Holiday Hobo

Holiday Hobo -- pt. 2

I could feel Jake's eyes on me again. He had taken to watching me sleep when he woke early in the morning. I imagined he used the time to wonder about the answers to all those questions in his eyes. He never asked the questions. I didn't ask the questions. We had fallen in love without first developing those basic relationship things like trust or context or agreeing on a life together because we were afraid of what would happen if our descriptions of that life didn't match. We were both being complete pussies about it. It was a mess. We both just avoided the questions by staying high on sex endorphins, binging on carbs, and pretending the holidays would never come to an end.

I kept my eyes closed and snuggled in tighter to his chest and he pulled the blankets higher over me, chuckling. "We can't spend all day in bed again, can we?" I asked, my voice muffled by his chest.

"Sounds good to me, but I think we need to do some more shopping today," he murmured into my hair.

"What? Nuh uh!" I protested, lifting my head with crazy red sleep hair off his arm. "We just sent everything out! We're done! We stalked the social media of all your nieces and nephews and got them extremely weird, but personal, Christmas presents. They are never going to stop talking about it. We can't possibly need to buy more stuff!"

"You still need some things," Jake clarified.

"Look, I know that you're a guy with that hard-wired 'protect and provide' thing going on and I respect it, but I don't need things." Ever since we had started sleeping together, Jake had gradually done more and more to take care of me. It made me uneasy. He had reasons to distrust women, to think they were mercenary creatures that would use and discard him. If I disappointed him, which I was almost certain to do at some point, all that baggage could poison his heart at a moment's notice... and I loved his heart.

"Your last pair of underwear is in three pieces after last night," Jake pointed out, his eyes darting to a ripped piece of cloth dangling from the ceiling fan.

He made a good point. I hated it when he made good points. Still, that never stopped me from arguing with him. "When did you get so conservative? I'll go commando or sew them back together," I explained, stubbornly.

"I'm pretty sure Baby ate the gusset..." he pointed out, nodding toward the 120lb rottweiler taking up half the bed next to us. Apparently, Baby was as much of a pervert as his daddy was, but since they were both so cute, I didn't usually mind.

"Not a problem. We just wait a day or two and--"

Jaked leaned down and his lips gave mine something better to do for a long, dizzying moment. "Stop trying to prove you're not Janell," he murmured. I blinked and bit my lips, tears suddenly filling my eyes. She had hurt him so much. I felt an irresistible urge to take a frying pan to his workplace and flatten the face of the stunning woman that ruthlessly used his wonderful heart and instinct to provide, leaving him hurting and questioning everything. Jake brushed the tears on my cheeks away with his thumb. "I know you're not Janell. I knew it that first night when I watched you dance around with Baby through the security cameras," he said, a smile playing around his lips.

"Um, wait a minute... was that when all my clothes were in the washer?"

"Well, how else do you think I found the perfect shade of nude for your dress?" he asked.

"You see a woman dancing around naked in your house to 'Fat Bottomed Girls' and instead of calling the police, you have a dress made for her? You're weird," I laughed.

"You needed something to wear..." he said, shrugging with deadpan logic. "Oh, that reminds me," he said, leaning over and taking something out of the nightstand. "Hold still, now." He had something small in his hand and reached behind my neck with it. Soon, I felt the diamond-encrusted chainwork around my neck go slack. He slipped it out from around my neck and placed it on the nightstand.

My eyes went wide as my fingers explored where the necklace used to be. Since the day I awoke to find him watching me from a nearby chair, I had felt the weighty links and what they represented around my neck. I couldn't get the ridiculously expensive thing off, and if I disappeared with it without his permission, it would be a felony. He had effectively trapped me, keeping me from running away like I usually did when I got caught squatting in people's houses. I had accepted the situation because I had to, at the time. Now, there was no threat of imprisonment hanging over my head. Jake was no longer my captor. If I stayed now, it was only because I wanted to be with him. I swallowed, feeling my heart start racing instead of relaxing. Somehow, knowing that if I ran away now it would only be our hearts that bore the consequences... damn, if the man hadn't just tied me to him even tighter than ever before.

I smiled, leaned up and kissed him. What else was there to do? My options were either that or start crying again, which was just as likely to happen anyway. I always got so weepy at Christmas. Seeing the inevitable flood of my tears, Jake met my lips with tenderness and rolled on top of me, covering and protecting me with his body. I held his face in my hands as our lips met again and again.

After what felt like two seconds, his phone chimed with an incoming text, alerting us to the fact that hours had passed. What is it about kissing that made time disappear without a trace? We were just getting to the good part! "Damn..." Jake said, frowning at his phone as he, rolled off me and headed to the shower.

"What happened?" I asked, nearly tripping over Baby in my attempt to follow him.

"New CRM system at work didn't update correctly. Rich wants me to manually enter all my client contacts and events again. He's reaching for any reason to make me look bad, so I have to do it asap... we'll have to shop another time," he said, jumping into the shower and turning on the water. I frowned at this news. I didn't care about the shopping, but I didn't like hearing that they wanted all his client information. I remembered overhearing Janell and another woman talking about the likelihood that Jake would be fired because of the awkwardness of his ex-fiancee now being engaged to his boss Rich. Jake had cultivated the company's international clients, developed relationships with them, and was solely responsible for the company's success in several regions. I didn't like hearing that suddenly Rich wanted all of Jake's client contact data, because wouldn't that be a first step toward stealing the clients out from under him before they let him go? Even worse, I hadn't told Jake about what I'd overheard. He had been through so much that I just didn't have the heart to.

I hopped into the shower with Jake once the water was warm and cuddled up to his back, "Um, so they just need a bunch of data entered?" I asked. Jake wiped the dripping shampoo back from his face and nodded. There was lather making a slippery trail down his neck and chest and I watched the bubbles slide down his body... for scientific purposes. Hydrodynamics, and all that. I stopped the lather from reaching his cock with my hand. "I... I could... I could do that..." I said, sliding my hand along his length in the spray, smooth and warm.

"You could do that..." Jake said, his face going slack as I rubbed my thumb around the mushroom tip. "Do... do what, now?" he asked, blinking and shaking his head.

"Mmmm... the... the thing... with the stuff," I murmured, leaning my head back to get kissed by Jake again.

"Yeah... yeah, let's do that..." Jake said, turning me toward the wall, sliding his hands up my waist until they cupped my breasts. My nipples brushed against his palms and I moaned, then squirmed against him when he pinched them hard. I felt his chest brush against my back and I pressed myself against him. He pushed his hips forward, sliding his cock through my pussy lips. "You need this?" he asked, moving his fingers to my clit and rubbing firmly up and down.

"Yes..." I whimpered, feeling my legs go weak.

I need this, too..." he rasped, "I need you. I need to be inside you again... need this pretty pussy..." He moved my hips, angling them to find my entrance and pushed up and in, making us both groan. The head of his cock stroked my g-spot as his fingers slid down to thrum my clit. I gasped for air, the delicious friction sucking every thought out of me, except the driving force of his cock. More. More. More. There seemed to be no end to what he wanted and needed to give me. No end to my hunger for him. With a growl, he spread my legs further apart and pushed deeper, sliding up inside me, tapping my cervix again and again with each thrust. "Oh, fuck!" he swore, increasing his speed and bucking his hips against me, driving inside me like a man on a mission. "Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck FUCK!"

I squealed, panting against the tile wall, pushing back to meet his thrusts, desperate to take more of him into me. I could hear his breath rasping in my ear, feel the spray from his lips with every grunt, every curse. My bottom throbbed with the abuse it was getting, his hips spanking them raw and red in our desperation. When my peak came, it's like he knew it and lifted me, impaled me, shaking against him as my body gripped him, sucked on him, desperately trying to make him part of me. "Take it..." he gasped, and his cock throbbed, twitched, and filled and filled and filled me.

"I love you..." I whispered, starting to cry, yet again.

"I love you, too..." he said, resting his head against the back of mine as we caught our breath. He squeezed my body tightly against him, slowly lowering me until my toes touched the tile floor again. We loved each other. What did that even mean? I didn't know his stories. He didn't know my quirks. Neither of us knew where my underwear was. Still, we were wrapped, smothered, swimming in love and need for each other. It was fucking terrifying. "We... we need to talk about all this, sometime, Everly."

"Yeah... yeah, we do," I agreed, panting. "Just, you know... later."

Jake grunted in breathless agreement. We would definitely talk about it later. Definitely. Later was good. God, we were such pussies.

*** *** ***

That's how it came to be that I was set up at Jake's computer moving contact information from one program into another while he was out buying me more panties. Baby stared at me soulfully as I did this because he truly loved me... and also because I had found a block of expired feta cheese in the fridge and I was eating through it like it was going out of style. Dairy was a rare treat for me. People almost never left it in the house when they went away on vacation for me to munch on while I squatted, so when a fridge had dairy... life was good. The feta had gone from being white and crumbly to a dull grey with an almost clay-like texture and while the smell was rather intimidating, Baby and I were in full agreement that it was the best thing that we had ever eaten.

Man, Jake knew a lot of people... the names and numbers and addresses just kept coming and coming. You know what wasn't coming, though? To put it delicately... poop. My holiday survival diet of refined carbohydrates and expired cheese left much to be desired in the way of intestinal motivation, if you know what I mean. I don't know how Europeans do it. If I hadn't been high on sex and conflict avoidance most of the time, I would have noticed the problem earlier, but coulda, woulda, shoulda. I was plugged up. Baby was looking rather bloated, too. So, dragging my feet on the data entry task that could possibly aid in Jake losing his job, I went back to the kitchen to see what he had that could help things move along. Holiday hobos need healthy gut biomes, too.

That's when I came upon the container of spicy looking vegetable stuff that smelled like pickled fish and had a language on it that I didn't speak. I knew pickled vegetable stuff was good for gut bacteria, and Baby seemed on board to try it, so I took a fork and brought the jar back to the computer and resumed my data entry work.

Man, data entry was boring. I speared a forkful of the crunchy, spicy, pickled vegetable stuff and munched on it as I typed, giving some to Baby, too. It tasted good and spicy in a way that made you fear for your life, but still keep eating it. I couldn't figure it out. I glanced over to the bed. I hadn't checked my phone in quite a while... not since Jake came home and found me squatting. When you have a phone like mine, it's best to hide it. I figured I might not have a chance to look through things again for a while, so I reached up under the bedframe, pulled it out, and turned it on.

The text notifications were in the thousands... nothing unusual there. I went into the app, hoping against hope for a release from my life on the run, but no. All the texts were from him. I made sure the read receipts were off and opened the most recent one. The screen filled with a wall of text. It was a river of prose, flowing from decisive and logical to random rocks and eddies of all-caps arguments. Brilliant and impassioned, then dropping from a high waterfall into a pool of despair. Begging. Ranting. Apologizing. Obsessing. For the millionth time, I wondered if I was doing the right thing. His texts always made me question if I was doing the right thing. Was I being cruel? Was all of this pointless?

I heard the garage door begin opening and quickly stashed the phone away, wiped the tears from my face and ran back to the computer. The jar of spicy, fishy, pickled vegetable stuff was now sitting empty next to Baby who licked his chops and said he didn't know anything about it. As I stared into his soulful eyes, I decided that I didn't know anything about it, either. I tossed the jar and continued my work. We had an alliance of ignorance, Baby and me.

"Everly... is there something you needed to tell me about?" Jake's voice called upstairs. My stomach dropped through the floor. Shit. There were a lot of things I needed to tell him about, but I was too messed up to approach it like an adult. Still, I loved him. I needed to fess up before he found out on his own or he wouldn't trust me. Nothing like being in love with a complete stranger to make you feel like your life is hanging by a thread.

I ran downstairs to him and flung my arms around his neck, pressing my face into his shoulder. "I... I overheard Janell in the bathroom at the Christmas party... she seemed to think you were going to be fired, soon. I'm so sorry. I didn't know how to tell you. I figured the CRM thing was really about getting your sales contacts so they could steal your clients, so I've been looking up the client's language and entering porn star versions of the clients' names on everything I could. I should have said something, but I love you and I didn't want to hurt you more than you've already been," I said, bursting into tears again.

"Hey now..." he said, dropping the bags in his arms to the floor. "I just meant that the Galliers chased me down in the street and gave me Santa hats for us to wear when we go caroling tonight... because apparently, we're going caroling tonight?"

"Oh yeah... I forgot about that. I told them we'd go caroling with them in exchange for some sugar," I confessed. I was really on a roll with the honesty. In no time I'd explain my life on the run and we could move on to that relationship stage where pure passion turns into boredom or even that restless feeling animals get before they decide to chew off their leg to get themselves out of a trap.

Then, Jake smiled down at me, making all self-amputation thoughts go fuzzy. "Well, I'm certainly not going caroling without getting some sugar, either," he said, bending to kiss me.

"Aren't you freaking out about your job, though?" I asked.

"Not really. Rich has been pretty obvious about trying to get me out. I've been looking for other positions for a while, now. I'd rather get terminated with a severance package than quit without one. We're going to fix the CRM, too... after I read the porn star names," he said, chuckling. "I don't want the clients having problems with orders or getting embarrassed because of what you did. I understand why you did it, but I need to do things the right way. I got those clients by being a guy they could trust... a guy who takes care of them. I'm not changing that now."

"Wow..." I said, feeling warm inside. "Do you wear a cape, too?"

"What do you mean? Like for caroling?"

"No, because you're the best person I've ever met," I said, sniffling.

"So, uh... anyway... you want to see the clothes I got you?" he said, turning red and obviously changing the subject.

"You were just supposed to get me underwear," I said, peering into one of the bags.

"I did get you underwear. The store also happened to have some clothes available for purchase, so..." he said, grinning adorably.

"First the dress, now this. I think you like getting me clothes," I said.

"I do. I loved it. It felt good. Which is ironic, considering how much I like seeing you naked," Jake observed.

Something strange in one of the bags caught my eye. Reaching in, I pulled out a harness with jingle bells attached to it and a set of antlers. "Kinky... and I'm here for it!" I said, trying to see how to put it on.

Jake took them back from me with a side-eye. "Those are for Baby, weirdo. I'm tired of everyone in the neighborhood acting like he's a monster because they don't know him. He's coming caroling with us, tonight."

"Good idea. He can rottie rumble the bass parts," I agreed. We smiled at each other for a moment, and then I noticed the tips of his ears were turning red. "You're picturing it, aren't you?" I asked. "You, me and the jingle bell harness?"

Jake frowned, grabbed the bags and pointed up the stairs. "Get out of my head, pervert."

*** *** ***

Joy and Todd Gallier were thrilled when Jake and I showed up on their doorstep wearing our Santa hats. They were even more thrilled that Jake brought his guitar, which I thought was just for decoration and getting girls, but he played it... the plucking the strings kind of playing, too, not just the strumming three chords kind of playing... although strumming three cords can get you plenty of girls if you know what you're doing. They invited us in for a hot toddies and eggnog, but their voices faltered and their eyes widened in fear upon seeing that we had Baby with us.

"Uh... is... is he, uh..." Joy Gallier stammered, her hands shaking as she handed us the hot toddies.

"Baby's a baritone, but his falsetto on 'Oh Holy Night' is unforgettable," Jake said, handing me his drink and playing a few measures of the song and Baby in his antlers and sleigh bell harness sat down and howled along as Jake sang.

"Oh holy night... the stars are brightly shining

It is the night of our dear savior's birth

Long lay the world in sin and error pining

Till he appeared, and the soul felt its worth

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn..."

Jake mostly kept his eyes closed when he sang, but at the end he opened his eyes and looked at me like he didn't have a worry in the world. Forget about having the ex from hell, a boss that wanted to bury him, and a family he was distant from. In that moment, he was just happy. I might have been perfectly warm in the fur-trimmed hat, sweater and mittens he'd just bought me, but I still couldn't help but shiver. You try not turning into a puddle when your crush sings to you. It's not possible!

By the time Jake and Baby finished the song, the Galliers were in love with Baby and Joy ran to the kitchen to get some of their dinner leftovers to give him as a treat. I could see Jake holding back an objection to them giving Baby people food and I decided not to enlighten him about what Baby and I had been snacking on all day.