Author's Note: This is a longish story with a lot of build up. While I personally find a long build up very erotic and seduction half the fun especially in this category; if you are looking for a story that plunges straight into the action, then this may not be the one for you. Enjoy.
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As I waited for Michael to come home, my mind drifted over the last few months to that night in the fall when we had met for the first time. I had just returned, bone weary, from my job as a copywriter for a major ad agency. While I stripped off my work clothes and slipped into a T-shirt and PJs, I bemoaned the insane hours that my job forced me to keep. Or did it? In my more lucid moments, I knew that the hours were my own doing; that I took on more than I had to -- to postpone having to return to an empty house.
As I shuffled into my nightclothes, the doorbell rang. I was a bit startled, given the lateness of the hour. It was past 9 o'clock. I turned on the light in the porch and peered out of the window at the young man who was standing outside my door. He looked up at the light as it came on and blinked at the sudden brightness.
He was tall and rangy, with tousled blonde hair and a knapsack slung over his shoulder. He was clutching a piece of paper in his left hand. I remember that the piece of paper had ragged edges as if it had been ripped, and not cut, from a larger sheet. Odd the things that stick in your memory. Definitely not someone I knew, I decided. Probably someone wanting directions, I thought, as I opened the door.
"My name is Michael," he said, putting down his knapsack and holding out his right hand. But seeing me in my PJs, with the tiny pink bunnies emblazoned on them, he hesitated, conscious now of the lateness of the hour.
"I am sorry," he said, "I didn't realize how late it was. I will come back another day if you would prefer."
He was already reaching for his knapsack when I asked him what he wanted.
"I came about your ad," he said, waving the piece of paper that he held in his hand.
I was surprised. My ad for a flat mate had appeared only in that day's newspaper and I hadn't been expecting any response till the weekend. Nonetheless, I ushered him in.
"I am Ashley," I offered, holding out my hand for him to shake.
"I have a spare bedroom." I continued, "I thought I would have someone share the expenses."
As I walked him through the house, he seemed distracted, uninterested in the details as if he had already made up his mind. Sure enough at the end of my tour, he said, "I will take it. If you will have me, that is."
I hesitated for a moment. Well, he was the wrong age and the wrong gender. When I put out the ad, I had been hoping for a woman and someone a bit older than this young man who seemed no more than 20. I am, however, a creature of instinct and something told me that this would work out fine. In hindsight, I think it was his face. It was open and transparent, completely without guile.
"You can have it," I said.
He heaved a sigh of relief. "I was hoping you would say that. I am starting University in the coming week and I can't afford their accommodation."
After I agreed, he visibly relaxed and filled me in rapidly on what seemed to me his entire life history. He was from a small town in Oregon that he was sure I would not have heard of. His Dad had a trucking business. In the last two years, the business was losing money. His mom was a homemaker. He had two sisters and a younger brother. Until now, when he was starting University, he had never stayed away from home. He was going to major in history and maybe if the competition wasn't too stiff, make the track team.
I was amused by his candor and his loquacity. Having lived my entire life in a big city where people guarded their lives like currency, it was new for me and somehow touching. He paused all of a sudden in the middle of the rush of words and blushed, afraid that he was talking too much.
"I am boring you," he said.
"No, no," I said quickly, "Not at all."
"How old are you?" I asked him then,
"18," he said, then added, "Almost 19," apparently worried that his age might somehow affect my decision to keep him.
I quickly set his heart at rest. "It doesn't matter. I was just curious."
However, it occurred to me that having an "almost 19" year old about the house was going to be quite a change. We will just have to see, I thought. I gave him my spare key and sent him on his way.
He moved in the next day. Not that he had very much to move in. Everything that he had brought with him took up barely a shelf in his bedroom cupboard.
As I slid into my bed that night, hollow and exhausted after another long day at work, I found the presence of another person in the house curiously comforting. But I was also a little apprehensive. He seemed nice enough, but despite what I had said the other day, his age was a niggling worry. He was a teenager after all. And teenagers could be noisy and messy and inconsiderate and several other things that didn't even bear thinking about. I knew. I had been there.
I needn't have worried. As I shuffled downstairs, bleary eyed, the next morning, I was greeted by an unfamiliar medley of scents from the kitchen. My nostrils flared as my still sleep befogged brain struggled to catalogue them. There was fresh coffee, certainly and there was something else more elusive, some distant, slowly awakening memory.
When I entered the kitchen, I found myself laughing. There was Michael, looking confident and utterly comfortable in my kitchen, flipping a pancake with complete Γ©lan. He grinned at me.
"Sorry I raided your larder, but I thought your might enjoy having breakfast made for you for a change."
Tell me about it.
"I am glad you did," I said, "I haven't had pancakes in ages, not since I was a kid."