THEN AGAIN • TC ✔️

14. Something Hidden

The first week of December, Nick comes over two more times. He fucks Clem on both occasions and she tells herself to enjoy it. Tells herself to stop thinking about unruly curls and soft stomachs instead of short hair and washboard abs.

Because, like, a dick is a dick, right? And it still feels good.

But it's like there's something missing. Something she might never be able to replicate, no matter how many times she and Nick have sex.

By the second week of December, she's not even enjoying it anymore. It just means she has to cook more often and in bigger quantities, because somehow they always end up eating a full meal either before or after fucking. (And somehow Timmy always manages to profit from it because she feels bad about leaving him out of the meal.)

She's making a sauce of some description but it needs to simmer for ten minutes, so she figures she'll put on a load of washing while she's waiting. Her next appointment is at four o'clock, and it's only three o'clock now. Plenty of time before her client comes, before Timmy gets back, before Nick arrives.

Clem goes through her hamper and finds loads of whites for some reason, plus there's her bedding which she's just changed. She goes into Timmy's room, and usually his clothes are scattered in the general direction of his hamper, not in it, but today his room looks suspiciously tidy.

She wonders when he cleaned it. Wonders if that's what he was doing last night while he couldn't sleep. The thought makes her cringe and she looks around. At his desk, a notebook open at a clean page, pen sitting stately on top. At the little scrap bag on top, with what looks like chopsticks poking out of the end. At the perfect placement of the mouse mat next to the keyboard, at the books that are starting to make his shelves sag in the middle from their weight. She needs to tell Timmy to spread the books out a little more evenly, otherwise one day they'll cave in over his head while he's sleeping, only realistically there's nowhere else for Timmy to put them.

(Because there are books everywhere. On the shelves, his desk, his windowsill. Stacked up in the corner of the room like a table, shoved in the space under his bed, on his dresser. There are novels from floor to ceiling and Clem loves that about Timmy. Because there'll always be some sort of book sitting there, half-opened on the kitchen counter, spine creased, pages accidentally splattered with whatever Clem is cooking. And she'll always tell Timmy to move the fucking book and he'll laugh. Nod, pick up the offending novel and start reading it, right there, right in the way of whatever Clem is trying to do.)

Clem goes over and sits on his bed, neatly made, the covers tucked into the corners like she taught him to do a couple of months ago. She smooths a hand over the bobbles. Falls sideways onto the bed and buries her face into the blanket, smelling must and fabric softener and Timmy. She pushes her face against it. Imagines what it would be like to wake up here, wonders what it would be like to wake up under these sheets instead of just sit on top of them as Timmy marks his papers.

But that is a terrible thing to think about, so she goes over to his laundry hamper. Starts separating things, and the third thing down is a pair of soiled boxers. She drops them quickly. Steps back and sucks in air through her teeth.

(And she feels bad. Feels too much like a mother, going through her son's dirty laundry.)

It's not like she doesn't know Timmy gets off. He has to, right? Just because she's so paranoid about doing it, doesn't mean it's the same for him. But it feels like crossing a boundary when really all she wanted to do was a good deed.

The thing is, the boxers are still damp. Which means-- God, this makes her uncomfortable --they're from this morning which means that's what Timmy had been doing.

(Because she'd knocked on his door with a cup of coffee in one hand, and he'd told her in a kind of muffled voice not to come in. That he was busy. Just to leave it outside, thank you.)

Clem had presumed he was getting dressed. Didn't think much of it, and if there was any part of her that might have been suspicious, it was quickly quashed by the fact he was probably putting a shirt over his head. That would explain why he'd sounded so strained, that and nothing else.

But now it's obvious what nothing else is and Clem doesn't know what to do with the evidence. Should she leave them there in the hamper? They're white boxers, it would look weird to leave them there with all the coloured stuff. But if she washes them, then Timmy will know she saw them. Maybe she can cover it up, pretend she never saw them. Yeah, she can just pretend.

She's getting quite good at that.

So she picks them up by the waistband and drops them into the mass of bedding. Carts the whole bundle out of Timmy's room, closing the lid of the hamper with her elbow on her way out.