Justin's Perspective
"Well, shit."
The door didn't listen.
I tried the knob again, the sweat from my hand slippery against the metal. Still nothing.
"SHIT." I said, louder. Maybe the door hadn't heard me before.
I tried a third time, before accepting the truth: I was locked out. The air was stale and thick and hot in this hallway, the AC was on in my apartment, I was a sweaty mess after an ill-advised late afternoon run, and I was locked out.
My key had been in my pocket when I left, but it wasn't there anymore; it was probably lying in the dirt of a path in the park somewhere, to be discovered someday by an archaeologist or a crazed apartment hunter. Whether that happened next Tuesday or a thousand years from now, it did me the same amount of good. And what made things worse was that my roommate Paul was away for the weekend, at a cousin's wedding. Dmitry, the super, was never around the building on weekends, let alone holiday weekends like this one; he'd only be available by phone or text. And of course, my phone was inside. No one had a spare key to our place, either.
I considered my options for a while, and came up with a working list:
1) see if any of the neighbours were home to call the super, or
2) die of heat exhaustion.
I went with option 1, starting with Mr. Menendez across the hall, but there was no answer there. Same at Ms. Jackson's door. That brought me to 313.
I couldn't remember either of their names; they'd moved in just a couple weeks earlier and we'd seen each other only in passing. They were our age, mid-20s. One was a teacher, this I knew. The shorter one. The taller one worked in tech? Maybe? Good looking, both of them, at least as far as I'd gathered from quick, non-put-together hellos in the hallway or on the way down to the laundromat on the corner.
I considered myself, before I knocked. I was drenched, my thin grey t-shirt clinging to my chest and stomach. My shorts and underwear were pretty soaked with sweat too; I'd been challenging myself lately, even in the heat of July. I was probably in better shape than I'd ever been, though, combining runs with two or three nights a week at the gym, and I was feeling pretty good about myself. Not that I'd turn many heads looking like this, of course. I shrugged and knocked anyway.
This door opened - it must not have gotten the memo. It was the teacher who answered.
Hannah's Perspective
The warm air of the hall hit me as I opened the door.
"Oh, hi." I said, taking in a lot: it was the guy down the hall - Justin? - and he was a mess. Sweaty as hell, his shirt soaked and clinging to... well, to a damn nice torso. Shorts looked soaked too, and he was flushed, his blonde hair matted against his head. He looked miserable and hot - in both senses of the word, if I was being honest.
"Hey, I'm... I'm Justin, down the hall?" I nodded, for lack of a better response. "I'm locked out. Any chance you could text the super for me?"
"Oh no! Sure - do you want to come in? It's brutal out there."
"You sure? I'm going to drip all over the floor."
"It's fine, come on in. Hey Lisa?" I called to my roommate. Lisa was wearing around-the-house wear - yoga pants, no bra, which meant those gravity-defying boobs I secretly envied were on display, nipples poking through her thin spaghetti-strap top. I was continually envious of her striking looks: her sharp features, big wide eyes, jet black hair, a tight but curvy body, like an anime girl come to life. She turned heads.
"Justin from down the hall is locked out," I started, "and needs us to text the super. Is your phone handy?" Lisa said yes and went back to grab her phone while I motioned for Justin to step inside. "Do you want a drink or something?" He looked at the water bottle in his hand, but said yes - I assume it was empty.
"Water would be great, thanks." He replied. I went to the cupboard to grab a glass. I was short, about 5'2", and the glasses were on the second shelf so I always had to strain a bit. I was very conscious of my shirt riding up, and my gym shorts - could he see my panties? I idly panicked - as I stretched up to grab a glass. I turned with one in my hand, my ponytail whipping around, and maybe saw his head turn toward the wall. Had he been checking me out? Nah. I filled the glass from the filter in the fridge and handed it to him. He drained it.
As he drank, I gave myself a moment to look him over. He was tall - 6'2", maybe. I liked tall. His shirt was plastered to him, and I could make out a broad, muscular chest and maybe even a six pack. He wasn't bulky, exactly, but powerful, and his arms were big enough to get me thinking about them around me. Strong legs, and though he was facing me I could tell he had an ass I could appreciate.
I realized he was finished with the glass, and was looking at me as I stared. It had
really
been too long, if I was dreaming on a guy who was about to pass out from heatstroke.
"Thanks, that was really necessary." If he noticed me staring, it didn't show. I took the glass back to set it down and felt the sweat on his hand as I did. He really was a mess. Had he been jogging? It was 35 degrees out there, as Toronto was three days into a July heat wave.
"Did you really go for a run in this weather?" I asked incredulously.
"Yeah, in retrospect not a great move. But it had been a while, and I'm trying to train up, so... here's what five km in a heat wave will do to you." H peeled the hem of his sweaty shirt back from the skin of his stomach for a moment, and looked down, the released it.
Lisa came back in with a report. "Dmitry says he's out of town for the night, but he's calling the locksmith - not sure he'll be able to get him out past 5 on a holiday, though."
"Great. Either of you know how to pick a lock?" Justin joked. Lisa and I looked at each other, and sort of silently agreed: we couldn't send him back out there. "Thanks for the water," he said. "I'm going to... dunno. Go somewhere? I've made your place enough of a mess already though." He started toward the door.
Lisa's Perspective
The moron was actually trying to leave.
"Are you kidding?" I said. "You're a sweaty mess, you're probably dehydrated, it's a billion degrees out, and you don't have anywhere to go. Stick around here, at least until we hear back from the locksmith." That stopped him. He looked at me, then Hannah, then back at me, and his shoulders slumped.
"Yeah, fair enough."
Hannah went into teacher mode then. "Okay, here's what we're going to do," she said, with sudden certainty. "You are going to take a shower, and one of us will go throw all of that" she waved at his clothes, "in the wash at the laundromat. Maybe it'll all be done by the time the locksmith gets here. Lisa, do you have any clothes of Mike's or anything?"
My boyfriend Mike spent a decent amount of time here, so chances were the answer was yes. He was shorter than this guy, but there was probably some stuff that would work. But... I'd seen the way Hannah had looked him over. She thought he was hot. And it had been a while for her. I could try to mix things up here...
Hannah and I had been friends since high school, and as long as I'd known her she'd been one of the most competent, smart, caring, and loyal people I'd ever known, but she was absolute shit when it came to boys. She'd always been self-conscious about her looks, though she was really cute, in a girl-next-door way that, if I was being honest, often drove guys crazier than the model type. Whenever she was attracted to a guy, she became an open book, stumbling over herself. The take charge thing I just saw her do was temporary, I knew, because she had logistics to think about; she'd be back to awkward soon. Especially if she saw even more of him.
"He's got, like, a couple pairs of boxers? I don't think anything else." I said, raising an eyebrow raised and looking Justin up and down. I saw Hannah's eyes open a bit wider. "They should fit you, but I doubt either of us have even a t-shirt that would." He looked at me, then her. Hannah looked tongue-tied.
"I..." He had been about to object, but realized he had no alternative. "I... guess I don't have any better option than that, but are you sure? This is a big imposition."
"Yeah, well, we were going to sit around in our underwear watching a movie tonight anyway," I said, "so you're not interrupting much." Hannah's head whipped around to stare at me
so fast.
It was only a bit of a lie - I had sure as hell been planning to sit around in my underwear. She did too sometimes, so it wasn't a lie exactly, as much as a bold supposition. "What, Hannah, you know we were! Now we just have some company." I tried to keep the mischief out of my voice. She blushed, hard, then turned back to him as I went back to my room. I opened a drawer, looked inside, and saw something that made me grin. I was going to make Hannah lose her mind, and if she was lucky... more.
Justin
Hannah - I silently thanked her roommate for reminding me of her name - seemed off-guard as Lisa disappeared down the hall. "Well yeah, but... okay, yes. That was our plan. And now you will be in underwear too, so that-" she seemed kind of flustered, which made her cheeks red. She really was pretty cute - Lisa was
hot
, but Hannah was cute, and there were ways that I appreciated that more. But at this moment, I felt far too gross to pay much attention to other people.