She shook her head, her mouth still hung half-open with an expression of disbelief and more than a little amusement.
“Do you think it's Emerson?” she asked.
A rush of something flashed through me again. I didn’t want it to. There was no reason for it, but the thought of him tangled with that awful bimbo doing ungodly things, his gorgeous eyes focused on her, on her of all people made me want to punch something.
“I don't know,” I sputtered a little too quickly and harshly.
I blushed as Leslie shot me a knowing gaze, smiling subtly at my reaction. “Or… maybe it's Chris,” she said slowly, still staring at me to gauge my response. She knew me too well for my own good sometimes.
“Um, yeah,” I replied, blushing furiously. “Yeah, ho-, who knows, maybe it's Chris.”
Jeez, I couldn’t believe I almost said, “Hopefully it's Chris.” Hopefully? Seriously? Why should I even care if that self-absorbed idiot jock, Emerson, was getting down and dirty with his skanky, plastic girlfriend? It wasn't any of my business.
Although, the sound of it coming through the walls into my place did kind of make it my business.
Leslie stared at the wall with her hands on her hips, listening to the still-intensifying sound. “We brought that softball bat from your parent’s place, right?” she asked.
“Um, yeah, but-”
“I'm gonna beat on the damn wall with it, let those two fools on the other side know we don't appreciate being the audience for their little porno flick.”
“No, no, come on, Les, you can't do that! That'll make it… Jeez, I dunno. It'll just make the whole thing even weirder and more awkward than it already is! We have to pass these people in the hall, ya know.”
“Well, they shouldn’t have the right to just… do that and make us feel uncomfortable in our own house!”
“I know, I know, but just… I dunno, just don't do that.”
“Well, what are we gonna do about it?”
I stood for a while, contemplating the issue. “Let's just go fix breakfast and forget about it,” I suggested.
“No way! Come on, Bee! That's such a defeatist attitude. We can't just let them get away with this.”
“Maybe it's a one-off thing. I mean, we heard how trashed they all got last night at their party. Maybe this is just something that happens once in a while, you know?”
The determination in her eyes to grab the bat resting in the corner behind my door and smack the wall a few times with it faded a little. I could see that she was weighing the pros and cons of what I'd said, so I added a little more insight to help calm her down.
“It's not a great idea to start off on the wrong foot with new neighbors when you've just moved into a new place,” I expressed, hoping my words would help sway her opinion and defuse the situation. “Seriously, we wanna have a good relationship with everyone else in the building. You don't wanna be known as 'that mean-tempered bitch from 13A' now, do you?”
The frown on her face morphed into a smile. “I’ve been called worse.”
I cocked my head to one side and glared at her with a motherly expression.
“Alright, alright,” she said. “We can let it slide this time. I guess.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“But!” she added, holding up a stern finger of warning, “if I hear that crap again, I am gonna reach for the softball bat and give that wall a big ol' bitch slap or two! I don't want those two meatheads next door thinking they can make forcing their… their… porn noises into our home a regularly scheduled event.”
We both chuckled as we turned around and walked out of my room. I closed the door behind me as we left in an effort to prevent the muffled sounds from following us into the living room.
“So, what do you think about Chris now?” I said, jabbing her playfully in the ribs.
She shot me a shit-eating grin. “Probably something similar to what you think about Emerson. After all, we don't know which one of the two is the stud behind that wall, now, do we?”
I felt another wave of heat rippling along the surface of my skin. “True, we don't know,” I replied somewhat coolly. “And, it’s probably best that we don’t know; let's just forget about it, alright?”
“Alright. Come on, there’s bacon and eggs in the fridge with our names all over them. And I picked up some frozen blueberries yesterday, too. A nice blueberry smoothie is just the right way to start off a Saturday while we cook breakfast. What do ya think?”