No One Is Awake To See and Other Revealing Tales Read online

  Chloe ducked away from the glass, embarrassed to be peeking at him that way. She’d told him she wanted to take a shower, and he was undoubtedly noticing that she had yet to turn on the water. Chloe fumbled for the silver handle and twisted it sharply upward, causing cold water to cascade onto her head. She quickly stepped to the side of the shower, out of the spray. The water would take a minute to heat up.

  She couldn’t help herself. She peeked out again at Ben, just in time to catch the final seconds of his peeing. She stared at the head of his penis, watching as the stream of his pee slowed, watching the final few drops trickle into the bowl. He bounced it up and down, shaking off another drop.

  Chloe ducked back under the water. She couldn’t believe what she had just seen. She had just spied on her brother’s friend while he was peeing! What would Marianne say when Chloe told her? Chloe pressed her hands against her face as the water poured down onto her. Even though Ben hadn’t noticed her, she still felt like she had just been caught.

  She could hear Ben at the sink, washing his hands. “Tony’s asleep,” he said to her. “I tried to sleep… I think I got an hour and then I woke up. I always have trouble sleeping before a flight.”

  “Aren’t you going to be tired tomorrow?” Chloe asked. She wondered if she should wait until he left before she continued with her shower, but then decided it didn’t matter. In a way, she liked the idea of sharing the bathroom with him. It made her feel like she was in college already. She put some body wash on a pouf and started to scrub herself.

  Ben chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll be tired. But I’ll try to sleep on the plane.”

  “I always have trouble sleeping on planes.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “They’re so cramped,” she said. “And loud.” She peeked out at him and watched him drying his hands on the hand towel.

  “Loud? Well, you could always put on headphones.” Ben returned to the sink, looking at his reflection in the mirror. “It’s a pretty long flight to New Zealand. I think I’d go crazy if I didn’t sleep through some of it. I’d sleep through all of it if I could. Wouldn’t that be nice? Close my eyes, get some rest, and wake up twelve hours later when the plane is landing?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “That would be nice. Um… the co-ed bathroom at your apartment…”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Six guys and six girls sharing one small bathroom. Three stalls and two urinals, two showers. We pretty much had to learn to share everything if we were going to survive. Tony told you about it?”

  “No… I mean, not much…”

  “We tried to be proper about it, but that lasted for about half of the first week.” He chuckled. “Then we were just too tired and too busy to care. I’d walk in early in the morning and find three or four girls in their panties putting on make-up at the sinks… but what could I do? I couldn’t say, ‘pardon me, please let me know when you’re done’, because I had class in half an hour, just like they did. I’d just squeeze in beside them at the sinks to brush my teeth and do my own thing.”

  Chloe felt herself relaxing. She was hidden behind the wall of the shower, and Ben wasn’t showing a great deal of interest in trying to see her anyways. He seemed like he just wanted to chat.

  “You know Joanne, right?” Ben asked. “Tony told you about her?”

  “Yes. I mean… you told us that story about her, at the dinner table… about the performance art…?”

  “Right, right. Well, a couple months ago, I applied for a spot on this professor’s research team. Professor Wick, a very serious older man. He came by to interview me, and we were sitting in the common area of the apartments. Suddenly, halfway through the interview, here comes Joanne, walking to the bathroom, totally naked. I don’t know if you’ve seen her picture… she’s got an amazing body, very athletic, kind of like you… and she passes by, with her towel slung over her shoulder, totally unconcerned. I look at Professor Wick, and he just shrugs, and says, ‘Penn State’… and he keeps going with the interview like nothing happened.” Ben laughed.

  “Did you get onto the research team?”

  “I did. Maybe Joanne’s little walk-by had something to do with it. Who knows.” Ben smiled, shaking his head. “That’s just how college is, though. Everyone questions everything, everyone experiments with acting in different ways. Nothing is out of bounds. You’ll see next year. I’m sure University of Washington has the same sort of things happening.”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’ll see.” Chloe decided she didn’t need to wash her hair. She could let it go another day. If she was going to have a conversation with Ben, better to do it downstairs in the living room, with her pajamas on. The tile walls of the shower made her voice echo, and she had to talk louder to be heard over the sound of the shower. She reached for the handle and turned off the water.

  As she stood there with water dripping off her body, she realized that her towel was hanging on the outside of the shower door. Ben also noticed it. “Ready for your towel?” he asked.

  Before Chloe could answer, he stepped forward and pulled the towel free of the door. Carefully keeping his eyes pointed away from her, he pulled open the glass door and stuck his arm in, the towel dangling from his hand. Chloe was startled, and felt self-conscious, although she could clearly see that he was purposefully looking away from her. She snagged the towel from his hand and pressed it to the front of her body. Ben immediately withdrew and returned to the sink.

  The whole thing happened so quickly that Chloe had to take a moment to turn it around in her head. Ben had just opened the shower door while she was standing there naked. He had passed her the towel, but she didn’t think he could’ve seen anything. He had made such a show of not looking at her.

  He acted like it was a perfectly normal thing to do. And maybe it was, to him. He was used to living in an apartment with a co-ed bathroom and women like this Joanne girl who walked around naked like it was nothing. Passing a girl a towel was probably no big deal.

  Chloe held the towel against her body like an apron and peeked out at Ben. He slouched against the sink with his hands in his pockets and he certainly didn’t seem very threatening. Maybe that was why she didn’t bother to wrap the towel around herself before she stepped out of the shower. She held it against her body with her forearm just over her breasts.

  “What made you decide to go to college so far away from home?” Chloe asked, hoping her tone sounded casual. She purposely let the towel slip a little to the side, exposing her left breast, and her eyes flickered towards Ben to see if he had noticed. He was looking right at her and his manner hadn’t changed at all. He didn’t pay any special interest to her visible breast.

  Maybe because he was in college. If Chloe had tried the same trick on the high school boys she knew, their eyes would have been fixed on her naked breast as if hypnotized by it. But Ben probably thought it was no big deal to see a bare boob. Joanne apparently walked around naked all the time.

  “I’ve just always loved the United States…” Ben began, and Chloe felt thrilled that he continued to act like nothing was out of the ordinary. Now that he was speaking, she felt confident enough to look him in the eyes, and nodded politely while she let the towel slide away from the front of her body. She brought it up to her head and started to dry her long hair, acutely aware that she was standing naked in front of him.

  She thought about the text she would write the next day to Marianne. Oh, Tony’s cute friend Ben? Yeah, we had a long talk after everyone else went to bed. We even talked while I was in the shower. Yes, I was naked right in front of him but it was no big deal, he was a gentleman…

  “…and the whole world is out there, right?” Ben finished and Chloe had barely heard a word he’d said. Fortunately, he saved her from having to think of a new question by asking one of his own. “Do you travel much?”

  “Um… not as much as I’d like,” Chloe said. “As far as other countries… I’ve been to Mexico and Canada, and we’ve gone to Europe a couple times�
�� Italy, France…” She glanced in the mirror and was amazed at the image of her naked body standing beside this cute, fully clothed man. Was she really being this daring? She’d had her pubic area recently waxed and she could clearly see the line of her pussy in the mirror. It looked very exposed. “Um… Austria, England… Italy… oh, I already said Italy…”

  If Ben noticed her distraction, he didn’t comment on it. “I hope I can get you to New Zealand someday,” he said. “Tony and I are going to have a blast over there.”

  “Maybe someday.” She peeked down at her body, noting a few lingering drops on her skin, but for the most part she was dry. What now? Say good night? Return to her room?

  “Shall we go downstairs?” Ben asked. “I still feel wide awake. Maybe I can brew us some coffee, and we can continue our conversation?”

  “Okay. That sounds good.”

  “If you’re not dry yet, just wrap the towel around yourself,” Ben suggested. “You can get dressed later. Everyone’s asleep anyway.”

  “Right. Everyone’s asleep.” Chloe knew she was already dry, but she did as he suggested and wrapped the light green towel around herself. It managed to cover her midsection from the top of her breasts down to six inches above her knees, leaving most of her legs bare. Ben opened the bathroom door and Chloe followed him into the hallway. She tiptoed as quietly as she could past her parent’s closed door. Although she was technically decent, it would still be a little hard to explain to her mom and dad why she was only wearing a towel.

  Chloe flicked the light switch at the bottom of the stairs to light up the hallway. “Forward, then right,” she told Ben. “The kitchen switch is to the left of the door. I’ll wait here to turn off the hall light.”

  “Right.” Ben walked ahead. When the kitchen light went on, Chloe turned off the hall light. She followed Ben into the kitchen.

  “Now, I’ll be happy to make the coffee, but I’ll need you to tell me where everything is,” Ben said.

  Chloe smiled. “Sure. The coffee machine is that silver thing by the microwave. My dad keeps the coffee in the cabinet below it.”

  “My, my!” Ben nodded in approval. “Not just a simple coffee pot, but an espresso machine! Would you like me to make you a cappuccino?”

  “Okay… but I don’t know how to work it, to be honest.”

  “No worries. I’ve worked as a barista before. This is all very familiar to me.” He waved at her. “Have a seat. It’ll just be a few minutes.”

  Chloe pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down, carefully holding the towel so that it folded underneath her when she sat. Then a reckless impulse seized her, and before she could think about what she was doing, she undid the towel and pulled it open, letting it fall away from her and drape over the chair. Her heart bounced in her chest like a rabbit as she waited for Ben to look her way and notice she was naked again.

  Ben crouched in front of the cabinet, moving items around on the shelf. He pulled out a canister of coffee beans and set it on the counter. Satisfied, he stood and examined the espresso machine, fiddling with the levers and buttons. He looked over his shoulder for a moment, gazing at her, and Chloe held her breath, waiting to hear what he would say. But he just gave her an appreciative smile, then turned back to the machine.

  “Do you drink coffee regularly?” he asked.

  “Not regularly. Every now and then.” Chloe glanced down at her body, trying to see herself from his perspective. She felt pleased that he hadn’t made a comment about her nudity. So they would continue their conversation, sipping cappuccino at the kitchen table, while she remained naked? The thought of it excited her tremendously. “I never even had a cup before this last year. But there’s a coffee shop we sometimes go to, it’s open 24 hours, and I started getting coffee there. Also, Starbucks… we go there sometimes…”

  “Yeah? I’ve really gotten addicted to coffee this last year. Late at night, trying to get a paper done, I can go through five or six cups, easy.” Ben pressed a button and the machine started making a loud grinding noise.

  Chloe tensed, listening for sounds from above. Would the noise wake up her family? Ben saw her nervousness and chuckled. He turned off the grinding. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not really that loud. No one’s going to wake up.”

  “Sorry…”

  “It’s all good. Just relax.” He pressed a button on the machine, and the sound of water pouring came from somewhere inside it. “Where’s your coffee cups?”

  “Up on those shelves over there.” Chloe pointed.

  “Do you mind getting us two cups? The bigger, the better.”

  “Okay.” Chloe stood and walked over to the shelf. She couldn’t see Ben but she felt like he watched her as she stretched up and pulled down two large mugs. She carried them over to him.

  “Thanks.” He smiled at her. He was doing something with milk. Chloe returned to her seat.

  “How long were you a barista?” she asked.

  “Six months. Just before college.” He filled the two mugs and carefully carried them to the table. He put one in front of Chloe and the other on the table across from her.

  “Oh! That’s so cute!” Chloe said, seeing the heart he had made in the foam on the top of her drink.

  “A little trick I learned. I can do a few other things, too. Like a cat. But the heart is pretty easy.”

  Chloe pressed her hand against the side of the mug. “It’s hot…”

  “Give it a minute. It’ll cool down.”

  As they waited for their drinks to cool, they chatted about college, how Ben’s life had changed when he went to Penn State, how her own life would change when she went to Washington. Ben braved his drink first, taking a long sip and grimacing slightly in pain. “Still hot,” he said. “But I like it when it’s still a little too hot.”

  Chloe waited longer for hers. When she finally took a sip, she nodded her head. “It’s very good!”

  “Yeah, sometimes I know what I’m doing.” Ben grinned.

  Chloe brought her drink up with both hands and sipped it, peeking at Ben through her eyelashes. She could feel her stiff nipples brushing her arms, and idly wondered what it would feel like to press the warm mug against her left breast. She thought about how she could describe this to Marianne, and knew she probably wouldn’t. It would just be too hard for Marianne to understand how she’d ended up sitting in her kitchen naked with a boy she’d just met, sipping cappuccino.

  Chloe peeked again at Ben. Maybe she could explain it by showing Marianne his picture. “Look at this face…” she would text. “All he did was smile at me and suddenly I realized I was taking off all my clothes…”

  “What are you smiling about?” Ben asked.

  “Oh…” Chloe sat down her mug. “I was just imagining what my friends are going to say when I tell them you and I drank coffee together and I still hadn’t gotten dressed from my shower.”

  “Do you tell your friends everything?”

  “Almost everything…” Chloe tapped her dark red fingernails against the coffee mug.

  Ben didn’t speak for a moment, gazing at her with a thoughtful smile on his face. Abruptly, he stood. “Man! This cappuccino is making me warm! Is it making you warm?”

  “No…” Chloe giggled. “But you’re wearing warmer clothes than I am.”

  “Do you mind if I open the front door for a minute? Let in some cool air?” Ben was already walking in that direction.

  “Okay…” The kitchen was adjacent to the foyer so Chloe could still see him as he unlocked the top lock and pulled the front door open. She was at the wrong angle to see outside, or for anyone outside to see her, nevertheless she felt nervous to have the door gaping open like that. Ben leaned against the door jamb, looking outside.

  “I think it’s a full moon,” he remarked.

  “Really? Yeah, I noticed it was almost full a few days ago.”

  “This is nice. There’s a cool breeze, it’s really refreshing.” Ben closed his eyes, as if savor
ing the feel of the night air for a moment. He opened his eyes and looked at Chloe. “Come on over, take a look at this moon.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Sure you can. What, are you worried you’ll be seen? It’s past one on a Wednesday night. Everyone’s asleep, I promise you.” He waved his hand towards the outside. “Plus, you have that tall hedge.”

  “It’s not that tall…”

  “Come on… Just peek out.”

  Chloe took another sip of her drink, considering. Then, shrugging her shoulders, she set the mug down and pushed out her chair. She paused for a moment to glance down at the towel on her chair before she left it behind and tiptoed naked towards the front door.

  She hesitated next to the door, looking at Ben nervously. He looked outside, his eyes scanning left to right. “It’s fine. No one’s out there. I told you, everyone’s asleep.” He nodded to her in reassurance.

  Chloe timidly stepped out in front of the doorway. The porch light was on, and she knew she was clearly lit. Outside, the moon was a bright circle in a cloudless sky. The street in front of the house looked dark and empty, dimly lit by the street light on the corner. Across the street, the two houses that lay opposite their house showed dark windows. A hedge separated the front yard from the street, but it really wasn’t that high, only a little higher than her waist. She could see the street clearly, and that meant anyone out there could see her.

  But Ben was right. It was late, and the world outside seemed silent and empty. Chloe turned sideways to put her back against the opposite door jamb, leaning against it as Ben did. She looked up at the sky and the twinkling stars, feeling the outside air on her skin.

  “It’s a nice night,” Ben said. “Not like a hot summer night, but not cold either. Comfortable.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re not cold?”

  “Mmm. No. I’m fine.”

  “Was I right? Beautiful moon, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s huge.” Chloe looked up at the moon, which bathed the world outside in a dim glow. “It’s definitely full.”