Page 2 of The Progressions

Oh. He’d lowered his head and now they were kissing, they werereallykissing. It wasn’t just lips and tongue but also groping, also moaning, also grinding. Hats be damned—those tumbled to the floor as he gripped her butt in his two big hands and lifted her with his strong arms. I watched his fingers massage and thought that those must be strong, too. She clearly worked out a lot and her glutes were probably like iron, but he was really digging in.

She tore away from his mouth with a gasp. “There’s a bed,” I heard her say.

I cleared my throat, loudly. “Ok, this is…” This scene was hotter than a fur hat in July and also so embarrassing that I thought I might catch on fire myself. I needed to smother it. “Ok, I can go…” I tried again, but neither of them paid a whit of attention. They were kissing more and she pumped against him as if theywere actually having sex, like that contoured bodysuit wasn’t even there and neither were his leather pants. “Excuse me?” I said, but they still didn’t respond.

And they were blocking the door, the only way out. Or maybe…I looked at the window above the bed she’d mentioned, considering if I could make an exit that way. But this room faced the back instead of the parking lot, and I knew that there was a drop-off. Plus, I was terrible at removing and replacing the screens in these units.

“Harder,” she moaned, and then grunted as he held her hips even more tightly to his crotch.

They were going to be naked momentarily and…ok, I had another idea, and I scrolled through my phone until I found the app. A moment later, a shrill, intermittent whistle blasted through the condo.

“That’s the fire alarm,” I yelled over the sound, and thank God that I was able to run the test cycle on the system from my phone. There weren’t too many other tenants in this particular building to get mad about it, and I could give them some of our logo t-shirts to compensate if I got any complaints. Everybody liked free stuff.

They had broken apart and Tyler Hennessy had put her down when the noise started. He looked flushed, maybe due to something besides the July temperature and his wintery outfit. She looked extremely pleased with herself and her hair hadn’t gotten mussed at all. How?

“We’d better evacuate, just in case,” I announced, and he grabbed their hats before they headed for the front door. I followed and as I arrived there, I deactivated the test cycle so that the screeching beeps stopped. They had served their purpose.

“False alarm,” I said. I slammed the door behind myself, because this tour was over.

“Does that happen a lot?” he asked. It was the first time he’d spoken directly to me, and I hadn’t thought that he’d even noticed I was with them.

“No, almost never,” I answered truthfully. Equally truthfully, I mentioned, “I’m glad that there isn’t a real fire.” And then less honestly, I added, “Who knows why these things act up?”

“Tyler,” she stated imperiously, queen-style, and he walked over and got into position next to her. I’d seen this happen several times already during our appointment. She fixed his hat and then they both smiled as she held up her phone. They were perfect together.

But she looked at the picture she’d taken and frowned. “I’ll use the one I got when we were waiting so long for her to open the door.”

“Would you like to follow me back to the leasing office?” I suggested. “We can discuss—”

The two of them were already walking away. They went directly over to the bright yellow SUV he must have rented and then they were gone, pulling slowly out of the parking lot.

It had been an interesting appointment. That was what I said to the other woman in the office, my boss, when I came back in. “It was interesting, but I don’t think he’s going to take it,” I told her. “She thinks the bathroom is too small.”

“Really? It’s bigger than my first apartment,” Iva said, laughing.

It was almost bigger than my current home, so I nodded.

“I was looking at all her social media,” my boss continued. She showed me her phone, and there was the girl with the fur hat. Except, in this picture, she wore a raspberry-pink bikini and her head was bare. She lay on her back in a really difficult position to maintain: up on her elbows, chest forward, chin tilted, lips parted, eyes half-closed, knees bent and splayed, right hand holding her right breast and the left one dipping down into her bikini bottom. I’d already seen that shot when I’d looked her up, after I’d read about the team signing Hennessy, and I’d tried to replicate it. I had given myself a charley horse in my calf.

“She’s beautiful,” I said. “She’s even prettier in person.”

Iva nodded. “Look how many followers she has.” She moved her thumb, flicking through more sexy images. “She got famous by posting videos of herself wearing wet t-shirts and holding her breath for as long as she could. It took forever before she passed out,” she said admiringly. “She could dive for pearls, for sure. Then she met Tyler Hennessy and now she’s everywhere. How did he act on the tour?” she asked, her voice now very, very casual.

Yes, several of the Woodsmen football players had leased from us in the past, but we always tried to act as if we weren’t thatconcerned with them and didn’t care what they did. It was absolutely false because we were hugely interested, at all times. The two of us tracked every one of their movements from the window in this office, where we could see the parking lot, the main entrance and exit to the complex, and also the dumpsters where they had to take out their trash. We commented to each other on what they were doing, but we always did it in a way that feigned nonchalance (e.g., “There goes Robby Baines, hm, that’s a big bag this week”), as if we didn’t actually care in the least.

So I answered the same way. “He seems fine,” I said, totally disinterested, and she shrugged one shoulder because she sure didn’t care, either. “He only spoke to me once, so she was the one asking the questions.”

“Shay Galton,” Iva filled in. “That’s her name. They’ve been together for seven and a half months.”

I already knew those things, of course, because I knew everything about the Woodsmen team, and Tyler Hennessy was now a part of it. “She didn’t like the kitchen or the bedroom, either.”

My boss waved her hand dismissively. “It’s not like she’d live here forever. He only needs a place for the season.”

The deal he’d signed was for four years with an option for more, but it was true that anything could happen. He could get injured or released. Maybe he would even retire, although that didn’t make much sense. Hennessy was only twenty-six and he probably had a lot of years of football ahead of him. But many of the guys on the team weren’t permanently in Michigan. Theywent off to warmer climates after the last game of the year, to live in places where there were better facilities to train and also had more of the California vibe that I’d been thinking about. So if she did stay here with her “big boy,” it might only have been for a few months during the football season.

I thought back to their tour, especially when I’d watched him walk up the steps in front of me. “His pants…”

“Were they painted on?” Iva burst out, forgetting to be blasé. “Damn, I could see everything! His balls, even!”

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