Breaking And Entering With Steele Pt. 04

"Awww," the cashier said with a huge smile on her face. "That's so sweet!"

Melody smiled and then she put a hand on AJ's chest and then, she leaned forward and gave him a little peck on the cheek. AJ smiled, and his face turned red, but it wasn't because Melody was being so nice. It was because his cock had decided it wanted to respond as well.

"I'll get the bags," AJ said quickly, stepping around Melody and grabbing the lights, the bags, the cans of floor coating...everything.

"Oh, he's so helpful," the cashier said, impressed.

"He is," Melody said, watching him go. "He's taken this project to heart. We're re-doing his bedroom. Deep blue lighting and deep blue floor coating."

"Ohhhh," the cashier said, giving Melody a knowing look. "He's trying to impress a girl."

"No," Melody said, glancing at the cashier. "He needs to get a girlfriend. Someone to get his hormones under control."

"How old is he?" the cashier asked then.

"Twenty-something," Melody replied. "I, uh...I wrote down his birthday somewhere."

"You...don't remember?" the cashier asked skeptically.

"No. Oh! No, ha-ha. His father and I just got married a few days ago," Melody said, swiping her credit card and then putting it back into her card-holder before stowing it away somewhere unseen. "No...I have a daughter I gave birth to. Candy. She's a handful."

"How old is she?" the cashier asked.

Melody gave the woman a curious look but then answered, "Twenty-eight."

"Hmmmm," the cashier intoned.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Melody asked then, offended by the woman's sound.

"Nothing. You might have to make sure to watch the two of them, is all."

"That's absurd," Melody said then, turning as if to walk out of the store, before turning back on the woman. "You should be ashamed of yourself. Thinking such things."

"I didn't mean to offend," the cashier said quickly. "I just say it how I see it. Blue floors, blue lights, blue...everything. Is your daughter's favorite color blue?"

"No," Melody said sharply, pointing a finger at the woman. "I picked out the colors. I like blue, not my daughter," Melody said, and she turned and walked out of the store, voicing one last word as the doors were almost completely shut. "Bitch!"

AJ already had the vehicle loaded up, and her door open, and was standing next to it, when she came out of the store. He was also able to hear her speak the last word, rather loudly, and when she got to the car, AJ asked her if everything was okay.

"Yes," Melody said, sliding into the passenger's seat and almost grabbing the door handle herself. AJ shut it quickly and then hurried around to the other side. As he brought the vehicle back out on the road and headed home, Melody started to unload.

"The nerve of that woman," Melody began and she pulled her phone out of some hidden pocket and began thumbing into it. "I'm going to file a formal complaint."

"What's wrong?" AJ asked then. "She seemed pretty nice to me."

"You know what she said?" Melody asked loudly.

"No. What?"

"She said I needed to watch you and Candy."

"What?" AJ asked, an awkward smile crossing his face. "Why? She doesn't even know me!"

"She said she calls them like she sees them, and you've obviously, you... you've got..." Melody waved in his direction, completely flabbergasted and unable to communicate what she was thinking.

"What a whack-o," AJ said, turning onto their street. "Candice doesn't even like me," AJ said then.

"But you like her?" Melody asked and then turned to watch AJ's reaction.

AJ felt a smile creeping onto his face, and he knew he was doomed if Melody saw it for what it was. "If I say no, am I going to get in trouble?" AJ asked quickly, using the statement to eradicate the smile from his face.

"No," Melody said, and then she said "Yes, I mean. She's your sister."

"Right," AJ said, nodding. "I have to like her. I'm her big brother. I have to like her, and protect her, and do nice things for her. But, do I have to like it when she's mean to me?" AJ shook his head. "No. I don't like it when she's mean to me."

"I'll speak to her about that," Melody said then, slipping her phone back where it had come from. "Alright, now when we get in the house, you take everything right to the basement. Finish cleaning, and then you can put up the lights. After that, I'll help you with the floor coating."

"Deal," AJ said, pulling into the driveway. He turned the vehicle off, got out and hurried around to Melody's side, and opened the door for her. She took his hand and stepped out, and then, she slipped. She fell forward, but AJ was there to reach out and grab her, holding her aloft. Once she regained her footing, AJ slowly let go of her right breast and her left hip. "Are you okay?" AJ asked again.

Melody gave herself a quick moment of self-assessment and then nodded. "Thank you, AJ."

"You're welcome Mommy," AJ said, smiling at her and then, he went back around the car, unloaded the items they had bought, and then closed the door with his hip.

"Uhhh, Mommy?" AJ asked, his arms filled with items to the tipping point. "I know I'm supposed to, but, can you grab the door?"

"Daddy will get it," Melody said, and she pulled her cell phone out and dialed Jaxson's number. "Hey, sweet-cheeks. AJ and I are outside. Can you come get the door?" AJ listened as his father sounded as if he were just getting out of the shower. He said something and Melody responded, "No. His hands are full. Completely. Yes. Thank you."

A few moments later, the front door opened and Melody walked inside, followed by AJ.

"Hooo! Looks like you guys did some shopping!" Jaxson said, and then he glared at AJ.

"They were running a sale," Melody lied, and she shooed AJ away to his room. As AJ hobbled his way through the kitchen, he heard Melody begin recounting how the store clerk had been so thoroughly rude to the two of them, to the point she thought it might be a good idea to file a formal complaint.

As AJ began his descent down the stairs, he shook his head, thinking the cashier might have been on to something. Had his "mommy" and dad not come home this morning, he had no doubt he would have been bending Candice over, this very instant, his cock balls deep inside her amazing pussy. Just the thought of it made his cock throb in his pants, and if he were being completely honest with himself, he couldn't wait to have her again.

He tried to put the thought out of his mind for the minute. He had to get his cleaning done, and as he set all of his recent purchases down, he realized it might make cleaning easier if he had decent lighting. Without another thought about it, he went to work, unpacking the LED light strips, positioning them, and hanging them up in record time. In fifteen minutes, he was done, and the entire basement was lit up as if it were the middle of the day in a wide open field.

As he began planning out the soft white lights, he decided that his existing lighting might be better suited to the "mood" lights, so he switched out the twin bulbs over his weight bench, the one over his bed, and he used a new single cord with an outlet to hang a blue light in the opposite corner.

He took a few minutes, switching lights on and off, checking to see if there were any issues, anything he could think of, and when he was done, it was time to get back to cleaning. Within a few minutes of scrubbing the floors, he could hear yelling coming from upstairs, once again. He hurried his pace, putting his back into it, not because he had a deadline, but because the extra scrubbing sound drowned out the angry voices above.

He moved most of his things to one side of the basement, scrubbed the hell out of the floor, wiped everything up with a towel, and then moved everything back. Next, he thought he should vacuum. That meant going upstairs to get the damn thing, and that...he just didn't want to do. He opted for dusting and wiping things down instead, and he grabbed a washcloth out of the utility cabinet opposite the washing machine and got it wet before wiping down every horizontal surface he could find. He did it a second time, just to make sure it was done completely, and then, he considered taking all the books and magazines off his bookshelf, although, that might cause an issue in itself. One of the books was a fake.

AJ and his friends had decided long ago, that they would make a fake book, and what they had done was, meticulously cut out the center of hundreds of pages within a book, so that when it was closed, it looked normal. When opened, it would reveal a hard drive, packed to the bursting point with porn. They often traded the book with each other, each taking turns watching, deleting, and adding porn to the drive as they saw fit. AJ was the current recipient and he hadn't done his required review of the new material on the drive, nor had he deleted or added anything. He really hadn't had a chance lately.

Aside from the hidden hard drive, AJ had numerous magazines spliced into his standard magazine collection. In some of the magazines he's simply sanded the words off the spine so you couldn't see or read what it was unless you pulled it out. Others he'd taken the covers off of Innocent looking magazines like Traveling with Scott, and The Gamers Almanac, and had put them on the porno magazines. He even had a thin box he'd found somewhere that contained several Polaroid pictures he'd accumulated over the years. Pictures of old girlfriends, or pictures of old girlfriends of some of his friends. He hadn't looked at them in a long time and had even considered cutting them up and tossing them in the trash, but he hadn't brought himself to that point yet. Now, he wondered if it might be wise, seeing as he was getting the feeling that living with Melody would have...unintended consequences.

Melody seemed to have very little respect for a person's personal boundaries, or privacy. She was all about other people keeping themselves in check, but when it came to her, there seemed to be a double standard in place. AJ decided then, that he would give this "thing" and name. A proper name. He called it, "The Mommy Standard."

With The Mommy Standard in place, you were expected to respect Melody's privacy and personal boundaries, while eliminating your own, absolutely and completely. She could touch you, grab you, push your foot down on the gas, brush your cock, whatever it was, and you couldn't say a word about it. The Mommy standard also applies to eating food, buying stuff, what you said, what you did, what you thought. As AJ stood there, thinking about it, he remembered how Melody had read all his text messages between his father and him. Sure, he'd shown her "a" text message, but he hadn't told her she could read them all. The Mommy Standard was dangerous and AJ knew it. Just how far Melody would take this, was beyond him, but he didn't want to find out.

Regretting the action before he even executed it, AJ headed up the steps and into the firefight. He found his father at the kitchen table, stuffing his face, and yelling out little fragments of sentences when he thought his opinion was needed or required. Melody and Candice were going at it yet again and AJ could hear them screaming at each other. It was something about eating too much, making money, and respect. AJ turned to his father and asked, "What's going on?"

"She's overweight," Jaxson said, taking another bite of what looked to be, canned ravioli.

"How?" AJ asked, grabbing a chair and pulling it out to sit down quickly.

"She stepped on the scale, and she's gained weight," Jaxson said. "She had a contract with these advertisers. She can't weigh more than a hundred and twenty-five pounds, and she has to keep her -he made a titty-grabbing motion- tits a certain size. It's all about the looks with these people."

"So, she lost her contract?" AJ asked.

"No. Not yet. Mel will take care of it. She'll make sure Candy gets underweight."

AJ hung his head then, feeling supremely guilty for eating pizza with Candice. If he had known, he might have tried to restrain her a bit. Help her out with her willpower to abstain from eating so much, although, he didn't know if that was necessarily the right thing to do either.

"Is it safe to grab the vacuum?" AJ asked his father.

"Safe? This is your house. Go get the vacuum. Don't pay them any attention. They have a dynamic and they'll work it out."

"Thanks, Dad," AJ said, standing up and pushing his chair into the table.

"No problem," Jaxson said, and then he looked up. "By the way. Have you found a job yet?"

"I've put out a shit load of applications and I've spoken with three managers already," AJ said confidently.

"Good. Good job," Jaxson said, and then he added, "Just don't make putting in applications a full-time job. Actually, find a job. You hear me?"

"Yes," AJ said, "I hear ya. I'll have a job soon. I promise."

Jaxson nodded and AJ hurried through the front room and headed for the supply closet. Before he even got within ten feet, Melody was there, continuing her screaming match with Candice, and dragging him into it.

"Look. Look at her," Melody said, grabbing his hand and pulling him to Candice's door frame.

AJ let himself be taken, but the first thing he noticed, the most drastic and weird thing, was that the door was no longer attached to the door frame. The hinges had been unscrewed and the door now sat in the hallway, leaning up against a wall. The next thing he noticed was Candice, standing in the middle of her room, wearing a bra and a pair of shorts. She was sorting laundry from the looks of it and had clothing and personal belongings everywhere. It looked like someone had opened and upended everything she owned, onto the floor.

"Does she look fat to you?" Melody asked, waving a hand in Candice's direction.

"N-no," AJ answered. "Not really."

"Not really. Which means yes. But he doesn't want to hurt your fat-ass feelings because he's a good brother," Melody said sharply. "Everyone can see it! You're getting fat and you need to stop eating. Either that, or you can work out like I do."

"If I work out, my tits will shrink!" Candice shouted at her mother. "I already tried that!"

"Then stop stuffing your face!" Melody shouted back.

The two of them continued their exchange and AJ quietly slipped back to the supply closet, and then inside. He closed the door and flipped on the light. He tried to block the noise of Melody and Candice shouting, but it was futile. He hurried over to where he thought the vacuum might be and started sorting through items, picking them up and moving them aside.

There were numerous blankets and pillows, sheets and pillowcases, jugs of cleaning detergent, floor wax, floor stripper, boxes of soap, bottles of shampoo, and conditioner. Why his father insisted on keeping personal cleaning items with everything else, was beyond him, but he did. His father also bought in bulk, to reduce the price he paid. They were still using bars of soap his father had bought almost ten years ago, and they were only halfway through the case.

AJ shifted to his left and felt something stab him on the side of the foot. He looked down, thinking it might be glass, but then saw it was only a piece of foil of some sort. He reached down, picked it up, looked at it, and then dropped it disgustedly. "Fucking Christ!" AJ said, wiping his hands on his shorts. The foil was part of a condom's packaging, and if that was true, then that meant his father and Melody had been in this room, the supply room, fucking.

Turning around, AJ meant to walk to his left, but then stepped on something else, something that did not feel like foil and he cringed. "Please do not be the condom," AJ repeated over and over as he looked down and then moved his foot. He was relieved to see it wasn't a condom, but when he bent down to pick the item up, a crumpled shriveled thing that looked like it was made of fabric, he realized what it was. Panties. Super thin panties that had been pulled down in a haste, and dropped to the floor without another thought. They resembled a chewed-up dog toy, complete with dog slobber all over the center absorbent fabric. The only issue was, they didn't own a dog, and that wetness was not slobber.

"Disgusting," AJ said, moving over to the door where he knew a trash can was. He thought about throwing the panties away, but then simply dropped them next to the can. Still considering it, he decided to put the panties on the shelf beside the trash can. That way, they wouldn't be sitting on the floor, and they weren't in the trash. If Melody came back in here, she'd find them easily enough.

AJ turned to go back to where he was when he spotted the handle of the vacuum sticking out from the corner, and he reached past the shelving and pulled it out with one hand. "Yes," AJ said to himself, making sure he had all the attachments and a spare bag. He turned, exited the supply room, and hurried back to his room as quickly as he could.

Once he started vacuuming, he never wanted to stop. The sound of the vacuum drowned out every other noise in the house, and sucking up things was mildly entertaining in itself. AJ vacuumed the couch and the loveseat, the chairs, the cushions, under the cushions, down the edges of the furniture, underneath the furniture, and everywhere. He vacuumed the rugs, flipped them over, vacuumed them again, vacuumed the floor where they'd laid while vacuuming them, and then vacuumed them again.

Finding himself famished, AJ snuck back up to the kitchen, and when he saw nobody was there, he grabbed a can of ravioli from the pantry and ran back down to his room. It wouldn't be the first time AJ had eaten cold ravioli out of a can, and he was sure it wouldn't be the last. He popped the top and, using a plastic fork he had sitting on his gaming table, he ate the entire can within two minutes and then put the empty can and the fork, in a box of trash he still had to take out.

A moment later, he was taking the trash out, removing ten boxes and three bags of trash from his room, which in general made the entire basement look much cleaner than before. As he went back and forth, he could still hear Melody laying into Candice, this time for the clothing she wore, the way she carried herself, and the way she presented herself to people. AJ cringed as he came in the door for the last time, and heard Melody screaming, "You think your looks are going to carry you through life? They don't! They're here one day and gone the next! You need to start thinking about that! You need to be nicer to people. You need to stop being such an ugly little cunt all the time!"

AJ shook his head and hurried back down the stairs, thinking if he just stayed down there, he could escape the wrath of The Mommy Factor, but he knew deep down, that it was just a matter of time, and that proved to be so true. Within minutes Melody was coming down the stairs, her footsteps unique and distinctively different from his father's or Candice's. AJ made himself look busy as she stepped down onto the basement floor and then she started looking around.

"Wow. This place looks...much cleaner. Not nice, but...cleaner." AJ turned to her and watched as she went over to his gaming table picked up a controller, looked at it, and then dropped it. AJ winced. The controllers weren't meant to be dropped like that, but luckily, they were a bit sturdier than that. "What is all this?" Melody asked, inspecting the cords and the consoles, the television and the setup.

"Video game stuff," AJ said.

"And you do this?" Melody asked, walking around the table.

"Yeah. Me and my friends play. We have game night and competitions. Sometimes we make prizes for each other."

Melody smirked at him. "That sounds awfully gay."

AJ's jaw dropped but he didn't say anything. He let her continue walking around, inspecting, and she did. She immediately went to his bookshelf and grabbed an encyclopedia. THE Encyclopedia. She hefted it in her hand and pulled the cover open. She read the first page where his mother had written "This book belongs to AJ". "How sweet," Melody said, and she grabbed a section of the pages to peel them open.