The Roommate Agreement

I couldn’t live with knowing what my best friend’s penis looked like when he was naked, never mind what it felt like as I rocked on him like a wave rocked a boat.

It was unintentional. A total accident. Yet it’d happened. A little twitch. Slowly getting harder until I moved off him as inconspicuously as possible, which for me, was about as inconspicuous as an avalanche.

This was a disaster.

All for some facemask.

What was I doing with my life?

I groaned, pressing the towel against my stomach. I’d just climbed my best friend like a tree, rocked on his cock like a boat, and plastered him in facemask like we were about to have a girls’ night in.

Except he was a guy. Not a girl. And we weren’t going to paint each other’s toenails and whine about men over wine and snacks.

This was why I’d lived alone and did shit like this in private.

Not once had I ever accidentally rocked on Brie’s genitals.

I pushed off the door and looked in the mirror. Even though I couldn’t see the redness of my cheeks, I knew it was there. My eyes gave it away—they were bright and shining, and even if I couldn’t see the embarrassment in them, I felt it.

All the way to my freaking pink-painted toes.

Ughhhh.

I took a deep breath and set my shoulders. Lord knew I couldn’t set my face. The mask had done that for me. I couldn’t even twitch my lips without being afraid it would crack.

Double ugh.

I pulled open the door and went back into the living room. Jay was sitting on the sofa, feet up on the coffee table, with a bottle of water in his hands—and a straw inside the bottle.

“What are you doing?” I asked, even though half of it sounded like gibberish.

He looked at me, his face covered in the same, half-cracked, light green mask that mine was. “’Inking,” he replied. “’Ot you one, ‘oo.”

I looked at the bottle on the table with a straw poking out of it.

I sat down, taking the water with me, and forced myself to look at the TV. No matter how much I wanted to look at his crotch, I wouldn’t.

Not today.

No, siree.

I was done with that nonsense today.

I didn’t want him to know that I’d felt it. He had to know, sure. I mean, it was his cock. That didn’t mean I wanted him to know that I knew. It wasn’t exactly small, you know what I mean?

You weren’t likely to miss his erection in a blackout, that’s all I’m sayin’.

My cheeks burned. Why was I thinking about Jay’s erection? I was a strong, independent, relatively-slash-questionably successful twenty-five-year-old woman in the prime of my adult life. Surely, I’d grown up past thinking about penises in my spare time.

Well, you’d think.

Apparently, I hadn’t. Especially not when said penis was attached to my best friend.

Damn it!

I needed an intervention of some kind.

Maybe a date?

Yes! A date! That was a good idea! A chance to think about someone else’s penis. Let’s be honest, it was more likely that I’d get to ride a stranger’s disco stick than it was Jay’s. It’d been a while, but riding cock was like riding a bike, wasn’t it? You never forget how to do it? Skill for life and all that?

Man, I was gonna be so pissed if that turned out to be wrong the next time I got me some.

There would be a lot of people behind spam emails who’d get a piece of my mind if they’d been lying to me.

Ugh, no, I didn’t want a date. Not with the idiots the dating apps always spat out at me. Not a single one of those had ever gone well, and that didn’t even take into consideration the ones who did actually look like their picture.

I was sure most people my age met people to date in bars. The problem with that was that the only bar I ever went to belonged to my parents, and, well, people in general.

I was an introvert by nature. Bars were not a place for me.

Why would I drink around other people when I could drink at home without pants on?

Exactly.

“How long does this stay on for?” Jay asked, prodding at his cheek. “Is it supposed to feel like cement?”

“Fifteen minutes, and yes,” I replied, grabbing the remote from the coffee table. I was not going to sit here and watch sports news. He could get that on his phone.

“I was watching that!” he eked out through his now-stony face.

I shrugged. “I wasn’t.”

“I thought we were compromising?”

I met his eyes. “We are. I’m not putting The Big Bang Theory on. Compromise.”

“If you put Friends on, I swear to God…”

“I wasn’t going to put Friends on! I was going to browse the guide, but now I might just to piss you off.” I shuffled farther down on the sofa and put my feet on the coffee table.