Like No Other

OCTOBER 6, 2010

Trey sat in the front and Emma in the back. Jeremiah tried to make conversation but it was mostly him and Trey doing all the talking. Emma simply sat in the back and willed herself not to fall asleep. Btu Jeremiah had it so warn inside his luxury vehicle. And the beige leather seats were comfortable and easy to sink into. The car vibrated underneath her like it was rocking her to sleep soothingly. Emma shuffled and wished that she could unbutton her pants again.

Jetlag was a bitch.

Jeremiah made a joke about living in the boonies when he pulled onto Emma's grovel road. "This is your house?" he commented once he got a good look at it though. Emma was glad her yard wasn't ridiculously overgrown though it still needed cutting. "This is a nice place."

Emma thanked him while the two of them waited for her to unlock the door so that they could put the bags inside. She glanced over her shoulder once to assure herself that her cat was either inside or gone from the house since he was not sunbathing atop the garage. The air conditioning wasn't as low as it was usually set because they'd been away from home but it had been getting colder by the second outside to her so she didn't mind when she stepped into the scented air.

"Smell good in here," Trey commented while they put the things on the foyer floor. There was a little afternoon light coming from the tall windows beside the door and the dome shaped glass right above it. The living room view provided a lot of light from the front lawn and the white of Jeremiah's BMW threw more sunshine into the space.

"Look," Emma said, not realizing how deeply domesticated they were to an outside eye like Jeremiah's. He watched Emma grab Trey's arm and turn him towards a table in the hallway a ways down beside the large staircase. There was a gel air freshener there. "Glade. Baby they're like a dollar," she said with glee at being so shop savvy as to find something so effective at such a price. "I grabbed like 30 of them." They both chuckled at her habit of buying her necessities in bulk and Trey cupped her head and brought her forehead to his lips, not really a kiss but a kiss by definition. She yawned into his shirt.

"Thanks again," Trey said to Jeremiah.

His brother looked offended. "What I don't get no tour? Whatcho rushing me off for?"

Emma giggled and waved him further into the house. "You can have a tour," she said in a friendly way though she didn't want to give him a tour for nothing in the world. She wanted to go to bed. And she had to pee.

"Maybe some other time," Trey interjected.

Jeremiah shrugged and shook his head. He turned for the door. Emma called over Trey's shoulder that it was good seeing him again. Jeremiah nodded solemnly and opened the door himself, Trey on his heels. They both partook in that man hug where they shook hands and wrapped one arm around the other at the same time. Trey followed him out onto the large porch that wrapped around her entire home and mumbled about being tired and hell. Jeremiah made a joke only the two of them could hear. Emma turned from their grinning and chuckling antics for the stairs. To hell with the bags and all that.

She went upstairs and grinned at the sudden scent change in the air due to the different flavor of Glade gel air freshener. She wished, while she walked into the bathroom to handle her business, that she'd found those little things sooner.

One glance around her bathroom made her glad that she'd tried to keep things at neat as she could before she left. Her closet was another situation entirely but the linen on the bed was fresh and the sinks were clean. The hardwood floors in her bedroom and the black and white tile in her bath had been swept before they'd left. Emma stripped to nothing as soon as she finished on the privy. She turned on the water, waiting for the pipes to heat up while she hung her pants and shirt over the closet door familiarly. She put her shoes back in the box and then left them there atop her dresser in the closet where they clearly didn't belong uncaringly. Emma washed the makeup off her face and was drying off with a towel when she heard Trey on her squeaky floors in her bedroom.