18. Liam
LIAM
I’ve lived with two women in my life. My mom and my grandma when she came to live with us for a year before moving down to Florida.
That’s it.
Never a girlfriend, or a buddies girlfriend when I lived with a few teammates in college.
So living with Chloe is one hell of an adjustment.
We know each other enough to be able to not make things awkward, but we are definitely learning more and more about each other as the days go on.
Every day it’s something new and just a week in, I’m looking forward to learning any little snippet I can about this woman.
Getting to know each other better is not the only thing that is happening in terms of adjustment.
She gave me the rule of not walking around the apartment in only a towel and like the dumbass that I am, I didn’t give her the same rule.
I should have because then I would be suffering with blue balls whenever I see her.
Every night before bed she’s in shorts that barely cover her ass and a tank tops that looks like they can come apart with one simple tug.
Her choice of pajamas also don’t hide the fact that her body is changing more and more everyday thanks to her pregnancy and in a spectacular way.
She looks fucking amazing and my dick is taking notice.
Too much notice.
We’ve only lived together for a damn week and I’ve already jerked off to images of her more times than I can count.
I’m going to hell, especially since I told her I was okay with us not exploring our attraction for each other further.
I’ve been trying to keep distracted but Chloe is everywhere and like I said before, it’s been a hell of an adjustment. Even with me traveling a few times for away games.
Thankfully though, today I have the distraction of all distractions.
Something that will keep my mind off Chloe’s mouth watering body and something that will keep her mind off not being able to dance right now.
Christmas decorating.
Usually when December hits, we are in the middle of the hockey season and traveling all over the place, so I don’t bother to decorate. I can’t even remember the last time I bought a Christmas tree.
This year, because Chloe is here, I decided to change that. She can’t visit her family because she doesn’t want to risk flying, so I thought I would bring on the Christmas spirit and celebration to her.
First things first, though, I have to convince her to come out of the spare room that’s hers temporarily.
Chloe has spent the majority of the last week cooped up, only coming out to eat, grab a drink, or to torture me with her little shorts.
Other than that, she’s been in her room.
I haven’t asked her why but if I had to guess she blames herself for her health scare last week and not being able to dance in the last remaining shows of her season.
So hopefully this cheers her up and hopefully she is able to at least before Christian, Blake and Blake’s friend Sophia come over and help.
I’m also a bad host and have no idea how to entertain anybody besides Christian the grump.
I take my chances and knock on her door. “Hey, Chlo. Do you want to help me with something?”
I hear movement on the other side of the door and a few seconds later the door swings open.
She looks at me with wide eyes. “Is everything okay?” She asks, looking me up and down.
I nod. “Yeah, I just need your help with something.”
“Okay.” She says, following me into the living room, where all the Christmas decorations that I had delivered cover about ninety percent of the room.
“Wow,” she says, taking in everything. “I didn’t know that you were so into Christmas.”
I scratch the back of my head. “I’m not.”
“Then why does it look like it exploded all over your living room?” She asks, a small smile playing on her full lips.
“I wanted you to be able to celebrate, you know since you weren’t going to be able to see your family.”
Chloe looks at me and then looks over at the living room covered in decorations again.
A minute passes before she says anything.
“Did you just buy all of this?” she asks, picking up a stuffed dove that I picked out through a computer screen.
I nod even though her back is turned to me. “I did. I don’t decorate, since I’m usually not home during this time of year, so I bought everything that I thought that we needed.”
She turns to look at me, that smile of hers growing. “You didn’t have to do that.”
I give her a shrug. “I wanted to. Besides, if it wasn’t for me, you would be dancing right about now or on the way to your family.”
“It takes two people to have a baby and I’m the one that didn’t rest when she needed to.” She argues, putting down the dove and picking up a dancing Santa.
She’s still beating herself up about her trip to the hospital.
I quickly move the conversation back to where it was.
“I still wanted to do this though. Bring some color into the place even if it is for a little bit.”
And if it has Chloe’s touch it will look great and possibly convince to decorate next year. Baby’s first Christmas and all.
Will the baby even be here for Christmas or will Chloe take them with her out of state to visit her family for the holiday?
I guess I should add that to the list of things we need to talk about when the baby gets here.
“If you don’t decorate, does that mean that you don’t celebrate Christmas?” She asks, walking over to the couch, to pick up the garland I had the people at the store pick out.
“I celebrate, I just usually go to my parents house for a few days. I’m an only child so I try to go home whenever I get the chance. Usually I have three days before I have to come back for a game.” I say to her.
My eyes follow her as she moves through the room picking up random Christmas decorations. I try hard to keep my eyes from traveling down her ass but it’s starting to become hard.
“Do you celebrate Christmas?” I ask, trying to get back into the conversation before I do something stupid like go across the room and sit her down on my lap.
“I do, but I don’t celebrate on Christmas day. We celebrate on Christmas Eve and then spend all of Christmas day sleeping and eating leftovers,” she turns to me, giving me another smile.
“Nochebuena, right?”
Chloe looks at me like she is shocked that I know that and her smile gets bigger.
Points for Liam.
“Yeah, how did you know that?”
“Christian, one of my teammates, he’s Mexican and his family celebrates on Christmas Eve. I’ve gone with him a few times.”
“Did you enjoy yourself?”
I give her a nod. “It was a fun time. Lots of good food, so I can see why you would spend a whole day eating leftovers.”
“The leftovers are the best part.” She beams.
“Maybe I can ask him to get us his mom’s tamale recipe and we can make some this year.” I suggest.
“Oh we don’t need a recipe, I know my mom’s by heart. We just need to take a trip to the grocery store and we will be eating tamales until new years.” I can see her already making a list in her head and I fucking love it.
Just as much as I love seeing her happy.
“We can go tomorrow if you’d like.” I offer, not wanting to live in excitement as much as I can.
“Okay, it’s a date, but first I think we need to figure out what to do with all of these decorations. And also, get a tree. Shockingly, that is the one thing that you missed,” she surveys everything again making sure she didn’t miss the tree.
She didn’t because she’s right. I didn’t get the tree. At least not at the store where I got everything else.
“I have it covered. Why don’t you get dressed and we can get started?”
“Why would I get dressed?” She asks.
Why indeed.
If it were up to me, she would stay just how she is dressed, and I will gladly suffer through blue balls for the rest of the day.
I would do that if Christian and Blake weren’t coming. I would shove a skate up my ass before I let them see Chloe like this.
This is for my eyes and my eyes only. She may not be mine, but I don’t give a shit.
“Because some of my teammates are coming over with the tree.” I say not lying.
“Oh, okay. Yeah, let me go get dressed.”
I shouldn’t, but I watch her ass sway as she heads down the hallway.
Up until this point, I thought that my apartment was big enough for two people but now that Chloe is here, I don’t think it is. She’s going to take over every single inch of the place and I won’t be able to think about anything but her while I’m at home.
Both a good and bad thing.
Ten minutes later, Chloe comes out wearing a pair of leggings that I try to decide if they are worse than the shorts or better.
I still haven’t decided when there's a knock at the front door. I take the distraction and answer the door, letting my teammates in.
But when I open the door, the only person that is there is Sophia, Blake’s best friend that apparently goes everywhere he goes.
She’s a sweet girl, and cool to hang out with. The girl is a talker and doesn’t take any shit. I’m honestly surprised that Blake hasn’t fallen head over heels for her.
“Hi,” she says, giving me a nod. The blonde bun on top of her head bobbing in the process.
“You might want to go down and rescue your stupid friends. When you told them to get a tree and well, they both decided that bigger and fluffier was the way to go and now they can’t figure out how to get it up here. ”
“There’s an elevator.” I say to her, opening up the door wider and letting her in.
“Yeah, that thing is not going to fit in the elevator. Not even if they stand it up,” she says walking in and taking off her jacket. Sophia waste no time going over to Chloe. “Hi, I’m Sophia.”
“Chloe. It’s nice to meet you.”
I leave the girls to get to know each other, and head down stairs and sure enough, Sophia was right.
My friends are stupid and probably got the biggest tree that the lot had to offer.
If I would them I would have chosen the same tree, so I can’t fault them for that. It’s a beautiful tree nonetheless.
I don’t even want to know how they got it here.
With more than a few head shakes, frustrated signs and so many curse words getting thrown out, we eventually get the tree up to my apartment. How?
Stairs. So many fucking stairs up to the twentieth floor.
By the time we reach my place, I’m sure the three of us want to watch the tree burn, but the second that I see Chloe’s face, that feeling goes away.
She is happy, that is all that matters.
We spend evening decorating the massive tree as well as the apartment. I honestly didn’t think that I would enjoy myself doing all this Christmas shit but I did.
Christian, Blake, and Sophia all welcomed Chloe and treated her as if she has been a friend of theirs for as long as I have.
Sophia and she shared their love for some designer that apparently makes amazing dresses. Blake and her talked about different Mexican foods that he was introduced to with his sister-in-law Lennie.
And her and Christian bonded over their shared experiences of growing up in a Latino household. It was in that conversation that I learned that Chloe comes from a mixed family.
I learned so much about her in such a short time, that I didn’t know that I should be pissed or glad that she was sharing all this information with my friends and not with me.
I’m going with glad.
No matter what, I’m still learning about this woman, and it shouldn’t matter how I do.
Somewhere close to nine at night, my teammates and Sophia head home and it’s just me and Chloe left sitting on the couch, eating a pizza we had ordered.
I’m about to grab another slice, my cheat meal of the week, when Chloe leans over and presses a kiss against my cheek.
For a solid second I sit there frozen trying to comprehend what just happened.
I eventually unfreeze and turn to the woman next to me.
“What was that for?” I ask, a smile playing on my lips.
“A thank you,” she answers shyly. I raise an eyebrow at her in question. “For today. You didn’t have to pull out all the stops, but I definitely appreciate it. It’s like a little piece of home.”
She looks around the room in awe, like she has a love for Christmas, and I knocked it out of the park.
“You’re welcome.” I say, reaching over and giving her knee a squeeze.
If she likes what we did today, she will love my mom’s house.
Which springs up an idea.
“You don’t have to say yes to this, but do you want to go with me to my parents for Christmas?”
She looks at me a little shocked. “Would that be a good idea? Do they know?” her hand falling to her stomach.
I don’t think I have seen her do that before.
“They know and I know they would love to meet you, no matter our situation. So if you would like to, we can go down for a few days and celebrate Christmas.”
I’m not the one that came up with the idea. My mom actually called and asked me to bring Chloe for the holiday when I talked to her earlier in the week.
Honestly, I was going to turn her suggestion down, not wanting to throw Chloe into something unknown. Now that I think of it, it might be a good idea though.
“You wouldn’t mind? I don’t want to intrude on your family time. Besides, I was going to ask Betty if I could celebrate with her family.”
A part of my heart breaks at knowing that I wasn’t going to be her option number one.
I give her a nod. “No, I wouldn't mind at all. I want you to come.”
I should let her go with Betty. I should let her stay here and celebrate with her friend but a selfish part of me wants her near me and within arm’s reach.
Chloe thinks about it for a moment and I’m almost positive she is about to say no, she gives me a smile.
“I would love to go with you. But you can’t be over-barring when I do things.” She throws an accusatory finger at me.
“When have I been over barring?” I haven’t been too bad, have I?
“Every time I cook, clean, or even try to do my own laundry. The doctor told me to rest, he didn’t put me on bedrest.”
Okay, maybe I have been a little over-barring. But only because I want her to be healthy.
“Fine, I won’t be over barring. At least not while we’re with my parents. Inside these four walls is fair game.”
She narrows her eyes at me but eventually she lets out a sigh.
“Fine, but at least take it down a notch.”
“No promise.”
She lets out a sweet chuckle and instead of heading to our respective rooms, we stay on the couch, put on a Christmas movie, and finish our pizza.
We might have just moved in together, and for a short period of time but I think we will get the hang of it.
Especially if every night ends with Chloe falling asleep and me being able to carry her to her bed and placing a small kiss against her forehead.
If every night is like tonight, I’ll take it.