Kate puled up next to the curb in front of the apartment. James was sitting on the front steps of the squat brick cookie-cutter apartment building. Kate shook her head as she cleared the memories of that night 4 years ago. She'd slept with the doc, in the bed with the curtains closed, and closed well. She might not normally be a prude, but too much was just too much.
As they headed inside, James didn't take her small "emergency bag" that she kept for when she spilled coffee at work or got stranded due to weather. He didn't hold her hand or open doors. There was no pretense that this relationship was anything more than two people who were lonely and didn't hate each other occasionally spending the night together.
They shed their shoes and jackets in the living room, then made their way to the bedroom. It was her habit to walk in, get undressed, and crawl into bed, where James would be waiting. They would have sex, and Kate would either sleep there or go home, depending on the schedule and the day. It was not a big deal. It certainly wasn't a growing or deepening relationship, which was good. Kate would have run away screaming if it had turned into one.
Kate was open to a relationship, maybe. Not marriage, certainly, but finding someone she could live with and share life with wouldn't be horrible. James just wasn't in the running. He was just... dull. He lacked ambition, both in bed and in life. Kate found absolutely nothing interesting about him, and when they talked she had to feign interest in amateur basketball leagues and movies she had no desire to see. It was good that they didn't find the need to talk much.
Tonight, Kate didn't much feel like having sex. She was physically drained, emotionally stressed, and had a headache that didn't seem to want to go away.
If I crawl in bed with my clothes on and try to just go to sleep, I'll have to deal with him kissing on me and touching me and trying to turn me on. Which means even if I put the actual sex off until morning, I won't really get to sleep. If I just take my clothes off and go through the motions to get him off, it will take less time and I'll likely get to sleep faster. God, I hope he hasn't been drinking much... I don't want to have to deal with the extra time it takes him. Shit.
Kate pulled her stretchy tee over her head and stood in her white bra and dark jeans as she removed her jewelry and emptied her pockets into her purse. Unbuttoning her jeans, she briefly considered going to bed in her bra and panties, but it wasn't like that was going to turn him on more or make him want her. He would be turned on because she was with him, but it could have been any woman as far as his dumbstick was concerned. Hell, he wasn't even watching her undress in the moonlight. James had shed his shorts and sweatshirt quickly, and already crawled into bed. His back was turned to her, as it usually was when she was undressing. She wished she could believe he was being polite somehow, but knew it was simple indifference.
A lot of people might be hurt by this knowledge, but Kate saw it in a far more practical view. This was not a matter of the heart, it was a matter of practicality. They were merely trading value for value. He wanted to put his dumbstick someplace warm and wet, and she wanted to sleep next to something with a heartbeat and have a place to crash closer to work. If she had given him a spare laptop in exchange for some car repairs, nobody would have batted an eye; but somehow a woman using her body to get what she needed was taboo. But let's face it - women are almost always more likely to have boobs and a vag than they are a spare laptop. More conservative folk would hear that and immediately have visions (from God) of cots fitted with stirrups in the back of the local brake shop where desperate women spread their legs and risked damning their eternal souls to pay a debt to an evil mechanic who overcharged them to begin with. Please. Sex might be best when it was within a loving relationship, and she admired the few people she knew who had that. But that didn't mean it wasn't good other times, or that it couldn't be used in other ways. It didn't mean the world would suddenly turn into one huge orgy - although...
As she slid into the bed, she rolled her eyes at the bare mattress and mismatched un-covered pillows. When you added the hodgepodge of college-logo blankets and the few errant socks and t-shirts that lay at the foot of the bed, it was evident that he cared little for the impression his home made on guests. Kate had heard stories of single men who lived this way, but by the time she hit her late 20's, most of the guys she knew had cleaned up their act, either because they got married or had kids, or because they realized that women weren't thrilled about looking at the shit.
James made the obligatory attempt at turning her on, but that wasn't what he was interested in. He asked - again - if she'd let him use the "back door". That was his thing. His ultimate goal. For him, sex couldn't be extraordinary unless he literally got some ass. But he knew better than to push it, so when she said "tonight's not a good night", he didn't ask again. Kate pretended to be ready to go, and sighed heavily as she whispered for him to please just fuck her. Like she wanted it bad and couldn't wait. Because that's what men liked and it would get her to where she wanted to be sooner.
Five minutes later, Kate was snuggled up with her pillow, wrapped up in a fleece throw proclaiming the owner to be the "World's #1 Michigan Fan". Whatever. It was warm and he had all the "real" blankets wrapped around his somewhat doughboy-like figure. She closed her eyes and drifted off to a world where the man lying next to her looked oddly similar to a young Tommy Lee Jones, had the mind of Ayn Rand or Einstein, and could hold a conversation like she imagined her favorite fiction writers could. It was a nice place.
In the morning, Kate's alarm went off early. Really early. She'd told him last night that she had to get the kids in the morning so she wouldn't have to deal with the awkward morning discussion that one always has after a one-night-stand or something similar. She slid out of bed, dressed, and thanked him for "last night" as she fastened the strap on her sandals. Grabbing her purse, she headed out the door. She walked up the street to her car, noting that she didn't feel the "walk of shame" shame that people talked about. She didn't care if other people thought she should be embarrassed because she spent the night with someone. Other people didn't get to tell her how to feel any more, and if there was shame to be felt, it should be by the people who believed their ideals should dictate how everyone else lived. Fuck them. It was still a free country in many ways, and she would use that freedom as she chose. She didn't force them to live like she did, or show them scorn because they didn't, so she refused to let their shame over her actions affect the way she lived. If she got burned by her choices in the end, she was the one who would have to deal with those consequences.
As always, Kate was thankful when her car started. She headed towards home, knowing the kids would be at Lee's until late that evening. Almost automatically, Kate flipped her blinker to take the exit to the Witch's Brew where the Jen the Amazing Barista would whip up a triple grande half-caf non-fat no-whip marble mocha without having to stop and think about it. And where Jen the Amazing Barista wouldn't ask questions about what Kate was doing up and about so early.
