Shelly's Disbelief
Sometimes I do wonder about the situations I find myself in. But it's not all bad. Four years in the Air Force paid my way through college, and now I was a grad student with great job prospects and a good bit more maturity than most of my classmates. At 28 I was more financially stable, and I had a good deal more life experience than most college students. I still retained a lot of the habits that I had acquired in the military such as keeping myself in good shape and eating right, plus treating people in general with respect, and this too had served me well. It also explained why I had acquired a 22-year-old roommate. A 22-year-old female roommate that could make a dead man hard. And it explained why I hadn't laid a hand on her.
I was about to start my third year of graduate school. I had been quite content living on my own. I had been in a pretty serious relationship up until last spring, but that hadn't ended on the best of terms and I had spent the summer pretty much lying low and licking my wounds. There had been a few casual hook-ups here and there but nothing serious. Once burned, twice shy, they say. Anyway, it had been a quiet summer and I was looking forward to getting started on my final year working toward my Master's Degree. We were down to the last few days before semester started and the apartment building was bustling with move-ins, mostly fellow grad students. Some I knew, some were newcomers. Most were happy, excited, sharing my eagerness to start the semester. This made the cute pixie-cut blonde in the lobby seem out of place, because she was clearly not happy. She was sobbing.
I have a wicked damsel-in-distress reflex; I couldn't help myself. I stopped and introduced myself. "I'm Kevin. Can I help you with something?" For a second she froze, staring up at me, tears tracking down her cheeks. She sniffed, then just buried her face in her hands and cried more. As answers go, it was less than ideal. I could either go on about my business or wait her out. I ended up sliding down the wall and getting comfortable sitting on the floor next to her. This gave me the chance to check her out a bit. She looked to be early 20's, fit, nice figure, at least B-cups under an old T=shirt, and cut-off shorts. It was hard to tell how tall she was, given the near-fetal position she was in, but I was guessing about 5-foot-6 or so. After a few minutes she wound down and noticed me still sitting there. "What are you still doing here?", she sniffed.
"I'm still waiting on you to answer my question. Can I help you with something? And I gave you my name....."
"Oh, god, I'm sorry. I'm Shelly. I'm just so upset. I just got here today, ready to move in with my new roommate. We'd set this up online, and my classes start in 3 days. But she's not here! She cancelled the lease!"
"Didn't she tell you about this? A call, an email or text?"
"I was driving for the last 2 days from Southern California. She sent me an email but I didn't notice it until just now." She brushed her bangs out of her eyes and sniffed again. "She got pregnant. She's dropping out of her grad program and moving in with her boyfriend." She tilted her head back and gave a little humorless laugh. "She's pregnant, and I'm screwed."
That got a chuckle out of me, and I got to see her smile for the first time. Down, boy, I told myself. She's six years younger than you and might not even be around here next week. I stood up and offered her my hand. "Let's go see what we can work out with the manager. I know these people pretty well."
Good intentions are great, but reality can sometimes suck. The demand for student housing was so high that in just the two days since her now-defunct roommate had released the apartment; it had been snatched up. There was a waiting list over a dozen names long, in case anything else opened up. Calls to neighboring complexes showed the same story. As this went on, Shelly got more and more depressed. She could see the writing on the wall here. We had moved down the street to one of the local lunch spots and grabbed a table. I was nearly as frustrated as she was; I was strongly motivated to try to help this young woman. Who says chivalry is dead? But we weren't making any progress. "So what now?" she asked.
"Do you have any friends or family in town?" I asked.
"I'm afraid not. I don't know anyone here. I finished undergrad in San Diego, over a thousand miles from here." She didn't look up, just kept chasing the ice around her glass with her straw. "You're the only person here that I know."
And that, in a nutshell, is how Shelly ended up moving in with me. I had a nice, comfortable 2 bedroom/2 bath unit and had turned the second bedroom into a study, but it had a futon that would do until we could get Shelly some decent furniture. It was awkward as hell at first given this was all completely unplanned. But we managed. I could have complained at several points but something always stopped me. I moved all my computer and school stuff into my bedroom and let her set up in hers. I tried to help her out with telling her how things worked in the grad department, where to go to get things she needed, etc, but otherwise tried to stay out of the way and let her settle in. She did a decent job of not stepping on my toes or encroaching too much on my turf. I actually had to point out to her a couple of times that the kitchen was half hers and she could actually put at least a coffee mug in the cupboard. After that she started to loosen up. We started to develop our routines, between classes and other activities. We started to get to know each other better. I was always careful to keep things respectful, treating her more like a younger sister than anything else. I was not sure it would be a good idea for me to come on to her, although she was starting to play a role in my private fantasies and masturbation sessions. I had kind of closed that part of me off for several months after Tina had left, but Shelly was reawakening my hormones and libido. She was also very different. She was younger and seemed much more innocent. That surprised me a bit, given that she was a California girl, but that just shows you how far stereotypes will get you. We had talked several times in the evenings and I knew she had had several relationships but nothing really serious. She knew about my military years, and about my two-year relationship with Tina. She also knew that when I talked about Tina, the closer to the end of that relationship I got, the more reluctant I was to discuss it. I could tell she wanted to know more but was willing to respect the fact that I didn't want to go there. By this point Shelly was getting more socially active, developing a circle of friends of her own and even going out with a few guys she had met. Again, nothing serious, and she promised she wouldn't be bringing any guys over. "I mean, it would be kinda weird, wouldn't it? I haven't told anyone I'm rooming with a guy, let alone an ex-Marine!", she snorted. "That would kill the mood in a hurry."
"Air Force, Shell. I was no jarhead."
"Whatever. You LOOK like a Marine to any nerd in grad school." She giggled into her wine glass. We had developed a habit of relaxing and talking on the couch with a beer or wine on weekends, if we were both home. I think the alcohol helped loosen up both of us and allowed us to get more personal. We'd been living together for several months by this time.
"That's because I still work out. Some of these grad school nerds have never seen the inside of a gym before. What do you expect?" Truth was, I'd been working out a lot more since Shelly moved in. I needed the distraction, and there was a little bit of motivation there to keep myself fit. Was I subconsciously preening for her? Maybe. "Anyway, if you need me to I can always make myself scarce. Just give me some advance warning." I smirked at her. "Especially if it's going to be all night."
She choked on her sip of wine at that point. "Yeah, right. Like that's likely." Then she got thoughtful. "What about you? I should give you the same consideration, shouldn't I? I don't want to, um, interfere in your life either."
"That's not a problem right now, Shelly. If it gets there, I'll let you know." I hadn't really thought about it, but could suddenly see how having an attractive female roommate could be a hinderance to a future love life.
"I haven't seen you go out on a date since I moved in here." She was staring into her glass, swirling the last bit of wine around gently.
"I know. It really doesn't have anything to do with you, Shell. I'm just taking some time off from all that. Focusing on my thesis, classes, stuff like that."
"Did Tina hurt you that badly?" she asked in what was almost a whisper, not looking at me.
Ouch. Where the hell had that come from? It was like a sucker punch in combat training, one you never saw coming. For several seconds I couldn't think, let alone respond. Finally I got my wits back. "In a way, yes. I guess so." I took a long pull of my stout.
"I'm sorry, that was prying. I didn't mean to..."
"No. It's ok. It's the truth. Just because I don't talk about it doesn't make it not so. And it's not your fault for being perceptive," I tried to reassure her.
"I want you to know you can talk about it with me if you need to. God knows I owe you at least that much, after you saved me when I got here." She tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling. "I've been a little worried about you. I've gotten to know a lot of the other women here in the complex. They all drool over you, even the ones in relationships. And yet you've never dated any of them. I've never seen you go out with a woman. I'm starting to wonder if you're gay."
My turn to choke on my drink. "Gay? Hardly! No pun intended." She giggled at that. "Not that I have a problem with gay guys, I know several. Just not my preference off the menu, so to speak." We both chuckled. "In the military you end up seeing a lot of naked guys. Ever been in a barracks shower? No, of course not, what am I saying. Let's just say, lots of shower heads and no dividers. And a whole bunch of 18-24 year old hard bodies. I'll let you fill in your own blanks." A funny little squeak made me glance over at her. Shelly had a shocked sort of look to her, and maybe it was my imagination but her nipples seemed to suddenly be a lot more prominent under her thin top. "intrigued?" I asked, then chuckled. "No, you've never been in a barracks shower. Something tells me if you had, you'd never have left."
