Heather closed the door behind her, crossed the spare two feet of her shoebox bedroom, and pushed Nick onto the twin bed. Her sweater flew off while he unbuckled his belt, kicking his legs up in the air and bouncing on his butt in order to get his jeans off.
"This would've been a lot easier," he said, struggling, his curly brown hair jiggling, "if you just waited a second!"
"I'm impatient," she said, shrugging. She pulled on the strings of her sweatpants, sliding them down her legs and leaning forward, presenting her cleavage in its most advantageous position. "I don't like waiting."
"You really know how to make a guy feel special," he said, pulling his boxer shorts down. They had only been doing this for a couple of weeks, the whole "friends with benefits" thing. Heather still hadn't seen his flaccid cock. He was always hard by the time he got to her room. He was always ready.
That was just how Heather liked it.
She didn't have a lot of patience, after all. Didn't have a lot of time for talking.
And the less Nick Panetti talked, the better.
Heather climbed onto the bed, dragging her tongue up his thigh while he unbuttoned his shirt. She arched her back, giving Nick a good look at the back of her black Calvin Klein thong that split her ass in two. Her ass was her best feature, she thought, and she looked to emphasize it whenever and wherever she could. She had him in her mouth by the time he got to the final button, his fingers tugging on her wavy brown locks while she smothered his length between her lips.
"Spin around," he said. "I want to eat you, too."
Nick's insistence on eating her pussy was just one of the many reasons he'd become her number one fuck these past few weeks. Heather hooked one leg around him and scooched her knees up the bedspread, dangling her thong-covered ass and pussy in his face. She felt him lick the thong, pressing his tongue into the cotton, bathing it with his saliva. He pushed his fingers beneath the waistband, squeezing her ass as he worked. She pressed back on his face, moving her clit on his tongue while she bobbed up and down on his prick, pushing her own saliva over his head and down to the base. Nick pulled on the thong, ducking his head underneath and pulling Heather's clit into his mouth, matching her tempo. She was feeling pretty wet, now. She was ready. She looked back.
"Condom?"
"Jeans."
She leaned over, relying on his support as she clawed for the leg of his jeans and dragged them back to the scene. He never stopped eating. She loved that about him.
Scratch that, she thought. She
liked
that about him.
Heather tore the condom wrapper with her teeth and guided it onto his cock, holding the tip as she rolled it down.
"It's not lubed?"
"...I don't know? Am I supposed to be checking these things?"
"Ugh."
Heather spit on the tip and gave him one good suck, grimacing at the taste of latex. She hated using rubbers, but they weren't exclusive, and while she trusted Nick was as clean as he said, she hated the thought of chlamydia even more. Not to mention babies.
Pressing one hand on his chest for balance, and holding his cock in place for stability, Heather sat down, feeling the awesome rush of pleasure as he penetrated her. They both sighed.
"That was cuuuute," he said, looking up at her with his soft brown eyes, smiling like an imp.
"Shut up," she said, leaning on him with both hands now. "Don't ruin it."
Heather swiveled her hips as she rode Nick's cock, closing her eyes and focusing on the delightful friction. It was worse with a condom, no doubt. But worse with Nick was still pretty damn good, she thought. They had been friends since senior year of college, and had spent the last few years in the city running around in the same crowd. It killed her to know she had been missing out on this that whole time. She thought of the six months she had wasted last year on Colby, the promising, hunky investment banker who had neglected to mention his cocaine habit in his Tinder profile. The countless Autumn weekends spent on bad rebound dates when the cure for what ailed her had been right there in the Stowe Bunnies 2022 group chat this whole time. They hadn't hooked up on that particular ski trip, but the eight Cornell grads who made the trip to Stowe, VT that weekend had become a sort of Super Clique, the group chat being a staging ground for nights out, dinner parties, weekends away and all manner of social events that entertained the young grads as they navigated their new life in the big city.
She should have suggested they become fuck buddies years ago. Sure, he wasn't super ripped or anything. He wasn't rich, working as an assistant at a media company and pecking out his little screenplays on the side. And she had always categorized him as the goofy brother type as opposed to an authentic love interest. But he was cute. He was attentive. And he was usually down at a moment's notice.
"Play with my clit," she said. It felt so naughty to talk like that with a guy she had only seen as a friend before the New Years Eve party.
She didn't need to tell him twice. Nick licked his fingers and plunged his hand beneath her, rubbing her tingling clit in a gentle circle.
"Faster."
Right on cue, they both sped up. Heather grit her teeth and furrowed her brow, slapping her ass on his thighs. She heard the front door open and close. Sasha was home. That could be awkward. Oh, well. Sasha was a big girl. Nothing she hadn't seen or heard before. Nothing she wouldn't understand. Heather squeezed her legs against Nick's body, her knees rumpling his unbuttoned shirt, and stopped her movement in order to focus on the first order of business: coming.
She came like an earthquake, her whole body shaking. It was all she could do to cover her mouth, reaching over Nick's face for the headboard, muffling her screams as she shook the bed.
"Fuuccckkkk," she said, her breathing labored. "Ok. Stop. Stopstopstop. Too sensitive."
Nick withdrew his hand and smiled up at her.
"Get on your back?"
They carefully negotiated the movement of arms and legs required to trade places. Heather was still catching her breath as Nick rubbed his cock against her pussy, searching for her entrance. He pushed. No dice. The condom had dried out. He bent down and tasted her throbbing sex again, smacking his lips and grimacing as Heather had about the latex taste. He spit on his hand and lubed up the condom, entering her again and hammering away.
"Do you think you could take your bra off?"
Heather looked down. She'd forgotten all about her bra.
"Do I have to?"
"Depends how badly you want me to come," he said.
"You need to see tits to come?" Heather asked, squeezing and shaking her breasts, willing them to look bigger, fuller, firmer.
"No," he said. "Just yours."
She grinned, lifting the bra and curling up, crunching her abs to create the space to pull it past her shoulder blades and over her head.
"Ooh," Nick said. "Do that again. The crunch. I felt that."
"I'm too tired," Heather said, pushing her b-cup tits together, squeezing her vaginal walls and baring her teeth. "I just got fucked, you know. Give a girl... a break..." She was unlikely to come again, she knew, but his cock still felt amazing inside her, like a massage that only hit the good part, when the knots were all gone and the masseur's hands produced undisturbed bliss. Nick groaned. Heather felt his cock contract three times before he fell onto her, panting.
"I came," he said. Heather laughed and slapped his back.
"Me too, pal," she said, feeling the sweat spreading on his shirt. "Me too."
#
Heather produced a fresh pair of panties from the drawer, along with a pair of pajama pants and an old fraternity t-shirt she'd stolen once upon a time.
"Beta?" Nick scowled when he saw the Greek letters on the shirt. "Who?"
"Use your imagination," Heather replied, securing her ponytail with a black hair tie.
"I'd rather not," he said, pulling his jeans on and sitting back on the bed, buttoning his shirt. "I think too much of you."
This is the part where you leave, Heather thought, pulling his camelhair coat from the closet and handing it over. Before you say any more cute shit.
"Right," he said. "Yeah, I should get going. I have an early day tomorrow."
Nick pulled his coat on, smoothing the collar, and Heather remarked at how grown up he looked these days. Gone were the days of ironic t-shirts and sloppy facial hair. Nick "Pasghetti" Panetti, against all odds, was turning into a handsome young man. It had always helped that he was a shade over six feet tall, but where he had seemed awkward and gangly in college, he was starting to seem more, well, mature. Suaver, especially now that he was clean-shaven. He held up his hand and Heather slapped it, moving to the side as he danced around her and out the door, smiling and waving with a little bow. Same old awkward Nick, in the end. Some things never change.
When the front door closed, Heather stepped into the tiny living room and flopped onto the love seat, resting her feet on the coffee table. The swimsuited contestants of
Love Island
danced on the TV screen. Her roommate Sasha occupied the other half of the sofa, and she stared at Heather, her jaw wide open. Heather caught her staring out of the corner of her eye, peeling her eyes from the TV and looking back at her roommate, slightly annoyed.
"What?" She asked.
"Um," Sasha finally said, "were you just fucking Nick Panetti?!"
"Guilty."
"Oh my god!" Sasha shouted, grabbing the back of her head. "What?! Since when?! How am I just learning this?!"
"Since, like, 15 minutes ago..."
"No!" Sasha said, gesticulating wildly. "Since when?!"
"Since New Years..." Heather said. She nodded slowly, raising her eyebrows, trying to remind Sasha of what happened that night just over a month ago.
The ball drop. The arched eyebrow. Kissing through "Auld Lang Syne." Kissing in the Uber back to Nick's apartment. They were drunk. The sex was unhinged that night, sloppy, awkward and ultimately anticlimactic for both of them.
But the sex the next morning, after Nick had ordered bagel sandwiches and iced coffee and enough coconut water to drown a small island, after he showed her his collection of old videos from college, including all the hare-brained short films he had written, directed and starred in... after he made her laugh so much she could have peed... That was a whole different story. That sex was a revelation. That sex was the basis for a productive and mutually beneficial arrangement that had seen them getting together at least twice a week throughout January and into February, more if they were all out together on the weekend and could coordinate their Irish exits under everybody's noses.
Sure, his apartment was a mess. They could use hers, when the coast was clear, when Sasha was working weekends or spending the night at one of her own paramour's. And sure, he still made dumb jokes that sometimes made her cringe. But his sex made up for the cringing, as long as nobody could make fun of her for it, and he still made her laugh, too.
"I know, but I thought that was just a onetime thing! Are you two, like, dating?!"
"Would you stop screaming? You're gonna wake the dead."
Sasha leaned across the sofa, grabbing Heather's arms.
"Are you?!"
They weren't. They were emphatic about that, when they set the ground rules a few days later, when Nick texted her on Saturday afternoon to say he had an errand to run in her neighborhood. She was sure he didn't, not really, but she told him to come over anyway. She stopped him when he tried to kiss her. "No kissing," she had said. "That's rule number one. Kissing is romantic, and that's not what we're doing, here." Nick could live with that.
