Garfield Logan really considered the notion of getting new friends. He knew they meant well, but seriously if they set him up on one more awful date, he'd kill them in their sleep. He had just gotten home from an evening out with a girl that his friend Kory had set him up with, an Australian named Toni. She was nice until one of the guys at the college bar started hitting on her, during their date mind you, and she karate kicked his ass outta there.
Sexy, well hot as hell, but not what he was looking for in a woman. She was pretty though with a curvy figure, pale skinned, black hair with red frosted tips, and full pouty red lips. Again she was fun and pretty, but not what he was looking for. In fact he wasn't sure if he even liked the pale skinned look. The dark hair was cool though.
They said their goodbyes and he headed back to his apartment, silently cursing his friends for being so nice. But honestly they were really trying to help him get over his last girlfriend. He shuddered at the thought as the elevator traveled up to his floor.
"I just want to go home, flop on to my couch, and forget about women. for the rest of the night." He said to himself once the elevator stopped at his floor. He threw his key into the lock and opened the door preparing himself to veg the rest of the day away.
"Well what's taking so long?!"
He slammed the door shut and took a few minutes to register what he had heard. He quickly scanned the door of the apartment. 1901. Yup this was his apartment. Then why on Earth was there a woman yelling in there? Did Vic have someone over?
He cautiously stepped back into his apartment, finding a petite and irate young woman using his landline telephone in the middle of his living room. She was a small little thing, pale fair skin and jet black hair with a pair of stunning blue eyes. But he noticed all of this AFTER he realized she was wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around her torso instantly making his mouth run dry.
She continued to yell into the phone, but glanced in his direction when she heard him step in, but motioned for him to wait a second while she was on the phone. "I've been waiting for thirty minutes . . . Please just come soon." Without a goodbye she slammed the phone down then turned to finally face him. Her frustration with whatever was happening was quickly replaced by red hot embarrassment which was evident by every inch of her revealed flesh turning a faint pink. "Oh god I am so, SO sorry for this. Your probably wondering what the hell is going on huh?"
As he fought to keep his eyes on hers, and responded. "I'm mildly curious."
She clutched at the towel to keep it from slipping as she approached him to shake his hand with his. The more primal part of him wishing for the towel to slip just as inch. "I'm Raven I just moved in across the hall, and as I was taking a shower when someone knocked on my door, and I thought it was the movers with the rest of my stuff, so I ran to get the door, but it turned out to be someone knocking on another apartment, but when I stepped out into the hall, I, uh, locked myself out." She gave a nervous laugh that he found absolutely adorable. "But Luckily for me your roommate was home."
As she mentioned said roommate, a large African American man stepped into the living room holding a lime green robe and handed it to her. Garfield rolled his eyes noticing that it was his robe that his roommate, Victor, was handing her.
"Here ya go," he said kindly, "I'll go get ya something to drink while you slip into this." He motioned for Gar to follow when he stepped back into the kitchen.
"I'll, uh, give him a hand." Gar gave a nervous smile as followed his roommate. Once they were outta sight, the whispering began.
Victor leaned in his friends ear. "Dude, I just found her in the hallway."
"Nice job, Vic but you can't keep her."
Vic snickered as he went about getting some water. "Nah man I've been talking you up the whole time. She's single, studying literature, she meditates and yoga, as you can tell by that body, good lord-"
"Vic come on man," But Gar would have to be dead to not notice how toned she was both in her arms and her curvy and shapely lega. "I don't wanna chat up a half naked girl. I'll look like a freak."
"Your not 'chatting up', your just getting to know each other before the managers get here with the keys to her place. So get going. I'm handing this one to you on a silver platter. In fact if she ignores the smell of cinnamon on your robe, it's slam dunk." Vic walked back into the living room and handed Raven her glass of water, but Gar could swear he caught her sniffing his robe. "Here ya go, now I've got some studying to do so Gar here will keep ya company." He winked at the blonde young man before disappearing into the other room, leaving the two alone.
Raven watched him leave with her eyes while taking a sip of water. "He seems nice."
"Yeah, Vic and I have been friends since we were kids, and even when he was on the football team and I was in the biology club, we were still thick as thieves."
Gar had taken a seat on a chair across from her, still trying to be as gentlemenly as possible by keeping distance between them.
"Oh, your interested in biology?" she asked.
"Yeah, its my major. I want to do something with animals someday."
"Interesting. I struggle with biology actually, but I've always liked animals too."
Gar suddenly saw a chance and jumped on it. "Well maybe I can tutor you some time."
Her face brightened at the prospect. "You mean it? Oh that would be wonderful."
Score one for the Gar man.
"Yeah, I had to take it for my Associates degree and I'm not excited about it. But it's what dad wants." She shook get head at the mention of her own father. "I'm sorry, I just have issues with my father."
He shrugged, "Sorry about that, but my parents passed away when I was a kid so I don't know much about that."
She slowly dropped her cup of water, "Oh my God. I'm so sorry."
He waved her off, "It's okay, I'm over it."
What the hell am I doing?! I NEVER talk about my parents and here I am blabbing everything!
"So what are you studying?"
They continued to chit chat for the next half hour until a knock on his door told them that the managers had come to help Raven into her room, to which Gar walked her back. He had to get his robe after all. Once inside, she scurried off to the back room to change, leaving him to glance about her apartment unattended. His emerald gaze went immediately to the large bookcase that had taken the spot of the television telling him that she was not a TV person, but he could have deduced that just from their conversation earlier. She was much too classy for TV. In fact her entire apartment reeked of class and elegance from statues, books maps, globes and the like.
Suddenly, even though they weren't in his apartment anymore, he was very self conscious of his apartment filled with video games, his roommates disgusting fast food wrappers and huge TV.
"Oh man," he heard her call from the other room.
"Is everything alright?"
Just then she emerged with his robe in her hands and her cell in another. She wasn't dressed in a way that he would classify as "his type". More conservatively, with a long sleeved shirt and leggings, but he had seen her mostly naked so what was he complaining about.
She passed his robe back to him but kept her eyes on get phone. "Sorry, it's just my boyfriend. He was wondering where I was."
He felt a thousand bricks sink in his stomach, but he played it as cool as he could. "Oh you have a boyfriend huh?"
"Yeah, we were supposed to meet up but I couldn't, cuz obviously I was detained." she nervously chuckled again, "But thank you so much for coming to my rescue. I really appreciate it."
You well, he thought to himself with a shrug, win some you lose some.
. . . . right?
xcccccccc
"I'm telling ya dude, she was classy, funny, super smart, and . . . hot . . just hot. I mean I know it's wrong cuz she was in a towel, but hey I'm a man for crying out loud of course I looked. And she was just easy to talk to, I even told her about my parents and I never do that, it just felt so . . comfortable. But she has a boyfriend, I don't know if it's serious or not. Well maybe I'm just imagining all of this just because she was half naked in my apartment. What do you think Drake? . . . Drake . . ?"
He was so focused on his retelling his tale he hadn't even noticed that his guest had fallen asleep on the other side of the coffee table. Garfield slapped the table, thus jolting him awake.
"I'm here! Yes - wha - huh?"
"Am I boring you?" Gar scoffed annoyed.
Drake let out a long stretch after his impromptu nap, "Sorry Gar, I'm just exhausted. Chloe was up all night with a cold, and if a two month old is up all night then so are you."
"Oh wow. Why didn't you get her some medicine?"
Drake narrowed his eyes that were laced with annoyance at him, then placed a nearby bag on to the table. "I did. I was on my way home when you pulled me in here saying you had something important to tell me. If I had known it was about more of your woman problems I would have kept walking."
Gar smiled sheepishly, "Heh, my bad. Wait, are you saying my woman troubles bore you?"
"Well it's the same thing Gar. 'She's crazy, she's horny all the time, she engaged'!"
"Yeah but this girl is different. I can feel it in my bones."
Drake was about to retort when someone called out to them, well specifically him. "Garfield?"
Both men turned to the direction of the coffee shop counter. And there she was. In all of her dark haired, pale skinned, dark clothed beauty. Garfield fumbled to stand from his seat, Drake watching his behavior with curiosity.
"R-Raven, what are you doing here?"
Raven gestured to the coffee shop. "Oh I'm meeting Damian here. My boyfriend. I didn't know you came here too?"
"Yeah, psh all the time." He rocked from one foot to the other thinking of something to say then remembered Drake at the table, "Oh this is a good friend of mine . . um . . uh . . "
"Drake Daniels." He stood up shaking her hand smirking playfully at his coffee mate.
Garfield wasn't paying attention to their exchange. All he heard was the sounds of blood thundering in his ears and heat rising up his tanned skinned cheeks.
I can't believe I blanked like that. I never get nervous in front of anyone! He scolded himself.
The next thing he knew, someone was waving a hand in front of his face and snapping their fingers. "Wow, you got it bad."
Gar suddenly realized Raven had left and was at the counter ordering coffee while Drake gathered his belongings to leave, chuckling at how oblivious Gar had been.
"Dude you can't leave." He begged but he was ignored.
"I can and I will, cuz I've got a sick baby at home and Nicole has been texting me wondering were I am."
"Well, what am I supposed to do?"
"Fight for her man. I mean who names their kid Damian for crying out loud? Your a charming, attractive guy, and can . . pass for intelligence. I'm sure you've got this." Just then both men saw a young, boyishly handsome man with jet black hair and eyes the color of the forest, dressed in a black turtleneck enter the coffee shop, head straight for Raven, and place a small peck onto her lips.
One look at the Tom Cruise look-a-like and Drake turned back to Gar. "Well your screwed." he patted his friend on the shoulder then exited the coffeeshop.
Raven had left the counter with Damian in tow. "Gar, this is my boyfriend Damian, Damian this is Gar."
Both men shook hands, Damian not having the slightest expression of jealousy on his face, or much of anything really. "Oh, your the guy who saved my lady from being Stark naked in the hallway."
Raven snorted laugh with something that sounded like annoyance. "My name is Raven, not your lady, and yes he is."
Damian didn't notice her correction, but Gar certainly did. "Yup, coulda been a lot worse, coulda been some freak that found her."
They had a good laugh at that before falling silent again. "Oh! Gar, could you do me a huge favor this weekend? Where headed out for a camping trip and I need you to water my plants."
He smiled a toothy grin, excited for the chance to be doing her a favor. "Camping? You don't strike me as the camping person?"
"Oh I'm not, but I'll try anything once."
"Yeah, we're gonna head into the mountains so that we can release some eagle hatchlings into the wild," Damian sighed as he grew fond of the memory, "Yeah, their mother was killed by a hunter, so I took them in and raised them as my own until their ready to be back in the wild."
Geez, angelic much? "Oh. Well how do you know it's time to let them go?"
Raven chuckled, "Well one of them ate his neighbors cat." Once again they all shared a laugh as Raven handed Gar the keys to her place. As they left he flopped back onto his chair and heaved a heavy sigh. Why couldn't he stop thinking about her? They had nothing in common, and she had a boyfriend and yet here he was, unable to rid his mind of her.
Maybe . . he could . . if he was charming . .
NO! He wasn't gonna be THAT GUY.
He needed to rib his mind of her thoughts. He reached into his pocket, got his phone and shot off a text.
"Hey Rose, what you up too? -Gar-"
