#tbitb fic

She regarded him through the glasses perched on her nose. They had fallen asleep on the couch last night, wrapped in the blanket that Bobby’s mom had crocheted for him for Christmas. Well, Bobby had fallen asleep. She had watched him for far too long, watched his chest rise and fall while tiny snores occasionally made his brow wrinkle. His hand had wrapped around her leg after a few minutes, and it was all the permission she had needed to curl up into him. He had woken up talking, as he always did, but it wasn’t the usual drivel about things he had remembered that he had forgotten to tell her the day prior.

“Hey, sweetheart, wake up. Your back’s gonna hurt. Did you sleep like that all night? Do you normally sleep like that? You need to put a pillow between your legs if you do, or otherwise you’re gonna be–”

“Bobby.”

She had heard all too clearly the fondness in his smile when he replied. “Sorry. Good morning.”

We can’t do that anymore, she had told herself firmly as she brushed her teeth, although it was something she wanted to do quite a bit more. Bobby was a furnace when he slept, and his warmth and scent clung to her the rest of the morning. She told him as much while his head lolled towards the open window. “I still smell like whatever you were eating last night, nasty.” 

“The Takis? You’re welcome,” he shot back, his eyes still closed. “If you’d like, I’ll help you take a shower and get nice and clean.” He peeked at her with an evil grin. “Or dirty, whatever.”

“Like I said, nasty,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t waver too much at the prospect. 

Bobby shut his eyes again, but the smile remained. Neither of them had put their contacts in for the day yet, and his thin wire frames slid up his nose when his head was tilted like this. Objectively adorable to anyone watching, she reasoned. There was a long beat before he cleared his throat and asked, “No Shorty last night?”

She blinked at him. “Oh, no, he was here. You didn’t feel him sit on you?”

“I’m a heavy sleeper.” She snorted. 

“Nope. No Shorty for a while now.” Bobby finally raised his head to look directly at her, and she could no longer kid herself that he wasn’t praying on the downfall of her casual relationship with his teammate. 

“No?”

Defensiveness was building a wall in her chest that she didn’t want to be there, but things had been so uncomfortably nebulous since that day at the mall where he’d told her how giddy it made him when people mistook them for a couple. Which was something friends said to one another all the time, she was sure. Almost sure. “He’s not gone forever,” she relented, and tried to ignore the cluck of disapproval Bobby made in his throat. “We’ve both just been busy. Maybe I’ll see if he wants to do something today!” 

She didn’t want to do something with Shorty, though. He had been coming to the apartment, at maximum, once every couple weeks, when the urge to run at Bobby and ruin the careful little household they had set up became too great. Every time George’s pretty smile kissed its way up her neck, she repeated to herself, “This is better, this won’t end poorly, at least we’re not roommates,” and didn’t believe a single word of it. It wouldn’t be enough soon. But she could keep trying, couldn’t she?

“Would be a great day for the beach,” Bobby was musing out loud when she refocused on him. A thrill that embarrassed her ran through her chest at the idea. 

“Ooh, yeah, it would! We could invite a few other people, too.”

“Oh, I’m included now, am I?” he grinned, delighted. She tried to shrug her enthusiasm at him joining the outing off.

“Sure, no one can get me to swim laps like you can, Mr. Coxswain.”

Bobby looked proud enough to burst. “Well, that’s true. I’ll text people!” 

They scurried around the apartment getting ready, shoving snacks into a tote bag that neither of them knew the origins of, pulling every available towel they could find, showering (separately) the sleep off, and wiggling into bathing suits and shorts. Bobby shouted across the rooms the entire time, meandering through ideas for group games and possibly a barbecue. She told him “Whatever you want” as she loaded up his waiting form with the bags, coolers, and chairs they were taking, and he kept talking, and she kept listening, and things felt a lot more normal by the time they were packing Bobby’s hatchback with all their possessions. 

While they drove to the beach, she nervously fiddled with the bathing suit top underneath the oversized t-shirt she was wearing. She hoped Shorty would be enough to distract her from whatever level of undress Bobby chose to strip down to once they were on the sand. Then she scolded herself for even worrying about something that ridiculous. He didn’t seem to be struggling with the idea of her bare skin as he rattled off a list of all the professional athletes he would put in his shell if he could. 

“And LeBron, obviously, stroke.”

“Obviously.” 

“But can I throw something crazy at you?”

“After you take the correct exit here, sure.” Bobby turned on his right blinker and merged over a lane, hardly pausing to take a breath. 

“I wanna see Ronaldo at the back.”

She laughed. “A soccer player who has to use his arms like once a game?”

He smirked back, said, “Ah, see, it’s all about the legs, baby,” and brought his palm down on her bare thigh in the passenger seat. On instinct, she jerked away from the touch and twisted her hips toward the door. Bobby’s hand fell away lamely, but he kept right up on his tirade. While he talked, she faced away from him and tried to cool her face down. Her leg was hot where he’d touched it. It was a joke. No need to act like he’d just leaned over and planted one on her. 

When they arrived at the beach and found a parking spot, Bobby pulled into it and put the car in park, then reached into the center console and felt around with his hand, frowning. She batted her eyelashes at him exaggeratedly. “Are you going to kill me now?” she fawned, and he snorted. He made purchase on and held up a small plastic canister in triumph.

“Next best thing. Sweet for my sweetheart?” She almost told him to knock it off. Their flirting, which had never bothered her an iota before, was starting to grate on her nerves the farther it went without her being able to reciprocate, really reciprocate. Then she saw the cannabis leaf on the canister’s label and her shoulders drooped in relief. He dropped a gummy into her hand and they tossed them back in tandem, Bobby humming about how good the mango ones tasted. She imagined if she were to reciprocate on that flirting at the current moment, he’d get to taste some more mango on her tongue. More scolding in order.

They climbed out of the car and she stretched her legs, pulling her shorts down as if the extra inch of coverage they allowed would stop him from touching her again. She glanced across the hood of the car at Bobby, and her heart slammed to a halt when he tugged the shirt he was wearing over his head and tossed it back inside the car. She’d seen him shirtless a hundred, no, a thousand times, since moving into his place, so why was her mouth so dry right now? Why was she tracing every line and inch of skin and small but lean amount of muscle on his stomach with her eyes? Maybe she should say something. Growing awareness that she was staring at him gnawed at her until she blurted, “Need help with sunscreen?”

Very subtle. Neither of them were holding a bottle of sunscreen. He looked at her in confusion and she recovered by sticking her tongue out at him and telling him that she didn’t care if the sun baked him to a crisp. They unloaded the car and walked down towards the water in relative silence, which was what she called not talking while Bobby talked for the both of them. As they began padding over the sand, their sandals kicking up huge wafts of it in their wake, she pulled her sunglasses on and squinted down the beach through them.

“Bobby. You said you would invite a few other people.”

“I cannot help my magnetic personality, darling.” A group of at least twenty-five students were milling in a clump near the water, towels and umbrellas and beach chairs thrown down in a makeshift camp, and more were making their way over even now. Someone had brought a Bluetooth speaker and a volleyball, and a pick-up game had already started, scored by the soundtrack of yacht rock blaring out of the speaker. Roger Morris was serving the ball, and her head followed the arc of it as it sailed through the air and toward the ground, but not before a frantic Shorty dove at the sand and yelled, “MINE!” The ball bounced off his upturned wrists and back at the other group of six, who did not demonstrate the same dedication as Shorty and missed the return. A smile snuck onto her face as she threw her and Bobby’s things down on the towel Bobby had laid out, watching Shorty’s lithe and perfectly-tanned body rush around the impromptu court.

Bobby noticed her sightline and followed it, rolling his eyes behind the light tint sunglasses he wore when he saw who she was staring at. Absently, she tugged the t-shirt, which she had since realized was Bobby’s, off and tucked it into her tote bag. The label on the edibles he had offered had said “Fast-acting!” but she hadn’t realized quite how fast until she felt a warm haze pull at the edge of her vision and the sunlight made her skin pulse in a very comfortable way. Shorty looked more amazing than she remembered. A sufficient enough distraction, without doubt. 

“Whoa,” came a low little giggle from beside her, and Bobby swayed while pulling off his left sandal. He bumped her leg and she laughed, too, sensing that his edible may have started hitting as well. 

“Stay up, you pothead,” she said, grabbing his elbow, and they both devolved into a fit of silent laughter. She tried to just appreciate how funny the totally normal situation was and not to notice that Bobby was pressed into her with only their thin bathing suits between them, and that the freckles on his shoulders and back were a centimeter away from her lips. “I’m gonna go say hi,” she muttered and dropped his arm. As she started walking away, something tugged her back by her bottoms, and she shrieked when she realized Bobby had slipped a finger inside the waistband at her hip and pulled her to him.

“Do not leave me to socialize alone right now,” he pleaded into her ear, and a stupid, treacherous little whimper fell out of her. His hand was almost inside her swimsuit, and the weed was heightening her feeling of arousal so dramatically that she got wet as hell at the idea of the hand traveling further. Instead, she grasped his wrist and yanked it off her, pushed Bobby down onto his ass on the towel and ordered,

“Just stay here. Eat something. You’ll feel normal in a minute. I’ve gotta…” She trailed off and away from him, needing distance to coach her breathing back to normal. Her feet led her over to the volleyball game, greeting some girls she knew from Econ 102 on the way. Joe Rantz and Don Hume were parked on a dark purple towel off to the side of the group, their heads together and muttering lowly, as was their soft spoken nature. As she passed them, they waved and she smiled back. Then, a girl she didn’t recognize as well walked over and dropped between them on the towel. The two men grinned conspiratorially at one another, and she could have sworn she saw each of them place a hand on the girl’s bare, outstretched legs. She made an urgent mental note to gossip with Bobby about the development the second they were back in the car.

Shorty caught sight of her as she walked up to the game, and he ran over to her as soon as the play ended. “Hey, firecracker,” he grinned, leaning down to kiss her cheek. Her face flushed, and she discovered she had room to think about something other than Bobby. 

“Hey, hot stuff. Gonna win one for me?” she replied. She tilted her head to the side and Shorty chuckled.

“I’d like to, but with you looking that good, I’m worried I’ll be all distracted.” He mimed fumbling the ball and then shaded his eyes to check her out, top to bottom. She fought the urge to cover her bikini-clad body. 

She retired to the sidelines and watched the game progress until Shorty’s team slaughtered the other so mercilessly that they conceded with a cry of “Alright, alright!” after a spiked ball nailed Roger in the forehead. The edible was making everything, the water, the blazing sun, Shorty, extra delightful and funny, and she found herself resting her head on his shoulder when he came and sat beside her, giggling at nothing as they watched the tideline encroach.

“You look so amazing,” she hummed to Shorty. “So sexy out there.”

“Careful, or I’m gonna pick you up and take you to my car,” he muttered back, low enough so the clump of people around them didn’t hear. No one was paying them attention anyway, too wrapped up in the wonder of being young and near-nude and more-than-tipsy on the beach. Shorty took a sip from the White Claw can dangling from his fingertips. She glanced at the flavor and tried not to care that it was mango.

The waves crashed against the shore in a hypnotic tug-of-war. They gazed out over it until another fit of giggles overtook her and she felt she had to whisper in Shorty’s ear, “We took edibles right before this.” He choked a little bit on his next swig and his eyes widened.

“Criminal!”

“I know.” She held her wrists up to him like she was waiting to be cuffed. “Take me away, officer.”

Shorty’s eyes darkened more than she had intended for them to do, and he leaned in until they were breathing the same air. “Do you have any idea how fast you were going, ma’am?” he rasped in her ear. “Because you weren’t moving. You’re actually at the beach and not even driving a car at all.” The stupid joke saved her from the overwhelming sensation of having him so close to her and they both snickered too hard at it. “Who’s ‘we’?” he suddenly asked, a frown creasing his face.

“Me and Bobby.”

“Ah, right. How could I forget.” If she hadn’t known any better, she might have thought his smile was a little rueful. 

“He drove me here,” she supplied, as if that explained anything. Shorty looked down at the pebbly sand they were sitting on. She elbowed him. “Whaaaat? What’s the face for?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Just you. You should stop fucking with him, you know.”

The shock smacked her clean across the face. Her head swam a little, trying to adjust to the sudden tone shift in the conversation through the thick haze the edible had left there. She said, “Fucking with him? I’m not–we’re not–we’ve never, I don’t even–”

“No, no, and that’s all very convincing, of course,” Shorty replied. His face was all straight lines, not happy, not angry. She wondered why her heart was beating so fast. “But look: he’s a great guy. And you’re a…” He broke off with a little sigh that made her heart cease its pounding and fracture into a hundred pieces. “...great girl.”

“George.”

“I know, I know. I know I said I was fine with it. But it’s just too weird, seeing you be so in love with him but still hanging out with me,” he continued. Humiliation scratched at the back of her neck, and the pink splattered across her nose and cheeks had little to do with the blazing sun. What the fuck was he talking about, “seeing her be so in love with him”? This was news to her. 

Is it? a little voice in her head whispered, then squeaked in terror when she mentally went after it with a baseball bat. She staggered to her feet and looked down at Shorty. “Well, sorry,” was all she could mumble before her feet were carrying her away from him and his hushed protests. He didn’t follow her, though, and she was grateful for it.

If Shorty had clocked her dumb little crush on Bobby, how many other people had? And worst of all, what if Bobby himself had? “I gotta get outta here,” she muttered to nobody in particular. It wouldn’t be a great look, from Shorty’s point of view, if she ran to Bobby and asked him to please take her home, but it was the only thing she could think to do. He was always there to take her home, to bundle her up safely. To take care of her. 

The little voice piped up again, in the very back of her mind, but this time, she let it talk for a minute while she swayed side-to-side, frozen in place. I want him to take care of me and I want to take care of him. I care about him. I really care about him. Someone yelled “HEADS UP!” as a frisbee whistled over her head, nearly taking an inch of hair off with it. She didn’t notice. 

She stumbled back to their towel, sobering rapidly while she repeated in a whisper to herself “I care about you, Bobby,” rolling the words around in her mouth to test how they might sound out loud. All she actually knew was that a weird and not unwelcome tsunami of relief had crashed over and through her by the time she made up her mind to say them out loud. She packed her bag and pulled Bobby’s shirt back on before she realized that he wasn’t seated on the towel. 

As if sensing her confusion (or possibly because she just had a pair of eyes and could see a very bemused girl looking side to side for a man that wasn’t right in front of her), her friend Joyce piped up from next to the ice chest and called, “He went home, girlie! Said to let you know that his keys were in the big tote bag ‘cause he took an Uber.” She giggled a little at the rapid blinks of her friend. “Bobby. Bobby Moch, your roommate.”

“Yes, Bobby,” choked back Bobby Moch’s roommate. She stood stationary for another second, her vision still wobbling. “I think I need to take an Uber, too,” she muttered. Joyce snorted and dryly asked her if she really thought so, then pulled out her phone and ordered one.

The ride home, laden with her and Bobby’s things, was quiet, and calmed the swirl of thoughts and cannabis inside her. She had to apologize several times over for the amount of sand she left in the Uber, but the driver only grunted in response. It was a half-hearted apology, anyway. There were more important things on her mind. 

“Home!” She yelled when she had unlocked their door and entered it. Bobby didn’t reply, and a quick glance around the apartment told her that he either hadn’t made it home yet or that he was in his room, although the lack of reply told her that the former was more likely. She heaved a sigh and began dragging the beach supplies, which hadn’t seemed nearly this heavy when they packed, into the bathroom, where sand could be shaken off it. 

As she passed Bobby’s closed bedroom door, a wet towel flopped out of the tote and onto the ground and she cursed. Most of the garbage in the bag was Bobby’s, and she knew that if she loaded his laundry into the machine for him, he would take that as a sign that she was graciously doing the whole load for him. “Fuck no, Moch,” she muttered under her breath to no one, doubling back down the hall to Bobby’s room again. 

She pushed the door open an inch and lifted the bag of wet clothing to heave it inside, but the sight waiting for her stopped her dead, cold.

Bobby was, in fact, home, and was, in fact, in his room, but his reason for not replying was not one she had considered. He was laying on his bed, shirt still missing and trunks tugged down around his thighs, and…and he was jerking off. His eyes scrunched shut, his hand working up and down his cock furiously, huffy and breathy moans uttered every other second like “Fuck!” and “God, yes, so goddamn pretty.” She could feel her jaw go slack, the bag slide out of her grasp, but no other movement was possible. Bobby’s back arched off the bed as his hips pistoned furiously into his hand.

“Little tease, fucking killing me today, weren’t you?” He gasped, and for one sick moment, she almost thought he was talking to her. But his eyes stayed shut and his movements unbothered. She should leave. She should go. Close the door and leave the apartment and come back in an hour later pretending like she’d just gotten home.

She kept watching. 

Bobby pulled his lower lip in between his teeth and bit down on it with a whine, his eyebrows scrunching together. Her core clenched. Heat was simmering low inside her. It had already reached boiling point at the beach. She was supposed to be avoiding this, avoiding anything that made her want Bobby more than she already did. Her fingers were digging into her own palm. He fucked his hand harder, and suddenly, she was wondering what would happen if she just dropped everything and climbed on top of him. Would those blue eyes be happy to see her? Or would he, much more likely, feel disgusted and violated?

The next thing out of Bobby’s ever-open mouth was her name. Her stomach plummeted to her feet. He cried it out again, clearly unaware that she was even home, let alone witness to the unspeakably intimate moment. Fuck, he’s thinking about me. Fuck. Fuck. His cock was so hard that it pressed against his stomach, his happy trail that she had spent many recent hours thinking about obscured by it and his hand. She once more considered joining him. Then he came, a violent yell croaking out of his dry throat, and his hand was covered in his spend. The sight made her knees buckle, and she bit her tongue to stop from saying something she regretted as he used the extra slick to jerk himself through the orgasm. More whimpering sighs of her name followed. She had to get out of this apartment.

She dropped the other items she was holding and backed away from the door, doing her absolute best to not make a sound. There would be time to process the image burned onto her retinas later.

The thump had been too loud. “H-hey?” came Bobby’s voice from his room, hoarse and scratchy. Shit.

“Shit! I mean, hey! Hey, I just walked in.” She scampered over to the front door and yelled from it, hoping it sounded like that was true. There was probably too much emphasis on the “just” for it to be believable. The springs of Bobby’s mattress groaned as she heard him move around frantically. She pictured him snatching up his discarded shirt and using it to clean the mess on his stomach and had to clench her thighs. 

Then, Bobby emerged from the room wearing only his trunks and clutching that same shirt she’d been picturing, and a small, “Oh, God,” popped out of her. 

“Hm?”

“G-g-um, oh, were you taking a nap? Sorry if I was too loud,” she stammered. His hair was mussed around his temples, and his lower lip was puffy where he’d clearly been biting it. 

They stared at each other, across the living room, for way too long. In the silence, all she could hear was the phantom pleas of her name and the sound of Bobby’s hand fucking himself stupid. It was making it very difficult to think. 

Bobby’s eyes narrowed, and panic shot through her. “You just got home? Just now?”

On autopilot, she nodded. He cleared his throat and fiddled with a vase of dead flowers on one of their end tables. “So, you didn’t hear me? Uh–singing? I was singing in my room and you didn’t hear me?” he asked with horribly-executed nonchalance.

If it had been any other situation, she would have burst into laughter. As it was, a smile was already threatening to peek through her impassive expression. “Ha, no, didn’t hear any singing. What were you regaling Tony with this time?” Tony was the creepy parrot statuette that Bobby had fallen in love with on a thrifting trip four months prior. She had once said that if she was Bobby’s girlfriend, Tony would be the first thing she’d purge from the bewildering decor of his bedroom. 

Count your fucking days, Tony, she thought, while Bobby recovered himself and picked up the bag of wet clothes and towels from the hallway. “Just another sold out show at Madison Square Garden performing hits from my new album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded,” he called behind him, and the smile won over her face this time. 

She thought, briefly, about telling him right then and there that she’d heard him moaning her name in ecstasy, teasing him a bit about it, then confessing her undying love and admiration to him. She decided she wanted it to be a bit more special than that.

Over their quiet dinner of spaghetti and meatballs that night, he poured her another glass of something cheap and red, and after he had finished, she said, “Bobby, I think I’m falling for you. Any ideas on what we can do about that?”

Bobby inhaled, fiddling with the small box he had hidden in his pocket as he waited for Tilly, his steady girlfriend, to get back from whatever it was she was doing. They had been steadily dating for at least a year now and tonight, Bobby planned on popping the question. After putting money aside for months, he was finally able to purchase the ring he had his eye on a few days ago. He even talked to her parents; now all that was left to do was ask Tilly those four words. He exhaled. He really wasn’t feeling nervous at all; in fact, he was feeling rather confident and excited. He had known for a while now that he wanted to marry this woman. Sure, the economy was bad, but he was just recently named to cox the JV rowing team, which entailed a job, he was graduating next year and then after that he planned on having a job to support them as he went through law school. It would be hard, yes, but being that they loved each other, they would make it work, right?

She pulled her head up and saw Don Hume looking at her with a humiliating amount of sympathy. He hardly ever spoke to her, but then, he hardly ever spoke to anyone. But he did other things, little things like holding doors or clearing a spot at study tables for her, that made her wonder if maybe he wanted to speak to her more. "When he went to kiss me good night, I missed his mouth and his teeth hit my cheek and it was just..." She buried her face in her arms again. The happy couple chuckled but Joyce reached across the table to rub her forearm.

"Don't worry! It's always awkward like that at first! You'll get into a rhythm–" Bobby Moch jerked awake, head flying off the hand that was supporting it, and cried, "Wh-?! Y'heard him, get into a rhythm, boys!" Joe and Joyce exchanged a very parental glance that said We better get this one to bed and gathered their things. Bobby looked ready for Joe to scoop him into his arms and carry him to bed, but the three of them bade the rest goodbye as they drifted out of the library and towards the boys' dorms. Chuck, who hadn't heard a word said the entire time, too terrified of his impending economics exam the following morning, trailed behind them while still reading from a dog-eared textbook.

Don didn't move. He also didn't speak, his sight fixed on the book in front of him that she hadn't seen him turn the page of once yet. She smiled at him and his eyes widened before a wobbly one was returned to her.

They sat in comfortable silence for a few more minutes. She picked through one of the foreign language volumes Chuck had left behind (the title read Advanced Economics II) but couldn't distract herself from the pit of embarrassment in her stomach over the awkward date she'd just endured. She sighed.

"Y–mm." Don had started talking, then stopped himself just as quickly.

"What?" she asked. She cherished the few times she could remember Don eeking out a few words in her presence. His forehead was the color of a brick.

He cleared his throat and tried again. "I'm, um, I'm sure that your date wasn't all as bad as you're thinking," he murmured, eyes still glued to the history text in front of him. Don's voice was so soft, low, even. The frustration she felt over the awful evening started ebbing away. She pushed away her book.

"It certainly was, Mr. Hume, but I appreciate your attempt to lighten my mood," she responded with a grin, and Don huffed a tiny laugh under his breath, at last looking up at her.

His eyes twinkling, he asked, "It was that kid who sits in the front row for English Lit?" When she nodded, he chuckled again. "His voice bugs me. And always with the hand." Don mimed the way her date raised his hand in their shared lecture, hopping a little in his seat and wiggling his fingers to make it clear just how much he knew the answer. She laughed until tears formed in her eyes, not just at the impression, but at the ever stoic man performing it.

Don looked positively giddy that he had cheered her up, a smile creasing the corners of his eyes. A gorgeous smile, she thought, a little dreamy, as they continued chatting about other irritating characters in their classes. It wasn't until the student charged with the night shift at the library came over to tell them he was going home, and that they should lock the front doors behind them when they left that they realized just how long they'd been talking.

At some point, Don had moved seats to sit beside her, and she didn't know when, but their jackets had also been removed. Her knee was pressing into his thigh while he regaled her with a terrible date of his own.

"...and there's her father, waiting for us on the front step, with an actual shotgun," Don finished, and she doubled over.

"You're lying!"

"I wish." A rueful smile wrinkled his button nose. When she recovered from her hysterical laughter, another warm silence gradually fell between them. She was about to suggest they head home with reluctance when a ridiculous idea occurred to her. A preposterous idea.

But Don was looking at her expectantly and pieces of his black hair were falling in his eyes and his teeth were running across his lip, so she tried to feign nonchalance as she mused, "Too bad there isn't a way to get all this awkwardness out of the way before you go on the actual dates. I can't even kiss correctly. How long is that going to take me to get right?" She didn't look at Don, but she felt the leg that hers rested against stiffen.

When he spoke again, his voice was dry. "Yeah." He was fiddling the collar of his shirt like it was uncomfortable. It seemed his non-verbal tendencies were returning.

"Wish I could practice with someone."

She really couldn't have made it anymore obvious, but Don had never been good at finding the subtext in English literature, and he wasn't good at finding it here. "Yeah," he said again.

All the lights in the library save for the lamps on their table were off for the evening, but she could still see Don fidgeting in his chair. This wasn't going to be as easy as it had been to get a date with the hand-raiser.

She gasped, as if a lightbulb had suddenly illuminated itself above her head. "Hang on...what if we practiced, you know, together?" Don looked ready to fold in on himself. "It's fine if you don't want to!" she continued, not wanting to spook him.

"No!" he said quickly. "Practice is good. That's how we win races. Repetition is helpful, for me at least..." The excuse was flimsy and he knew it and she knew it. They stared at each other, trying to decide if this was as bad of an idea as it seemed. Don decided first. "Let's try."

The kiss was not at all awkward, and after they'd tentatively pressed their lips together and managed to make full contact there, Don reached for her neck and pulled her closer to him, so she was forced to climb into his lap. She couldn't stop the little sounds that leaked out of her while they pawed, increasingly feverish, at each other, but he drank them down so willingly that she stopped trying to after a while.

"We should practice more," he groaned when sucking a red mark below her ear made her press herself against the hard bulge in his pants.

"I could sure use it," she agreed after a cheeky bite of Don's lower lip made his fingers dig into the skin under her sweater, just above her ass.

If the night librarian had known that Don Hume was going to sweep several antique books off the study and throw an eager co-ed onto it, he probably wouldn't have given them free rein to close up the building whenever they wanted. But because he had, they took their time. Don admitted in a meek murmur that he'd never used his fingers on a woman before, and she graciously gave him a tutorial that left her legs shaking, her hand guiding his in and out of her cunt.

Don tried to smooth her clothes out after she came on his index and middle fingers and kiss her sweetly, but she wasn't finished studying yet.

Practice makes perfect, after all, she reasoned with herself as she sank to her knees in front of Don and unzipped his trousers. "A-are you sure?" he breathed, his hand ghosting over her head as if she'd snap to her senses if he spoke too loudly and leave him to deal with the erection she was now licking a stripe up by himself. "Ohh, fucking God." She took him as deeply into her mouth as she could, but she figured he must be quite a bit larger than the average man, because she could only cover about half his length. His cock was hard and pink and leaked onto her tongue when she swirled it over the tip. Don's hips bucked into her mouth and his hands finally tangled into her hair.

Don and her had run in the same friend circles for awhile now, but she'd never seen him be anything like this before; he whined, he whimpered, he fucked her mouth so desperately that she could hardly believe it was the same man who had, only an hour ago, been almost too shy to talk to her. "Shit, shit! Oh, God, okay, you've gotta stop," he moaned, and grabbed a hank of her hair, gently pulling her off him. Her lips gave a small pop around the head of his cock. "Christ, you definitely don't need more practice with that. I was so close to bus–" Don's mouth clamped shut and he looked at her with horror. "I'm sorry. That was so crass."

She hopped up on the table again and giggled at him. "It was also crass of you to finger me within an inch of my life, Hume. I'll allow it." Don grinned and she kissed him again, the tastes of both of them (because Don had needed no instruction for him to pop his slick-covered fingers into his mouth after he'd made her cum) mingling on her tongue.

"I need some help finding my way down here," he muttered as they kissed, his fingers pressing up into her exposed cunt again. Her skirt was pushed up around her waist, her panties pushed down around her ankles. Don's shirtsleeves were rolled, and she watched his forearm flex as he lazily circled her clit and gazed at her through a lusty stupor. "Could you draw me a map?"

"Y–fuck, Don!" He sunk one finger inside her and the cry that issued from her lips made him smile proudly. "Again?"

Bobby was a chronic clothing over-shopper who had to have his credit card taken away and frozen too many times to remember. She still recalled the unholy hellfire that had rained down on her when she revealed to him that she’d frozen it the same day the local mall was supposed to run a massive sale.

“You don’t need any more workout clothes! You sit at the front of the boat and yell, that’s it!”

“Melt it out of there right now, or so help me God, I will take YOUR card with me, and you do not want me to do that.” He usually won the card away from her with little argument after the threats started rolling out. And the only other way to corral his spending was to accompany him on his frenetic fits of financial irresponsibility and wrestle things away from him herself.

When he had woken her from her peaceful Saturday afternoon nap to announce that he needed a new shirt “because I want one”, she’d groaned and covered her eyes but ultimately found herself trailing behind him as he trotted from store to store and held up anything he needed her opinion on. 

It was a beautiful day at the open-air mall, and as she leaned her head backwards and waited for Bobby to change for the umpteenth time, she realized she was enjoying herself. Unprecedented. It had been happening more and more lately; having Bobby flit around at her ankles wasn’t grating on her nerves the way it usually did. She pulled out her phone while Bobby vocalized the bassline of a Temptations song from inside the cubicle and opened a new note. Research early signs of dementia. The swish, swish of Bobby turning on his ankles to vogue in the mirror made the corners of her mouth turn up without her consent.

“I like this one.”

“Then get it.”

“But there was another–”

“Robert.” He stuck his head back out of the curtain and gave a sunshiney, if slightly shit-eating, grin. 

“I can tell when I’m pushing my luck. I’ll get this one.” 

Bobby bounced lightly on the balls of his feet while the cashier rang up his record-low shopping haul of two shirts and a pair of swim trunks. He turned to his roommate, who was preoccupied with scrolling through pages of WebMD-sanctioned proof that she was losing her mind by enjoying his company. “Thanks for coming shopping with me,” he said.

“Someone has to keep you in line,” she responded without looking up from her phone.

“And there’s no one I’d rather have more!” He reached out to tweak her nose but she intercepted his hand mid-reach, still not bothering to glance at him, and squeezed his fingers backwards in a death grip. “Ow, ow, ow,” he said cheerfully, and without thinking, she pulled his hand to her lips and pecked three light kisses on the crushed fingertips, a remedy she had picked up from the man himself. She wasn’t sure if it was a holdover habit from his childhood that someone had used to soothe him or if doing things in threes was just another one of his compulsions, but the act had made its way into her rolodex of ways to calm him down.

“All better,” she murmured, her brow furrowing while the medical advice site recommended cryotherapy and the cashier handed Bobby a large shopping bag with his purchases and receipt. The woman’s severely slicked bun made the smile she gave them look tense. 

“You two are a very sweet couple,” she told them. “Have a great rest of your day, and thank you for shopping with us.”

Bobby’s face split into a smile that reached each of his ears. Next to him, his presumed-girlfriend’s face was melting into a mixture of mortification and outrage. “Oh no, we’re not–!” She wasn’t sure why alarm bells were blaring in her head, but she couldn’t even hear what Bobby gushed to the cashier as she yanked him by the forearm out of the store. 

“Sweetheart, that was rude,” Bobby deadpanned, letting himself be pulled along behind her. God, that idiotic grin was back and she wanted to peel it off his face like a sticker. It was so typical of him to delight in the fact that she was single and to rub it in her face. Any time someone even implied that they were dating, he would break into a giddy giggle as if the idea of her being able to sustain a relationship was impossible. 

And when he had realized that Shorty would not be a permanent fixture in her life, as with all the other people she brought home, he had been borderline insufferable. Their dinner from the evening following Shorty’s overnight stay was still being stewed over in her mind.

“Mm. Good soup.” Bobby made a ring with his thumb and forefinger, the rest of his fingers splayed out, to emphasize how delicious the pad thai in front of him was. She snorted and nodded, dipping back into her plate of noodles. “So,” he began. He dabbed his lips with an affected little sniff. “Post-sexual encounter debrief time.”

“Ew, no.” His eyes narrowed, and she started sputtering as if she owed him an explanation. “No! That is not a thing we do; when has that ever been a thing we do?!”

Bobby scoffed, “When the person you encounterrr—” (he stretched the last syllable out while lifting a noodle of the same length to his mouth) “—happens to be a dear, dear friend of mine.” It was her turn to scoff.

“A friend whom you accused only last night of being illiterate.” She put her finger to her chin and pretended to be sussing out one of the great mysteries of the universe while Bobby ground his jaw. She knew she should stop, and that this rehashing would only reopen the wound that this dinner was supposed to heal. This dinner, and the cute note he’d left for her that morning, which, for some reason, was now stuck to the lamp on her nightstand. The note that had contained a few scratched out words that she still couldn’t make out.

He was starting to get irritated again. The jumpiness always started under his skin and worked its way out to his fingertips, which started drumming the table right on cue. Silence fell between them while they studied their noodles. Her shoes were sticking to the tacky floors of the restaurant, and “Big Flame” by Doris Wilson was playing over a tinny speaker perched in one corner. She almost dropped the whole thing to tell Bobby how much the song reminded her of him.

She could keep pretending to be annoyed with Bobby’s behavior, she reasoned, or she could start wondering why exactly he was this upset over her hooking up with his friend.

Speaking of. “I guess I was really surprised you decided to…on the first date,” Bobby said, slowly. “I didn’t think you’d go that fast.”

“Are there official rules and regulations I should be following?”

“For when to sleep with someone? Um, yes, my dear, they are found in a little socially and culturally significant piece of media I like to call Sex and the City.” She choked on the sip of water she was taking and began laughing hard. Leave it to Bobby to ruin her determination to be pissed at him by being himself.

While they were still laughing, Bobby motioned to his left cheek. “You’ve got…” He wrinkled his nose. “Somethin’.” She touched her face, swore, and began looking around for a napkin, but he beat her to it. Before she could stop him, Bobby leaned across the table, took her face in his hand and dabbed at the smear of peanut sauce on her cheek with the napkin in his other hand. “Hang on, jeez.” She was frozen in place, somehow annoyed at the intimacy of the act and somehow enjoying it at the same time. He was concentrating on her face, his tongue poking out between his lips while he scrubbed at the stubborn stain. When his brow furrowed, his lips tended to form a comical pout. They were pink, even in the restaurant’s grey-green fluorescent lighting, really pink. Soft-looking, too. 

She panicked and said the only words that had been pre-written by her brain in an awkward monotone: “This song reminds me of you.” Bobby stopped what he was doing and looked up at the ceiling, presumably to hear the song better. When he clocked it, he broke into a smile that made the parts of her face he was still holding onto heat up a little.

“Why’s that?” he asked, like the answer would get him “A”s in all his classes for the rest of the year. She shrugged. Very pink lips. And a cute nose, damn it.

Then Bobby pulled the napkin to his mouth without relinquishing her face and spat on it, a huge glob of saliva falling from his mouth, and raised it back to her face. She squealed and pushed him away so he rocked backwards into his seat and asked “What?!”

“Nasty,” she scowled. Chastising herself for…whatever that behavior had just been, she licked her own fingers and wiped away the rest of the food on her face. “Oh, but it’s fine when you do it,” Bobby said, rolling his eyes. The food on their plates had dwindled to a few scraps, and he craned his neck around until he made eye contact with their waiter. “May we have the check, please!” he called very politely, but still so loudly that it made her want to cover her face. 

The waiter hurried over and asked, “Two checks, or–?” Bobby held up one finger.

“One, please, sir. I owe this young lady a meal.” When they were alone again, Bobby sobered suddenly and said, “I really am sorry, you know. For what I said last night. I think…” He reached for his water glass and took an enormous gulp. “I think you guys will make a really sweet pair. You’re great for each other!” 

Bobby Moch, I’ve never heard you tell such a bald-faced lie, she thought. “Well, thank you, but even though Carrie Bradshaw has sanctioned our one-night stand, I think that’s all it’s going to be. We’re just gonna be friends.” Bobby looked far too happy at this news, so she added, “Probably still gonna hook up with him, though.” 

Glee, that was the only word for the expression on his face as he absently tossed his credit card at the returning waiter. As the waiter walked back to the kitchen, Bobby clasped his fingers under his chin and leaned on them, pure delight strobing off him. “Sad to hear it.”

“Clearly,” she growled. It hurt, more than she had realized, that Bobby enjoyed her romantic failures as much as he did. He practically celebrated every time she fucked up her love life by forgetting a first date or putting her foot in her mouth while flirting. And there was nothing he loved more than when they were mistaken for a couple in public and he could lord the fact that he was the only man she ever spent any time with over her for a good few days. In the interest of not exposing anymore of her vulnerability, she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair. 

“No, really!” But he was fighting through laughter that made her stomach sink in humiliation. She tried to look away. Bobby’s laughter was a special breed of contagious. It had been known to rip  through entire lecture halls in mere seconds if he found something really hilarious. No matter how angry or sad she was, if Bobby found something that tickled him, she inevitably found herself laughing along. “Shorty’s so–mm, he’s just so yummy!” He was almost in hysterics at this point, and although it was the last thing on Earth that she wanted to be doing, she felt her shoulders start to shake a little, as well. Then a smile was fighting the frown of her face. Before she knew it, Bobby was saying, “Think about all those yummy babies you’re missing out on!” and they were both doubled over the table, heedless to the tables next to them that were giving pointed and exasperated looks. 

She wiped a tear from under her eye. “He is yummy, you bitch. And very smart, for the record.”

“I know, I know,” he said, and waved a hand at her dismissively. “I just have to keep you humble.”

“Oh, do you?” An eye roll was locked and loaded, but he had to go and interrupt it by saying, “Oh, yeah. If you ever figure out how pretty you are, I would never get to spend any time with you.”

To say that this memory came back to her wasn’t quite accurate; she was fairly certain it hadn’t left her head since he’d said it, but she spent so much time trying to expel it that she thought she might be going insane. It had kept her up for two weeks now. They had left the restaurant and returned home as if he hadn’t even said it. If you ever figure out how pretty you are… She released her vice grip on Bobby’s arm and turned on him. 

“Why do you do that?” she cried. Her voice came out weaker and more wounded than she’d intended. She realized that they were standing in the middle of the street outside the store and pulled Bobby and his shopping bags back up onto the deserted sidewalk. The look of unrestrained joy had melted off his face and been replaced by sheer confusion. His lips were doing the pout-y thing again. Idiot.

“Do what?!” he demanded.

“Make fun of me because I never have a boyfriend.” It sounded dumb now, a very high school complaint for a college student to be making. “You always laugh and make jokes whenever I break up with someone or suck at talking to them, and you always rub it in my face when we get mistaken for a couple.” She sniffed and discovered that she was crying. It wasn’t much, just a few tears streaming down her cheeks and settling, salty, on her mouth. She decided not to be embarrassed by them, and to not let him make her feel embarrassed.

Bobby was aghast. “You think I’m…making fun of you?” She made a guttural noise in the back of her throat.

“I know you’re making fun of me, Bobby. You get so happy that people think we’re together, because of course you’re the only guy I could possibly sustain a relationship wi–”

“You are so stupid.”

She had gotten all revved up, and he’d gone and ruined it again. “What the hell did you just say?” Bobby was staring at her like she’d just insisted that nine plus ten equals twenty-one. His thick brows were drawn together.

“You can’t think of any reason, other than some horrible and malicious intent, that I might be happy someone thought we were dating? Like, oh, I don’t know, flattery, maybe? That someone thinks I could land a girl like you?”

No less than thirty cars had whipped past them on the busy street they stood in front of before she could form thoughts again. Oh, he isn’t making fun of me. He just likes people thinking I’m his girlfriend. Alright.

Alright. That’s fine. “Don’t call me stupid,” she muttered stupidly. Then he was hugging her, and it was warm and really nice and his arms fit into the contours of her body like they were made for it. 

“I’m sorry,” he said to her hair, “that it seemed like I was making fun of you. I think I might be passive aggressive even when I’m not angry.”

“Passive regressive,” she replied, still completely dumbfounded but refusing to let Bobby Moch have the last word. “You child.” He smelled like the cologne she’d bought him for his birthday, plus a little bit of the cupcake store they’d been in prior to the clothing one.

“Ah, see, you’re fine,” and Bobby released her to smack her gently on the forehead and wipe the tear tracks away from her cheeks with both his thumbs. They started walking back in the direction that they’d come from, weaving in and out of stores and window-shopping to Bobby’s heart’s content. As was starting to become a pattern, she noted, they didn’t talk about what he’d said. And really, when she considered each word carefully, all he’d meant was that it was nice to be mistaken as anyone’s boyfriend. He didn’t have much time for dating either, between crew practice and his pre-law course load. That’s what he’d meant. 

And calling her pretty? He had obviously just been trying to win her over after laughing at her. The flattery seemed transparent in retrospect. Now that she considered it all in conjunction, the conclusions were so undeniable, she couldn’t believe that she’d been losing sleep over it all.

That night, while she layed in bed, ready for a night free from overthinking, she admitted to herself that she wanted to kiss Bobby. She rolled over, grabbed her phone off the nightstand, and texted Shorty.