Chapter 1
"What did you think?" Glenn asked as Sheryl and he walked out of the Psych building into the frigid winter air.
Sheryl pulled her inadequate hoodie tight around her and shivered as the cold air enveloped her. A winter coat capable of protecting her from a Michigan January had been beyond her financial reach. She never complained about it, but watching her struggle with the cold was painful.
"I have no idea. The questionaire seemed pretty general," she pulled up her hood against the biting chill, "I couldn't see that they were pointing toward anything. For a NASA study there were a lot of questions about personal finances, though."
Glenn shook his head mugging a sad face.
"Rats, I was hoping the study was about the effect of nudism on grade point average."
She gave him a sardonic smile.
"Why is everything about sex with you?"
"Because I'm a twenty-one year old male? Why is everything about money with you?"
Awkward silence ensued and filled in by the chatter of students around them hustling to their next class leaving vapor clouds hanging in the still frigid air. It was a day to get where you wanted to go and to not tarry. At the end of January, despite the days getting longer, winter had not gotten the memo that it should be warming up.
"Can we talk about anything else?" Sheryl finally replied.
She was never happy with silence.
"I sure hope that we get picked," Glenn changed the subject, "I need to cut costs. Free room, board and tuition would make my senior year comfortable."
"The tuition increase nearly killed me this year," she looked daunted for a moment, "could you spot me five bucks until payday?"
He nodded and pulled out his wallet.
"Running out of food? We can share, I've got plenty."
"I'm fine for the week," she gave him a sheepish grin, "a girl needs a few extra things once a month."
"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you," his face warmed from his blush.
"You're living with a woman, Glenn," she patted his frigid cheek to reassure him, "these things happen."
They stopped in front of the Chemistry building.
"Have fun in your organic lab," Glenn said as she walked away.
Glenn watched heads turn as she sauntered by. There weren't many tall, blue-eyed women with thick glossy black hair on campus. She stopped pedestrian traffic without even trying.
They met their freshman year at a campus job fair, but working together at the library pulling and shelving books over the last three years had cemented their friendship. Their common ground was poverty. It had led them to share an antique two bedroom flat a long walk from campus. When his friends found out, they went nuts. He reassured them over and over that it was a platonic arrangement. He amazed those friends again when it was no longer platonic.
He continued on to his Multivariate Analysis class. He wanted to slap the sadistic professor who thought up a class about story problems for calculus. There was nothing like teasing out the illusive 'X' along with it's friends 'Y' and 'Z' in among pages and pages of equations. The equations looked so simple as did the inputs. The endless computations were not, and one little arithmetic error meant that none of your answers were right. It annoyed him that he had to do everything by hand when he knew computers handled these computations in real life.
"Glenn, are you in there?" Sheryl tapped on the door to his bedroom.
The end of April was time to line up lodging for next year if there was a next year with covid stalking the land. The psychology department had promised to send letters by the end of April, and they had developed a ritual where Sheryl got the mail each afternoon as she came in from her job and told him if the letters had come yet.
"I'm here, come on in."
He shook the cobwebs from his brain and sat up on the bed. He had been napping and having the falling dream again. That usually meant that he was worried about something, probably how he was going to pay room, board and tuition for his senior year.
Sheryl, free of clothing as usual and matching his outfit exactly, walked into his room. Their co-habitation rules were simple, he and Sheryl had slowly lost interest in clothing until they wandered about the apartment nude. Glenn didn't mind, it cut down on trips to the laundromat, and Sheryl looked like a work of art half of the time when she lounged on the couch. For a guy too poor to afford the occasional date that having a girlfriend required, Sheryl was a godsend. She needed reassurance that she was still attractive after being dumped before the lock down. He never let his thinking get much deeper than that because his conclusions ended in anguish. Instead he tried to take her nudity as a gift.
"It's from the Psych Department."
"Did you get one?"
She nodded.
"And?"
"Open yours first," she pointed at the letter in his hand.
Glenn tore the envelope open and read: "You are invited to join the Psychology Department's study of Transactional Analysis in Isolation. It is a NASA study that will simulate the eight month long isolation that a crew will face on their journey to Mars. You will be sequestered in Harris Dormitory for the entire autumn and winter semesters. During that time, you will be required to spend 100% of your time in the dormitory on your floor. Once you are enrolled in the study all room, board and tuition will be paid by the study. A zoom meeting regarding the specifics will be held at 8pm on May 15."
Glenn looked up.
"What about you?
He kept his face neutral fearing that she might not have made the cut.
"I'm in!"
She grinned and hugged him. Her unrestrained breasts squashed against this chest. He grabbed her by the waist and hugged her back.
"I'm pretty hungry who's turn is it to cook?" Sheryl said as they stood back from each other.
She stared at him because she knew whose turn it was.
"It's my turn," Glenn replied, "but all we have in the apartment is some eggs and ramen noodles. How does egg drop noodle soup sound?"
"It sounds perfect," she bit her lower lip, "it's okay if you want to dress for dinner. Dropping hot soup into a naked lap can be painful."
She gave his semi erection a tap. It hung at 45 degrees below horizontal.
"You hug me, I get a boner," he gave her an exaggerated shrug, "I'm about to eat dinner with an enchanting nude lady, why would I want her or myself to put clothes on?" Glenn stood to go to the kitchen, "if you want to, it's okay though."
"No." she smirked, "I don't drop soup in my lap."
She looked down at his tumescent groin. This time it had risen 10 degrees above horizontal. Not fully hard, but getting there.
"I like the freedom of sharing an apartment in the nude. We should do this whether I have a boy friend or not. Baring my all to you is fun," she bent over to examine his cock.
He was tumescent no longer; he had swelled to a full erection. It now stood 45 degrees above horizontal ready for action.
"What's a good male friend for if it isn't to appreciate the body of his best female friend," she teased running her hand along his shaft.
"Sorry, not sorry, I have no control over it," he replied as he covered his erection with his hands.
"Oh, don't be like that," she reached out and pushed his hands away and gave his dick a tap making it bounce, "I've been around them on the farm all my life between the horses, the cows, the pigs, the dogs, the cats and two brothers. After you've seen a Belgian stallion primed for the mare, everything else looks minor by comparison."
"Thanks, I think, although I feel inadequate now. I should add that you are erection worthy."
She giggled.
"That has to be the strangest compliment that I've ever received, but I'll take it in the spirit it was offered."
Sexual tension filled the air throughout dinner. Sheryl went through very predictable stages following a break up. The first and the most difficult was 'leave me alone'. Beer, pizza and rom/coms got her through it. In the second stage, she gave up on men and dove into her studies. Everything was regulated, her goals in sight as she strove toward academic excellence. As a chemistry major she needed that rigorous approach. In the final stage, clothing usage got careless. Her bra was the first to go when she entered the apartment followed by her outer clothing a week or so later and finally the panties. They were at the start of the 'you're a man, I'm a woman, let's play' stage. This one would last until she found a new love, and the cycle would repeat except it couldn't with the lock down and Glenn reaped the benefits and the heartache. She had made it clear that she was looking for a man with money, and Glenn did not measure up.
After dinner Glenn tried to study sitting at the rickety kitchen table. He was supposed to be calculating the empty volume inside a single crystal of sodium chloride, and he was on the fourth page of calculations. The presence of Sheryl across the room drew his eyes again and again. Half of the time when he looked at her, she was eyeballing him. When their eyes met, she smiled before looking away.
Their flat was in an old poorly maintained Victorian house long ago stripped of its bric-a-brac and stained glass leaving behind a hulk smelling vaguely of dry rot, an aroma that candles and incense could never cover. The foot high oak moldings and massive doors clashed with the lime green velour couch that could best be described as 1990's thrift store. The lavishly carved banister rose to the second floor beside worn creaking stairs.
Sheryl, her pale skin flawless, looked like she had been posed by an artist as she sat with one leg tucked under her and the other resting on the rug while studying on the couch. As he watched, she lifted her other leg onto the couch, raised her arms above her head and yawned displaying her lovely breasts to their fullest extent.
Everything around her looked flawless. She wasn't the rose among weeds, she was the rose that transformed the other weeds into a garden. He could only think of pulling her into an embrace and stroking that pale skin from her shoulders down her back to that amazing inverted heart shaped ass. She sat with her legs drawn up beside her, but tonight either he was different or she was. Her luscious blue-black hair cascaded in waves over her creamy white shoulders, her perfect breasts so available yet so far away made him stiffen again and again. Her stretch and slow amble into the kitchen for a glass of water verged on a seductive dance in his fevered imagination. On her return she leaned over him to see what he was studying and when her stiff nipple brushed his shoulder; he nearly orgasmed.
When he looked up, her lips seemed fuller and softer, more kissable. Had she brushed his shoulder with her nipple on purpose? Her hip rocking sashay back to the couch afterward spiked his erection again. He was thankful for the shadow under the table. Had he been sitting anywhere else, this arousal would have been on display. He tucked his hardening member between his legs where his erection would be less evident.
