I woke up to a strange sensation against my face. I didn't know how long I had been feeling it but it was kind of getting on my nerves. After a few minutes of trying to ignore the sensation, I give up and look around. Turns out my head is resting on Chez's stomach and she was cradling my face. I briefly pondered how I got there, but then registered that she wasn't at work.
"Surprise!" she says, gently squeezing my face. "What are you still doing here?" I ask, groggily. I could barely get the words out, my throat was so dry. She sighed. "I called in. Those motherfuckers will not rob me of my sanity, just yet."
"How long you been up?" I ask.
"Probably three hours. I'm surprised you slept through me taking a shower, loud as it is." I chuckle. It was loud. "I'm so glad you're awake. Now we can find something to do."
"What, you don't wanna hit the movies anymore?" I ask, wiping my eyes.
"Considering that note you got, I never wanna see the inside of a theater again. You got any other ideas?" she inquired. I yawn. "I can't think of anything right now, I barely know my name." I respond. She chuckles. "You're so dramatic." she says, still stroking my face. "You're one to talk." I counter, moving myself up to where she was. She stops scrolling her phone to acknowledge me. Her hair falls on my face as she comes in for a kiss. I smooch her back, but push her away when she tries to gain entrance into my mouth. "Stop, I haven't even brushed yet." I warn, giggling. "I don't care, give me a kiss."
"That's disgusting." I say, giggling. She rolls her eyes. "As many times as I done ate your ass, you think I'm afraid of some tart breath?" she asked rhetorically, with a brow raised. I cackled heartily. "It was clean!" I counter. "Girl, gimme a damn kiss." she says again. This time she leans in again and I give in.
She got to feeling on me, but I knew I had to stay strong. I was not going to give into her touch again. I feel myself leaking as she rubbed her hand over my bare thigh. I hated that she could just get me to that point of submission with no effort. I pulled away before it really got started today, though. I knew if it went any further, somebody's hands would have been inside somebody else and I was still trying to prove to myself that I could stand to be around Chez without sex.
"Alright, get off me. I got a damn headache."
"You good?" she asks, scanning my face.
"Yeah." I reassure her. Honestly though, I did feel a little off. It wasn't too bad but headaches are annoying, period. She goes back to scrolling her phone. "Okay, back to finding something to do... Or do you wanna just lay around?"
"Wouldn't mind that." I respond. I was perfectly okay with spending the whole day at home with her. I wasn't in the best shape to leave the house anyway, plus I hate last minute shit. "Ooh, I know what we can do. Let's make a date jar. We gon' be in the house, but we can still do something fun." I furrow my eyebrows. "Wait, wait. You wanna make a date jar?" I ask. "What the hell is that?"
"It's where you get a bunch of popsicle sticks, write a bunch of date ideas on 'em, and stick 'em in a jar. Whenever you need an idea to as to what to do, you just pick one without looking."
"Oh." I say. "I don't have popsicle sticks." I warn.
"Welp, it looks like I'll need to go get some." she said.
"Is there not an alternative? You could use paper, right?"
She gasped like she was offended. I chuckled. "I am a DIY king. I am a perfectionist when it comes to stuff like that. So, no. There is no alternative to using popsicle sticks."
I furrowed my eyebrows at how invested she was. "Well, fine, then." I say. Immediately after, I started cramping. "Aahhhh." I seethe, rolling away from her. I knew I needed to make my way to the bathroom, because now I was sure what was going on. "Ah, hell. It must be that time, huh?" Chez asked. Instead of answering her, I just groaned in a dramatic fashion. She giggled. "What you need?" she asks me. "Pills? Tampons? Pads?" I finally sat up and reached over for the overnight bag I had from our last trip. I ruffle through my things and find my bottle of pills. Much to my displeasure, I find only a single fucking pill. I also discover that I have but six tampons left. I open the bottle, dumping the last pill into my hand. Then, I pop it into my mouth. Then I take a sip of whatever was left in my cup from last night. Turns out it was water. I knew this pill wasn't gonna do much of anything but it was better than nothing. Finally, I respond. "Yeah, I'm gonna need all o' that."
"What kind of tampons?"
"Regular, everything is regular."
"Regular." she repeated to herself, in a whisper.
She hops up out the bed. "Okay. I'll just go to the spot up the street, I'll be back." she says.
A few minutes later I finally make my way to the bathroom and find that I was indeed on my cycle. I quickly figured out that that is what I felt earlier on. After thanking the universe for giving me the wherewithal to stop Chez in her tracks, I proceeded to do my business. I knew I had enough time to hop in the shower and brush my teeth before she got back.
When Chez got back approximately a half an hour later, we got started with our project. She was dead ass serious about this damn date jar. She had picked up some plain popsicle sticks, a couple bottles of acrylic paint, a box of sharpies, some paintbrushes, and some ribbon. She also had a few mason jars. I furrowed my eyebrows at the sight. "Isn't this a bit much?" I ask. She furrowed her brows, too. "Is there even such a thing?" I don't respond. "I figure we could have a lot of fun while making this. You can watch me in my element of putting little knick knacks together, and I get to watch you try your hand at it. Win-win."
I raised a brow in such a manner that made Chez rethink exactly what she said. "Try?"
"Oh, God." she said, massaging the bridge of her nose.
"No, let's settle this, right now. I bet my sticks will look better than yours."
"Don't play with me like that, Mick." she said, failing to understand that I was dead serious.
I chuckle sinisterly. "I say we make two jars. One can be for dates and the other can be for themes! Remember, we talked about having themes for our dates. So, you make the date jar, I'll make the theme jar. Whoever's jar looks the best has to do whatever the other says for a week."
"What are you, 12?" she jokes.
"So what I'm hearing is you are not up for a competition. Hmm... it kinda smell like bitch in here." I say.
"You're on." she declares. And that was when we made a space on the floor and covered it with newspaper. I figured I could probably get through this because at this point I had swallowed two Advil from the bottle she gave me.
Honestly, even if I was still feeling cramped, I was still going to push through to beat Chez at her own game, period. After setting the newspaper down, we sat all of the materials in the middle. We each had our own separate mason jar as well as popsicle sticks, but everything else would be shared. I go straight for some yellow paint, 'cause I already knew I was going for a rainbow theme. Who doesn't love colorful shit? We talked our slick shit to each other as we decorated our jars. We take little glances at what the other is doing, but for the most part we focused on our own jar.
After a little bout of silence, Chez breaks it. "Baby." she called. "Hmm?" I respond, writing a theme down on an orange popsicle stick. "What's another date idea?" she asks. We had been throwing out different ideas to write down on our sticks, because of course we don't wanna find anything too crazy once we go to pick something. "Uh, I dunno. Maybe... rock climbing?"
"Hell, no." she says. I crack up. "Alright, alright. Um... how about...the kitchen? Like, we can cook something special together in the kitchen."
She smiles. "That would be a cute idea." she remarks. "How come we haven't done that yet?"
"Mmm, I don't know. That could be fun." I say.
"Ay, what's a fun theme for a date? I did all the typical stuff— holidays and all that, but what's another good theme?"
"Lingerie." she says, looking dead at me, biting her lip. I could tell she was imagining me in some skimpy little leather outfit. I raise a brow. "Lingerie? Is this your way of telling me you want me in lingerie?" She giggles. "How the fuck do you even make that into a theme, anyway?"
"I don't know how, but I think it would be sexy." she said, with a devilish smile. "I don't know about all that. I don't wear shit like that." I said, debating if I should actually write it down. As a matter of fact, I couldn't really imagine her in anything like that, either. Now, I was holding a green popsicle stick in my hand. "I mean, it's no pressure, but before you count it out, think of it as something temporary." she sets her brush down for a second, like she was daydreaming. "Lingerie is kinda like gift wrap. You know how it is, at Christmas. You see the present under the tree and the wrapping paper is just calling out to you. You're excited to be near it 'cause you're dreaming of when you can see what's inside. So boom, Christmas morning you get so excited to be face to face with that gift wrap again. And then, when you can no longer restrain yourself anymore, you rip it off and enjoy what's inside." she had a look of lust in her eye when she turned back to me. "You nasty son of a bitch." I remarked, shaking my head. This bitch just sexualized Christmas. I finally picked up my sharpie, and wrote something on the popsicle stick. "Whatever, you wrote it down though." she says. I crack up. She was right, I did.
A while later, I showcase my jar. It looked like some shit straight off of Pinterest. I had popsicle sticks of all colors inside the jar, with cutesy little hearts at both ends of the popsicle sticks. I also took every color of string she bought and made a braided bow, tying it on my jar. It was as beautiful as you could make a glass jar. "Wow." Chez says, smiling wide. "That is really nice." she says. I return the smile. "Thank you." I say. Then she picks up her mason jar, which had a lot of red, white, and black on it. Her popsicle sticks were painted black, white, and red. She used a magic marker that showed up white on the black and red popsicles, and used red and black sharpie on the white sticks. She used the black sharpie and the magic marker on the red sticks as well. I had to give it to the bitch, she had an eye for detail. She decorated the red and white popsicles with polka dots, and gave the black ones a simple white border. Her jar was tied with a bunch of white, black and red string. After making a bow, she grabbed a pair of scissors and dragged it along the length of the end of the string, curling it as tightly as she could. The whole thing was giving me ladybug tease, while mine was looking more like a Lisa Frank thing, minus the animal print. "It's pretty cool." I admit. She giggles, and we get to cleaning our mess up.
After having a quick meal, I came back in the room to lay down. I couldn't help but keep looking at Chez's mason jar. I took a picture of our jars sitting next to each other. I was gonna have my subscribers vote for our jars in a poll to determine the winner. I wouldn't let anybody know that it was a competition, nor let them know that two people made a jar. I wanted their honest opinion of which jar looks better. Chez comes into the room as I've uploaded the picture to YouTube. "Hey, I'm gonna have YouTube decide whose jar is better."
She snaps her own picture of the jars and plops herself on the bed, snickering. "Welp, I'm gonna ask Facebook."
"Ask 'em, then. All they gon' do is choose mine."
She giggles. Once she was done, she put her phone down and snuggled up to me. More specifically, my back. I was still fixated on her mason jar though. It looked amazing. I secretly liked it more than mine, but I'd never let her know that. "Quick question." I began. "Ask away." she replied. "What made you go with the ladybug theme?"
"Well, I feel like the red and black represents my masculinity, but I'm still pretty dainty like a lady, you know?"
"I guess. I see it now, I think... Yeah, it fits you. You know what? That's my new nickname for you. Ladybug. It's great."
"I wish you would. You gon be walking around, calling somebody 'Ladybug'. Everybody else gon' expect to see a kid running off, but here my grown ass go, talkin' bout 'huh'?" she said.
I chuckle. "I don't think it should be that surprising for a stud to answer to that. I mean, when you think about it, ladybugs are studs. Or tomboys, at the very least."
Chez chortled. "Shut up."
"Oh, shit. We got so carried away with the jars, that we didn't even pick what date night is gonna be." I remind her.
"Go ahead and pick it, then."
I sit up and reach for the ladybug jar, sitting it on my lap. I lower my hand into the jar and look at Chez as I pull something. I pull a black stick out and look down at what it said. I chuckle wryly at what it said and show Chez.
"Pick another one." she said. I tossed the stick that said 'movies' to the side. I look at Chez again as I reach for another stick. This time I pull out a red one, and it said 'skating'. I frown. "Not happening." I say. I pass the jar over to Chez, because obviously I wasn't picking anything good. She looks at me as she reaches for a white popsicle. She didn't read it, she just tossed it to me. I look at it. It said 'dinner'.
"Dinner. I can dig it....tomorrow, probably."
"That's cool, we can try a new spot. You sure you'll be okay tomorrow?"
"Yeah. First day of the cycle is always the worst. I'll be aight."
"Okay."
"But since we can't go out tonight, how about we try that kitchen date we were talking about earlier?"
"Okay, that oughta be fun." she says, as I put the sticks back in the jar. I put it back up on the dresser and laid back down, glancing at whatever the fuck was on the TV.