“Okay, this is getting ridiculous,” Kinsey groaned as she stood to pull her clothes on, too annoyed with herself to care that she was standing there fully nude in front of Taylor.
“Ridiculous but good,” Taylor grinned, his drunken orgasmic afterglow still shining brightly. Kinsey glared at him and yanked her tank top almost violently over her head.
“It doesn’t matter how good it is, Taylor. It’s still wrong,” she huffed going over to the bed to yank up the sheet, hiding his deliciously naked body from her sight. She fisted her hands in her hair and pulled it lightly, wishing he would stop staring dopily at the ceiling and take the situation seriously.
“Is it?” he asked, rolling over lazily and propping himself up on his elbow, “I mean, we’re two consenting adults so what’s the big deal?”
“What’s the big deal?” she repeated, “How about that your brothers have no idea what we’ve done three times now! Or that we’ve done nothing but annoy each other for the last ten years.”
“Hm… ten years ago. What happened ten years ago?” he asked, a look of fake concentration on his face as he obviously was making a point and wanted her to reach the conclusion before he was forced to tell her.
“Just spit it out, Taylor.”
“That’s when we hit puberty, Kinsey. We started fighting when our bodies started going into psycho hormonal mode. Don’t you find that interesting?” he asked. Kinsey just crossed her arms across her stomach and suddenly felt very uncomfortable.
“When did you figure that out?” she asked softly. He laughed lightly.
“It took me longer than I’d like to admit. But you obviously never thought of it.”
“That’s because I never thought of you in that way until just a few weeks ago when I had a stupid sex dream about you.”
“Never? Not even once?”
“Not even ever,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him.
“Hm…” he said, “Thanks a lot.” She threw her hands up exasperatedly.
“I’m not going to apologize for the fact that I wasn’t having lusty feelings and secretly pining away for you, Taylor!” she exclaimed, “You’ve just always been such an obnoxious pain in my ass that I never thought of you that way. And now that I have thought about you like that, you still piss me off as much as ever!”
“Right back atcha,” he said, collapsing onto his back, “Especially right now.”
“What do you want from me, Taylor? Do you want me to fall into your lap and tell you that I’ve been waiting for so long for you to want me and get all gooey and mushy, because that’s not how it is and I won’t do it.”
“Of course I don’t want that. All I want is for you to admit that what we’re doing actually kind of makes sense and that since it hasn’t changed our relationship in any way since we still bug the crap out of each other, then we should keep doing it since it feels good!”
“You mean like… be friends with benefits?” she asked, crinkling up her nose.
“Obviously you’re not interested. Just go back to your room,” he said dismissively.
“Oh don’t cop an attitude with me just because I need a minute to think about this,” she said, sitting down on the edge of his bed, “So, we would just agree to hook up again when the other person wants to? Like an in house booty call?”
“We don’t have to be so official about it,” Taylor snorted, “I just think we should know that the option is there if we want to take advantage of it.”
“You mean take advantage of each other,” she said, shaking her head, “It just doesn’t seem right.”
“I’m not asking you to sign a binding contract here, Kins. All I’m trying to say is that we know that we have good sex with each other, and neither of us are in a relationship right now, so if we want to have sex we can without having the same damned “Oh my god, what did we just do??” conversation when it happens again. Which it will whether or not we have an agreement,” he told her matter of factly.
“I don’t know…” she said.
“Oh my god. Forget I said anything. I’ll see you in a week when you get drunk and horny again. I really look forward to having this same conversation with you again,” he said snidely.
“See? This is why I’m having doubts, Taylor. Because now, in addition to all the other stuff we’ve always fought about, we now have all of these really intimate things with all of the stupid intimate feelings you can’t help but experience with people you’ve slept with. Your brothers will find out eventually, and they will not understand our arrangement.”
“Well, if Isaac’s an ass about it, he’s the world’s biggest hypocrite.”
“Isaac and Tif were dating,” Kinsey pointed out.
“But they started out as fuck buddies. Did Tif fail to tell you that very important part of the story? Because that’s what Isaac told Zac and I. They were fuck buddies for two months before they started dating,” Taylor said, “That was the part they were afraid to tell us about. Not about their relationship, but the stuff that happened before it. So, Ike can’t get pissed. And if Zac does, well… he’ll get over it.”
Kinsey looked at him and wanted desperately to say yes. Sex with Taylor was unlike any other sex she’d had before and all she could think about in the back of her mind during their entire conversation was the fact that he was still naked under that sheet. They had already opened Pandora’s Box and his reasoning did make sense, she was just having a really hard time keeping the guilty pangs in her gut at bay.
“Friends with benefits relationships never work,” she said simply.
“We can make it work. And if it doesn’t, then we’ll stop,” Taylor said.
“Fine. But only if we stop if things get weird,” she stated. He extended his bare arm towards hers, expecting a handshake. She shook his hand, then found herself fighting against him as he tried to pull her back in bed next to him. “We are not starting now. Good night Taylor. And… you might want to take care of that before you go to sleep.” Kinsey nodded her head towards the tent forming in the sheets. Instead of trying to cover himself up, he put his hands behind his head and stretched out, grinning at her the entire time.
“Will do,” he smirked. She sighed and got up, heading for the door, but pausing before opening it.
“When did you first think about me like that?” she asked.
“Well, the first time was a long time before the next time and it was completely involuntary.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had my first wet dream about you,” he told her.
“Gross! Good night!” she laughed, leaving and quietly walking across the hallway to her own bedroom. As she lay in bed, all she could think about was not her new status with Taylor, but rather about how it would affect her relationships with Isaac and Zac when they found out. In Kinsey’s mind, it was not a matter of if they would find out, but rather when. She knew that they could only press their luck with hidden romps for so long before they were found out. But somehow, the terrible idea of being caught wasn’t enough of a deterrent to keep her from agreeing to Taylor’s proposal. Sure, he was probably right about the fact that it would undoubtedly happen again whether or not they agreed to be friends with benefits. The sex was far too good to go ignored when they lived in rooms next to one another, especially when they were both single. Forcing herself to stop all of her many simultaneous thought processes, she turned on her TV and zoned out until she finally fell asleep.
The next morning, Kinsey awoke to the smell of cooking bacon and she rose with a smile on her face. After pulling on a sweatshirt, she scurried downstairs to find the kitchen in the most ungodly state of mess and chaos imaginable. Bits of food and abandoned cooking utensils and pans littered the counters, something was cooking on each of the four burners on the stove, and there were grocery bags stuffed full of ridiculous and unnecessary foods all over the floor.
“What the fuck is this?” she asked, completely unable to make herself go into the disaster area.
“What? We brought home some groceries,” Zac said as if the answer was painfully obvious.
“And a kitchen apocalypse, apparently,” she said, crossing her arms and shaking her heads at them. Finally mustering up the nerve to step inside, Kinsey looked into some of the bags to find that they were mostly full of cookies, candy, and a few thick and expensive steaks. “Who taught you three how to grocery shop?”
“I’m not going to tell Mom you said that,” Isaac told her, pointing a wooden spoon in her direction before stirring a skillet full of scrambled eggs with it.
“How much money did you guys spend?” she asked. When none of them answered and didn’t even look up at her, she knew the answer was something in the astronomical range. Instead of further addressing them, she stormed upstairs and sat down at her computer, opening a Word document and starting to type furiously. The hunger pangs she’d been experiencing ever since she’s first smelled the bacon they were cooking didn’t go away, but she worked through them, refusing to eat the food they’d bought. If it had been the first time they’d overspent at the grocery store, she wouldn’t have been mad, but every single time they went to the store they spent more than twice what they should have in order to stock their cabinets and fridge with good, logical foods. She stayed in her room for the next several hours, working on her project and then leaving her room only to take a shower. Once she had gotten ready for the day, she gathered all of her materials and shoved a sheet of paper under each of their doors, gathering that they had all retreated there from the sounds of music playing in all of their rooms. The sheets had informed them that they would have having a house meeting in a half hour.
She found that they had somewhat cleaned up their mess by at least putting the messy dishes in the sink and putting the bags of non-perishable groceries on the counter. While she waited for them to make their way downstairs, she begrudgingly put away all of their junk food and emptied the dishwasher so their messy dishes could go inside to be run through several times from the looks of them.
“A house meeting?” Taylor asked skeptically from the doorway.
“Sit,” she ordered, pointing to the kitchen table. He rolled his eyes at her and sat down.
“We were going to deal with that stuff after we’d showered, just so you know,” he informed her, but she didn’t want to hear it. She was too busy organizing her things on the kitchen counter. Zac and Isaac peeked their heads in the room a few minutes later. Kinsey didn’t turn around to see them do that, but she had heard them approach down the hallway and knew that they would be just as curious about Kinsey’s meeting as Taylor had been.
“Come in and sit down,” she said, not looking up from her papers.
“Should we be scared?” Zac asked her, but Taylor answered instead.
“She has charts and shit. I’d say yes,” he said blandly. Kinsey turned to glare at him and saw that Zac and Isaac had seated themselves at the table as well, so she decided to get the meeting started. The sooner it started, the sooner it could finish and they could start anew.
“Ever since we started living here, I’ve had some concerns,” she began, “Not about my decision to move here, because I love many things about living with you guys. But there are some things that have to change around here. The first thing is the messes you three insist on leaving everywhere. You can make as big of a damned mess in the studio as you want. I don’t care. That’s your space. So are your bedrooms. But the shared spaces have to get taken better care of and a lot of these issues would get taken care of if things would just get picked up as soon as you’re done using them. Like your groceries for example. If you had just put them away as soon you got home, it would have taken the three of you about five minutes to do. So, I’ve made a chore chart with a rotating schedule that goes for the next eight weeks. It has taking out the trash, cleaning duties, loading and unloading the dishwasher, things like that, on it. I’m going to keep this on the fridge so you know what you need to do each week.
“Also, we need to be a little more budget conscious. Since I just contribute what I can and you guys pick up most of everything, I want you three to sit down and agree on a reasonable amount of money to spend on food every week. Not cigarettes, not booze, not hookers,” she teased, “But food. And real food, not just crap. I need to eat, too, and I shouldn’t have to go to the grocery store separately every week. I think that if we take out the grocery money every week in cash and keep it here in this envelope on the fridge, it’ll help us all know what we have left to spend for the week. Does this sound okay to you guys?”
“Yes, mother,” Taylor groaned.
“I am not your mother. Thank god. If I was I would have killed all of you a long time ago,” she sighed, checking her notes to make sure she’d covered everything she wanted to say to them. She knew that she had a tendency to babble and usually forgot an important point or two when giving a big speech, so she had made herself type out all of the key points so she would be sure to talk about them all.
“Don’t you think this was all a bit excessive?” Taylor asked, prompting Isaac and Zac to both give him a warning look.
“No, because if things don’t change, I’m going to start looking for my own place.” As soon as those words came out of her mouth, a look of fear crossed all of their faces.
“Kinsey, if you’ve been that unhappy living here, why didn’t you say something sooner?” Isaac asked almost pleadingly.
“Because you guys are my best friends and I love you and I didn’t want to have to say anything! But I didn’t come here to be your maid and I will not keep doing the bulk of the cleaning and household stuff by myself. Especially not now that I have a job. I understand that you guys have a ton of work to do in the studio and that I have no idea how exhausted it makes you and how stressful it is. All I’m asking is for everyone to take over one or two things a week so it stays clean around here and that way it won’t be a big deal for any of us to manage. Is that okay? I really didn’t want to overstep any bounds here, but it’s getting crazy around this place.”
“You’re fine, Kinsey. Insane and bossy, but fine. And that’s nothing new, so…” Zac teased, standing to give her a hug. Taylor and Isaac stood and went to join Zac over at the fridge to see what she had put them in charge of for the first week.
“Garbage and cleaning the bathroom?” Taylor cried, “You suck!”
“Oh stop whining, it’s not attractive,” she said, gathering up her things, “It’s only for a week.”
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t,” she rolled her eyes as she left the room, heading out to take care of her own chores for the week. If she was the one demanding the changes, she figured the best thing to do was set a good example.
The next morning, Kinsey sat at her desk nervously straightening things while her e-mail loaded, and desperately wanting Tyler to pop his head in her door so Taylor’s head would stop popping in her mind. Their discussion from two nights before was haunting her and she couldn’t believe she’d been stupid enough to agree to being Taylor’s fuck buddy. The thought was so unseemly she shook her head and busied herself by answering e-mails for the first hours of the morning.
Right before lunch, she moseyed down to the kitchen, making sure to walk past Tyler’s office which she found dark with the door closed. As she paused there, looking at his office and looking completely puzzled, she felt someone come to her left side.
“He’s out of the office today,” the guy next to her said as if reading her mind, “You’re Kinsey, right? The new buyer?”
“That’s me,” Kinsey replied, trying not to feel uncomfortable that this guy she’d never seen before knew who she was.
“I’m James,” he said, “I work in legal, too. My office is right down there.” He pointed a few doors down and Kinsey smiled and nodded politely, wishing he would just go away. He kept smiling at her like he knew a secret about her or something and it was not helping her discomfort subside.
“Okay, I’ll just talk to him tomorrow then,” she told him, turning to talk away and moving down the hallway as fast as she could so it would look like brisk walking instead of the almost run it really was.
She went home that night feeling sullen and slightly nervous. Had he considered their date so terrible that he had wanted to avoid being around her for another day and called in sick? Or if it was work related, why hadn’t he told her on their date that he wasn’t going to be in on Friday? Kinsey groaned and shoved open the door, cringing as it banged against the wall, further increasing the indent in the wall.
“Son of a bitch…” she muttered. Isaac appeared out of the living room almost instantly.
“Did you see Tyler?” he asked excitedly.
“No… I need a beer,” she grumbled, shuffling her way to the kitchen and not even bothering to take her coat or laptop bag off. Once she had a Fat Tire in hand, she slumped down in a chair and handed it to Isaac as he approached, silently asking him to open it for her.
“Was he avoiding you?” he asked incredulously, sitting down across from her.
“No, he just wasn’t there,” she moped, taking a long sip of her beer, “I mean… where was he?”
“I’m sure he had something important to do,” Isaac said reassuringly.
“Yeah, being as far away from me as possible,” she moaned dramatically, “Am I that awful?”
“You’re being dramatic, Kinsey,” he laughed at her, “You’re… well, you’re amazing. And there’s no way that he found you so repulsive he had to stay home from work to avoid you. That’s just the most ridiculous idea and I can’t believe you even thought it for a second.”
“I didn’t… not really. I just don’t know what to think,” she sighed. She really hadn’t expected to be so bothered, but then again she had to admit that a guy had never taken so long to talk to her after a date. Though most of her tried to be positive, she couldn’t help the little nagging thought in the back of her brain that wouldn’t stop wondering if it had been her living situation that had scared him away.
Later that night, after she had already brushed her teeth and was just lounging on her bed watching The Daily Show, she heard her bedroom door open. A very sneaky looking Taylor came in, checking the hallway before he shut the door.
“Are you afraid the hall monitor is going to give you a detention?” she asked. He ignored her and came over to lay on his stomach next to her. They lay there watching TV together for a few seconds before the strangeness of it was more than she could take. “What do you want, Taylor?”
“Just watching TV,” he said, obviously lying. She sighed heavily and put the show on mute.
“We don’t hang out, Taylor.”
“We hang out!” he said defensively.
“When is the last time you and I deliberately spent an extended period of time together?”
“Last night,” he smirked.
“That was not hanging out, that was sex.”
“Same thing.”
“Oh really? Is that how you hang out with all of your friends?” she asked snidely. He had no response to that and just grabbed the remote from her hand to turn the sound back on. Without hesitating, she snatched it right back and silenced the TV once more. “What do you want?”
He paused for a moment. “You know…” She sighed disgustedly and shoved his shoulder hard.
“You want to start now?” she asked.
“Can you think of a better time?” he asked, “Come on, I’m bored and I’m horny.”
“Then go watch porn and beat off. I’m tired and have to work in the morning unlike some people,” she said, pushing him away but finding herself countered and pushed onto her back with him on top of her before she could do anything about it. “Taylor, I’m serious.”
“Yeah? So am I. So why don’t you just stop pretending like you don’t want to and go with it.”
“I’m not pretending, I had a bad day!” she exclaimed, putting her hand to his chest to push him off of her, but stopping as he slid a hand into the front of her shorts.
“Oh, wah wah. Tyler didn’t call me! Tyler wasn’t at work today!,” he mocked, “You’ll see him tomorrow and he’ll either ask you out or he won’t. End of story.”
“Can you not make fun of me when you have your hand down my pants? It kind of ruins it for me,” she sassed.
“So you’re agreeable then?” he grinned, working her shorts down her legs. She didn’t answer at first, mainly because she was waiting to see what he was going to do next. As he gently grabbed one ankle and brought a kiss to it, then starting to kiss his way up to her knee, and then the inside of her right thigh, she just settled back into her bedspread and smiled.
“If I must…” she practically purred, lacing her fingers in his hair, “Oh, Taylor….
The next morning, Kinsey yelled at her alarm when it went off. She grumbled at the lights in the bathroom for being too bright, and she scolded the clothes she put on for not matching. When she tried, she couldn’t remember the last time she had been so exhausted. By the time Taylor had finally left her room, it had been well after three in the morning, and her alarm had gone off at six, leaving her less than three hours of sleep coupled with the rigorous physical activities she’d engaged in the night before. But not even those memories could put her in a better mood because even though the sex had been just as amazing as it had been the three times before, it still felt wrong somehow. Probably, she mused as she dumped an entire pot of coffee into an oversized and insulated travel water jug, because it was still Taylor.
As she attempted to put the lid on her “coffee” cup, Zac entered the kitchen.
“Jesus, you look like shit,” he told her.
“Thanks a lot, Zac. You’re such a sweetie,” she snipped.
“Are you feeling okay?”
“Not really,” she admitted. At that moment, she was so exhausted she literally felt nauseous, “Why?”
“I know you, Kinsey, and I know when you’re sick. You can’t go to work like that.”
“Zac, it’s my second week on the job. I can’t call in sick. I’m just exhausted. I had really bad insomnia last night,” she lied, “I’ll pick up something at the drug store to help me sleep on the way home tonight, okay?”
“Take a nap under your desk on your lunch break or something, all right?” he said, “You just look miserable.”
“Yeah, you said that already,” she rolled her eyes. Not only was it entirely likely that she would be seeing Tyler during the day, but now she also knew that she looked like total and completely shit. Before leaving, she ran upstairs and put even more concealer on her dark circles.
“Damn you, Taylor Hanson,” she swore at the mirror before stomping out of the room.