Days are awkward

The rest of Sunday passed at a crawl. Natalie kept herself busy with laundry, dishes, anything she could find to keep her busy, choosing to skip her yoga for the morning. She stripped her bed, remade it, washed the old sheets, then stripped it again because she didn’t like the way the fitted sheet clung at the corner. She caught herself replaying last night in her head every time the silence got too deep. Every time she heard him move about. Every time she passed the couch.

She didn’t see much of Aiden, since he mostly stayed in his room, as well. She heard the occasional shuffle, the faint hum of his music through the door. Once, in the afternoon, they crossed paths in the hallway. She stepped aside; he mumbled a thanks. And neither of them looked up.

She tried not to wonder how often he touched himself. Or how often it was about her…

Matt texted sometime around three.

Matt: Hope your weekend’s going alright. Let me know if you want to grab a drink later or something.

She saw the message, read it, and went back to busy work, considering his offer.

A few minutes later, she decided to reply.

Natalie: Been a long day. Maybe another night?

He simply liked the message, choosing not to push.

Later, after dinner, she opened their thread again, scrolled back, and read some of the older messages from earlier in the week, where the teasing had started to pick up. She almost smiled at one of his dumb GIF replies. Almost. But it didn’t feel the same anymore.

She tossed her phone on the couch and wandered into the kitchen, stopping herself just short of grabbing wine. She didn’t need to add drunk guilt to whatever this was already becoming. Wine contributed to last night, which didn’t bode well for her self-control.

Instead, she stood at the island, staring at the couch. The same spot where Aiden had leaned back the night before, breathing heavy, his hips bucking under his own hand. Her stomach clenched.

She turned off the light and went to bed early, but sleep didn’t come easily. Every nerve was too alert, and her thoughts too tangled. And the apartment, felt too quiet.

Chapter 46

Aiden didn’t do much on Sunday, either. At least nothing he’d be proud of. He stayed in his room most of the day, clicking through YouTube until the autoplay landed on something he didn’t recognize from his head zoning out, or gaming half-heartedly. Eventually, the controller slipped to the floor, and he didn’t bother picking it up.

He was trying not to think about the night before and how much she’d heard him, or seen. He kept replaying the moment in his head: that faint shift, the soft squeak of her foot against the vinyl, the sound of her door. The same thoughts he had at breakfast.

If she had seen him, if she’d stood there, even for a second, watching him jerk off on the couch, why hadn’t she said anything? Why hadn’t she looked at him that morning? Scolded him? Yelled at him? Smiled with that certain look she can get… He immediately pushed the last thought out of his head. Shit was bad enough; he didn’t need to turn last night into more of a reason for her to be pissed at him.

She’d stood at the coffee machine with her back to him the whole time, not even a glance his way. It had felt like a deliberate sign to him. He couldn’t tell if it was shame, embarrassment, or something worse. Maybe she was disgusted. Maybe she was trying to pretend it didn’t happen.

His gut twisted. Technically, he hadn’t done anything wrong other than not choosing to go to his room, but she wasn’t supposed to be up, she went to bed. He didn’t know she was there. It wasn’t like he’d been flaunting it, but still, knowing she might’ve seen everything left him shaken in a way he didn’t know how to process.

He thought about messaging one of his friends or heading out to kill a few hours, but the idea of putting on real clothes and acting like everything was fine felt exhausting. Instead, he stayed in. Door closed, with his video games, laptop and phone, listening to music in an effort to drown out his own thoughts.

He followed her movements through the apartment without meaning to. Footsteps crossing the hall, dishes clinking in the kitchen, her voice drifting from the other room while she talked on the phone. And even though he couldn’t make out the words, he kept listening, hoping to hear something in her tone that would tell him how she felt - angry, embarrassed, anything. But there was nothing. Just silence when she hung up, and the dread he felt pressing in harder than before.

Every so often, he found himself glancing toward the hallway, half-hoping she might walk past and say something. Maybe a joke, maybe a teasing jab, anything to cut through the silent treatment. But she never did.

By the time the apartment finally went quiet that night, his body was tight with frustration. He didn’t touch himself again. He wanted to, needed to even, but it felt like that was what had started all of this in the first place, and that doing it again might make everything worse.

What if she heard? What if she didn’t leave this time…? Yeah, great, then he could really impress her with what a perv he was by giving her a live encore. Real smooth. Or maybe, just once, he could keep it in his pants and stop acting like a fucking idiot.

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