kind of treasure over there?” Allyson picked at her usual lunch brought from home (pasta salad) while shifting the phone to her left ear. “Maybe you want to do something different. Having our dates in restaurants and wandering through downtown is─”
“Boring. Inconvenient with all this bloody snow falling almost every day.”
“Yeah, falling in slush isn’t great.” That misfortune occurred on their first afternoon date two weeks ago; Harbor Neck was the recipient of sixteen inches of snow, followed by two days of alternating frozen/unfrozen rain which created large piles of black, oily slush. The chances of slipping and leaving a stain on clothes varied from sidewalk to sidewalk; Allyson’s luck ran out when she fell backwards at the crosswalk near Barnes and Noble. (There was a good aspect which came along with her messy step; they decided to enter the bookstore for a little while, during which she discovered some of Jamie’s literary tastes [medieval history, travel guides, books on Greece and Morocco]. Allyson was afraid to reveal her own reading interests among the sheets of printed words, because her lack of intellect would glare in comparison to an Oxford grad. Brian [the last boyfriend] often criticized her crates filled with tomes about yoga technique, general spirituality, and ghost books. “Nothing substantial about nothing of substance,” was his opinion about her collection).
Brian only cared about “The World”; all those elements he could grab and spit out were all that mattered. “The World” meant something different to Allyson. She walked among things and beings which inhabited that space, but it lay far removed from her true self. Physical reality was too harsh and simple.
“You must have some ulterior motive for getting me across your threshold.” That couldn't be his only reason to invite her over to his place; two months of dating, and they hadn’t started doing the horizontal mambo. Jamie hadn’t pressed the issue, but…
Well, it had to be a big reason for his insistence. There was nothing horrible about it, right? What about her? Did she want anything physical now? Well, yes…Jamie was gorgeous! His regular flirtations prodded something buried within Allyson, or maybe that something never existed until she met him and he created a spark…
“How does Saturday work for you?” she asked.
Jamie let out a surprised chuckle. “Fantastic!”