Love Isn't Blind 2 (5 page)

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SHANE STOOD NEAR the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal in one hand and a coffee in the other. His eyes wandered over the unruly pile of lists, brochures and samples that made up their wedding plans, where not an inch of space remained for him to put down his breakfast. The large desk he shared with his fiancée was no better. Between his computer, notebooks, drawing tablet, and the snaking network of cables that powered his working life, there was no space to be found either.

“Bayley, this is getting out of hand.”

She looked up from her computer on the other end of the desk. “Sorry, what?”

“All of this junk. It's getting too crazy in here. I can't even sit down for breakfast.”

“What do you want me to do about it? Clear some space off your desk.”

“What about the table? When are you going to deal with all of this wedding stuff?”

“I wasn't aware that it was solely my job to deal with our wedding. Maybe if you could make some decisions about who you wanted as your men of honor or as your best man, we could start finalizing some plans.” Bayley tapped out a few quick keystrokes and tilted her laptop monitor so she could better stare him down. “You made me go to that cake tasting alone yesterday.”

“You know I had a tight deadline and had to work through most of yesterday to meet it. My client has been pushing all my deadlines up, and if I don't meet them, we won't be able to make rent on this place.”

The single bedroom apartment wasn't much, but it was all they could afford on their combined income. Having only recently finished college with a degree in journalism, Bayley was finding it difficult to get much paying work as a freelance writer. Although Shane had been in the workforce a year longer, the market for his graphic design skills was glutted with people working for such little money that it was proving difficult for him to make a decent living.

Shane placed his coffee on the kitchen counter and ate his cereal standing up. Bayley still sat there, eyeing him from across the room, waiting to see where this conversation was going. It wasn't a new topic for either of them, and it was beginning to feel stale and bitter.

“Are you sure you even want to marry me?” asked Bayley.

“I wouldn't have asked you if I didn't. I guess I just thought...” he trailed off and dropped his spoon into the bowl, sending tiny droplets of milk splashing out onto the floor.

“You thought what?”

“I thought things would be different. Look at this place. We don't even have a living room.”

He gestured towards the area occupied by their workspace. Where others might have placed a couch and a television, they'd opted instead to use the half of their apartment not taken up by the kitchen and dining area as an office. The only other room was a cramped bedroom that barely contained their bed and dressers.

“No, we don't have a living room but we have each other. Did that stop being enough for you?”

“It didn't stop being enough. But how are we supposed to pay for a wedding when we can't even afford a two-bedroom apartment? What happens when we want to have kids? I just don't know how we're going to survive like this.”

Bayley rose from her chair and went to stand by her partner. She wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder.

“We're only going through a hard time right now. Work will pick up for both of us, and we'll be able to have those things someday.”

Shane placed the cereal bowl on the table and returned the embrace. “It feels like there's so much pressure right now. Don't you notice how everyone we know has a good job and is starting a family? Everywhere I look, it seems like someone I know is buying a new car or a big house, and I can barely afford bus tickets.”

“Maybe we should put the wedding plans on hold for a little while. Would that help?”

“It's not that I think we shouldn't get married but I'd rather wait a little longer until we know we can pay for it without racking up any more debt on top of our loans.”

“Don't remind me,” she said as she pulled away and returned to her computer. “I got another bill today. All that money for an education and I can't even seem to earn enough to pay it back.”

“Do you want to blow off work this afternoon? Maybe go see a movie or something?”

“I can't. I have to meet this deadline. It's the only paid assignment I have right now, and I can't be late with the submission. Maybe this weekend?”

Shane poked at his cereal with the spoon, his appetite falling away as he watched the once-crunchy lumps of mush further dissolve into the milk. He turned to the sink and dumped the bowl's remaining contents into it, watching his breakfast swirl around the drain. Tiny bits of cereal clogged the hole, and he had to prod it with his spoon to dislodge the blockage and allow everything to disappear into the pipes below.

“I really need to get out of here for a bit. I think I'll go today, if that's okay.”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, I'd like to come with you, but I have this deadline, so...”

The sound of running water filled the gap in conversation as Shane rinsed his bowl and washed the final remains of his cereal off the bottom of the sink. When he turned the tap off, he heard the clacking of Bayley's keyboard and knew she was once again lost in her article, effectively ending any further conversation. He placed his dish in the drying rack, scooped up his wallet and keys from the edge of the counter, and slipped into a pair of shoes before leaving the apartment.

Bayley heard the soft click of the door being locked from the outside. It was far too early to go to a movie and she wasn't sure what Shane was going to do with his day, but if he needed space, she wasn't going to stand in his way. She often felt the pressure of spending all day and night with someone in a cramped space, and she wouldn't begrudge him his time alone.

The kitchen table really
is
a giant mess,
she thought as she stared down at the wedding plans. She began sorting through the information, dividing it into piles, so she'd be able to make sense of it later. Once it was organized by category, she dug out a spare file folder and slotted everything away. After closing the lid on the organizer and looking down at the cleared table, she shook her head and sighed. This life wasn't exactly what she'd imagined when she'd met Shane in her second year of college.

THEY'D DATED FOR two years before moving into this apartment together, and everything had seemed so right then. The tiny living space was just fine for a couple of students in love. They hardly needed more than a place to eat, a place to work, and a place to sleep. Not that they did much sleeping in the first few months of living together. The bedroom had been a different sort of educational experience for Bayley, never having slept with a man before Shane. Looking around the apartment, she smiled and mentally corrected herself.
This whole apartment
had seen its share of sexual pleasure. There was hardly a surface in the place that hadn't seen a bare butt or hadn't been used as a support while they made passionate love to each other.

Bayley put the wedding plans on an already overcrowded bookshelf and sat back down at her computer. Before diving back into her work, she decided that she was going to make a real effort to reconnect with Shane when he got home that night. A distance was developing between them and it was important that she not let it grow any larger.

THE MATINEE LET out in time for Shane to be home for dinner, and Bayley had made a point of preparing one for him. She wasn't the sort of girl who felt she needed to cook and clean for her man, but she also wasn't above setting a nice table and opening a bottle of wine for someone she cared about. They hadn't exactly been fighting these last few weeks, but the constant pressure of two people living and working in one small apartment was taking its toll on them.

“What's all this for?” asked Shane, surveying the table. “What happened to all the wedding stuff?”

“I filed it away. It's not worth stressing you out over, and you're right: I don't know how we can pay for something like a wedding right now.”

She opened the oven and removed a heavy cast iron pan. The light smell of fish and lemon filled the apartment.

“You bought salmon?”

“I submitted my article just now. My editor said it looked great and wouldn't need revisions, so I'll be getting paid for it later this week. I figured I could spend a little extra on dinner tonight.”

Shane poured wine into two glasses. “I'm sorry about this morning.”

“It's okay.” She placed their dinner plates on the table. “It's hard right now. I'm feeling it too.

“At least you're working though, right? I mean, I know your client is kind of frustrating but it's money coming in.”

“Yeah. We hit a major milestone yesterday, so I'm hoping for a bonus to come through on that." He let out a rueful sigh. "I give it two days before I start getting emails telling me the next phase has been moved forward on the schedule. I really thought freelancing would be such a great way to make some money and still have free time to travel or work on my own design projects This is worse than the part-time job I had during college.”

“At least the pay is better.”

Shane swirled his wine around in his glass, staring down into the red current as though it might offer him a path to a better job. “That's the thing. It's only barely above minimum wage when you break down the contract rate and all of the unpaid hours they're asking me for.”

“It'll get better. I'm sure it will.”

The words hung over their meal and for a time they ate in silence, pausing occasionally to refill a wine glass or to stare out the window. It was as though they were two children playing a game of seeing who could avoid making eye contact the longest. Cutlery clinking against plates was the only sound throughout the rest of the meal.

“Why don't I do dishes?” offered Shane, rising and stacking their plates.

Bayley reached out and placed a hand on his, turning it away from the dishes and into her other open palm. She clasped both his hands in her own. “Why don't we leave those for now?”

She rose from the table and led him towards the bedroom. Inside, she turned and moved closer to him, tilting her head back for a kiss. She was happy that his mouth touched hers instead of making some work-related excuse to back away. They'd finished the bottle of wine and she felt a light buzz of alcohol-induced desire swimming through her. Her excitement rose at the rough groping of Shane's hands.

Reeling a little from his own intoxication, he kissed her, sloppily probing into her mouth with his tongue and squeezing at whatever piece of soft flesh his hands stopped on. He grabbed her butt and gripped it hard. His other hand found her chest and closed down over her, pinching at her nipple beneath the light padding of her bra.

Her hands tugged at his belt, working to slip it out of the buckle and give her access to his fly and zipper. Her clumsy hands finally freed him from his pants, and she thrust her hand under the waistband of his boxers to grasp his manhood. He was halfway hard when she closed her hand around his shaft. To her delight, she felt him stiffen and rise as she worked her hand back and forth.

Clothes were removed hastily and awkwardly, Shane having no success with the clasp on her bra and ultimately needing her to reach back to snap it off with one hand. Finally naked, she fell backwards on the bed. He crawled on top of her, kissing her breasts a few times before reaching down to grab himself so he could slide inside of her. She spread her legs wide for him and gasped a little as he worked his way into her.

His grunting filled the bedroom as he lay on top of her, panting and thrusting his hips. Bayley lay underneath him, feeling the pleasant sensation of his shaft running in and out of her sex but missing that little something that would bring her to climax. Shane was in his own world, working himself up and getting closer to finishing. She need to help herself out if she was going to do the same.

Putting a hand on his chest to push him up and indicate that she wanted to switch positions, she rolled away from him so that he could lie down. She took advantage of the break to reach into the drawer of her bedside table to retrieve a small silver vibrator that she could only hope still had fresh batteries after all the use it had been seeing recently.

With Shane on his back, she straddled him and reached down to grasp his manhood and guide it into her. Slowly, she started to move her hips back and forth, feeling the length of him sliding in and out of her. Twisting the vibrator into a medium speed, she applied it to her bud and felt the first tingles of extra pleasure spark through her body. She could feel herself getting wetter as she rolled her hips and butt back and forth on his body, her hand on his chest for balance as she moved the tiny vibe over her now swollen button.

Shane's hands clenched hard on her hips, the signal she'd come to know as him being close to reaching his peak. She ground herself against him even harder. Her own orgasm was right there and as she felt him stiffen under her, the warm flood of pleasure shot outwards through her limbs. She leaned back and tilted her head to the ceiling, moaning softly and rubbing the vibrator against herself to squeeze every last bit out of her climax.

Lying there afterwards, they rehashed some of their earlier conversation, trying to take advantage of the warm afterglow of their sex to discuss difficult things without turning to anger or frustration. It was clear that his biggest frustration was money and he repeated his concern that they were always stepping over each other in this small apartment. They both deserved the space to work properly so that they could really enjoy each other's company when they were together, instead of always being uncomfortably aware of the other person's presence in the room.

There was nothing to be done about the money, as that would have to come with time and work. Before falling asleep, they did promise each other that they'd both make a better effort to be attentive to the other person's needs and emotions while working in such close proximity. It was easy to get wrapped up in the problems of a client or a deadline, but that was no reason to take it out on the person you wanted to share the rest of your life with.