And bright and early at six-thirty a.m., she showed up and stood there watching me pack up said moving truck while she typed away on her phone. Likely writing up another PDF for me.
Then she went ahead and followed me in her ridiculously practical small SUV that she claimed had a high safety rating as well as good fuel mileage when I had maybe called it an ugly toaster.
Practical, that was how the woman was.
I couldn't claim to know what that was like myself, but I found it oddly charming that she extended it to every aspect of her life. Even her damn shoes were practical.
The new place was a little more remote, a standalone building at the edge of a dead-end road. It wasn't much, but a step up from the row of little rooms I had been living in.
It was a low brown-shingled ranch with an uneven front porch and a gravel drive.
"So you'll hear someone coming," Chris told me as she caught me looking at it.
"Got every detail covered, huh, dollface?" I asked, opening up the back of the truck.
"That's my job," she agreed, sparing me a short glance before going back to her phone, something she found there making her brows draw together, creating two little vertical lines between them.
"I'm assuming you know of the moving-in-day tradition, right?" I asked, watching her head snap up, eyes blank.
"No?"
"We--or in this case, I--move in all the boxes, make a half-hearted attempt to unpack a few of the essentials, then give up on everything, and order take-out."
"There's no reason for me to stay here for dinner," she objected.
"Other than the fact that you know you want to, that is," I corrected, shooting her a smirk as I moved past, letting her stew on that a moment while I made my first trip inside.
The inside was as dark as the outside, the windows caked in years of grime, making me wonder when the last person had inhabited this place. But the kitchen was a little bigger than the one I'd been renting. There was a proper living room to the left inside the door, as well as a hall that had three open doors. Master, bath, and second bedroom, I figured.
"It needs a proper scrubbing," she said from behind me, looking past my shoulder. "But it has the extra room for all the printing stuff. Which you need."
"So I don't burn it up with my smoking," I figured.
"Oh, right. About that. Hold on," she said, turning, rushing back down the path to her car, grabbing a reusable bag in a bright green color, then making her way back as I put down the box. "I picked this up for you. You can reimburse me when you unpack your money," she told me as I took the bag.
She was careful to make sure our fingers didn't touch, but she seemed a little excited as I reached inside. "Nicotine patches. Nicotine gum. Self-explanatory," I agreed, finding myself touched that she had gone out of her way to pick them up. Even if her intention was to keep her seed money safe. "And... lollipops?" I said, feeling a smile tug at my lips as I pulled out the bag of Dum-Dums I used to beg my grandmother to buy me as a kid.
"For the, you know, oral fixation issue," she told me, shrugging.
I tore open the bag, unwrapped a root beer one, and plopped it into my mouth, watching the way her gaze stayed on me the whole time.
"You know, angel, you're right. I do have a bit of a... oral fixation," I told her, letting those words drip with the innuendo they deserved. "I wouldn't call it an issue, though."
"I, ah," she started, letting out an awkward throat-clearing noise, shaking her head. "See? They're working already," she declared, taking the bag back, and moving toward the kitchen, setting the boxes in a row, then fidgeting with the bag of lollipops, and I got the feeling it was bugging her that she didn't have anything to put them in.
Neat and organized, that was how she wanted things.
"I've got a bowl for them somewhere. Well, it's a container that came with takeout, but I washed it, and it will do."
"Great. Okay. Well. I am going to go, ah, pick you up some cleaning supplies. Since I am pretty sure you don't have any of your own," she told me, eager to get away.
"Darling," I called as she went for the door. "Here," I said, reaching into my back pocket for my wallet. "Already owe you enough," I told her, pulling out some cash, holding it out.
It was a dick move.
I knew it even as I waited for her to reach for the cash, as her fingers closed around it, as I let my thumb move out to purposely stroke over hers.
It was a dick move.
Because she clearly didn't like being touched. I should have respected that. I should have kept my distance for her comfort.
But my thumb stroked down her thumb.
And there was a cheesy-as-fuck, but undeniable jolt of electricity at the contact.
And I figured she felt it too, because her gaze shot up to mine, those full lips of hers parting slightly, her eyes squinting small with confusion.
She didn't immediately pull her hand away, though.
Curious, I moved my thumb over hers once again. A little slower, watching as she took a slow, deep breath, as some of the tension left her shoulders.
Knowing the moment wouldn't last forever, wanting it to end on something other than awkwardness or discomfort, I teased her.
"You know, if we were in Victorian times, we'd have to get married now," I told her, watching as confusion turned to amusement, a smile tugging her lips upward, toying with her usually so-serious eyes.
"You're ridiculous," she told me, taking the money, tucking it into her back pocket.
"You love it," I shot back, watching as a blush tinted her cheeks as she turned to walk away, glancing over her shoulder at me once before she was gone.
Oh, yeah, she loved it, alright.
Maybe she wasn't ready to admit that.
And maybe she was confused about it.
But that was alright.
Because I planned to keep her close for a while.
She would have some time to suss things out.
I'd be there when she did.
And it wouldn't exactly be a hardship to wait, I decided as she came back an hour later with half the cleaning aisle in her trunk, making me haul it all in while she got to work filling a bucket with hot, soapy water.
"What are my orders now?" I asked as she dug through the last of the bags, pulling out spray bottles, sponges, and rags.
"Finish unpacking that truck. It needs to be back later tonight. I am going to get started on the cleaning."
"You're going to clean my house?"
"Well, I am not entirely sure you are capable of doing it satisfactorily," she told me. There was no malice in her words, just honesty, it seemed. And she wasn't wrong about it either. "Seeing as I will need to come here to pick up the money for the mission, I would prefer not to worry that every surface is covered in some new form of antibiotic-resistant bacteria."
I'm not gonna lie, watching her clean my new place wasn't exactly a hardship since cleaning involved twisting and turning and bending in interesting ways that happened to show off a woman's body from very enticing angles.
When she was finished, there were faint traces of lemon cleaners and bleach in all the rooms, and everything--even those grimy windows--was clean.
"I'm guessing the old place came 'furnished,' from your lack of anything to sit on," she said, looking around, taking in my boxes piled against the wall. "You need to go furniture shopping."