Housemates

Chapter 95

Ellie had been lying on the bed, waiting. She sat up when she heard the shower stop. She sat up at the end of the bed, twisted sideways to stare at the bathroom door.

She was excited. She was suddenly nervous. She waited.

A few moments passed.

Mia opened the bathroom door and came out with a towel wrapped around herself. She saw Ellie looking at her, and stopped, surprised. “Hi?” she said.

“Sorry,” Ellie said, and looked away.

“What for?”

“Staring.”

Mia shrugged. She sat on the bed next to Ellie.

They sat. Neither spoke. Neither moved.

After a while, Mia reached up and took the clip out of her hair. She pulled her fingers through it, tugging it all loose, then wrapped it back into a bun and put the clip back in.

Then she sat some more.

Ellie waited, confused. She didn’t know what to say. She wanted to start having sex, to go down on Mia like they were here to do, but suddenly she wasn’t sure how to start. Ellie wanted to start, and wasn’t, but Mia wasn’t starting either. Ellie didn’t know why, or quite what to do, and the longer she sat there, the odder she felt, sitting there naked while Mia was wearing a towel.

It wasn’t going as Ellie had planned.

There was a bang in the distance, a door somewhere down the hall closing. Ellie made herself not jump. This was silly, she decided. They both knew why they were here. They didn’t need to pretend with each other.

“I’m nervous,” Ellie said.

Mia looked at her. “You don’t need to be.”

“I know,” Ellie said. “Because we’ve done this before.”

Mia nodded.

“All the other times have been good.”

“Yep.”

Ellie thought. “Great,” she said after a moment. “Amazing.”

Mia smiled.

“But I’m nervous,” Ellie said.

“Because it’s something new?”

Ellie nodded slowly. It had to be that. It couldn’t be anything else.

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Mia said.

“I know,” Ellie said. “You’ve told me enough times.”

Mia grinned.

“So stop telling me,” Ellie said. “I get it.”

“Okay.”

“And because it doesn’t matter anyway,” Ellie said. “Since I want to. I really want to. I just honestly do.”

Suddenly Mia looked pleased.

“I’m nervous,” Ellie said. “That’s all. Enough I don’t know how to start.”

“Oh,” Mia said, and nodded some more, but she still just sat where she was.

That made Ellie even more confused. She’d meant what she’d said as a hint. She wanted to tell Mia to start, to ask Mia why they weren’t having sex yet, but she didn’t know how to say it, and Mia seemed not to understand.

It all seemed terribly complicated, Ellie thought.

She sat there thinking. She looked over at the room’s fridge, and at the row of little bottles on the shelf above it. She was tempted, but didn’t really like the idea of what needing a drink to start might mean.