* * *
When I get back to the apartment, Leila’s already home. That’s the good news. The bad news is that that asshole who was trying to suck the lips off her face is sitting on the couch.
“Hey, you,” Leila says as I close the door behind me. “How’d it go?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
I never bothered telling her what my plans for the day were.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Isn’t that what people say when their significant other comes home?”
The phrase makes me a little uncomfortable. I glance over at the couch to make sure that the gangly idiot feels just as uncomfortable about it as I do, but he’s just sitting there without a care in the world, scrolling through pages of what looks like apartment listings on a laptop.
“What are you up to?” I ask.
“Oh nothin’,” Leila says cheerily, and gives me a quick peck on the lips. “Mike and I are looking to see if there’s any place we missed. I hope you don’t mind if we do that here. Mike’s roommate is back in town, and he’s not the friendliest guy on the planet.”
“I don’t mind,” I tell her. “Sorry your roommate’s a dick,” I call to “Mike,” hoping to preempt any indication of just how little I like the asshat.
He shrugs, but doesn’t look up from the computer screen. “Hey, Lei,” he says, “how about this one?”
Leila leaves my side and goes over to look at the page.
I’m not that jealous a guy. After all, jealousy is just the admission that someone would make your partner happier than you do and the selfishness not to allow it.
With that said, it really wasn’t that long ago that Mike and Leila were sucking the spit out of each other’s mouths on that exact couch.
I really don’t know what to do with myself right now.
I don’t like the feeling.
“You two had anything to eat?” I ask. “I could whip something up.”
“Yeah, Dane’s the chef at l’Iris,” Leila tells the fuckwad.
“I’m not hungry,” he says. “Ooh, look at this one.”
So, what is a man in my position to do?
What I want to do is kick Mike out the window and take Leila to the nearest soft surface and make love to her until neither of us can keep our eyes open anymore, but the relationship is less than a day old.
If I start by kicking her friend out, she’s either going to think I’m a dick and it’ll ruin the relationship, or she’s going to be strangely aroused by that, which means she’s into weirder stuff than Wrigley is, and I really don’t know if I could handle that either right now.
I don’t have too much time to think it over, though, as Leila and Mike finish what they’re doing, and with a quick hug, Mike’s on his way.
“Sorry about that,” Leila says as soon as the door is closed, “but he’s been really great, helping me find places and all.”
“It’s fine,” I tell her.
Telling her that I don’t want her to go is another one of those things that probably isn’t the best idea in the first 24 of a relationship. It’s right up there, I would imagine, with telling her friend to move to a different state.
“You seem upset,” she says. “Is something wrong?”
“Nah,” I tell her. “Everything’s fine. I’m just kind of tired.”
“Well, in that case,” she says, moving close and putting her arms around me. She looks up at me with those gentle eyes. “How about we watch a movie or something? There’s plenty of room on the couch for both of us to lie down,” she adds. “That is, unless you’d rather keep your personal space.”
“I would not like to keep my personal space,” I tell her, bending down to kiss her on the lips. “Really, I’m kind of hoping for a blanket, few, if any, clothes, and absolutely no personal space for either of us.”