The Sinful Obsession

Chapter 2

“I have a roommate who knows where I am, so she knows my last whereabouts if I suddenly go missing,” Amy informed him as she walked through his door and shoved a bottle of red wine into his open hands. She had spent the whole day dreading what was to come and regretting suggesting they ever talk again because she really was no good at the whole people thing. Human interactions were not her thing. So asking to see him again was a sort of spur of the moment thing, and after she got home she remembered how awful she was with people. She would actually enjoy being cut off from society with no human contact for years, so it was incredibly stupid for her to suggest coming over. But she couldn't exactly cancel because she didn't want to have an enemy living across from her for god knows how long, so she was forced to just do it and wait for it to dissolve into disaster.

“I actually did not make any contingency plans for if you planned on murdering me, but I'm beginning to regret that. Just call me an optimist, but the first thought I have when I look at people is not 'how can I make sure the police will catch them if they kill me?' And considering the fact that you're the one who followed me home and just happened to live across the street for the past few weeks without my knowledge is a little suspicious, isn't is? I mean, think of the odds. Do you think your roommate would notice if I went missing?” Jake smirked, and for a moment his easy facetiousness made her forget how awful the night was sure to get. But only for a moment. She was soon back to her normal nervous nature.

“I've never been a good neighbor before, so I had no idea what to do. The internet said to cook something, but I'd probably kill us both if I tried to make anything edible, so I went with wine.”

“If I'm not mistaken this cost more than 8 dollars. I'm genuinely impressed,” he said as he studied the bottle. “I've got something too, so I'll be right back. Make yourself at home,” he said as he swept his hand across the room and walked away.

Amy was surprised by how... normal everything looked. He seemed like one of those quirky types that would have everything in disarray, but the front room was surprisingly perfect, almost to the point of empty. Like no one lived there. There were the usual amenities like places to sit, coffee table-y stuff,

and a TV, but nothing actually personal.

“I thought I told you not to do anything!” Amy called as she walked towards the direction he went off in, finding him standing at a counter with his back turned to her.

“No, you said nothing fancy!” He yelled back, completely unaware that she was so close to him and definitely didn't need to respond so loudly. But when actually took a look around, she couldn't help but grin.

“Ha! I knew you were a messy person!”

The whole place looked like a natural disaster rather than a place where you were supposed to prepare food. Random papers were piled on the edge of the counter that looked like they would slip off any moment, stacks of mail laid beside them with two books on top of them, and that wasn't even to mention the mess of powder from pancake mix and dirty utensils strewn about.

“Aw, you were supposed to stay out there where it was clean and I'd make a good impression,” Jake griped as he turned to her with a package of Oreos between his teeth that he was apparently trying to tear open. “It's not usually this bad, I swear,” he said as he ripped the package from his mouth and created an opening that he widened with his hands. “I really wanted pancakes this morning, so I made some. But I hadn't made pancakes in a while so I forgot how long they took to make, so I didn't have time to clean up before I went to work. And then I had to throw everything from the front room into places I'll never find so everything wasn't a complete mess, and I didn't have time to clear this place up before you came.”

“And what's all this?” She asked referring to the cookies in his hand.

“Something decidedly not fancy. Can you get the glasses?”

Jake side stepped her to allow her access to two glass of milk on the counter behind him, which she duly picked up and followed him into dining room where he took a seat and she followed suit. Amy was wondering if it was all a joke, but he took a cookie and dipped it in milk, then popped it in his mouth, and he pushed the package towards her.

“Is this what all neighbor meetings are like?” She asked with skepticism lining her voice. Still she tentatively took a cookie, but kept it in her hand rather than do anything with it.

“I unno,” he shrugged. “I'm not exactly an expert. An expert would probably be appalled at my technique. But most people don't have any clue so you just pretend that you know what you're doing, and most everyone goes along with it. So far no one's called me on it, so I'm sticking to it.”

“Is this it?” Amy motioned between them. She didn't know exactly what she was expecting, but it just seemed far too simple. Milk and cookies was just so childish- but in a good way. In one of those nostalgic ways where you remember all the innocence of childhood and you bonded over sweets and stories instead of beer and stress.

“Yup. I thought I'd go with laid back because our first meeting was, while enjoyable, sketchy at best. And you can tell a lot about a person from how they eat their Oreos,” Jake informed her completely straight faced.

“I was wondering about that. So what does your way say about you?”

After the first cookie, he settled into a routine that he seemed way too familiar with and committed to for it to be anything other than deliberate. For the most part he twisted the two pieces apart, scraped the icing off with his teeth, then held the actual cookie parts in the milk before devouring them. Then every second or third cookie he would just submerge the whole thing. And after that cycle repeated twice he would do two wholes in a row. And then the pattern continued.

“I've never been asked to analyze myself. The people who only eat them dry whole tend to be people who only eat them with milk whole, and if they match up they're almost always picky eaters and have a hard time or just flat out don't accept help because they have to do everything themselves. And if they only do whole one way but not the other they’re still picky eaters and they're always working when other people are because they hate feeling useless when someone's doing them a favor. There's other combinations, but they'd take awhile to get into. Now myself, I like to think of as chaotic and unpredictable. The stuffing is the best part, and if it's dry I'll just eat the stuffing or whole. The outside is just nasty by itself. But with milk the stuffing's good by itself, and the black parts are okay by themselves if they're dipped in milk, and whole they're great in milk. But I like to switch it up so even I don't know what I'll do next,” Jake grinned and seemed extremely proud of himself. By the way he talked about it, he had it down to a science. Which Amy had no reason to doubt. He always made it sound like he was winging everything with intercommunication, but she was sure that he was more adept than he let on, even if he didn't realize it himself. He was a people person through and through, and she always hated people people. So he was good enough with others to get through to her, which was an accomplishment.

Still, she couldn't imagine paying so much attention to a person's cookie eating habits to develop a psychological profile on them. Technically she had been paying attention to his habit, but that was completely different. Amy wasn't trying to learn more about him as a person, just trying to figure out a pattern. A pattern that would have been just as intriguing if it were any other person and she definitely didn't spend any more time on figuring him out than she would have anyone else. Figuring the pattern out. Or at least that's what she told herself.

And she supposed that he was figuring out a pattern too, but a pattern of people instead of figures and facts.

“You're wrong,” she informed him, trying to keep the smirk from her lips. “You're completely predictable.”

“Am not,” he shot back immediately without even thinking about it, because he was so sure of himself.

So she told him about his pattern, and he scanned his memories to see if she was telling the truth, but finally admitted that he didn't pay enough attention to himself to check the veracity of her statements.

“What can you tell about me?” Amy said, but it was more of a challenge than it was a question.

“I don't know. You've had that one cookie in your hand the whole time,” he quipped as he leaned back in his chair with his eyebrows raised.

“Oh,” she tried to hide her flush. She should have remembered that. She didn't know why she didn't remember that. “I guess whole's okay in milk. I haven't had these in forever. Most of the time, milk or no milk, I scrape the stuffing off and just eat the black. It's way too sweet otherwise.”

“You're kidding,” Jake gasped as he stared at her in disbelief- though she didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“No?” She said, unsure. Well she was sure that she wasn't kidding, but she wasn't sure why her answer was so weird and what the truth would mean to him. But then she realized it was incredibly stupid for her to be worried about what he thought about how she ate freaking Oreos. “If they sold just the outsides in a package that would be all I'd buy. I don't usually buy any because it feels like a waste to just eat two thirds of it and throw the rest away.”

“This is like seeing a unicorn in the wild for the first time. I didn't even know someone like you even existed. You like the cookies and I like the stuffing. The perfect partnership. We would be unstoppable,” he marveled in a hushed tone of exaltation. “I need to eat Oreos with you and only ever you from now on.”

Amy couldn't help but laugh at that. He sounded so eager and so sincere that she was actually convinced he meant it. And at that moment she realized it wasn't his ideas that were nostalgic and wonderful, and it wasn't the cookies and milk. It was all him. Jake was the most idealistic person she had ever met. Amy was prudish and off-putting at best, and a total bummer at worst- or at least that was what she had always been told. And he was wide eyed and ridiculous and fun. He took her back to the days when nonsense was something she enjoyed instead of pushing it off as useless. It had been a long while since she had felt this open and carefree.

She found she rather liked the feeling.

“Oh no,” he groaned suddenly at seemingly nothing. “You're right. I do have a pattern. I couldn't tell when I was paying attention at first, but then I got back into the habit of eating Oreos normally, and you're completely right. All this time I was so proud of myself for being unpredictable, and I have a routine. This is just awful. Now I need to change it.”

“Aw, don't do that when I tried so hard to figure it out,” Amy attempted to banter, but it came off sounding dangerously close to flirting.

“All right, I won't,” Jake agreed immediately, and she couldn't tell if there actually was a tension in the air, or if it was all in her head.

“I was half worried you were going to bring out a board game,” she chuckled halfheartedly in an attempt to interrupt whatever she felt between them, but his immediate response made her sure it really was all in her head.

“Does anyone still play board games these days?” Jake scrunched up his nose in disgust. “I mean I get family and friends, but with people you have absolutely no legal, familial, or social obligations to? They have got to be the worst get to know you activity with strangers. And you know some i***t is gonna suggest monopoly.”

She had no idea why he was smiling so wide at her until she brought a completely dry cookie to her lips that she had expected to be drenched in milk. Only then did she notice that her glass was completely empty.

Wordlessly Jake got up and took their glasses into the kitchen in what she hoped was a move to fill them back up instead of put them away. So she was more than pleased when he came back in with two full glasses of milk clutched to his chest by his arms, both hands filled with a glass of wine and a second package of Oreos tucked under his chin.

“I could've helped, you know,” she chided him, but he only scoffed like the mere idea was preposterous and only accepted her assistance to set stuff down once he realized there was no way he could pull it off by himself.

“Okay, worst neighbor stories. Go!” Jake declared as if he was counting down to the start of a race.

“I don't know. You?”

“Have I got a story,” he said as he rubbed his hands together and Amy leaned in. “Okay, first apartment I ever had on my own. I was a model tenant, absolutely perfect. But there was this guy across the hall who absolutely hated me for no reason. He couldn't have been a day over 50, but his hair was completely white and he had a rage in his eyes that could have only been amassed by an ageless being that suffered through every up and down of the human race. And- I'm completely serious about this- sometimes I could see this fire burning in his eyes and I can't think of any explanation other than he was possessed by a demon or had the most bitchin' contacts. But I can't imagine someone would be as bitter as him with contacts like that,” Jake set the scene for her, and he really was a natural story teller. It was like every part of his body was telling the story with him. His hands that illustrated the picture, his eyebrows that knit together and raised at the perfect points in his description, his shoulders that welcomed her and she couldn't help but be drawn in by, and his eyes that lit up- going from bright and wide to sharp and suspicious- but always piercing and always honest. Even his breath seemed to play some role and add to the whole experience.

And of course there was his voice. The most important part.

It was warm, charming, and inviting. He went from a low murmur at a slow pace only to speed up in a second into impassioned and indignant, then shifting into sarcasm. And he did it so well. The whole time it felt like he was telling her a secret that she was privileged to hear.

And she still couldn't see him as actually directing a classroom of kids, at least not with any success, but this was where his teacher-y-ness shown through. The best teachers she ever had were the ones with fantastic reading voices that just brought the book to life. And Amy was sure that she wanted to hear more of this voice. He sounded more than pleasant when he was just talking to her like normal, but his story voice just brought the words out of his mind and sound waves and made them real and tangible.

She wanted him to read to her.

Almost as soon as the thought hit her she realized how weird it was. Who in their right mind fantasized about a new acquaintance reading to them. And then it hit her that fantasized was really the wrong word to use, even though she only thought it.

Because that word choice made her picture that same low voice, now thick and husky, whispering things in her ear that were completely inappropriate to imagine him saying.

And she was picturing that when he was sitting right in front of her. She could only pray that the heat she felt on her cheeks wasn't visible. She only managed to shake her stupidity from herself when she realized with a pang of regret that she had missed out on some of his story.

“And he still claimed he could hear it, even though if he could actually hear that well my radio from across the hall and through two closed doors would be drowned out by the sound of his cold, shriveled heart struggling to keep beating. And then he started the absolute insanity with the newspapers. He called the cops on me four times claiming that I stole his newspaper off his door mat when I had absolutely no use for it because if I was going to steal any newspaper in that hall, I would have definitely gone with the family next door whose paper covered all the major surrounding cities when his only concerned a single zip code. Eventually even the cops got fed up with him so they told him to set up a video camera, something that I had absolutely no idea about. So he does it, but he doesn't know how to play it back and so he calls the cops again to help him figure it out and the best part, thank god because it was the greatest , he calls me over to so we can all watch it and he wants to see my face. So me and him and these two officers are standing around and I just started cracking up when it got to the right point because it was priceless. I swear to god I'm not making it up, it was his cat .” Jake beamed and looked like he was about to start a hysterical laughing fit right then and there. Amy was fairly sure he was making the exact same face right then as he was when the whole story was taking place. “He was still a jerk, but at least that was the last time the cops knocked on my door with an apologetic look and saying that they had to 'investigate' his claims and me reassuring them it wasn't their fault.”

And for the first time since he began his whole escapade he reached for an Oreo that he had been practically inhaling earlier. And she knew she should have warned him that he accidentally dipped it in the wine and not the milk since he wasn't looking, but Amy just bit her tongue so her face wouldn't give anything away because she had to see this.

And he bit into it like any old thing and took a good two seconds to register that anything was out of order. And then his face contorted like it was the most repulsive thing he had ever tasted and was caught between a choke and a gag before somehow managing to get it down his throat. As soon as that happened he took a mouthful of wine and swished it around in his mouth to rid it of the taste.

“Oh my god,” Jake gasped. “That was the most disgusting thing ever.” He then took one look up at her and her near silent breathy laughs and knew what she had done. “Thanks for the warning,” he grumbled.

Before she could even stop grinning from ear to ear he grabbed another Oreo and dipped it in what was left in his wine.

“What on earth are you doing? Didn't you just say how disgusting it was?”

“Yeah, but I need to be sure it's actually disgusting or if it was only disgusting because I was expecting milk,” he explained like it was the most logical thing in the world and that it wasn't an absurd thing to do. This time though, he only took a tentative nibble and shook his head in response.

“Nope. It's really disgusting. Really really gross. Just nasty.”

“You never did tell me what you were doing walking a good 30 minutes last night. You already know my reason, so what's your excuse?” Amy prodded with the lighthearted taunt that somehow seemed so natural between them.

“Boredom,” Jake answered immediately.

“You're one of those healthy people who exercise when they're bored?” Amy asked, her disbelief bordering on horror.

“God no,” he laughed, and it was just another warm and genuine sound she loved hearing from him. “You just get to explore all of the back alleys that are hiding just out of reach from the access of a car. All the seedy and shifty stuff and just stuff that's so weird you have to take a breath and wonder about the vastness of the universe. There's this shop that's all superhero stuff and is refreshingly genuine, with a surprising lack of fetish gear. But not even three doors down there's the kinkiest s*x shop that you could ever imagine, and they don't even try to hide it. Just walking around is a whole thing of it's own. I was once offered a complimentary tattoo in exchange for my left shoelace. It was tempting, but I really didn't want to walk home with my foot slipping in and out of my shoe. But I am probably the most unhealthy person you will ever meet. After exploring I have to come home and work on all of those calories that I lost. I have a whole 'nother package of Oreos in the pantry and at least four other brands of cookies. That's not even to mention the gummy bears that I buy in bulk, and the chips that-”

“I get it, I get it,” Amy interrupted with a grin, because she was sure if she didn't stop him he could go on like that forever.

“That's one of the disappointing things about how you've already been living here for a while. One of the best neighbor things to do is to show someone new around town. Or at the very least offer too,” Jake said and actually did sound dejected.

“I haven't explored around here at all,” she started, but suddenly felt sheepish. People said stuff like that all the time and didn't mean it. He had probably only brought it up because he was sure she wouldn't say anything about it, or just go along with it. Something that most normal people would have politely moved on from instead of bring it back up. But she was already hinting at something stupid so she couldn't just leave off on that. “So, I mean, if you were to offer...” She trailed off as she dragged a finger across the table in front of her, not even looking at him.

“Really?” He asked so eagerly that she couldn't help but meet his eyes. She'd be damned if the expression on his face could be described as any word other than hopeful.

“Yeah.”

“Well then I am definitely offering,” he beamed, and Amy couldn't do anything but smile back.

“So is it just when it starts getting dark? When all of the weird stuff comes out?” She probed. For some reason she couldn't imagine anything she would enjoy more than seeing weird and crazy things with him. Or really anything with him.

“Oh no, the later the weirder,” he informed her as if he was the foremost and only source on the topic.

“So, what, midnight? On Friday so I don't fall asleep at my desk and you won't collapse on top of a child? Does that sound good?”

“It's a date,” Jake grinned, then faltered at his word choice. “I mean, not like a date date,” he stumbled until she rested a hand on his arm.

“I know what you mean,” she chuckled a reassurance. Still she couldn't help but be disappointed that it wasn't a date date, and that he was so averse to the idea that he got so flustered over it. Even though she knew that it was stupid to be so disappointed about that.

“I don't think I've eaten this many cookies in one sitting in my life,” Amy sighed as she leaned back into her chair. Both of their wine glasses were empty, while their milk was getting close, and of the two packages only three Oreos were left. The whole night was so simple, but in an amazing way. Where everything was easy and you didn't have to try at all, everything just worked.

“Welcome to my world, Amy.”

And she found herself laughing again- she had laughed so many times that night that she had lost count. It had been a long time since she had lost count of anything. Much less laughter.

Much less happiness.