It was Friday morning, five o'clock on the dot. I got up the way I usually did for my morning workout, except today the routine looked a little different. I made a quick stop in the kitchen first, drinking a glass of water and then filling half of it at the sink before heading down the hall with a plan already forming in my head.
I pushed open Georgie's door and stepped inside.
"Georgie. Georgie," I said, nudging his leg with my foot where it hung half off the edge of the mattress. He didn't so much as stir.
I knew it would come to this eventually. I tipped the glass slowly, letting a little water drip onto his hair first. Still nothing. So I tipped the rest of it straight onto his face.
He jolted upright like he'd been shocked, eyes wide and darting around the room, looking every bit like a soldier startled awake in the middle of a warzone.
"What the—" he sputtered, blinking water out of his eyes.
"Wake up. I told you to set an alarm last night," I said, already walking off toward the bathroom to start my own morning routine.
"What the fuck, Charlie!" he shouted after me. Lucky for him, Mom wasn't around to hear that particular word choice, though he kept right on grumbling insults under his breath as he dragged himself out of bed. I couldn't help but giggle at his misery.
"Keep it down. You'll wake everybody up," I warned him. Sheldon had already managed to disturb Mom and Dad's sleep the night before, staying up half the night wrestling with the physics problem, and I had no interest in becoming the next name on that particular list after yesterday's mess at dinner.
After we'd both gotten through the usual morning routine, we made our way out to the garage together. The plan was to get the whole space cleared out and cleaned up today, since the car was set to arrive that afternoon and I needed room to actually work on it once it showed up.
Beyond just clearing floor space, I also wanted a real look at what tools we already had lying around, so I'd know exactly what still needed buying before we got started on the repairs.
It took us a few solid hours of digging through years of accumulated junk before the garage finally started looking like somewhere a person could actually work. We hauled box after box of old odds and ends into the far corner, stacking them as neatly as we could manage against the wall.
Buried in one of those boxes, half-crushed under a stack of paint cans, was Sheldon's train set, tracks and all. His train models were taking half the space of the garage.
I already knew he was going to have something to say about that the second he noticed it missing from wherever he'd left it. Still, there wasn't much he could actually do about it now, not with the space already needed for something a lot more important than a toy train.
Mom came out to the garage a little while later, carrying plates of breakfast for the two of us while we were still elbow-deep in the cleanup.
"You boys are really serious about this," she said, looking between the two of us with an expression that told me she was finally starting to understand just how much this actually meant to us, enough that even Georgie had dragged himself out of bed early without being asked twice.
"Yes ma'am. Herschel's bringing the car around two this afternoon, so we needed the space ready," I told her. She nodded, seeming satisfied enough with that answer, and turned to head back inside, though not before catching Georgie reaching straight for his plate with grease still on his fingers.
"Wash your hands before you eat," she said, arms already crossed as she watched him freeze mid-reach.
We finished up the last of the cleaning and got ourselves ready for school not long after. Honestly, I didn't much feel like going that day, too wound up thinking about the car to focus on much else.
Even with the option sitting there to just skip it entirely, I still went, mostly for my parents' sake. It wasn't that I hated school. Most days I genuinely liked being there, but every now and then, today included, I would've rather just stayed home.
Between being fairly popular these days and having an actual girlfriend now, school had gotten a lot more enjoyable lately than it used to be.
I made my way down the corridor with a stack of five thick books balanced in both hands, heading toward the library to return them after finishing every last page the night before.
I nearly dropped the whole stack when someone came up from behind and covered my eyes with both hands. At least I knew it was a girl since I could feel her mounds on my back.
"Guess who?" a deep, obviously fake voice said. But it was definitely a man's voice. That freaked me out. A man hugging me like that.
I jumped back startled.
I turned around to find Kevin cracking up beside Helen, the two of them clearly proud of themselves for the little ambush.
"Man, that was funny," Kevin said, still laughing.
"Fuck you guys," I said, laughing right along with them despite myself.
"I might let you…," Helen whispered.
“What” I asked her since I must have missed it.
“Nothin’ silly” Helen said to me grinning as she looped an arm through mine and took two of the books off my hands to lighten my load. The three of us started off toward the library together, Kevin peeling off toward his own first class along the way.
"Hey, can I use your dad's computer this Sunday?" I asked Helen once it was just the two of us. My family didn't have one at home, and the computers at school didn't even have a modem hooked up, which meant I needed somewhere else to pull the data I was after.
"Yeah, of course," she said, agreeing without a second thought, clearly more excited about the idea of me coming over on Sunday than curious about what I actually needed the computer for.
We reached the front desk a minute later, where Cheryl, the librarian, sat looking like she'd already had a long day despite it barely being eight in the morning.
"Morning, Cheryl. Here to return these," I said, setting the stack down carefully on the counter.
"Just put them back where you found them. I'll log it in the register," she said without even glancing up.
Helen and I carried the books back into the stacks together, returning each one to its proper shelf. Along the way, tucked between two rows where no one else happened to be looking.
"This one goes on the top shelf," she said, trying to reach it. She couldn't quite make it.
I set my books aside that i was going to read today down on a nearby table and came up behind her, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off me. "Let me."
I reached past her, sliding the book into place, and when I lowered my arm it settled naturally around her waist. Helen turned in the loose circle of it, tipping her head back to look at me.
"We're supposed to be shelving," I murmured, though I wasn't moving away.
"We are." Helen's fingers curled into the front of my shirt. "Technically."
She rose up and kissed me first — soft at the start, testing, and then not soft at all. My hand slid from her waist to the small of her back, pulling her in until there was no space left between the books at her shoulder blades and my chest.
She kissed like she meant it, like she'd been thinking about it the whole walk over from the corridor, and I matched her, one hand coming up to cradle her jaw while the other pressed flat against her spine.
Helen made a small sound against my mouth and tugged me even closer by the fabric bunched in her fists. The kiss deepened, unhurried now that they both understood no one was coming down this aisle — Ms Hutchins will not bother to get up from her seat even if she knew we were doing this here.
My mouth moved to her jaw, her neck, and she tilted her head to give me better access, breath catching. "Charlie—"
"Yeah?"
"Nothing. Don't stop."
I huffed a laugh against her skin and kissed her again, deeper this time. Her hands slipped inside my shirt, fingers finding the strip of bare skin at my waist, and I shivered under her touch.
Emboldened, I let my own hand drift beneath the edge of her shirt at her back, palm spreading warm against her skin, tracing slowly upward along her spine. She arched into it, a quiet gasp lost between their mouths.
The metal shelf dug faintly into her shoulder and neither of them cared. Somewhere on the table behind them, the forgotten stack of books sat abandoned, spines askew, waiting.
"We really need to finish shelving, the class bell is about to ring" Helen whispered eventually, though she made no move to let go.
"In a minute," I said, and kissed her again. I sucked her neck and she made a slightly high pitched sound like a mouse.
The first bell rang and Helen immediately broke off and fixed her shirt while blushing. I just looked at her acting so cute after giving me that hungry kiss.
Helen headed off toward her own class while I made my way back to my usual table with a fresh stack of books to get through.
"Wipe that lipstick off your cheek, Charlie," Cheryl called out from her desk, since the two of us were the only ones left in the library this early in the morning and she clearly didn't feel any need to lower her voice.
I wiped at my cheek immediately, feeling caught out even though I'd already cleaned my face with my handkerchief.
“Where?" I asked her.
“So you really were doing it huh. I like you. Just use protection kiddo. Don't be stupid” Cheryl said dryly, not even bothering to look up from her register. "You kids and your sweethearts."
"We were just returning books, we were not–" I said, trying and failing to sound casual about it.
"Sure you were," she said, the faintest smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. "Go on, get to your table and don't disturb me now."
I sighed, grabbed my new stack, and went to find my usual seat by the window, more than happy to let the whole thing drop.
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An:
I will try to push myself and put more chapters here for patreon readers.