***All characters are over 18 and are fictional. Any resemblance to any real-life persons is purely coincidental.
...
The pandemic was an incredibly weird time. When people weren't panicking about getting sick or having enough supplies, some suddenly had a lot of time on their hands and used the time to do things they always wanted to do. Some people read more books, others learned new languages, and some took up new hobbies, among other things. Nobody was going anywhere, so it was only logical for some people to try to fill their time in other ways.
Steve, who suddenly found himself working from home, found two things for himself to do: exercise more and binge-watch TV. Normally, binge watching makes people too lazy to exercise, but he found a way to do both. The reason for the first thing was that he never had time to go to the gym, and he knew he needed to start getting more fit. Now that he had more time on his hands, he started exercising at home and even ordered a treadmill to help him out. The second thing was that, again, he never had the time to do it; there were plenty of TV shows he wanted to see but never had the time to begin watching and finish them. So, when he wasn't working from home, he now had more time to do those things. He even found a way to combine the two, such as watching his TV shows while running on the treadmill. Within six months, Steve had lost a good amount of weight and gotten a little muscular. He wasn't looking like a body builder or anything, but he had got a good muscle tone going for him that he hoped to show off at the beach next summer.
He had other friends doing the same thing; exercising, binge-watching, and other things to keep themselves busy. Others, he knew, weren't doing anything at all and had just decided to be lazy. He had no problem with that; he was doing it in the beginning before he began exercising, and he sometimes missed just doing nothing.
He regularly talked to his friends and family on video chat, trying to keep up with them. He did see a few of them in person, but only in outside settings and not often. They tried their best not to talk about the pandemic and how it was affecting their lives, but it always ended up being talked about. But they tried to talk about other things, and it was still a good way to keep in touch despite everything that was going on.
His friends were impressed with how lean Steve was getting from his exercise routine. He wasn't overweight before COVID-19, but he was very thin and not in good shape. He tried to be humble about it, but deep down he enjoyed the praise he was getting. Even a few of his female friends couldn't help making jokes about wanting to hook up with him after the pandemic was over, but he knew they were joking. Of course, they were all just having fun.
One day, about six months into the pandemic, he was having a very lively chat session. This time they managed to go a whole hour before they started complaining about the pandemic, but Steve was happy that they managed to keep that subject short before moving on to other topics. When the chat was finally over, one of his friends, Abby, asked him to stay on a little longer to talk to him about something.
"What's up, Abby?" asked Steve. It was just the two of them now on the video chat.
"I was hoping that you could come by this weekend to help me out with putting together some furniture I'm getting soon."
"Are you sure about that?" He asked. "You are sometimes more cautious about the pandemic and social distancing than most other people."
"Yes, I know, but we've been good lately. I know I'm healthy, and from what I can tell, so are you."
"I've been careful and haven't had any problems," he told her.
"And I really need help with this stuff because I'm not very technical and I'm afraid I'll mess it up. Also, to be honest, I could use the company."
"So, can I?" he told her, understanding how she felt about having to be alone for long periods of time. "Ok, I'll be there this Saturday."
"Thank you so much, I really appreciate this," she said with a big smile. They said their goodbyes and ended the video chat.
Over the next few days, Steve was having second thoughts about actually going to visit Abby's place. There was a big COVID-19 wave in the area, and it was causing a lot of concern. But he had been in his apartment the last several days with no human contact, and he was sure Abby was going through the same thing. She had also been working from home since the pandemic, and from what he gathered from the video chats, she was also just as extra careful with social distancing and cleaning as he was. He decided to just go. He would just be careful with her. He missed having some human contact and could finally use some. Most importantly, he missed having some female contact. That was the thing that was driving him crazy during the pandemic. He was hoping the strip clubs would open back up soon so he could see some live naked women instead of looking them up on his laptop, but they weren't expected to open up for at least another month. He wasn't expecting to hook up with Abby, he didn't think she was that kind of woman who hooks up with her male friends, but he just liked the idea of having some kind of female companionship, even if it was just a simple friendly get-together.
Around 10 a.m. on Saturday, Steve arrived at Abby's apartment. She greeted him with a big smile and gave him an elbow-bump, the new preferred method of greeting for the pandemic era. They did some small talk first, the usual stuff between friends. He saw several boxes in her living room, some new furniture she had been wanting to get so she could throw out some old ones. He could tell that this might be an all-day type of job.
"I'm so glad you agreed to come over," she told him. "I think I could've done this myself, but it would've taken me much longer."
"Also, I don't think you could've taken the old furniture out to the sidewalk on your own," said Steve.
"Totally, I'm glad I got some muscle now to help get these old things out of here."
Steve couldn't help but notice that Abby looked somewhat different to him. She was about a few inches shorter than him, with light-brown hair and a slim figure. She was wearing jeans and a black tank top. He knew she was working out a lot, just like he was during the pandemic, and thought he was just noticing some weight loss. He also thought that it could've been that he had only seen her on video chats for the last several months, which kind of threw off how you look in person, so he just kind of forgot how she looked over time. Whatever it was, he thought she looked great and couldn't help checking her out. He always thought she was attractive before, but right now he was hot. Again, he considered that it could've been that he hadn't seen her in person in months and hadn't had much female contact during the pandemic, so it was more likely that he was just horny and willing to see something different about her.
Abby had gotten a new TV cabinet, two side tables, a dresser, and a shoe stand/coat rack to put by the front door for guests. She also got a TV wall mount to hook up her TV to the wall above the new TV cabinet. They worked for a few hours on the TV cabinet and side tables for the living room first; the instructions were easy to read, but there were a lot of small parts, so it took some time. They were also having a lot of fun together, joking around and telling stories as they put things together. It was hard work, but still the best time they had had in months.
During this time, Steve continued to sneak glances at Abby. He knew there was something different about her, and he knew it wasn't just his dirty mind checking her out. She had changed in some way; he wanted to ask but was afraid of how it might seem to her.
"We're almost done with this cabinet, finally," said Abby. "We just have to screw on these doors."
"Pass me that Philips's screwdriver; I got them," he told her.
Abby was standing above Steve, who was sitting on the floor, by the door and by a series of tools that were spread around among discarded pieces of the cardboard box, Styrofoam blocks, and plastic wrappings that the cabinet came in. Abby bent down to find the screwdriver hiding among the mess that they had created, and in doing so, Steve found himself looking down her tank-top and getting a good look at her cleavage. He enjoyed the view a lot. And that's when it finally hit him why he thought there was something very different about Abby.