I shared an apartment with three other guys for a few years. Most of the time, it wasn't so bad. But, when one of the guys brought a girl home, whoever shared a room with that guy was expected to vacate so the guy with someone could have a little privacy.
We even worked out a system. Each of us has his own color Post-It notes - one blue, one green, one yellow, one pink. I'm sorry to report that I was the one who had pink as his assigned color. Someone had to get that color and it turned out to be me. If you were planning on bringing a girl home that night, you wrote the time you thought you'd be home on the note and left it on the door on your way out. The guy who shared your room was expected to be somewhere else for about two hours from that time.
The trouble started when my roommate got a steady girlfriend and they were in our room regularly. I was paying rent for a bed in a room I seldom got to use.
Now, our neighbor across the hall lived alone. She was older than us - the four of us being just out of college at the time - and attractive in her way. She was not strikingly beautiful or possessed of the figure of a goddess or anything like that. She stood probably 5'3" - just short of average - and carried just enough extra weight to soften her edges a bit. I never asked her name or ethnicity, but her skin was brown-tinged, her hair true black, and her eyes a vibrant, almost electric green.
I was often sitting in the hall - waiting for my roommate to signal the all clear - when she got home from work. I greeted her and she greeted me. After a few days of seeing me in the hall, she asked why I was there. The story made her smile and she invited me to wait in her place. We sat at her table and I regaled her with stories of the sexploits of my flat mates.
She, for her part, told very few stories. I knew nothing about her work or family or anything else except that she had never been married, had not had many lovers, and did not enjoy cooking. She regularly came home with a bag containing a dinner she could put in the oven to cook while we talked and something to eat at work the next day.
One night, my roommate texted me with the news that he expected that he and his lady would occupy the room until fairly late - as in some time in the A.M. hours. I let him know that I appreciated the heads up, but started texting other friends to see if I could couch surf for a night. My neighbor came home while I was trying - to no avail - to find a place to crash.
"Wait inside?" she asked.
"Thanks, but I think that might be too long a wait to ask you for." I answered.
She shook her head. "Come inside and explain."
I shrugged, pushed myself up the wall, and followed her into her apartment.
She followed her usual routine of putting dinner in the oven and putting something else in the refrigerator for the next day. She set the usual glasses of cold water on the table and seated herself. I sat down across from her and sipped my water.
"Why would the wait be too long tonight?" she inquired.
I sighed. "The guy I room with brought his lady back to the apartment tonight and thinks they'll be in there until really late tonight or really early tomorrow, depending how you look at it."
She nodded her understanding. "Where will you sleep?"
I shrugged. "A few people haven't texted me back yet. One of them might let me couch surf."
"If not?"
"Dunno." I sipped my water again. "Maybe I'll go hang out at a Denny's or something. Just find some place that will let me hang around until I can go home."
She changed the subject and we chatted while her dinner cooked. The timer beeped and she removed the food from the oven, setting it on the counter to cool a bit. "In all the stories you have told me," she said, "I do not once remember hearing of your doings."
"Yeah...." I trailed off. "Nothing to tell." I raised a hand to forestall the objection I saw forming. "Sure, I've had a fling or two, but nothing on par with the guys. They're the kind of guys people write tell-all memoires about."