This is the fifth installment of my "College Roommate" series. The first chapter was published about sixteen years ago, and the subsequent chapters at wildly erratic intervals since.
***
I drive in my battered hoopty 1995 Toyota Avalon, rust and duct tape holding together the remnants of the original sheetmetal, away from UT Austin toward the address Chivas gave me miles outside the city. The skyscrapers get replaced by apartments, then single family homes jammed together, then higher end houses with larger yards, further and further out in the burbs. I figured she must live in an apartment, since she gave me a code to get through a gate, but this is looking less and less like somewhere student-grade apartments would be located.
I have a What The Fuck moment as the Little British Lady in The Box, aka the LBLTB, as I call the GPS app on my cell phone, steers me to a gated entrance way out in the exurbs, with ridiculously nice houses on the other side of the meticulously tended landscaping in front of The Reserve at [name redacted].
Fuck. Musta got the address wrong.
I punch in the gate code Chivas gave me, and the gate swings open.
Hunh.
I drive into the development, gawking a bit at what must be multi million dollar houses, the sort of place you might expect to see Teslas and Mercedes and Range Rovers in the driveways. Until you had the epiphany that The Quality park their cars inside their ubiquitous three or four bay garages, not outside on the driveway, or god forbid, on the street like common ruffians and proletarians.
"You have arrived at your destination" the LBLTB announces.
I drive my beater car up a longish driveway with interlocking grey pavers instead of plebian concrete, to a beautifully landscaped two story house. Well, more like a mansion. The car engine diesels a bit when I try to turn it off, then finally stops with a shudder.
I get out of my car, watching the property values all around me depreciate from my ride. I feel kinda bad in advance about the engine oil that is gonna slowly drip onto the otherwise pristine driveway, as I walk towards a really nice front door that must have cost many multiples of what my piece of shite car would sell for, assuming anyone else was desperate enough to buy it.
***
I slide on my sexy mesh bikini panties with little black hearts, then look in the full length mirror in the master bedroom of my house in the Texas Hill Country.
Nice booty, I tell myself.
Some guys might find it too big or too brown, but Harry has told me that "too big a booty" is an oxymoron. And yesterday, while we ate chocolate from a sampler pack, he licked his fingers and said he liked dark chocolate best. Absent the adorable crinkling of his eyes - and the fact that he is * almost * as smart as I am - one might have assumed there was no double entendre intended. Well, that and the fact that we were naked at the time and literally smelled like sex and candy, which might have been a parody moment if it had been 1997, rather than a more civilized year where Marcy Playground was justifiably relegated to the oldies stations.
Oh. Right. Probably shouldn't answer the door when Harry arrives wearing just panties. Hmmm. Phrasing? Fine. "... wearing just panties, when Harry arrives." Happy now?
Though I wouldn't put it past him to show up buttnaked except for panties, cause he's confident in his masculinity. Arguably, a bit TOO confident.
I put on the matching black mesh bra with the teeny hearts. It's a little tight - it's hard to find lingerie for breasts as big as mine, since some fashion designers seem to think anorexic runway models are in the middle of the bell curve for body shapes, rather than the thickness that most men crave. There's a reason math textbooks talk about Bell Curve distributions, not Bell Stick distributions.
Next, I put on an elegant Little Black Dress, aka an LBD, that treads hard on the line between appropriate attire for a cocktail party, versus understated lingerie. Demure enough to use when opening my front door for Harry for the first time, but sexy enough to let him know the grand tour of the house is likely to end in the bedroom.
I'm in the master bathroom dabbing perfume under my ears when the doorbell rings. My little nutjob Corgi, Buddy, loses it as usual whenever he hears a doorbell, and sprints maniacally out of his little red bed in the corner of the bedroom, then skids into the hallway to the front door, barking his fool head off the entire time.
I follow him at a more leisurely pace, some butterflies from having Harry over for the first time, but on the exterior the epitome of calm. Be the Buddha.
"Oh, hush, you little ankle biter," I tell Buddy as I approach the door. He glances back at me, then resumes guarding the Alpha Female of his two dog pack by continuing to bark like he's two hundred pounds of pure muscle instead of eighteen pounds of concentrated weirdness.
I open the door. Harry is looking backwards at my neighborhood - said neighborhood currently badly sullied by his rusted hoopty car parked in my driveway - like he was wondering if he had the wrong address. What, he thought I lived in the 'hood?
"What?" I say. "You thought I lived in the 'hood?"
He turns to look at me. "Fuuuck, you look hot."
Hmm, deflection. In an exaggerated Tejas drawl I say, "I'ma gonna tell my momma you thought I lived in the hooood", drawing the last word to two, mebbe three syllables.
"You gonna tell your mom I think all Black folk are poor? I just thought you were a broke ass college kid, same as me."
"Do you know me? I tell my momma ever' damn thang. She's gonna looove this, Pervert Boy."
