Her name is Kristen, and she lives in the apartment above mine. She moved there last year from the city, and you can tell she's a city girl from her attitude. She's fiery, easy to anger, and she doesn't take anyone's shit, and you can tell it's been a long time since she had to rely on anyone to take care of her. I'd guess that she's probably in her early 30's, though she's got a middle-aged mentality about things that would make you suspect she's much older than that. She's also just about as close to being the most beautiful woman I've ever met. I've always had a thing for petite women and Kristen fits that description perfectly; she's got a long slender neck and something of a square jaw, narrow shoulders and a tiny little ass that would easily fit in the palms of both my hands.
Kristen's boyfriend, Mason, stays with her almost every night, almost, but he doesn't actually live there. She works two jobs so she's rarely home herself, so some weeks her boyfriend spends more time in her apartment than she does. He's well built and drives a Mercedes and I'm pretty sure that he pays her rent.
I tend to get nervous around women I find attractive (especially if they're speaking to me) so up until the day she caught me in the laundry-room, our conversations had been limited to simple "Hey, how are ya?" comments made in passing. Whenever she looked at me I sort of froze . . . like a child waiting to be scolded for something. She has very intense eyes that seem to lock on you with intensity, almost enough to make you wonder if she was about to slap you. Though she may be smiling, and she has a beautiful smile, her eyes told a different story and any fool could see that no man, no matter how large, worried her in the least. I like strong and assertive women, but I often found myself tongue-tied and stammering whenever I tried to carry on a simple conversation with Kristen. I get like that with women I'm into, but it tends to go away once I've known a person for a little while. And that might have been the case with Kristen too, that is if she hadn't caught me in the laundry room barefoot, wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of women's panties. That sort of cemented our relationship and my place in it from that moment forward.
She wasn't even supposed to be there . . .
Both Kristen's and Mason's cars were gone from their spots, and since my laundry-room is only about 10 feet outside my back door I thought I could risk it. I'd done it before, so many times in fact that I barely gave it a second thought as I stepped out into the room that day and began moving wet clothes from the washing machine into the dryer next to it. My mind was somewhere else entirely, the way yours probably is too while you perform menial chores like folding laundry or washing dishes.
One minute I'm closing the dryer door, dropping a Loonie (a dollar coin for you Americans) into the slot and slamming it home and pressing the start button.
I turned and placed the empty basket on the small table next to the washer and dryer . . . turned to walk back into my apartment mere feet away . . . and there she was, standing between me and the back entrance to my apartment. I practically jumped out of my skin and almost ran out of the room, except there was no place to go. The door behind me led into the foyer, the one to my left led out into the parking lot . . . dressed as I was, I wasn't going anywhere unless it was through her.
"Hey there," she said, looking me dead in the eye and offering a wave as though it were any other day.
I couldn't even pull my t-shirt down or anything that would make me less embarrassed than I was. Actually, I might have been less humiliated if I'd been wearing nothing but a towel or even if I'd been naked. I held my hands up and tried to skirt around her to my open door as though she was pointing a gun at me, but she side-stepped and blocked my path. "What are you doing down here?" she asked, smiling. Her smile was devastating to me, the lines of her mouth and the broadness of her perfectly white teeth highlighted by red lipstick.
I can't possibly manage to recreate the babble I offered in response, something along the lines of . . . "Sorry . . . don't . . . I just . . . laundry . . . thought you were out . . . I never . . . I was just . . ."
I tried to slip past her and again she moved in front of me. "Where are you going?"
"Nowhere . . . I just want to go back inside . . ."
Then, to my absolute horror . . . I watched, paralyzed, as she swiftly reached behind her, twisted the lock . . . pushed the door closed with her hip and then leaned against it. My jaw dropped open and I suddenly felt like I might get sick.
"Ooops," she said, smiling. At my shocked expression she almost giggled, "Something wrong?"
She knew what was wrong . . . my keys were inside, of course they were. "Oh, do you not have your keys on you? Of course you don't, my bad. You should be able to let yourself in with a screwdriver . . . have you got one?"
"Yeah," I stammered, "But it's . . ."
"Oh . . . I guess you don't have that on you either. I might have one upstairs . . ."
"Would you get it for me . . . please?" I asked, barely able to contain my anger.
"Sure, I guess," she shrugged. "You want to come up with me, help me look for it?"
Going upstairs meant walking through the lobby in full view of the cameras not to mention the other two residents living in the building, both of which were senior citizens who might not think to highly of me walking around the building wearing black satin panties. I also didn't like the idea of being alone in Kristen's apartment with her . . . who knows what she might say happened? "I'll just wait here," I said as calmly as I could manage. "If that's okay, with you."
"Suit yourself," she said easily as she headed out of the laundry room. "Might take a little while though. Plus I thought you might like a pair of Mason's pants, but have it your way."
Since there was nothing in the laundry to wear except for wet lingerie, and putting it on wouldn't have gotten me back into my apartment in any case, I reluctantly agreed to go upstairs with her. She stayed in front of me the entire time and seemed to take her sweet time too. As we passed through the lobby and climbed the stairs to her apartment I waited to hear the clicking sounds of the other tenants unlocking their doors and seeing them poke their heads out . . . luckily they didn't, and after what seemed like an eternity, we were finally in her apartment.
"Make yourself comfortable," she said, closing the door behind us and twisting the lock. "I'll see if I can find that screwdriver."
"And some pants?" I reminded her.
She gave me a smile and a wink and said, "I'll see what I can do."
I stayed near the door and remained standing while she went into her kitchen and began rummaging through drawers . . . obviously having chosen to look for the screwdriver first rather than finding me something to wear. "Do you want a beer or something while I look?" she asked.
"No, no thank-you . . ." I said, annoyed that she was acting so casually about the whole thing. "Have you found the screwdriver yet?"
"Still looking," she called back. "Keep your panties on."
I might have laughed under different circumstances, but not these.
After a few minutes she called out again, "Found it!" before heading into her bedroom. She emerged a few moments later and tossed me an article of clothing that turned out to be a pair of purple yoga pants. "Here you go."
"What are these . . . I thought you were going to give me . . ."
"Something of Mason's?" she interjected. "Those are Mason's. Don't worry, they're clean, I bought them for him months ago and he only wore them for me one time. He said wearing them made him feel gay."
I tried to offer them back to her, but she backed away. She had the screwdriver in one hand so I could see it, but she had no intentions of giving it to me . . . not for free anyways. "Put them on or don't," she said, "it doesn't effect me either way. You either want my help, or you don't. Make up your mind."
The implications couldn't have been clearer; the yoga pants and the screwdriver I needed to get back into my apartment were a package deal . . . no substitutions. Reluctantly, I sat on the arm of her sofa and began pulling them on. "So . . . you bought your boyfriend a pair of women's yoga pants?" I asked gently.
"Yeah, but like I said, he wasn't feeling it . . . not like you probably do when you wear women's clothes."
I froze momentarily, then I stood up so I could pull the shiny purple tights up to my waistline. Normally it might have been exciting, but I felt ridiculous. Once I had them on I reached out my hand and asked for the screwdriver, which she still held tightly in her fist. She shook her head and motioned for me to turn around.
