Housemates

Chapter 49

Ellie sat beside Mia for a while, quietly, stroking Mia’s skin.

Mia wasn’t talking, and Ellie didn’t really expect her to. She didn’t actually expect Mia to make conversation any more. Ellie stayed quiet too, because she didn’t want to talk too much and seem needy, or whatever she might seem.

She was getting used to Mia’s silences, she decided. She wasn’t finding them uncomfortable any more. Getting used to them, and almost getting to appreciate them. Silence was nice, in some ways. Mia’s silences saved Ellie from having to think up things to say.

Ellie sat, and stroked, and thought. She thought in a way that wasn’t really thinking at all.

About warmth, and silky skin under her hand, and Mia, and very little else.

After a while she needed the bathroom, but she couldn’t be bothered moving yet. She liked having Mia there, in front of her, bare. She liked the gentle touching, and the way Mia’s hand was resting on her knee.

She decided to wait.

Needing the bathroom distracted her though.

She started trying to remember exactly when she was supposed to pee after sex, and what she had to have done for it to matter. She couldn’t actually remember. She didn’t think it was all sex, because she’d never heard she needed to after she’d touched herself. And if it wasn’t all sex, she thought, only sex with things inside her, especially unhygienic things inside her, then maybe she didn’t need to all the time. So maybe she didn’t need to any more. Not with Mia. Which would be nice, she thought. It would be very nice not having to run off right afterwards all the time.

Even though she needed to right now.

She decided she’d quite like to know, and that she ought to ask, because Mia would probably know. And because thinking about it too much was making her need to more urgently, and that wasn’t much fun.

“Hey,” she said. “Do I need to pee after sex?”

Mia lay there for a moment, looking at Ellie. She seemed a bit surprised. “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you?”

Ellie shrugged. “I’m asking.”

“You don’t know?” Mia said, still surprised.

“How would I?”

Mia kept looking at Ellie for a moment, and then started laughing.

Ellie thought, and realized what she’d just said. It sounded a little silly, but not silly enough for how Mia was acting. Mia was laughing like she was about to cry, like some terrible solemnity had suddenly lifted. Perhaps she just got giggly after sex, Ellie thought, or perhaps Ellie really had said something odd.

She was fairly sure it hadn’t been that bad.

“Not right now, I mean,” she said. “I mean like as a rule.”

Mia nodded. She was trying to speak. She had her mouth open, and was gasping for air, but she wasn’t actually getting any words out past her laughter. She was shaking, and had her arms folded around herself. She tried to speak, but laughed instead before she managed more than a word.

She tried again, and this time Ellie heard, “I don’t know, can’t you tell?”

Which was sort of funny, as a thing to say, but not really worth all the laughing Mia was doing.

Mia went back to laughing, a kind of breathless uncontrolled laughing like Ellie hadn’t seen anyone do in years.

“Stop it,” Ellie said. “Please?”