I woke to the tugging of sheets and I turned over, staring bleary eyed at Jennifer who was in my room, urging me to "roll the fuck over".
"What's going on?" I asked, sitting up on my elbows and then looking around with one eye open.
"I'm changing the sheets," Jennifer said, a tight lipped smile on her face. "Now come on. Get up. It's almost eight."
"Fuck! We're going to be late!" I said, grabbing the covers and throwing them off of me, only to grab the comforter and rip it back over me, hiding my nakedness. Jennifer looked like she was dressed for work, but not really. None of her clothes were tucked in.
"What are you doing?" Jennifer asked, giving me a thoroughly confused look.
"I-, I, was, uh...I was going to do my own laundry," I stammered, trying to come up with something convincing, and on the spot.
"You? Do your own laundry?" Jennifer chuckled. "Come on," she said, lowering her voice. "Get up and let me put this in the wash."
Jennifer grabbed the comforter and tugged. I grabbed the comforter and tugged back. As casually as I could, I used my left hand to try and tug at my cock, which I had noticed was completely coated with dried, caked on cum, which was now flaking off onto the sheets.
"Jesus Christ!" Jennifer said, throwing the blankets to the side. The middle of the bed was revealed, and there, in the center, was a two foot wide strip of what could only be described as a combination of sweat, cum (both mine and Mackenzie's), and a brown substance, which I assumed was a mix of the previous substances and, fecal matter.
"I, uh, I was sick and-"
"Shut up!" Jennifer said, grabbing the lower edge of the fitted sheet and yanking it up off the mattress.
"Hey!" I said, my temper flaring. "Don't talk to me like that!"
Jennifer bit her lip and refrained from saying another word, but hurried to yank the sheets off the bed. She gathered them up, eyeballing me curiously, and then took the comforter out of my hands. The look in her eyes told me I had no choice in the matter, and she didn't care what I'd done, how it got there, or my excuses. The laundry had to get done.
The laundry! I rushed to my dresser, ripped open my undies drawer, threw a pair on, and hurried after Jennifer. She was just putting the sheets into the washing machine when I caught her. If the washing machine was working, that meant the water was too, which meant the electricity was back on, and that meant...
Jennifer lifted a black cast-iron kettle off the dryer, and dumped the boiling hot water into the laundry machine, giving me a curious look once again.
"The...electricity is still out?" I asked.
"Y-up!" Jennifer said, putting a good amount of emphasis on the "p" at the end.
"I, uh...is Mackenzie up yet?"
"Nope," Jennifer said in much the same way.
"Has...have you called to see if Dan's Nice Ice is open?" I said, using the grocery store's unique and completely unconventional namesake.
"I called. No answer. I'm gonna assume, they're snowed in," Jennifer said, dumping an entire cup full of laundry detergent into the washing machine.
"Uh, if the electricity is out, how are you going to do laundry?" I asked.
"I'm not," Jennifer said with a smirk, and she handed me the improvised crank-shaft that I'd created a few winters back, when the power had gone out for three weeks straight and I wasn't willing to go another day without clean clothes.
"Ahhh," I said, taking the crank from her.
"Put some clothes on," she said softly, turning around and walking away. "Although, I don't..."
The rest of her words were lost to the void as she walked out of hearing range. Quickly, I put the belt that connected the side gear to the lower one I'd attached to the main drive mechanism, and then attached the crank up top. I turned the crank one time forward, and then one time back, causing the inner tub of the washing machine to spin one direction, picking up speed slowly, only to slosh to a stop and then reverse direction. I looked through the lid to make sure the soap was dissolving nicely, and then hurried back to my bedroom, only to find Jennifer there, picking things up off the floor.
I thought about asking her what she was doing, snooping around my room, but instantly I felt like doing so would have seemed overly suspicious, so I stayed silent. I went to my dresser and pulled out a pair of pants and tossed them on the bed. I grabbed the first shirt I saw and tossed it on the bed as well.
"No. Don't...don't wear that," Jennifer said, seeing my selections. "Wear the blue jeans int he bottom drawer, and you've got a white t-shirt in the top drawer to your right."
"Since when did you start dressing me?" I asked, glancing at my own selections. "And what's wrong with the green corduroy pants and the yellow shirt?"
"Well, nothing," Jennifer said, folding her hands in front of her chest, "if you're living in the seventies and it's one of those "dress like your favorite vegetable" kind of parties."
"The seventies were good," I said, although I had been born in the middle of them and hadn't really been old enough to experience them first hand. But my mother and father, god rest their souls, had made sure to share the best years of their lives with me, making sure I was well outfitted with velvet shirts and corduroy pants, bell bottoms and neon button-downs with long sleeves, well into my high school years. "And what vegetable?" I asked in my own defense.
"Zucchini anyone?" Jennifer said.
I glanced back at the clothes I'd picked and then grabbed them quickly, tossing them back in my drawers.
"No, go ahead," Jennifer said sarcastically. "Your maid will fold your clothes for you once you get dressed and leave the room."
"I don't have a maid," I said, ripping the drawer back open and yanking the unfolded clothes back out.
"Yup," Jennifer said, smirking at me. "That, was the point."
I folded the pants and shirt and put them back, in the drawers where I'd gotten them from, and then pulled the jeans and T-shirt out and pulled them on before grabbing a belt out of my middle drawer.
"You're being awfully snarky today," I said, and then I shut my mouth considering that, she was probably highly suspicious of me right now. The bedding, the sheets, the evidence. Everything pointed at the fact that I'd been having sex with someone. A lot of it. A whole lot. And there was only one person in the house I could have been doing it with, and Jennifer...while she had said it was inevitable, and it was bound to happen...she'd made me promise I'd be safe. I'd wear protection. A wave of guilt washed over me and I knew I had to do something, something to make it up to her, not so she might not suspect that I'd done something, but so I wouldn't feel like such a fucking shit, for doing it. "You, uh... you want some eggs?"
"No electricity," Jennifer said, slowly twisting back and forth, her arms still folded in front of herself.