Hiding in My House

[All characters in this story are 18 years of age or older.]

***

A phone woke me up, which really pissed me off because, you know, doesn't the universe

always

turn your bed into the absolute one-hundred percent coziest of cozy beds possible specifically on days when the phone is going to ring and ruin the whole effect? Like, there I was asleep in the Platonic Ideal of what a cozy bed should be, and some ass-wipe phone decides to go,

Haha, fuck you!

I did my best to give the phone and/or universe the most brutal, scathing, Platonic Ideal of a scathing, brutal condemnation ever verbalized, but I think it mostly came out along the lines of,

"Mmrrf -- hrr-hrr-Mglhrrgh..."

Then, to make matters worse, some of my coziness rolled away from me, letting non-cozy, cool air in under the covers to antagonize my back. My eyes squeezed really tight, and I got ready to scathe my ass off.

But the coziness rolled against me again and even looped some extra coziness up around my shoulder.

Ahh. Perfect.

And then Seong's voice breathed warmly into my ear, "Sea. Your sister is calling. Do you want to answer?"

Awake.

Instantly.

Maybe as awake as I've ever been in my life.

Somewhere, the phone rang again as I rolled onto my back in Seong's arms and found her wonderful, dark-eyed, soft-lipped face hanging over mine. My right arm had gotten half trapped between us as I turned, so I ignored it and reached up, trying to get my left hand around the nape of her neck and pull her down for a kiss.

But... she lifted away instead of cooperating, and held my phone in between us where I could see "Sis" and Kellie's number in the middle of the screen.

From behind the eclipsing phone, she said, "This seems an uncompelling soundtrack for our first kiss, don't you think, Sea? You should answer or send her to voicemail."

I took the phone meaning to hit "decline" and toss it away... but taking it revealed Seong's patient, contented eyes basking in the sight of me, and the time on the screen seemed earlier than Kell would normally call me on a Saturday (since she knows how long I usually sleep in on weekends), and I thought,

Shit. I guess it could be an emergency.

Rolling my eyes, I thumbed the answer button icon and said, "Yeah?"

Seong settled in beside me. Her lips teased my earlobe softly, maddeningly.

"Chelse," came my sister's voice from the speaker -- worried? Frantic? "Is... are you..." Her tone shifted gears before she'd gotten a full sentence out. "Ah, fuck, I'm waking you up I bet."

"Sort... of..." I tried to keep my breathing even, as Seong switched to the barest hint of a nibble with her teeth.

"Shit. I'm sorry, I just -- I had this dream -- I mean, nightmare really, and it woke me up and... goddammit. This is stupid. Everything's fine, isn't it." She let the last bit trail off so it wasn't even a question.

"Uh-huh," was about all I could get out in response.

Then Seong relented and whispered into my ear,

"Ask her about her dream."

"Um, what?" I asked.

"What?" Kellie echoed. Then she made some quick decision and said, "You're not even all the way awake yet. Sorry, Chelse, dumb call. Go back to sleep."

"No, uh, what was this dream?"

"Thank you,"

Seong whispered.

"I'm curious."

"Sorry," Kell said, "it's so dumb now that I'm bothering to think about it. We had this alarm system put in yesterday, and I dreamed you were locked outside with some psycho killer chasing you and you couldn't get in because you didn't know the code."

"Well, shit, you better give me the code really quick," I said.

A warm breath in my ear said,

"Here is your reward for humoring my curiosity."

I felt a hand settle lightly on my belly, then make its way southward in a steady, gentle slide. I had to bite my lip to avoid making a sound, and I missed something Kellie was saying.

"... high school."

Fingertips reached the waistband of my panties and glided back and forth there a moment.

"Uh... sorry, what?"

"She said it's the year she graduated."

"It's the year I graduated high school. Look, you're obviously --"

"Oh!" The fingertips moved farther down, two curving along either side of my vulva while the third, between them, found and rubbed the little nub of flesh it sought.

"Chelse, are you..."

"So

rrrr

y," I slurred a little, trying hard to get it out without gasping as the pressure against my groin moved in firm, mind-blanking circles. I let my thighs slip farther apart and was rewarded by Seong's hand moving to cup and caress my entire pussy. "You're... kind of... interrupting something..."

"Oh my god. Gross! I'm hanging up."

As soon as I heard the "call ended" beep, I dropped the phone to my left and turned my head toward Seong, on my right. "I guess I should have told her that s

oo

ner... nh... how is it our first kiss can't happen with a phone ringing but our first hand-job can happen while I'm on a call?"

She looked at me with placid eyes, her pupils immense in the dim room. "Lust is accentuated by delays and anticipation. Love deserves one's fullest attention."

I started to say something, but the phone pinged and drew her gaze to it. "What are you doing? Just ignore it."

But she ignored me instead. I saw her eyes tracing the words. "Kellie texts, 'Sorry but I just can't stand thinking about you and that guy. Next time just say you need to go pee or something.' Hmm."

"Haha. She's -- hey! What are you doing? Don't stop!"

But her hand came out from under the sheets and picked the phone up. I almost gave myself whiplash looking from her face to her hand -- its thumb ticking letters onto the screen -- and then back to her face.

"What are you saying to her? My pussy is hoping it's something really short!" Almost before I'd finished, the 'text sent' noise sounded and she let the phone plop back to the pillow.

"You can read it yourself a bit later. And was I not just talking about the advantages of postponed gratification?" she leaned in closer, right hand moving to my cheek instead of back to my underwear. The warmth of her touch and the vibrance in her eyes kept this from seeming like too much of a tease.

I wet my lips with my tongue and left them barely open as an invitation. Her face lowered toward me, the eyes calm and somehow intense at the same time.

Plink!

went my phone.

"Seriously?" I asked with a growl. "What's she saying now?"

Seong's eyes laughed as they flicked toward the phone and back to mine. "Let's ignore her for the moment."

Her face, her lips, moved closer.

Plink! Plink!

"Are you sure you can concentrate on a first kiss while it's doing that?" I asked. "You could always go back to fingering me until Kell shuts the fuck up."

She laughed, then removed the last space between us, closing her eyes as her lips touched mine.

Have you ever had a kiss like this? Oh, you think maybe you have? Sorry, I'm calling bullshit on that one. First off, you've never even seen Seong's lips, much less touched them. Seeing them, you'd expect you knew how soft they'd be -- how mobile, sensitive, full of life. But they would still surprise you when their curves met yours and the fullness of them greeted your mouth with two years of silenced emotion.

Second, if you imagine you've had this kind of kiss, that means all the way through your version of it, you were thinking,

This is what has been missing in every kiss I've had before

. Only I wasn't thinking that, because I wasn't thinking anything. Seong's mouth against mine in that instant banished all thought from my brain. It left only this...

awareness

of her trembling completion -- and an overwhelming joy that by joining together like this, I could make someone feel the way I made her feel right then.

Physically, I don't know if I've ever had a kiss that easy and patient. My best kisses before had always been built of passion and furor and heat. This kiss was the moon, orbiting through phases of wan, steadfast beauty: the obliterating dark of its newness... the crescent sliver of suddenly understanding how I had only seen stars before, tiny specks of something bright but faraway... the half circle that let me gaze for the first time on the shape of what was happening to me... the gibbous brilliance of her beauty, which had always been there and only just now neared a true illumination...

And then the full glow of revelation, shining and enormous and raising the highest of all tides in me with its gravity.

The moon's not the sun, right? You can stare at the moon and not be blinded. At its peak, it throws the world into silver truths and clean shadows -- and it does so without pretense, without hurry, without ever threatening to broil or burn you.

So no, you haven't ever had a kiss like that one. And when it faded just as gently from that intense, lambent apogee, and her lips retreated from mine, and her eyes opened again, I knew that another just as good would come round in its own time.

"Mm," she said, regarding me from above. "That was good, yes?"

I laughed. I couldn't help it. I laughed

so

fucking hard as I grabbed her and squeezed her to me and held her tight until the giddiness somehow let go of me. By that time, she was laughing too, and the whole world seemed right.

And then a knock came at the door, followed by Mrs. Song's voice. "I don't mean to interrupt, since the sun has risen on a new day, and Rule Number Seven no longer applies. But if you reach a caesura in your poesy, there are pancakes."

"Thank you, Mother," Seong said. Then she boggled my mind by continuing, "We will be there directly."

"Are you serious?" I asked. "I don't know what a caesura is, but I'm pretty sure you haven't gotten yours in my pussy yet."

She rolled her eyes and applied a light pressure to my shoulder, as though suggesting I let go of her. "I'm certain you know what a caesura is -- we had Introduction to Afro-American Poetry with Jamison second semester. And Mother clearly said, 'poesy,' not 'pussy.'"

"Pretty sure she meant it as a double entendre," I said, loosening my hug enough for her to lift up but not quite off of me. "And if she didn't, I did."

She smiled and gave me a quick peck on the lips. "Delay and anticipation, remember? Anyway, you should read your sister's texts."

Pouting but remembering that I really wanted to find out what Seong had texted back to Kellie, I surrendered and allowed her to roll back to her side of the bed, where she propped herself on one elbow and waited for me to look at the phone. There were several more texts than I had heard the alert sound for -- apparently, once we started kissing, I'd lost all connection to the real world. I scrolled up a little to the text Seong had read aloud to me.

Sorry but I

just can't stand

thinking about

you and that

guy. Next time

just say you

need to go pee

or something.

Which was followed by:

Not Brandt;

Seong.

And then:

What?

Wait, WHAT???

Do you mean

Chelsea!

Oh my god, I'm

dying here

if the two of

you are just like,

studying or sone

shit, pick up the goddamn phon

e and answer

me!

By the time I was done, I was laughing so hard I had to pass the phone to Seong instead of reading it out loud to her. She scrolled, read, and immediately texted something else before handing it back.

Seong here.

We are doing

some shit

like having

pancakes.

I snort-laughed. "I had no idea you had this cruel streak in you."

With a shrug, she said, "Like many human entities, I conceal the worst of my characteristics until they simply force themselves out. Let's go and have breakfast."

# # #

We ate as we'd slept -- in our tops and panties. The usually impeccable Seong startled me by not even brushing her hair.

"It's the eighth," she explained as we arrived in the kitchen to find her father Carl and her father Joji debating who should have the last of the blueberry syrup. "Thanks to Rule Number Seven, arriving disheveled to the breakfast table usually earns you some form of congratulations."

As if to demonstrate, Carl made a pistol of his dark-skinned hand and moved his thumb to fire it at Seong.

"That looks like the hair of a woman who is indulging herself this morning," he said. Joji took advantage of Carl's hand releasing the syrup and pushed the bottle closer to Carl's plate. Carl immediately pushed it back. "No cheating. I forgot to put it on the grocery list; you shouldn't pay for my absent-mindedness."

I felt the color rising up my face at the implication Seong and I had been up to something already. "We didn't really..."

But the two men paid me no attention, having returned to their contest of wills over who better deserved the blueberry syrup. Seong tugged me to a couple of chairs, and we sat down together.

"Four pancakes for the two of us, Mother," she said. "No butter, all on a single plate."

Mrs. Song made a wordless noise of acknowledgment from her place at the griddle across the kitchen. She wore a lazily tied robe covered in cartoon opossums, and her sculpted wave of hair appeared to have crashed to pieces on a pillow in the night (or on something else this morning).

"No, seriously, I'll be fine with the maple."

"You detest maple."

They went back and forth over it until their wife arrived beside the table with a single plate that she set midway between my place and Seong's. Without so much as asking, she hooked a finger through the handle of the all-but empty syrup bottle the two men had been shoving back and forth, unscrewed the top, and drained the contents out across the stack of flapjacks she'd put before us.

"I apologize if blueberry syrup ill-suits you, Chelsea Vickers," she said as the final drizzle ended. "Perhaps your suffering will burden these two men with sufficient guilt to remediate their future behavior."

"Um... I like blueberry syrup okay, I guess?"

Joji crossed his arms. "Uncalled for, Candora."

Carl half-stood from the table. "Now I'll just have to go to the store and get more."

"There's powdered sugar and cinnamon butter," she said, stepping behind him to push down on his broad shoulders until he sat again. "You both like powdered sugar and cinnamon butter, and if that's not enticing enough on its own, we'll simply have to take it all into the bedroom where you can eat your breakfast from my naked abdomen."

Joji and Carl looked at each other, and in almost no time, Seong and I found ourselves alone at the table. The stack of four pancakes on the plate between us stood neatly partitioned into twelve wedges, thanks to some quick work by Seong's fork and knife.

"Apologies if you would have preferred these buttered," she said, spearing one section of the stack. "But I know myself to have a palate more selective than yours, and I wanted us to share."

The fork rose from the plate toward me, so I leaned, opened my mouth, and let her ease the soft, warm slice onto my tongue. I chewed several times, not enough to swallow, before saying, "Very romantic of you, S."

"No, actually," she replied. "I'm about to cajole you into telling me the story of Eric and Kellie scandalously borrowing your room for incestuous sex, and I want to be able to control how full your mouth is so that the narrative proceeds at a reasonable pace."

"Cajole away," I said. Then I looked down at the plate. "Damn, that's some fucking good blueberry syrup."

I opened my mouth toward her and raised my eyebrows high until she let me have another bite, after which she proceeded to feed me breakfast as I dished out the details of Kell and Dad doing it in my bedroom while I hid in the closet.

Both the story and sharing the pancakes with Seong got me really hot. Like, hot enough that by the time we were finished, I pretty much could have climbed on the table with her and done it right there.

But as she walked to the kitchen sink to wash our dish, t-shirt hanging down where it just covered half her delicious ass in her plain pink panties, she said, "Your story has given me an idea."

Then she looked at me as she turned on the faucet and said, "But it is most likely a different idea than the ones you're about to tell me the story gave you."

I closed my mouth, which had dropped open for the specific purpose of saying, "It gave

me

several ideas too." With my arms crossed, I narrowed my eyes at her.

"Go on."

"You said they avoided your bed because they worried you might notice any change to the sheets?" She scrubbed syrup from the plate under a stream of hot water. When I nodded, she went on, "And tell me, are they still in the habit of playing tennis Sunday mornings, showering at the facility, and eating lunch out?"

"Uh-huh," I said, wondering how those two questions might connect up.

"So." After a moment of inspection she held the plate back under the faucet and scrubbed some more. "Since we now have the security system code, it seems to me there would be time for us to drive to your place and position a few things strategically in your room while they're out. Then you could text or call Kellie sometime this week and tell her you intend to come home

next

weekend and bring me along, and that you'd greatly appreciate her washing your sheets and making the bed so things would be nice for me."

Some wheels turned in my head, but I guess not as fast as they turned in hers. "Okaay... I'm not sure exactly what -- I mean, if she has an excuse to wash my sheets, are you thinking the two of them will take advantage of that to get my bed as dirty as they like beforehand?"

"It stands to reason that they might," she said, examining the plate again. It must have been clean enough, because she got a dish towel and started drying it.

"But... so? What are we going to do, camp out in my closet for days waiting to spy on them?"

Seong put the plate in a cabinet, then nodded over her shoulder toward the hallway.

"Let me show you something."

# # #

A few minutes later, we were in her car again. And in the back seat, a plastic bin of electronic equipment rode along with us.

Evidently, Mrs. Song had decided, a few years back, to create a photo-collage self-portrait using thousands of miniaturized pictures of herself. The problem with that was, Mrs. Song absolutely hates to be photographed or recorded on video. So she got the most technically adept of her husbands at the time -- a guy named Phil -- to install a bunch of motion-activated spy cams throughout the house.

The project ended up a complete bust: instead of relaxing because she couldn't see anything recording her, Mrs. Song spent the next few weeks cringing around the house under the assumption that no matter where she went, a camera had its eye on her. Even worse, the experience sensitized her to the very idea of surveillance cameras, and she got to the point where she couldn't even go shopping without constantly watching for security monitors.

So the cameras came down and went in a box in the garage, and they ended up staying in the house longer than Phil.

"I'm still on the fence about the whole two-wrongs-make-a-right part of this," I said as we reached the highway. "I mean, sure, if we end up getting them on video, we'll definitely only use it for good and not for evil, but some of those boxes literally say, 'Spy Camera' on them. So it's obviously spying, and if they ever found out..."