***All characters are over 18 and are fictional. Any resemblance to any real-life persons is purely coincidental. Thanks to MarriedHeat for helping me edit this story.
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It was early in the morning when Steve went to pick up Cathy. She was standing in front of her new apartment with a bunch of moving boxes she bought the day before. She jumped into the front of his truck after tossing the boxes in the back. Steve noticed the smile on her face; she was very excited.
He hadn't been inside the apartment yet and just heard about what it was like inside. It was already furnished, with a few new things she added on her own; what she really needed was her stuff that she had at her old apartment that she used to share with Todd, her ex-boyfriend.
That's where Steve came in; he had the truck to haul away some of her things that she left behind. Cathy had other male friends that could've helped, but none that were available for that day in particular. It was the only day that she knew that Todd would be away on a hunting trip with his friends, and it was just enough time for them to get her things out of there.
Four months ago, she finally had the courage to break it off with Todd. She had enough of him cheating on her and making her look like a fool for sticking around with him. She knew it was partly her own fault and she should've left a long time ago. She had low self-esteem issues, and Todd took advantage of that.
He had a superiority complex that made him think he deserved to do whatever he wanted and liked to have Cathy around to make him feel good about himself by having a woman who always did what he wanted and let him get away with anything. There were a few times she did leave him, but she always found a reason to go back to him after a few days.
It took Cathy getting an STD that came from his philandering and finding out that Todd got another woman pregnant over a year ago without telling her to finally say she had enough. She grabbed a suitcase full of her clothes and a few things and got the hell out of there. Todd, of course, tried to pursue her, giving her the same tired lines that he would use to smooth talk his way back into her life, but this time it didn't work.
Cathy moved back in with her parents, who were both happy that she finally got away from Todd. She got treated for the STD he gave her, feeling fortunate that it wasn't herpes or something else incurable. She also started seeing a therapist to deal with her self-esteem issues and get over her thoughts of going back to Todd. She felt better than she had in years. She still had a long way to go with her therapy, but she felt she was going to make good progress with her life.
Although she was happy to stay at her parents' house while she improved her life, she still felt stifled being there and needed to be out on her own. She searched online for weeks for a good place to rent and felt that she had hit the jackpot when she saw a listing on an amazing apartment rental website. It was a standard one-bedroom apartment with a balcony and a walk-in closet that was already furnished by a previous tenant, all for an incredibly low price.
She saw that the listing was just posted a few minutes before she saw it and contacted the landlord right away. She sent an email letting them know who she was and how she had a good paying job to let them know she could pay her rent. The landlord replied to let her know she could come by to check out the place any time she wanted, and she ended up stopping by there within the hour. The place was better than the pictures, and she couldn't find anything wrong with the place or the location. She did a quick search of the building and the area and saw that everything was perfect. It was a spontaneous thing, but she signed the lease for the apartment that very same day.
This is where Steve came in; he was a long-time friend of hers and one of the few people who tried to warn her about Todd from the very beginning. They knew each other from high school. He had asked her out a few times back then, but she turned him down each time. Eventually, he was just happy to be friends with her. They knew a lot of the same people from the same crowd and always had fun when they hung out.
Cathy once introduced him to Susan, who he was with for several years and was engaged to before she abruptly broke it off. That took a while for him to get over; he didn't date anyone for several months after that, and didn't have sex again for over a year. By then, he was finally over his former fiancé and was really ready to move on. He dated some good women for a while, had a few good relationships, but it didn't work out.
During the time he was with Susan, he had seen Cathy get hurt by Todd several times. Whenever she left Todd, she ended up staying with each of her friends for two or three days; on a few occasions, she stayed with Steve and Susan. All of her friends have tried to talk to her about how bad Todd was for her; she did seem to listen to him, but those talks never seemed to stick in her mind. When she left him the final time, no one believed that it would last long before she went back to him. To everyone's surprise, she had shown that she was definitely done with him and moved on.
From what Cathy told Steve, Todd always left on his hunting trip early in the morning with his own friends. To be safe, they got there at around 10 am to be sure there were no changes to his plans, and fortunately they saw that his car was gone and no one was home. They brought several boxes with them, and Cathy had a list of everything that she wanted to take away. Fortunately for her, Todd didn't change the lock on the door, and even better, she saw that he didn't throw away anything that she wanted.
"Oh, good," she said. "After he stopped trying to call or text me last month, I was worried that he was going to throw my stuff away."
"But it also doesn't look like he has been throwing out anything either," said Steve.
They looked around and the place was a stye; Todd hadn't done any basic cleaning that a person should be doing to keep their house clean. Cathy was the one that did all the cleaning around the house, and it seemed that Todd didn't want to take up that job himself after she left.
"He was probably hoping I'd be back by now and clean up like I always do," said Cathy.
They began in the bedroom, with the remainder of her clothes and other personal items. She told Steve that he didn't have to worry about folding her clothes; he just had to throw everything inside the boxes and she would deal with them later. She went straight for her underwear drawer first, before Steve had the chance to get there before her. Besides her underwear, there was some lingerie and a few sex toys that she didn't want him to see. She threw all that in the box and closed it before he could see anything.
They got all of her clothes and a few extra things from the bedroom into four boxes. They even planned to take the TV and TV stand that were there because it was Cathy who bought it and she felt it was hers.
"That's everything we needed from the bedroom," said Cathy.
"You forgot that on the floor over there," Steve said, pointing to an area by the night stand.
Cathy walked over to that spot he was pointing to and picked up a black lacey bra with large cup sizes.
"Do you really think this is mine?" asked Cathy.
"It's not?" Steve responded.
"Steve, I know I'm your friend, but don't act like you haven't checked me out enough times to see that this can't be mine," she said.
Cathy wasn't naïve enough to think that none of her male friends had ever checked out her body. She had caught them looking several times over the years. She let it go because she knew how men were, and as long as they didn't stare too long or do anything inappropriate, she didn't mind the occasional looks. She was a short woman, around 5'2", brunette, with a slim body but with good-sized breasts that got noticed when she wore the right kinds of outfits, but her breasts were not big enough to fit into the bra that they had found on the floor of her old bedroom.
"Yeah, I see that now," said Steve.
