The Snowstorm : Friday Night

"I've had dates cancelled for worse reasons."

That was Aaron's thought as he hung up. It had snowed pretty much all day and as he came home from work, it really started to pile up in a hurry. He did the polite thing and called his date and proposed that they cancel for safety reasons. His prospective date had readily agreed. Too readily perhaps. She had done her best to sound appropriately disappointed, but Aaron could hear that she wasn't much of an actress.

Aaron didn't hold that against her though. Honestly, he had not mustered much enthusiasm for the project himself. It was a blind date after all. Like some kind of throwback to pre-internet dating, one of his friends had fixed them up and they had both agreed out of friendly obligation. They did the usual faux cautiously-excited predate phone interview replete with the required number of "greats" and "awesome" and "I look forward to meeting yous". They each expressed the necessary enthusiastic cool so as not to lead too much expectation, but sufficient to cast doubt on any apparent reluctance. With their compulsories completed, they agreed to meet Friday at a local bar for a few socially non-committal drinks.

After their initial contact, Aaron did his requisite internet snooping under the assumption that she would investigate him as well. She seemed nice. She was cute, on the thin side, with brown hair, brown eyes, and a tattoo of some kind of bird on the inside of her left ankle. She posted a lot of family pictures, and she liked dogs and fried oysters. Her profile included a tasteful few bikini-beach pictures in the company of her girlfriends, complete with duck faces, peace signs, red solo cups and sorority squats captioned by song lyrics he didn't recognize. Honestly, the internet avatar she projected reminded him of his own, only instead of ankle tattoos and squats, his beach pictures had backwards baseball hats, tank tops and bro hugs. He had made a mental note to upgrade his profile game a bit.

Mercifully the snow had settled in as predicted. It was supposed to be two-day storm of near blizzard proportions, so they both seized the convenient excuse and begged off with the obligatory mutual promise to "try to get together some other time" coupled with the polite, unspoken agreement to forget to reschedule before they hung up. That was that and no one was worse for the wear and, as a bonus, his wallet was four drinks thicker.

So, Aaron wasn't too broken up about it as he plopped onto the sofa and took up his book. He had enjoyed this book so far, but he hadn't yet spent the time on it that it deserved. A snow-bound weekend looked like as good as a time as any to catch up on his reading. He snapped on the light, found his page, and settled in for a few chapters.

"No date tonight?" his roommate asked from the kitchen.

"Nope," he answered as he turned a page. "Looks like you're stuck with me."

Celeste shrugged and turned back to the refrigerator.

"Stay out of my Chinese food," Aaron warned.

"Awwww, man! Help a girl out, would you?"

"Not my fault you got the munchies last night." Aaron flipped another page. "Told you to make it last."

To protest, Celeste noisily rummaged through the crisper drawers in search of the Chinese food she had devoured last night in the throes of her midnight munchies.

"Have a sandwich."

"I don't want a sandwich."

"Soup."

"I don't want soup either."

"Let me guess. You want Chinese food, right?"

Celeste snapped the refrigerator shut with a dramatic huff.

"C'mon. I'll buy you more."

Aaron cocked a curious eye at her.

"Oh yeah? When?"

Celeste put her hands on her hips while she evaded the question. She had only recently graduated with her Master's degree and currently worked as a waitress to meet her portion of the rent and bills while she searched to start her career.

"You don't think I'm good for it?"

Aaron's eyes went back to his book, but he didn't say anything. With another dramatic sigh Celeste noisily worked her way through every cabinet in the kitchen as if Chinese food would materialize if she just opened enough doors. It was her version of Schrodinger's Cat; until she looked inside each cabinet Chinese food existed and didn't exist at the same time.

"I'm hungry," Celeste whined after the last cabinet failed to yield up any Chinese food.

"I would never have guessed," Aaron answered ironically.

Celeste huffed her way to the living area, swathed herself in her fluffy powder purple blanket and plopped on the other end of the sofa.

"Katie would have given me her Chinese food."

Aaron simply ignored that and didn't rise to the bait. Katie was their former roommate. Aaron had moved into the apartment when Katie and Celeste's previous roommate bailed just before COVID quarantine. Aaron needed a new place to hole up after his previous roommate's girlfriend moved in and, shortly thereafter, asked Aaron to get out. Aaron kind of knew Katie and they couldn't make their rent without a third, so serendipity dealt him in as their new roommate. Since then, Katie, Celeste and Aaron had since lived comfortably with a three-way split of the rent and bills.

Katie and Celeste were necessarily closer to each other as their friendship predated Aaron, but they had been welcoming enough. It didn't take very long for a tacit agreement to form where they didn't get too involved in each other's lives and nobody went naked outside of the privacy of their own room. It was as close to having sisters as Aaron had ever been, and so it remained until three months ago when Katie decided to head home to Kentucky to live with her grandmother. That left Aaron and Celeste with a half share of the rent and bills and the tacit agreement.

In retrospect, the only mildly irritating thing about living with two women had been the constant undercurrent of food tension. Aaron was a couple of years older than Katie and Celeste and into his career as a young accountant. He had plenty of money after he paid his share of the rent and bills, so he bought food. Katie and Celeste were still graduate students at the time and had no money after they paid their share of the rent and bills, and they had almost no food and were hungry. It was like he lived in a house full of hungry mice and the result was a constant struggle to keep the two hungry young women from devouring his food. And if he ordered some kind of take-out food, or they're synchronized PMS was in session, they would stare at him like a pair of famished stray dogs until he relented and gave them some.

No matter how vigilant he was, his food to magically disappeared from the kitchen. Celeste and Katie were co-conspirators in the mysterious vanishing of food, and Aaron would be left to stew while the obvious culprits wiped crumbs off the table and blamed hungry little elves that somehow got loose in the kitchen. Now that Katie was gone, Celeste didn't have an alibi and lacked the temerity to shamelessly misappropriate Aaron's food. Hence her current mopey dilemma.

"You don't know what it's like to crave something," Celeste accused with a pout.

Aaron peeked at her over his book.

"Nuh uh. Not for another two weeks."

Celeste looked frustrated and that made Aaron chuckle.

"What am I, an amateur? I had that clocked within the first two months. Stuck in an apartment with two women? It was life and death."

Celeste "tsked" at him through eyes narrowed with exasperation.

"Good for you," she pouted.

"Mmmm hmmm," Aaron agreed.

The entire rhythm of their lives together depended on the estrogen tide, so Aaron had wisely acquainted himself with that cycle long ago.

Celeste kicked her feet under the blanket and made pouty eyes at him.

"Please."

Aaron sighed and lowered his book.

"No peace in our time, I see."

Celeste didn't answer. She just stared at him with big doe eyes, picked at her blanket and stuck out a pouty bottom lip, the portrait of gloomy and hungry resignation.

"Oh, alright," Aaron relented with a deep sigh. "Just leave me some."

"Yay!"

An ebullient Celeste skipped into the kitchen as Aaron turned around to watch her invade the refrigerator over the back of the sofa.

"Remember, leave me some."

"OK!" Celeste called cheerily through a mouthful of cold pork fried rice and heaped more spoonfuls of it into a bowl to warm up in the microwave.

After the microwave had done its work and the apartment smelled of reheated Chinese food, Celeste returned to her spot on the sofa with a steaming bowl of lawfully appropriated pork fried rice with a side of two dumplings, swathed herself in her purple blanket and tucked into it with a vengeance.

"Don't gobble your food," warned Aaron over his book. "You'll give yourself a tummy ache."

Celeste responded with something that sounded like "Mmfffft", but Aaron couldn't understand her through the spoonful of pork fried rice she had just shoveled into her mouth. He shook his head and went back to his book while Celeste cooed contentedly over her prize.

A few chapters later Celeste curled up, tiny and full, under her blanket like a small fuzzy creature about to hibernate.

"Ooof," she mumbled and patted her stomach. "So good!"

Aaron shot a sideways look at her over the last page of his current chapter.

"You're welcome," he muttered as turned to the next chapter.

Celeste stretched until her toes poked out from under her blanket and rested against Aaron's thigh. Aaron looked down at her feet with a knit brow. Celeste's toenails were the same powder purple as her blanket. Purple was her favorite color.

"You're warm," Celeste murmured sleepily and tucked her cool toes under his thigh.

At this, Aaron got a little peevish. For the years he had lived with Katie and Celeste this kind of thing was strictly verboten, and it made him uncomfortable. Katie and Celeste were like his sisters, and he had never allowed himself to view them as anything else. He expected the same from them. He didn't move in to play the role of platonic source of male attentions and contact. Plus, he was seven weeks out of a very long relationship with an ex-girlfriend who had suddenly broken up with him for some guy she met at the gym. During those seven weeks he had not actually had physical contact with a woman beyond a handshake, so this was uncomfortable on a lot of levels.

Slightly miffed, Aaron reflexively scootched away from Celeste. He'd given her some food and, while that was irksome, it was just par for the course every now and again. Something he would do for any roommate so long as it didn't turn into a persistent habit. But now Celeste hoarded most of the sofa and stuck her cold toes under his leg to boot. It was entirely too familiar, and he wasn't her boyfriend after all. Yet as he settled into his new position, Celeste's toes snuck back under his thigh again. Aaron looked up from his book in irritation.

"Hey, keep your cold toes to yourself," he grumped as he scrunched himself against the arm of the sofa.

"Where are you going?" Celeste murmured sleepily. "I'm just trying to get warm."

Celeste continued to search for his thigh with her toes. Aaron dodged as best he could and noticed, ruefully, that Celeste's medium height allowed her to occupy the vast majority of the sofa.

"Then put on some socks."

Celeste's purple toes poked into his thigh.

"C'mon. Just let me warm up my feet."

Aaron flinched away again, so Celeste stuck her toes in his ribs insistently. At this Aaron snapped his book shut, seized her by the ankle and glared at her.

"Hey, that's enough."

Aaron emphasized his pronouncement with a shake of Celeste's foot. In response, Celeste drooped and plucked at her blanket while her bottom lip pouted again. As Aaron huffed out a breath of exasperation, he caught sight of Celeste's foot. Her little purple toenails lined up so neatly. He had never noticed that before. Strange.

Still holding her ankle, Aaron looked at Celeste's pouty face. She must have sensed his gaze because she looked up shyly from under her blonde bangs. Aaron thought she looked mildly upset and her lashes blinked slowly over moist hazel eyes.

"Sorry."

Aaron hesitated. He couldn't articulate it, but something had just happened inside him. Something about Celeste was different. She went from comfortable Celeste who stole his food to ... What? And what was it he saw in her eyes? Some little flutter of hope? A question? Whatever it was, it struck him in such a profound way that Aaron did something he never would have considered before that moment.

Without breaking eye contact, Aaron gently kissed the inside of Celeste's calf just above the bulge of her ankle. Her skin was soft and supple and smelled of vanilla body wash. Aaron let his lips linger and, in reply, Celeste bit her bottom lip and a little shivered ran up her leg. Her doe eyes went big and round and in them Aaron saw ... something. That same nameless something he felt.

Suddenly things went from zero to sixty in a flash. It happened so fast he didn't have time to register it in his brain. All he knew for sure was that he had dipped his head under her blanket and pulled Celeste's sweatpants off. In response, Celeste let out a soft moan of anticipation and threw her baby smooth legs up over his shoulders, and without warning or any fore-thought, Aaron found himself pressed ears deep in her crotch. Celeste entwined her fingers in his hair and her legs spread wider to encourage his attention. Then her taste was slippery and thick in his mouth and his tongue searched out her clit, swollen and tight like a kernel of corn. Celeste let out a long moan and began to pant and squeak in time with his ministrations as Aaron pursued her towards orgasm like a bloodhound on the trail.

Aaron had eaten out women before and, but for a very few bad experiences, he enjoyed it. He liked giving pleasure and the feeling of control. However, this was something else again. Celeste's breathy "ah" and "oh" and "ah" chirps of pleasure fascinated him, and he applied his tongue to her with gusto, which drew even more enchanting pleasure sounds from her. In response to light touch of his lips and tongue, Celeste's body bucked and rolled, so Aaron possessively fixed her in place with a firm grip on her hips and accelerated his pace in a concentrated effort to drive her over the edge.

He couldn't see her face but urged on by Celeste's increasing volume and the smooth grip of her thighs, Aaron stirred intently at her clit with the tip of his tongue. Her moans intoxicated him, and he voraciously lapped her up just to hear her repeat those sounds. Not too much later, Celeste issued one long wail as she pressed herself against his lips and orgasmic syrup forced its way along his tongue.

Aaron was swept away by the magical sound of Celeste's ecstasy. He had never heard anything that sexy in his entire life and his only thought was "do it again." When she released his hair from her shaking hands, he paused to cast the blanket aside so he could see her face, and then greedily plunged back into her. As he glared up from between her thighs, Celeste's eyes, wide as saucers, looked back at him, and her mouth made a little circle of pleasure that panted out those magical "ooos" and "ahhs". A few more insistent strokes of his tongue made her clutch at the sofa as if she was afraid she would fall, and her back arched until all he could see was her chin. Celeste's breath came in choppy gasps interspersed with louder and louder squeals until Aaron bore down in in just the right place in just the right way.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh ooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Celeste howled as she came for a second time.

Enraptured by the sound of her pleasure, Aaron had thought to push her toward a third orgasm, but a surprise rush of orgasmic fluid took interrupted him. With a gasp, he pulled back, face smeared with her juices, and watched as Celeste's strained body forced out the last of her passion onto the sofa. With her orgasm spent, she collapsed onto her back in a sexy pile of flushed cheeks, tousled hair and short, choppy pants.

"Whoa!" he uttered in shock.

Celeste's eyes snapped to him, and embarrassment spread on her face. At that exact moment their neighbor from downstairs tapped on the ceiling in protest. Instantly, Aaron felt badly, as if he had insulted her, and as Celeste scrambled for the blanket, his thoughts tumbled out of his mouth awkwardly.

"Celeste, ... I ... ummmm ...," he tried to assure her. "It's OK ... we can ... it will wash ... ummm. Are you ... uhhh ... OK?"

Celeste murmured something as she clutched herself into the blanket and searched in vain for her sweatpants. Aaron continued to scramble for something to say to help her past her embarrassment and bridge the gap that grew rapidly between them.

"I ... I really enjoyed ... that," he told her earnestly.

Celeste glanced up at him and Aaron thought he saw tears in her big eyes. And then Aaron noticed something else. Celeste was pretty. Tall and slender and generous in all the right places, and her cheekbones were high on her symmetrical face with that cute, kissable nose. All at once, Aaron saw how pretty Celeste was and he wondered why it had taken him this long to notice. His realization must have shown is his eyes because she blushed deep crimson under his gaze, and it only highlighted for Aaron how pretty she really was.

"You're ... you're pretty!" he blurted.

And that did bring tears from her hazel eyes. She looked so cute and vulnerable that Aaron got a thrill in his chest and all he could do was stare. Celeste's lip quivered uncertainly under his stare, and then she abandoned her search for her sweatpants in favor of a hasty retreat to the bathroom.

"Celeste ... wait!" Aaron called and he stood to follow her. He wanted to hug her and hold her and tell her ... what? He wasn't sure what it was, but there was something he wanted to tell her. However, Celeste seemed intent only on escape.

"I'm ... we ... sorry I ... ummm ... need a shower," Celeste sobbed in a teary voice and shut the bathroom door before he could reach her.

Aaron stood before the bathroom door in quiet surprise with Celeste's taste in his mouth and her juices on his face. He thought he heard her sob something, but the water shower started to run and washed it down the drain. He turned away towards the sofa where it all happened so fast and and the only thought he could hold in his head was;

"What just happened?"