“What?” I asked. I poked my head around the corner and saw her slowly shaking her head.
“This place is a disaster.”
I cringed as I looked around the room, seeing it as it must look through her eyes. I knew it was kind of a mess, but I never had company that wasn’t someone like Gary or Wade, so I never considered how bad it really looked.
Aside from the pizza boxes, dishes, wrappers, and bottles, there were free weights lying around, a couple of less offensive magazines on the floor, and a stack of junk mail piled so high it was falling over. There were CDs outside of their cases lying around all over the floor by the portable CD player, and stacks and stacks of cases all over the place.
“Yeah,” I admitted, “it is.”
“I’m going to help you get it cleaned up,” she said, and her tone left no room for discussion, and she hadn’t even seen the bathroom yet.
The bathroom.
Shit.
Were there cum stains on the tile in the shower? Did cum leave stains?
“Yeah, I could probably use a little help,” I agreed. “I’ll start in the bathroom.”
I shoved past her and closed the bathroom door behind me. I looked around apprehensively, feeling liked I’d never really looked at the condition of the room before. I quickly gathered up a pair of dirty boxers, a spare porn magazine, and a couple burrito wrappers. I had no idea how those had even gotten in here. I grabbed a washcloth and wiped down the sink, shower, and toilet to get rid of pee stains, stray hairs, and nail clippings. I shoved the stuff lying around on the sink into the medicine cabinet, realized she’d need some room for her own stuff, and pulled it back out again. I looked around for another place to stash razors, trimmers, and Q-tips so there would be a place for Tria’s things.
Leaning back against the sink, I looked around and decided there wasn’t anything worse to clean up. I swallowed and sighed in relief.
I was never one to be overly concerned with spotlessness, but I probably needed to clean up my act.
Chapter 10—Accept the Arrangements
“Well, I feel a lot less like a mooch now,” Tria said several hours later. We had completely cleaned up the kitchen, living room, and bathroom. The only place we hadn’t touched was the bedroom, but I had just done laundry, and there wasn’t much else in there. All the trash had been gathered up, the CDs placed back in their respective cases, and the dishes washed. Tria handed me the last of the plates, which I dried carefully with a towel before placing them in the cabinet where they belonged.
“I think I’m pretty much feeling like the waste of space so far,” I agreed. “I made the mess, but you cleaned up more of it than I did.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you trashed the place just to make me feel better!”
We both laughed, and then Tria poured apple juice into two clean glasses and brought them over to the sparkling clean table.
“I’m really sorry,” I said after I took a sip. “I guess I never really thought too much about how this place looked. I should have cleaned it up before you got here.”
“It was all kind of rushed,” Tria said. “Don’t worry about it. It really did make me feel like I was contributing.”
“I don’t think this place looked this good the day I moved in,” I told her.
“How long have you been here?”
“Quite a while,” I said. “I moved here not long after I dropped out of school.”
“Were you going to Hoffman?” Tria asked.
“No.” I shook my head. “I never graduated from high school.”
“Oh…um…I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “It was my own decision.”
“Why did you drop out?”
“That is way too long a story,” I said. “It’s late, and I have to train tomorrow.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I should have realized how late it was.”