House Rules

The Set-Up

It was finally the anticipated Friday night, movie night, and you clicked through a fourth page of movie titles on your firestick hoping to find a satisfactory movie with a working stream. Movies were your way to unwind from the stress of the long work week and between having single-handedly dealt with a major cyber threat that threatened the informational security of your place of employment and drafting various reports, you needed your reprieve! So of course it drove you NUTS now to click so far only to see ‘no stream available’ every time you found a good title and you just knew that Erik wasn’t patient enough to sit there and click buttons until something worked. Knowing him, he’d say forget the movie. You briefly considered switching over to Netflix. You didn’t even want to think of what could happen tonight with this freight train of sex in your apartment without a distraction.

You’d wanted to spend time with him mainly because you loved his vibrant and fun personality. He seemed to be drawn to yours too and he was great company. He filled your lonely Friday nights with laughter and your busy work days with cheeky chatter through consistent texts. You loved all of the attention he gave and you flirted like mad right back, but you weren’t even close to being ready for where all that flirting could lead, which is why you were very careful not to tease too hard, lest the air become charged with a lustful energy you couldn’t escape. It was a very thin line.

The mental imagery of hardcore ‘chill’ without the buffer of 'Netflix’ made your face go hot and your heart freeze. Your fingers click faster through titles as you force your thoughts into a more light and acceptable direction.. the food. This week it was Erik’s turn to supply the fare. Every weekend for the past six weeks you’d alternated. Last week you ordered two large pepperoni pizzas from Domino’s. This week, he’d chosen to bring wings. Lots of wings. Lemon pepper, hot buffalo, parmesan, and barbecue. By the time he’d carted it all to the coffee table with napkins and drinks you were salivating. “The buffalo is mine,” you claimed taking the entire box for your own. Digging into a meaty buffalo flat, you settled on a romantic comedy you’d seen many times: Life As We Know It, a movie with Katherine Heigl. Of course you knew Erik hadn’t seen it.

“I don’t watch movies without black people,” he’d grumbled the Friday you’d tried to convince him to watch all 3 hours and 15 minutes of Titanic. You’d switched your choice to the newer Annie with Quvenzhané Wallis, and then he’d complained about it being a musical! He’d enjoyed it nonethess, following up with Boys in the Hood, a movie you admitted you hadn’t seen. From then on, he’d made it his mission to play every classic hood black boy movie that you’d never seen in a sort of movie intervention. “I’m educating you for the culture,” he’d reason with his hooded eyes flitting to yours every five minutes to ensure you paid close attention. He’d laughed at your gaping expression when Ricky got shot.

This time you decided you were watching your tame Caucasian movie and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

As the beginning credits ran, Erik dropped onto the couch next to you, almost sitting on the spillage of your wide flattened thighs causing you to shift slightly away for space. His eyes went easily to the screen without dispute, fingers flipping through lemon pepper flats.

“No objections?,” you teased slipping the back of your cool brown hand under his falling locs and against his forehead to make sure he wasn’t ill. It wasn’t like him to just accept your choice. He rested the clean palm of his hand on your titty in a fit for tat motion, only dropping his hand when you dropped yours. There was the Erik you knew.

You bit through wings together with only the sounds of chewing and the tv as the plot of the movie began to unfurl. A couple died leaving behind a baby for their best friends to care for. At first the friends don’t get along but of course, they will.