Note 1: This could have easily fit into Exhibitionist/Voyeur, but I fitted it into Gay Male instead. Hopefully there aren't too many people put off by it.
Note 2: Special thanks to my muse again. She knows who she is.
"Hey, Sean!" Amanda greeted as she opened the door. They briefly exchanged pleasantries about each other's kids before she sent him off his engagement at the house. Judging by the case of Molson Canadian under his arm, it was his turn to bring the refreshments. "Well, you know where to go. John's already down there."
She never did understand why there had to be a
pre
-game show before the actual game. Who wanted to men sitting at a desk making meaningless predictions? Then again, who would want to watch the barbaric game itself?
Sean smiled at her as he thanked her. He then ventured down the hall, down the stairs, and then down a second set of stairs.
The basement.
A man's domain.
Or for tonight, a man and his best friend. How could a woman feel like there was a no go zone for her in her own house? Especially since she contributed just as much as he to those pesky mortgage payments. John mentioned he was going to make the basement "his" rec room when they first moved. She rolled her eyes and laughed at the time, 'We'll see.'
But sure enough, he adopted the room as his own. She wasn't sure how that happened. It definitely
started
as a communal space. Despite fitting it with his Xbox and all the home entertainment centre trinkets, it could still be a shared space.
Nope.
The tall blonde stayed away from them that night, if only for a little while. Boys' night meant she had to handle homework duties and getting the kids ready for bed. At around 8:30pm, she closed the last bedroom door and let out a sigh. And then a yawn. It would have been logical to retire herself because of her own fatigue, but instead Amanda was feeling very illogical. For no reason other than wanting to sweet taste of Shiraz to soothe her, she poured out a little glass. The bottle was almost done so did the 'economic' thing and filled it up again. After that, she left the empty items as they were and followed a very coy idea that popped into her head.
Heading down was was like infiltrating the boys' clubhouse or journeying into the cavern of men. She giggled at the former.
The third quarter had just commenced. The boys sat with only a few inches between them on the three-seater. John's stomach formed a bit of a pouch under his black T-shirt. So did Sean's. The snacks they laid out for themselves did not help that. Sean, a brown haired man, sat a bit taller than the short raven haired John, if only because John was a sloucher and naturally a bit shorter than him.
Standing directly in front of them, she giddily asked, "May I join you BFFs?" As if she was going to take a 'no' for an answer, she thought to herself.
"Go ahead," Sean replied, sounding at least a bit inviting to her. John had not even looked up.
There was an awkward moment where the boys didn't know where she was going to place herself. She would, of course, elect to sit between them. Amanda thought for a second that John was craning his neck to check her out as she turned to sit. The tall, slender mom admittedly didn't have much of an ass so she would've felt flattered...if not for realizing that she was just in his line of vision. His efforts to make space were minimal, so she sat on his leg before roughly forcing herself into place like a Tetris piece finding its destination.
John gave her a brief unpleasant look and an annoyed click of his tongue as he shifted over. She would choose to ignore that.
In front of her, the table was littered with empty beer bottles and half-empty bags of greasy chips. To her left, the man she called her partner was completely engaged with the tiny men crashing and banging inside the magic box. He leaned forward as he mouthed the words 'come on' over and over.
Wearing a playful smile, Amanda tapped him on the arm and informed, "They can't hear you, honey." John only continued his mantra. Amanda was convinced that he might as well have gotten on his knees and started chanting upwards. Then she smiled at the thought of him on his knees doing other things to her.
"They're going to have to run the ball. They have their passing game scouted," John commented to an agreeable Sean. Amanda caressed his arm lovingly...and apparently uselessly.
Studying his focused expression, she knew his dark eyes weren't for her. Not even for a second. Then he had the nerve to tell her to stop staring on top of it. Peripheral vision was a bitch.
Dejected and annoyed herself, Amanda folded her arms across her modest chest. Amanda was lucky these wild card games only held
some
significance and this wasn't the Super Bowl itself. Then she would
really
been shit out of luck.
"So the point of the game is to kill the quarterback?" she stupidly asked, trying a different way in to understanding them and the game. The boys yelled at the television once more. There was cursing and a lot of it.
"Pretty much," Sean, the best friend, the man to her right, replied to her when he was pacified enough. "Except not when you the team you're cheering for has the ball. FUCK!"
Good.
Someone
was speaking to her. "And that's a good thing?"
The guys uniformly came out of their seat as the quarterback was sacked for a second straight play. Somehow, Amanda had her answer. Shaking her head, she finally declared it in her head: she did not understand football and she did not understand men watching football.
"Ugh, so this is it, huh?" she grumbled, motioning to the table and the giant TV, "The pinnacle of male bonding: beer, belching, and brutality."
"The three Bs!" Sean chimed. He slid a Dorito in his mouth and chased it with a swig of beer.
"You forgot talking about broads," finally added John, reaching under her work trousers to squeeze her ass. She jumped and slapped his arm. He wasn't a drone after all, but was a chauvinist pig all that better? Actually, maybe it wasn't a whole lot bad.
They continued to watch as more of the same beer guzzling and yelling continued. If she thought she was going to figure out and figure into their homosociality in the few minutes she had in the land of the conscious, she was wrong.
"Boys will be boys," she finally resigned with a sigh, "I shall leave you two to share your bromance in solitude. I'm going to bed." She slapped John's thigh and perhaps rose to her feet a little too quickly. She had a topsy-turvy moment and also might have had to stifle a burp.
"You know, 'bromance' is so insulting," Sean objected, launching into a semi-serious repudiation. "Why can't two guys be close friends without having a 'bromance'?"
Amanda smirked, firing him an unimpressed look, if only in jest. "Just be quiet, alright? You're welcome to stay the night, Sean. Just make sure John fixes the couch, OK?"
Sean saluted her and she started up the stairs. She wouldn't hear a word from John until she was half way out of the room and even then it could have been towards the TV.
"Finally!" Hoping it actually wasn't for her, she waveringly rounded the bend and headed upstairs.
The kids were her first stops. A peek inside each was needed to ensure they were still asleep. They were. Hopefully they would stay that way.
In front of her mirror, Amanda peeled off the layers of work clothing, removed her jewelry, and lifted her glasses off her blue eyes. She replaced them with dark blue pyjama pants and a loose white tank top. In her thirties now, the signs of experience and age had begun to show. She remembered when they weren't there. Her body shape had remained the same though: tall and thin, without notable curves and with tiny breasts. She smiled at her reflection and shut off the light.
For a working woman with two kids and a partner, a warm, spacious bed was the best reward at the end of the day. She climbed into bed and lifted the layers of comfy sheets over herself. She could still hear them shouting downstairs, but it was faint enough. She might have attempted some bedtime reading, but she was not up for it today. Instead, her eyelids fluttered to a close and she rolled onto her side.
Sleep would not end up being sustained exercise, however.
Amanda's eyes abruptly shot open at the latest sound emitting from the basement. A look to the clock on the night stand told her that she was not even asleep for thirty minutes. She swiftly tossed the comforter off her slim body and swung her long, star and moon -covered legs off the bed.
Boys will be boys, she thought, but they were men now. Men with children. Heck, Amanda was a parent along with one of them! On top of that, there were others in the house that had school and work in the morning.
With her bare white feet patting on the wood tiling, she purposefully yet carefully descended the several set of stairs to the basement. Her rest, as abbreviated as it was, seemed to at least refuel her coordination.
