The Quake

Chapter 1

Erin, a twenty-two-year-old virgin who still shared a room with her brother, pulled her face up from the sticky pages of the text book she'd been drooling on. A door down the hall slammed, rattling her spindly desk beneath her elbows. Her life really wasn't as pathetic as it sounded on paper. Yes, she was still a virgin because instead of partying like her peers in this tiny rural Oregon town, she'd had her nose stuck in anatomy and biology books. While some people— well, okay, her mother— had accused her of being a dog with a bone in pursuit of her dream, she was just being practical. Besides, her mother was no longer here to comment on her life.

She blotted the drool spots on the book with the edge of her wrinkled sleep-shirt, then whipped the shirt over her head to land on an increasing pile taking-over her side of the floor. Erin glared at Drew's side of the room with its neatly shelved fashion magazines and crisply made bed. His clock read 7:37, what inhuman monster made their bed at that hour of the morning? The one she shared DNA with, that's who. She supposed something must be done about that pile or Drew would have a shit fit.

Erin began shimmying out of the day-old scrub pants she'd slept in, again. When she'd been given the green light to complete her clinical residency for veterinary school at home, she'd expected that home to be just how she'd left it. She'd only been gone for three years, and yet her parents had departed for Europe, her brother had taken the master suite, and the rest of the bedrooms had been gutted by his best friend Tyler in the name of developing a high-end remodel business. She'd had little choice but to move in with her brother until Tyler completed his various house projects.

The guys could fix up the house however they liked, as far as she was concerned, so long as the 10-acre plot of land their parents had deeded the both of them could someday house the big animal veterinary clinic she dreamed of. Erin adored this property, even if she had to share it.

Her door cracked open, then shut quickly.

"Dude, don't you knock?" she growled at the intruder.

Tyler's beleaguered sigh drifted in from the other side of the door.

"Nothing I haven't seen before." It was true. Since she'd moved back, Tyler had become some sort of magnet for her naked body. It wasn't his fault and there wasn't any romance to it. She wouldn't know how to intentionally attract him even if she wanted to. The insane hours she'd spent on books and working to pay for those books meant that she'd never had energy for romance, or friendships, or conversations with real human beings that didn't live or work with her. Conversations with human beings were overrated. Especially when any conversation she had that didn't center on something she was an expert in (ie animal physiology) resulted in incoherent ramblings, tunnel vision, and sweaty palms. Sadly, their nude run-ins had more to do with her lack of situational awareness, than anything Tyler was doing.

"I'm starting a load of laundry before I have to cut power. Gimme your clothes," he called through the door. Erin found Tyler's presence in the house quite nice actually. Apparently his arrangement with her brother had him doing the laundry and dishes. And the man could cook. "Be out in a minute." She pawed through a pile on her floor for a shirt that didn't smell like cat piss. Finding none, she instead wrapped herself in a towel, then piled the cat piss clothes into her arms with a few others.

She used an elbow to jostle the handle on her door without dropping the clothes. With a nudge of her hip, she thrust the door open all the way, "Ouch," right into Tyler's face.

"You were waiting for me out here like a creeper?" she asked, a smile in her voice to take the edge out.

He reached his hands beneath her pile of laundry, attempting to take it from her. "I told you, I was starting a load."