9
Madi called in sick on Friday, too. I directed her to my sorry excuse for an apartment and watched carefully as I unlocked the door to let her in. While her house might have been small, it fit Madi to a T. My apartment didn’t look a bit like me. It looked similar to barracks that I stayed in while serving, only slightly bigger and without a roommate. I left her to explore as I packed a bag. I made sure I had an extra battery and all my meds. While in the bathroom, I came across an old box of condoms, a looked at one just to see if they were still any good.
Expired. Fuck me.
“What are you doing?” She stood in the doorway, when I looked back at her I saw something else held her attention.
I followed her gaze and saw that she was looking at the shadowbox my mother had made for me when I was going through physical therapy. It had all my ribbons and medals with a picture of me in my dress uniform and in my fatigues.
“Is that you?” She came into the room and went right to it, looking at it intently.
“Yep,” I finished packing up my bag and looked at her. “What, you don’t like the beard?”
“Sidney Joseph Redding,” she murmured instead, seeming to test out the quality of my name. “You got a purple heart,” she said looking at me in awe as she pointed at the medal in the shadowbox.
“Yep,” I confirmed, not wanting to expand on the circumstances.
“Wow, I didn’t realize,” she shook her head and looked back at me with her full attention. “This is all that disability will pay for?”
“Mom and dad helped with the furniture. Disability keeps the roof over my head and the lights on. Fortunately, water is included in the rent,” I folded my arms over my chest. “You judging me?”
“No, no, God if it seemed like I was I’m sorry,” she started fidgeting with the hem of her shirt like I was giving her a real hard time.
I snorted and came over to her, “That shit was over four years ago. It’s been awhile since I even looked at it. If anything, the only time it occurs to me is when I’m down for the count hurting or waiting in line at the VA to get a refill on my pills or to see my PCM. Don’t worry about it, sweetcheeks. I’m taken care of.”
“If you lived with someone, would it affect the amount you got in disability?”
“Nope, but I’m not really looking for a roomie. Let’s get going though,” I went to get my bag, throwing it over a shoulder. “I’m ready to get back to our slumber party when you are. If our party is going to include sex of the real kind, I’ll need to make a stop by a gas station at least to get some rubbers.”
Her face went pink, and it was hard for me not to smirk at her. The last bit was said with the intent to embarrass. Kind of an asshole thing to do, but her poking put me on edge a little.
“Would you consider moving in with me?” she squeaked, almost a whisper.
I nearly dropped my bag, I stood there staring at her for what felt like hours, but it could’ve been five minutes.
“You said earlier that it was too soon for me to think about putting a ring on it. Isn’t it too soon to ask this question?”
“It was something I was considering while we were laying in bed earlier,” she admitted, and she walked past me like she hadn’t just said something important. “I want you to stay the entire weekend with me. Even if we don’t do anything and it’s just ‘couples shit’ we talked about a week ago. Then if we're in agreement to not breaking each other’s hearts, we can talk about being roommates seriously.”
“Uh huh,” I followed her out, watching her closely.
I was growing on her like she was growing on me. If she was talking about me moving in seriously, then I wasn’t the only one playing for keeps.