Housemates

Chapter 31

Ellie spent most the next day at work trying to concentrate on what she was doing, and trying not to obsess about Mia.

She didn’t really manage to do either.

She worked a little, and talked to people, and answered the phone, but she was unfocused and vague and her attention kept wandering.

She was trying to work, but mostly she was just thinking about Mia. About Mia’s legs and Mia’s grin, about how Mia’s skin had smelled the day they’d gone to the market, and how her mouth had tasted in the alleyway behind the supermarket.

Most of all about the silky feel of Mia’s skin.

Ellie thought a lot about Mia’s skin.

She could remember exactly how Mia’s skin felt, all silky and soft and smooth, and she could remember exactly how much that turned her on. She could remember, too, how Mia’s skin didn’t feel quite the same as her own, and she couldn’t completely work out the difference.

Several times, almost by accident, she put her hand on her arm and stroked it gently, the way she’d stroked Mia, thinking. It wasn’t anything as simple as the shape of their arms, or how squishy they each were, or that Mia might have a little more muscle. It was nothing to do with what was underneath, and everything to do with just skin, the layer of silkiness over the top of the actual her. Mia’s skin felt different. The texture of her skin was slightly different to Ellie’s, slightly smoother, and perhaps slightly warmer too.

Ellie found that fascinating.

Ellie thought a lot about Mia, and her skin, and her legs and her kisses, and when she wasn’t thinking about that, or distracted by actual work, she worried.

She worried a lot, about what she was wearing, and about how she looked.

Ellie had made an awful mistake the day before, and had only realized once she got to work.

She’d been impatient to see Mia. She’d wanted to see Mia as soon as possible after work, so she’d insisted on meeting at five. She hadn’t thought to make it a little later, and to meet somewhere in town.

She hadn’t given herself time to go home and change.

She was never forgetful like that, but now suddenly, for Mia, she was.

And not only that. Worse, far worse, she’d left herself no way to change her mind.

No way without phoning Mark to get Mia’s number, at least, which would mean making all this obvious. And no way without spoiling the whole dramatic effect of the meeting which Ellie had carefully created.

She was stuck.

She was also worried.

She was anxious that Mia would think she hadn’t tried hard enough. She didn’t know what Mia liked, or what Mia expected from her, but Ellie probably wasn’t it right now.

She hadn’t prepared at all. Not for an evening this important.

She’d been running late that morning, and still been half asleep, and hadn’t stopped to think through the consequences of what she was wearing. She’d dressed for work, somehow not quite realizing she’d be wearing the same thing after work too, because of meeting Mia, and that now she was stuck with what she’d picked.

In a way she was glad. Almost glad.

Not thinking beforehand meant she hadn’t got up an hour early just to worry about what to wear. It meant she hadn’t made herself all anxious over nothing, trying to organize the perfect magical outfit she already knew she didn’t have, one that let her take off a jacket or change her skirt and suddenly transform work-wear into eveningwear. She already knew she didn’t have that outfit, so going out with someone she liked right after work was completely stupid, and yet she’d insisted they did anyway.