QT: Aisling's Antics (Ch. 02)

"This guy," I told Dr. McKenna. "I want to be paired up with this guy."

There was an interesting look of recognition as he looked at the picture before he spoke. "Okay. If that's what you want, we can make that happen. We'll start the process, and you'll be brought over to him early tomorrow."

"That's it?" I asked him.

"That's it."

"So... just back to my room then?"

"Off you go." I stood up and started to walk across the conference room before I heard him shouting at me. "Oh, Miss Blake? One more thing..." He was jogging across the room towards me before he stopped just a foot or two away from me. "Look, this may be a little unethical, but the man you've chosen, I don't know him personally, but he's a friend of a friend. And the man's mutual friend had, well, a strong suggestion I was supposed to relay to anyone who chose him."

This is the bit I don't want you to tell Andy about, by the way.

"Okay, and what's that? Is he a guy I shouldn't be picking?"

"No no! In fact, he might be one of the best choices you could've made, just because if he's a friend of my friend, well, he's got to be a great guy," Dr. McKenna chortled. "But my friend's suggestion was that you may have to be a bit overly forward and direct with your new partner. He's a good guy, but he's also one of those creative types, which means he can occasionally be plagued with illogical doubt as to his own worth and consequence. Totally unjustified, but he might have a touch of the whole 'you're too good for me' going on when you first meet him."

"Awww, that's cute," I remember saying. "I can put those fears to rest."

He nodded emphatically. "Good. Great. Wonderful. That's all I needed to hear. I just wanted you to know that he might be overly self-deprecating or have a lower than wise self-opinion, and the more you can do to disabuse him of such notions, the better off you're going to be. Can I ask why you chose him? I mean, I saw that look of recognition for a couple of the people you had options for in there, and some of those people are worth quite a lot of money."

I gave Dr. McKenna my cheekiest grin and sauciest wink. "Don't you ever listen to the Beatles, Doctor? Money can't buy me love."

I headed back to my hotel room, climbed into the shower and tried to get myself off while I washed myself clean, but just couldn't find myself a way to get to an orgasm, much to my annoyance. At the time, I chalked it up to being nervous, but I know now that it was actually being gated off from me by the serum, waiting for me to have contact with my pairing partner.

We were told via pieces of paper dropped off with our dinners that we should bundle up as much as possible during the transport between the hotel and our partners, that we would be driving through several neighborhoods and that we should do our best to remain as safe as possible. That meant scarves, masks, goggles, whatever we had to bundle up, we should wear it. I still have a mirror selfie I took of me in the getup that you can use for your book. I look like I'm preparing for Antarctic ice fishing.

There was an 8 a.m. wakeup call, explaining that we needed to be in the lobby in an hour. At 9, there were about twenty or so of us milling around, all completely bundled up. We were checked in and stickers with bar codes were slapped onto our shoulders, I guess so they could make sure everyone was where they needed to be. Then we were told we were either on bus Alpha or bus Delta, with me being on bus Delta.

Once I got on the school bus, I was sat next to Lily, Andy's old roommate Eric's first partner. You've met Eric - a good guy, very smart, very kind. Lily wasn't at all what I expected her to be, overly direct and almost a little smug, but she seemed to have a good heart. I think I caught on to her sense of humor part way on the drive, although we couldn't talk too much, just because of the high winds as they kept all the windows on the school bus open to keep us from overheating, considering how bundled up we were.

We were told we were going to be the fifth stop along the way, and most of them seemed to go fine, although the one before us seemed to have some serious problems. The trooper took the woman in question, a girl named Shelby, to the door of the house, but when they knocked on it, nobody answered. They knocked two or three times, but nobody answered. The soldier sent Shelby back to the bus and then apparently walked around the house. I'm not sure what happened, but I have to think, knowing what I know now, the guy she was supposed to be delivered to had to have been either out of the house or had died in his place. Never did figure out which it was.

Lily and I talked about what we were expecting, how we were feeling and how surreal the whole thing was. She asked if I'd stressed to my family how important it was that they take the quarantine seriously, considering what we knew about how it sounded like people were dying left and right from it. I did, and she had done the same with her parents.

When we pulled up to the condo building, I didn't know really at all where we were, but it turned out we were in the far eastern corner of San Jose, outside of a small building of condos as the guard hopped out and motioned for me and Lily to come and join him. "Your stop, you two."

We headed up to the front door as the guard rapped his fist against the door. "Open up! CDC! Delivery and I haven't got time to fuck about, so let's go!" As soon as the door opened, I got to lay eyes on him, and I think I fell instantly head over heels for him, because I could see he was concerned for us, and not thinking a damn thing about himself. "You Eric or Andy?"

"Andy." I remember being impressed with how deep his voice was, like a nice bass purr of thunder.

"Copy," the guard said, tapping on the little handheld computer he had. It was more like one of those oversized scanners UPS uses than an iPad, but after he'd tapped on it, he sprayed the surface with Lysol and then held it out to Andy. "Just use your finger to sign on the line. Any day now. I've got another seven deliveries to make today, and people are on the bus waiting so let's go."

"So how long is this for? How long are these people staying with us?" Andy really had been given even less information than we had, and I had to admit I thought that was a little scary at the time, because for a moment, I thought maybe he wouldn't want me.

"Which bedroom is Eric's and which bedroom is Andy's?" Lily asked him.

"Upstairs and turn right for Eric's room and left for my, uh, Andy's room."

We didn't want to wait, so the two of us pushed right past him and headed immediately up the stairs, with Lily heading into Eric's room and me heading into Andy's. I closed the door immediately, and began stripping out of all my extra layers, looking around the room. It was packed, not a whole lot of space in the room. There was a single reclining chair off to one side, a massive California king sized bed taking up, like, three quarters of the room, a little pedestal with a giant LCD TV just past the foot of it, with almost no space to move around the room itself. There were a couple of bookcases that were completely overflowing with books, and several posters on the wall that I didn't recognize at the time, but I'd later find out were for Andy's book releases.

I didn't know it, but as I sat there on Andy's bed, getting changed into the clothes I'd brought along to make a good first impression, as Muninn sat on the bed purring at me, Andy was standing on the other side of the door. He knocked on the door, and I shouted back "Five minutes please!"

I didn't want him to just see me all sweaty and whatnot, after having been in that coverup gear the whole time, so I stepped into the attached bathroom and cleaned up a little bit, washing my face and making sure I was as fit and sexy as I could get.

Just a few minutes later, I met the love of my life, and fell in love forever.

* * * * *

"There we go," Aisling said, draping the protective cover back over her painting. "Next time for a break."

"You don't want to tell me about your first time with Andy?" Fiona asked her.

Ash smirked. "I think a girl's allowed to have a couple of secrets to get to herself. My first time with Andy can remain just between him and me. Besides, that's not really of any interest to anyone in your book, is it?"

"No, not really," Fiona said, stretching her arms out again. "They really weren't that organized at the beginning of all this, were they?"

Ash shrugged. "They were in crisis mode, responding as quickly and capably as they could. I'm not going to judge them too much."

"And you don't want me to tell Andy that Dr. McKenna said he had confidence issues?"

"I don't think he needs to know. It's not like Bill was wrong, but we're working on it with Andy anyway, and it's probably best that he told me. It gave me a bit of an edge when it came to learning how to deal with him, and how to always push me to remind him how much I love him."

"You fell for him hard and fast, huh?"

Ash blushed a little bit, looking down at her feet for a moment. "I'd never met a guy who cared so much about me and my opinions before. I mean, I get that's how it's supposed to be, but Andy and I fell into an immediate rhythm, finishing each other's sentences. I mean, it was months before we had our first fight, and even then, it was mostly because we were both more tired than we should've been and we patched things up before we went to bed. You remember your first fight with Andy?"

"Not the fight itself," Fiona laughed, "because knowing how I was back in college, someone probably did something innocuous and I blew it way out of proportion and then got mad at Andy for trying to talk some sense into me, but I remember the first time we had makeup sex, and wow, did we go at it."

"Imagine how you and I are gonna fuck after our first fight," Ash teased.

"Can't wait. Let's go walk around the house for our stretch break."

"You gonna put on any clothes?"

Fiona scoffed. "At my age? If you've got it... flaunt it."