Thread: Going Down? (Traveler & Charlotte)

There were definite benefits to having her on the evening edition of Downtown Weather Report on Channel Two. Sure, it meant that she got home late and wanted to talk, talk, talk, just as he was sliding into bed, but the evenings home without her were priceless. He'd only been living with her for seven months, two weeks, and a day but who was counting? and already he was wondering if that had been a mistake. Fuck... if he was thinking about it then it was already a mistake. He just wasn't ready to pull the cord yet, and it probably had something to do with that other, much more pleasant, thing that she did with her mouth. Just thinking about the morning they had when she was half-asleep made him ache all over again. Her sleepy sex was almost as good as her drunk sex, with the exception being that she didn't stink of mixed drinks and too much booze when she was taking care of his needs. When she wasn't talking, her mouth was his favorite feature. He shuffled through the stack of mail as he stood in the ground floor lobby. To his right were the large, glass doors that faced the busy urban street. People and cars passed, the city pulsed, and life poured into the glossy room every time someone came in or left, like breaths from the building feeding the vibrant community it existed in. He loved the way the leaves sent speckled light into the lobby floor like water reflections. The lighting in his own apartment on the third floor was part of the reason he chose this building it appealed to his sense of design and placement, and as an urban planner and land developer, those kinds of things mattered. Vanessa , on the other hand, liked that it was within easy heel-walking distance to her favorite manicurist. She rarely went anywhere without her three-plus inch heels to compensate for her height. Even though she was a five six, she felt too short in front of the camera, and she always insisted that he not stand too near her in photographs. His six foot stature made her uncomfortable. He wasn't extremely tall by any means. Most would call him 'average', but his physique and the confident way he held himself made him seem to command any room he entered. He narrowed his grey-blue eyes as he noted an envelope in his stack addressed to Vanessa. He'd told her to get her own box he liked his privacy and he didn't want to see her plethora of fashion magazines and her bills for all the pricey clothing she went through in her career. His firm jaw framed an irritated frown, one that looked stern through the short, evening bristle of his beard. He wrote 'not at this address' across the envelope and slid it into the out-going slot, then thumbed through a few more until he got to the last one, addressed to Olive-Something. This one had another box number on it, so he simply slid it into the dark hole with Vanessa's and then closed the metal door to his box. As he turned to walk to the elevator the doors opened, revealing the cute neighbor he had seen several times before. She had a definite style to her, a kind of rockabilly sexiness that was both playful and mysterious, and she had seemed friendly enough every time they ran into each other. Jacob Galloway's frown instantly vanished and he reached out with one strong, masculine hand, to keep the doors from sliding shut. He was still in the suit he wore earlier, a light grey jacket over a tan pin-striped shirt. His tie had been loosened and he looked like a magazine model, perfect all the way down to his Italian shoes. Hello gorgeous, he flirted, his smile turning cocky. You look like you were ready for five o'clock about eight hours ago. Are you coming... or going? As he stood there, holding the door open, his eyes roamed over her sweet, flirty dress and the flawlessness of her decolletage. Her makeup and hair were always picture-perfect. She was like some WWII pilot's fighter come to life a dream that somehow walked separately from the world, yet made it a better place simply because she was in it. To make it even more sweet, he had never heard a word out of her mouth that did anything but make him smile. In his world of conflict-filled town meetings, lawyer negotiations, and demanding girlfriends, a sweet word and a shy glance went a long way to making his day more pleasurable.