Orbit

7/6/08

Updated 8/19/17

Chapter 1: Orbit

I'm just...quiet. Quiet and unassuming and ordinary. I'm kind of short and awkward, and I work day and evening shifts at the bowling alley down on 5

th

and Chestnut. I liked college; I knew how to handle classes and papers. I had a good time, but my degree is useless. I would need to go to grad school to get any kind of decent job, but I don't know. Could I even get in? And what would I study even if I did? I don't think I even have any real passions, just bad thought spirals that lead down to a pit of "you're not good enough for other people."

One of my roommates, Bailee, is one of those extraordinary, golden people. She's working nights and weekends to put herself through grad school, and still manages to have this awesome relationship with Rowan, who's been her sweetheart for as long as I've known her. He's no ordinary guy, either; he's training for the Olympics. Some track and field thing. Both of them, I have no idea how they do it, how they drive themselves so hard and still stay that close to each other. They both have such drive. But it's more than that, it's to this extreme level where it's almost like they have some kind of mystical powers, or something.

They're both great, they really are. When I get to see them, that is, which is a couple times a week for her and once or twice a month for him since he has a place across town and they mostly stay there.

Unfortunately, that puts me in a really awkward position. See, my other two roommates are a couple and

they

are home

all

the time. Richard and Shelley both come from the same little town called McCallow somewhere on the East coast. They were in the same high school English class, for godsakes, and now they're living together and I'm always getting in their way. I'm little old Sid and I'm a bother. I'm half broke, single, and I have nowhere to go. Nights and weekends, I haunt our apartment like the ghost of Häagen-Dazs pints past.

Richard and Shelley used to be pretty good about it, too, but I guess I just stepped on their alone time a little too much. I sat down with them to watch a movie after dinner instead of immediately retreating to my room and closing the door like I usually do one night, and they didn't talk to me for a week. I heard heated arguments happening behind their door, but couldn't make out what they were fighting about. I could guess, though. It was about me. The Sid problem.

Then, they kinda...did a one-eighty. They stopped ignoring me. Instead, they wouldn't leave me alone. Shelley especially. It seemed like she always wanted me to sit out with her while she had a smoke, or watch something on youtube with her (in her room, where they fucked, which made me kind of uncomfortable), or cook with her. She would just walk up to me, tap me on the shoulder, tell me to come do whatever, and walk away.

I would shrug, think "what else do I have to do but stare at my computer screen?" and follow. The more quickly I joined her, the more excited she was to see me when I got there. She would give me a huge hug and tell me how great it was that I was there, doing whatever with her. It always tingled. I mostly felt guilty about that. I mean, she had a boyfriend. The last thing I wanted to do was break up a relationship. But then, thinking along those lines was just another bad thought spiral, because what do I have to offer that no one else does? What do I have to offer at all, what is there in me that would make somebody leave anybody? Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing. I'm mediocre, I'm second, I'm...hopeless.

I started thinking, whenever she hugged me, oh maybe...

Oh maybe this could turn into something more, like maybe these hugs aren't just friendly, they're more than friendly, and she would one day give me a huge kiss to match the hug, a lingering, full-lipped kiss with those pink, moist flowers of hers. And we would sit on my bed and she would push my hair back from my forehead and tell me that I was sexy and special and wonderful and she would take care of me, take care of me if only I did what she told me to, if I did what she said...And she would kiss me again, press her chest into me and start sliding it around, let me reach up her shirt, let my fingers explore her taut stomach, her smooth, unblemished skin, and my grubby fingers would somehow be good enough to reach up under her bra, to cup her perfect---

And I would get that far in the fantasy until I realized she had stopped hugging me and I was staring off into space like an idiot.

Obviously, nothing from my fantasies would never happen. It never could; Richard was so handsome, such a good boyfriend, treated her like a princess with flowers and dates and massages and heavenly sex I could hear through two closed doors. Shelley was always cumming, always loudly and heatedly. I would hear smacking sounds, I would hear moans and then the yelling, followed by contented giggles and doors opening and closing, sounds of a shower.

So there was no way she would ever have left Richard. But still...those tingles kept me hoping, kept me fantasizing, kept me doing whatever she said with exponentially increasing willingness and speed.

The first day she started asking me to hang out and hugging me, I took out the trash. I mean, I would have eventually since it was my turn, but it just looked kind of full and I figured, why not now?

A few weeks after the tingles started, I was washing the dishes every night. I picked up around the place every morning before work, and started cooking whenever I wasn't working late. Not that that seemed to matter to Shelley.

A few months after the tingles first started, Shelley started leaving messages on my cell telling me to meet her places after work. If I tried to call and cancel, her cell battery was dead and she'd forgotten the charger. So I always rearranged my schedule to meet her. What else could I do? I was already mostly used to doing what Shelley said without a moment's thought.

Richard, through all this, remained a cheerful, decent guy. He worked his job, he hung out with his buddies, and he had a hand on Shelley whenever they were in the same room. Sometimes I wondered if he also got tingles when his skin met hers. He just couldn't stop touching her; a hand on the knee at the dinner table, a huge hug from behind while she washed dishes...they would even hold hands over the emergency brake while one of them drove. I'd never seen a couple this close or affectionate before, and it didn't seem to stifle either one of them at all. They basked in their incredibly intense intimacy.

Richard went to RU instead of M.O.N. U like Shelley and Bailee and me, so I hadn't seen them interact much before we all moved in together.

He was just so good to her, it made me feel twice as single. Lonely emptiness crawled around in my stomach and arms and lips, digging tunnels. They were so...connected.

I think I'm maybe just not as smart as them. I

know

I'm not as smart as Bailee; we were roommates senior year and she kicked ass at basically everything difficult and half of it was utterly incomprehensible to me. That's really the only reason I'm here, I think. She just didn't want to be rude to me when I had nowhere to go after graduation.

Also, somehow, none of these people have student loans. Who

are

they? I know Shelley and Richard met in high school, I think Shelley and Bailee had a class together at M.O.N., but besides that I don't actually know anything about these people from before senior year. Could they be spies? Or drug dealers? Was living with them a really bad move? When Shelley started taking me to bars and clubs and making me drink and dance, I came to the conclusion that yes, yes it was.

I just couldn't say no to her, and before I knew it I would've had four shots inside a half hour and be hanging off some skeeze who had his hands on my ass. Somehow, though, (and I have no idea how) I still felt totally safe. Shelley was always there to make sure I was safe and nothing got out of hand. Knowing she was standing by the bar, sipping a Shirley Temple through a straw and smirking at me dancing with strangers made this whole thing feel normal, forget the fact that I'd never had an alcoholic drink before a couple weeks ago and hadn't been to a dance since middle school. But it felt like she would have beat down or stared down whole gangs of guys for me.

Except, of course, that I'm just short little Sid and nobody's racing to the stands for this issue. Nobody even wants to molest me, let alone take me out on a date. It was just the booze that made guys want to dance with me and feel me up. That and the fact that, by this point, Shelley was telling me what to wear. If I objected, she'd pull the outfit out of a grocery bag in the backseat of her car and make me change right there while she circled the neighborhood. Slowly.

I soon learned to just do as she said in the mornings as she lay on my bed or walked around my room, poking at my stuff or fiddling with my computer or my hair. It tingled when she touched any part of me, even the tips of my pixie cut. So I started to just wear what she told me, even when the outfits started becoming totally not functional for working at a bowling alley! I mean, I can't grumble at assholes for not wearing bowling shoes when I'm wearing my tallest heels or bend down to grab the shoes on the bottom of the shelves when I'm wearing my smallest skirt.

Richard would smile whenever he saw the two of us together. Smile, and then come in and kiss her on the mouth, sometimes while I was changing! Somehow, you know, I couldn't close my door anymore. Forget about locking it. But Shelley and Richard would give me this disapproving, scary kind of look when I tried, and then joyful smiles that made me bloom with happiness for a second or two when I opened it again.

So I got used to that, too. But then I'd hear one of the other happy couples fucking around the apartment again. And then I would feel as lonely as an apple in orbit.