Bedtime

Chapter 1
Moving in

Chapter Description: Having convinced Jessica to take him in, Andrew takes the rest of the day off.

Andrew watched as his girlfriend brought in the last of his belongings, briefly taking his eyes away from his laptop. “Hey, thanks for doing this for me, babe.” He blew her a kiss, as if that were all he needed to do in order to thank her for moving him in.

Jessica just gave him a quick nod. She wasn’t going to call him out on being a lazy asshole just yet, but noticed she was getting close to that point.. It was tempting to take all of his crap back to his parents’ house and tell him to move it himself, but she didn’t like to waste her time like that, hell, she’d probably be better off taking him back to his parents’ house to live until he was ready to “grow up”, by which time she would have moved on. No, not yet. She would put up with her childhood sweetheart for another month or so. She brought in the last of the boxes.

They had been next-door neighbors since early childhood. They always played together and when they got to the decisive point of their teenage years they started dating each other. Their long-lasting friendship was probably the one factor which made the secret Andrew was just now springing on her nothing short of unbearable. Still... he’d turn around at some point. Andrew was just that type of guy.

Jessica stared unbelieving at Andrew, who continued gaming as if the idea of having other demands on his time was absolutely absurd. She quickly shook her head and went to go take a nap. It was early evening, so she might even crash for the night.

Seeing that his girlfriend left the room, Andrew put his feet back up on her coffee table. Keeping his feet off the furniture was the one thing she had specifically asked him to do, but his feet were clean, so he didn’t see anything wrong with it. He hastily lowered them at the sound of Jessica’s tooth-brushing getting louder.

Andrew had become addicted to MMO’s, so much so, that it was almost impossible to have a conversation with him anymore. Whenever he spoke, it was usually into a headset that he used to chat with other players in the game. He’d kept this a secret from everyone, including Jessica, until the day his parents made him move out, too tired to deal with his slothfulness anymore. He’d started playing these games sometime after high school. He didn’t remember when he got addicted or what caused him to enjoy playing them more than he should, but now he just couldn’t help himself.

When he told Jessica about his ordeal, he made it sound like he was the innocent victim, so she was all too happy to help him move into her apartment. They had to use the word “help” very lightly. Once they arrived at her apartment, Andrew excused himself from her company, claiming he had a little bit of business to take care of online. Jessica figured it had to be important, so she trusted him, only to find herself moving all his boxes and bags in for him while he sat on her couch playing on the computer, feet up on her coffee table.

Upon beating around the bush to get him to help, he grumbled that this was a very important quest which he had to do now. The way he kept gaming and blowing her off made it sound like he didn’t have a lot going on. She asked him about when he had work that week only once, to which he told her he got fired about a month ago, which was news to her, but honestly a complete lie since he’d never even bothered applying anywhere.

Jessica spat in the sink, which made her boyfriend jump a little, since he could hear it over his headset. He felt a cold, moist hand rest on his shoulder seconds later. As he was in the middle of fighting a boss, he just said, “What?”. Jessica shook her head and shut Andrew’s laptop, earning her a dark glare.

“Honey, I know this is asking a lot, but I’d like it if you slept out here tonight. I have to get up early for work tomorrow, so I need my sleep." Andrew gave her a blank stare. She interrupted his gaming just for that? With a sour look on his face, Andrew nodded, replying “Just leave me a note next time,” with that he flipped his laptop screen back up and apologized to the other gamers whom he was fighting alongside.

Jessica just rolled her eyes and went to her room. She came back out with sheets, a blanket, a new toothbrush, and a tube of toothpaste. She put the toothbrush and toothpaste on the coffee table and without disturbing Andrew too much, she escorted him from her coach into a rocking chair. She didn’t trust him to make his own bed and didn’t want him to mess up her couch. She and him would definitely have a friendly chat the next day. Having lined the couch with the blanket and sheets, she wrote him a note on her sticky pad and placed it on the top left corner of his screen. The note read,

"Sleep on the couch. Brush your teeth. I’m kicking you out when I leave for work tomorrow morning. You are to look for a new job while I’m gone tomorrow and I’m not letting you back in until I get home tomorrow night."

As he was removing his headset to protest the note, Jessica retreated back to her room for the night.