Some Enchanted Girlfriend by Donna Lamb 13. Stop Over “Hell’s Little Wieners in Habaá±ero Sauce, is he still here?” asked Muffins coming back from a quick tour of my apartment. “You’ve got to get rid of your hairy sex ape or we’ll never be able to figure out what’s going on!”

I’d managed to talk Tim all the way to the door but he’d found something interesting – the door itself. “It’s a deadbolt. You have to have the keys to lock it, inside or out. But see, it’s got this lever on the inside that you can lock it with and then it can’t be unlocked from the outside.” He demonstrated. “That’s cool. And the deadbolt uses the same key as the lock in the doorknob, so you only need one key.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Say, where are my keys?”

“Oh,” he said. “I think I put them back in my grouch.” He rummaged in the zippered bag he wore on a belt while I leaned against the kitchen counter and tried to stretch the kinks out of my legs. “Here they are.” He pulled out the set of two identical keys on one of those little slip rings.

“Okay,” I said, reaching for them. “Thanks.” But he didn’t drop the keys in my hand.

“I think I should keep one of your keys,” he said.

I looked up at him, and up and up some more. Standing so close to him reminded me of just what a man-mountain he was. My butterfly mind hopped to a new subject. “How tall are you?”

“Huh?” he said. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“Oh, nothing I guess,” I said, remembering that I was trying to get him out of the apartment so I could get dressed and have a long talk with my cat. Okay, that sounded weird.

“I’m six-nine, six-ten, around there,” he said. “How tall are you?” He grinned at me.

“I dunno,” I said. “What do you think?”

“You’re just a little smidgen of a girl,” he said, still grinning. “Are you even five-foot?”

“About that, I guess,” I said. “But I usually wear heels. I think.” I popped up on tiptoe to demonstrate, which caused my boobs to take a little bounce which caused Tim’s grin to get even wider which caused me to giggle because it did funny things inside me when he grinned like that with all the evil thoughts of what he’d like to do to me just bubbling in his eyes.

My nipples had all crinkled up again and must have showed through the t-shirt I wore like a couple of turkey timers popping out of my butterball boobies. I needed a cold shower–or something to distract me from my hairy paramour. How did I turn into such a bimbo airhead in only a few hours?

“Practice,” I said aloud.

“What?” Tim looked a little startled.

“Practice,” I said, trying to make some kind of sense of my outburst. “I wear heels for practice in being taller?” I hadn’t meant that to sound like a question but he nodded solemnly.

“That oughtta work,” he agreed, his eyes twinkling. “Then when you grow up, you’ll be ready.”

While we talked, he had separated the two keys and now handed me the one still on the little ring. Not having any pockets, I laid the key on the counter, wondering vaguely if I should make a fuss about him keeping one of the pair.

“That’s so you don’t lock yourself out of your apartment,” he explained. “I’ll get a copy of one of my keys to give to you, too, huh?”

“Uh, sure,” I said. Wow. Exchanging keys. I had to think about that. I needed to talk to my cat and think about things. Life seemed to running along at freeway speeds and my brain hadn’t taken the training wheels off my bicycle yet.

Speaking of which reminded me of the little cart thing in the closet/laundry room but before I could go off on another tangent Muffins pounced on one of my toenails in an excess of kitten frustration.

“Kick him in the goolies if you have to, but get rid of the giant!” said the cat. “Hell’s Egg Timer, girl! We’ve got to talk!” She batted at first one toe then another when I wriggled them.

“Mousies!” I said aloud to embarrass her for acting like a kitten. “Get them mousies!” According to her, she couldn’t use her claws or teeth to hurt me so it was just a funny thing to do. I stood there, wriggling and giggling and probably jiggling and driving my cat crazy and maybe my new boyfriend, too.

“She’ll be good company for you on those cold lonely nights when I have to work,” said Tim with some sort of hidden amusement.

“Huh?” I said. “You work nights? I thought you said you had to go into work Monday morning?”

“Sometimes I work late,” he said. This seemed to amuse him, too. For a solid plank of a man, he seemed to be easily amused. It made me want to tickle him but I knew where that would lead.

The kitten must have read my mind because she hissed, sat back and stared up at him. “You, out!” she said and it sounded like she said the same thing both in my head and out loud.

“Okay, okay,” said Tim, laughing. “Baby, you want to get dressed,” he added to me, “and we can go out for lunch. You like soul food?”

“What? Like hog jowls, chitlins and collard greens?” I must have looked astonished. And I still wasn’t used to being called baby.

“No, more like catfish filet, smothered pork chops and barbecued ribs. There’s a place not too far away that makes really good stuff and they serve big enough portions for a guy my size. You can probably get by as an appetizer.”

“You mean with an appetizer,” I said.

He waggled his eyebrows. “How about I come back in a couple hours and we go out to lunch? The soul food is one option or we could go for something else?”

“Uh,” I said. “Well, yeah. Sounds good. Um. What should I wear?”

He looked down at me standing there in his borrowed t-shirt. “You look fine to me now,” he said, grinning.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re no help. Okay, what time is it?”

“About ten, I’ll be back around noon. ‘Kay?”

I nodded. Then I stood up on tiptoe and put my arms up. He bent down and we kissed and I decided that being Connie Catewood, or Kate Wood or Baby or whatever the hell my name was, had turned out to be a pretty good deal.

“Hell’s Patented Barnacle Remover,” said Muffins. “Catewood, back away from the giant! He’s got his hands under your dress!”

“Mmm,” I commented. Dress? Oh, the t-shirt. And yeah, he did. I tried to move back but the tide came in and forced me closer instead. “Tim,” I murmured. “You.... We.... I....” Damn, but I’m articulate when it counts.

Tim broke the clench himself. I still had my arms up over my head–he’s a tall fucker, I’ve mentioned that–and he had both hands under the t-shirt when he simply pulled it off over my head. And he laughed, a sort of deep, “Bwha-ha-ha!” Then a chuckle of real amusement.

I did step back then and almost landed on my keister again but he caught me by the wrist and easily held me up.

He held up his trophy. “I had to steal something and this is actually mine,” he said, still grinning.

Naked again, I tried to act cool about it. “Why do you have to steal something?” I asked, resisting a weird urge to hide my tits with my hands. That wouldn’t have worked well anyway, even if I had six arms; my hands are small and my boobies are not.

“Oh, I never got around to telling you what I do, did I?” He opened the door behind him and sort of walked sideways part way through. It looked like a rhinoceros trying to be sneaky but he may have just intended to hid my nudity from anyone out in the hall.

“You’re a thief?” I asked, astonished again.

“Not really,” he said. “But I am a super-villain.” And with that, he stepped out and closed the door behind him, still chuckling.