Page 19 of Offside

Sam

BaskarKnight: Good morning, Metal! Before you ask, since I seem to have actually beaten you to waking up this time, I slept well. I have an off day at home today, which feels weird, but I’m being a productive person and moving all my crap from storage into my new place. I might appear offline all day, but I’ll be here when you wake up, and come hell or high water, we’re watching Revenge of the Sith tonight.

Okay…so maybe my practice wasn’t really going so well.

Or, maybe it was going really well–it depended on how you looked at it.

The fact that I was still talking to Knight was crazy–I mean, it had been over a month now of this. A month of just talking all damn day. A month of crossing every fucking topic, except anything about what we did for work and stuff–nothing identifiable.

After about a week of endless talking, Knight gave me a few heads-up that I already figured–he didn’t ever meet up with anyone from the app and that I could never ask who he was or anything, but the feeling was mutual.

I liked talking to him, but I didn’t want him to know who I was or anything.

My days had been filled with him…and I liked that.

I moved into my new place–in the same building as Ash, just several floors down–about two weeks ago, and it has been nice. I had privacy and space again–I could watch movies with my friend at night and…it just didn’t feel as lonely an action when I had Knight texting me his random thoughts throughout the movie.

We even ordered the same thing for dinner at night, and I taught him how to make some chicken thing my mom used to make for me growing up, so we could have it together.

And he didn’t make any more comments that made me feel weird inside.

Honestly, by the time I got that message, I'd been awake for hours. I usually was the one who woke up first and messaged him, but uh…I woke up a little distracted.

It was an event.

I woke up horny–so horny–I thought I was going to die. It was the kind of horny that had me moaning outrageously at just my own hand touching me, followed by some very dramatic groans with every stroke.

That would have been bad enough, but right when I was about to finish, Ash called. I sent it to voicemail and tried to forget it, but he called again, and then it was lost, and I was so mad.

He just wanted to get breakfast because Thayer was busy this morning, and I was doing really well with the friend thing with him, so I agreed.

Hard as a friggin rock and aching, but with nowhere near enough time to build it all back up again.

Morning in Toronto was three hours behind, so I got his message at noon, which was inconsistent for him–he was normally up crazy early. He'd almost beat me in the morning message race, but he said today was his off day, so good for him to sleep in a little bit.

He needed the sleep–he worked really hard.

He’d been trying to work with a new guy at work, and he said it was going well–I just wished I could report that back. I'd been trying so hard with Landon at work, and I really felt like he was trying too, but we just weren’t gelling.

It didn’t seem to matter what we did or how much time we spent together–we just didn’t fit.

Two puzzle pieces from different puzzles.

“Oh, shit–sorry,” I mumbled, moving out of the way for the box with arms and legs.

“You’re good,” the box grumbled, lowering to the ground just inside the propped-open apartment. “Sam?” the voice asked.

I looked up, and there was Landon, like we were in sync enough for him to know I was thinking about him, but not enough to score together.

“You live in the building, too?”

Yes, we were doing so well at getting to know one another that he didn’t even know I lived in the building that most of the team lived in.

Someone should really have given us a medal.

“Just moved in about two weeks ago.” I nodded, pointing down the hall a few doors. “Moving in today, I see?”

“Eh,” he huffed, cocking his head a little as he looked at the box. “Got the keys a week ago, but first day off to actually move shit in.”