Only You by K.T. Quinn

15

Donovan

The Day I Went Outside

“Are you sure you feel comfortable doing this?” Molly asked me the next morning while we rode the elevator down. Neither of us acknowledged the fact that we were sharing the cramped space. I felt safe around her, and she felt safe around me.

“We’re running low on food,” I told her. “I didn’t expect to be sharing it with my hotel neighbor.”

She gave me a playful little glare.

“I didn’t say you weren’t worth it,” I clarified. “But unless you want to eat plain pasta noodles, I need to get supplies.”

“I don’t like the idea of you risking yourself out there.”

The elevator opened on the first floor and we walked across the lobby. “I’ll be okay. I’ve got my mask, and a pair of sunglasses to cover my eyes.” I put them both on and turned to her. “How do I look?”

“Like the Unabomber, but sexier,” she said.

“Sexy Unabomber. Now there’s a Halloween costume I’ve never seen before.”

I went into the office behind the concierge desk. There was a panel on the wall for the exterior alarm. The light indicated that it was currently armed. I found the right key on the key ring to open the panel, then pressed the button marked “DISABILITATO.” The light winked out.

“Any last minute requests?” I asked.

“Oranges!” she said. “I’ve been craving orange slices like you wouldn’t believe. If it’s not too much trouble, I mean. Don’t go out of your way just for me.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Wish me luck.” I unlocked the front door.

“Good luck. Watch out for zombies.”

I chuckled, but said, “Not sure how I feel about dark humor right now.”

“If I didn’t laugh about it, I’d probably be crying!” she said cheerfully. Then her tone softened and she said, “Be safe. Seriously. Text me if anything happens.”

I was touched by her concern as I walked out of the hotel. But the feeling quickly dimmed as the reality of the situation sank in. I hadn’t left the hotel since I got supplies at the beginning of the lockdown, a week ago. Things still felt normal back then, with people crowded in the plaza and the sound of markets and tourists and street performers. Now everything was deserted and silent.

And experiencing the silence down in the plaza itself was a lot different than experiencing it from my hotel balcony. It was like the difference between watching a shark at the aquarium and being in the fucking tank.

I turned back to look at the hotel. Molly was watching me from the front door, and she gave a little wave.

It really did feel like I was walking around in a post-apocalyptic movie. Humanity had been wiped out and I was the only person left. It was unsettling. Like swimming too far from the shore and suddenly realizing that there was only empty ocean in all directions.

“Relax, Donovan,” I said out loud. “Everything’s fine. Just a quick trip to the market.”

The market I had used the other day, a quarter mile from the hotel, was closed. The city had sent out a map with the locations of open grocery stores which people were allowed to visit in a four-hour window. Unfortunately, that store was over two miles away.

Three kilometers, I corrected in my head. When in Rome…

The farther I got from the tourist center of Rome, the more signs of life I saw. I passed an apartment building with balconies that were full of life: plants, laundry, even an old woman smoking her morning cigarette. Her eyes followed me down the street.

At the next intersection I saw a police officer. “Dove stai andando?” he asked me.

It was one of the few phrases I had learned in my week of cooking school. “Cibo,” I replied back. “Il mercato.”

Food. The market.

The officer pointed up the street and waved me on.

The walk was long, but I didn’t mind. It actually felt nice to get outside. Actually outside, not just sitting on the balcony. It felt good to stretch my legs beyond just running on the treadmill, too. Back home, I had to walk three miles to get to the diner where I worked. I liked to walk.

Soon I came across two other masked pedestrians walking in the same direction. I slowed my pace so that I wouldn’t catch up to them. Then another person fell in behind me from a side street. They kept their distance, but I couldn’t help but wonder if any of them were infected. Was I breathing the same air as the people in front of me? I pictured them exhaling, breath droplets hanging in the air like smoke, waiting for me to walk through. Realizing that I was holding my breath, I tried to make myself relax. It didn’t work.

As I drew closer to the market, the street grew more crowded. Somehow the crowd made things feel normal again, and also eerily different. Nobody talked—we all walked along, silent except for our footsteps, like mice who were too afraid to make any noise.

The grocery store was called DESPAR, which looked unnervingly like the English word despair. There was a line of people waiting to get inside, with police officers patrolling the area to make sure everyone stayed two meters apart. Their presence was surprisingly calming for my nerves. After being isolated in the hotel, it was good to see that there were people in charge. Lines were a byproduct of civilization. The world might feel like it was ending, but at least it was an orderly apocalypse.

The line moved slowly. I pulled out my phone to kill time.

Donovan: I’m here. There’s a long line, so I probably won’t be back for another hour.

Donovan: Don’t throw any parties while I’m gone.

Molly: Too late. I’m inviting all my friends over and we’re drinking ALL the liquor in the lounge.

Donovan: If there’s no booze when I get back, I’m making you eat vending machine chips for the rest of the week.

Molly: That’s not nice!

Donovan: Neither is drinking all the alcohol!

Molly: Fine. I promise not to drink all the booze.

Molly: Are you doing okay?

Donovan: I think so. It’s kind of surreal out here.

Molly: I bet. Be safe.

Molly: I’m thinking of you.

I’m thinking of you. My eyes scanned over the last text again and again. It was such a simple, straightforward statement of care and concern.

But it made me grin like an idiot while standing in line.

While I waited in line, I replayed the events from last night in my head. I thought I was so smooth, showing her how to use a pool cue as an excuse to get close to her. Oldest trick in the book, right? But rather than turn her into the awkward, nervous woman I expected, she leaned into it by leaning into me. Pushing that sweet ass against my crotch until my dick was wedged between her plump cheeks. Her dress was thin, so I felt everything. And I knew she felt everything from me.

Even now, a day later, my cock twitched just thinking about it. I had to quickly think about something else to keep from getting hard there in the line outside the store.

But one thing was certain: I needed to think of a way to get even.

When it was my turn to go inside, a grocery store employee used a laser thermometer to check my forehead temperature. I must have been fine because he waved me inside. Another employee wiped down a basket with a disinfectant cloth and handed it to me.

The thing about European grocery stores was that they were small. Back in America, our stores had wide aisles that could fit two or three carts across. That wasn’t the case in Rome. The aisles in DESPAR were so narrow that a single shopping cart blocked the path, and there weren’t big open walkways at the end of each aisle.

This may have been annoying in normal times, but it was debilitating during a pandemic. It was a challenge to stay two meters from everyone as I darted through the store, grabbing supplies. It was like a game of tag, except everyone was “it” and nobody wanted to win.

Even when I managed to navigate through the store like an art thief dodging lasers, I couldn’t get everything I needed. Many of the shelves were empty, especially in the dry goods section. The pasta aisle was totally wiped out. A single box was open on the floor, dry macaroni scattered in all directions like a crime scene.

My grocery list quickly became unrealistic, so I changed my game plan. I grabbed whatever food I knew I could use to make a meal. Canned tuna. Two packs of ground beef, and one of ground sausage. A head of broccoli that had seen better days. I was in emergency mode now. We had to eat to survive, not just for pleasure.

The store was out of oranges, so I grabbed a bag of apples instead. I knew it would be heavy to carry back to the hotel, but if it put a smile on Molly’s face? It would be worth it.

The check-out line was extra unnerving. The cashier had to pick up every single item, scan them, and then place them in a bag. I wondered how many other objects she had touched today, objects that had been touched by other people. She rubbed some hand sanitizer between her palms when she was done ringing me up, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was carrying a bag full of tainted items.

The fresh air outside felt good on my skin. Little was known about the virus so far, but that was something everyone agreed on: outdoors was safer than indoors. I breathed a sigh of relief through my mask as I made the long walk back to the hotel.

When I walked through the front door, I was greeted by a surprising sight. A figure stood next to the concierge desk, decked from head to toe in a yellow hazmat suit. The face was hidden behind a plastic window in the suit. In front of the suited person was one of the coffee tables from the lobby, and a bucket of water.

“I found this in the janitor’s closet!” Molly said from inside the suit. “Does it make my ass look big?”

She turned around and shook her butt, which was just a shapeless plastic bump.

I laughed. “You’ve never been sexier.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” her muffled voice said through the suit.

“You’ve actually stumbled upon my kink,” I teased. “Dressing up like astronauts is the only way I can get hard.”

She giggled inside the suit. “I know that’s not true. Shut up and start unloading the bags. I have a process for cleaning everything on this coffee table.”

So she’s acknowledging what happened last night, I thought.

Molly had me place each grocery item on the table one at a time. She then sprayed it down with a can of disinfectant spray, then used a big pair of tongs to dip the object into the bucket of water. Then she placed the clean object to the side where it could dry.

“No oranges,” I told her when we got to the bag. “But I got apples instead.”

“I like apples too,” she said, but I could tell she was a little disappointed.

It took ten minutes to individually clean every grocery item. “Okay, your turn,” she said, when the last one was done.

“You’re not spraying me with that,” I said.

She laughed and said, “No, we’re getting you clean another way. Come on!”

I followed her suited shape down the hall to the pool. The hot tub was bubbling gently. Next to it was a towel.

“You walked into the pool room?” I asked. “Woah now. You’re breaking the rules, Feisty.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. “The closed sign fell off the door, so technically I’m not breaking any rules by being inside.”

“So you’re excusing your criminal behavior based on a technicality. I see how it is.”

“Get in,” she insisted. “Scrub yourself clean!”

I smirked at her. “You just want to see me naked, don’t you?”

“I already saw you in your underwear when you were swimming laps,” she said curtly. “This is just like that.”

“You mean when you were so embarrassed that you ran out of the pool room?” I asked.

“It’s different now,” she said. “I’ve gotten to know you better. Strip down to your underwear.”

Molly turned away from me slightly to give me a little bit of privacy, but I could tell she was looking at me out of the corner of her eye. You just gave me a way to get even, I thought while removing my shirt, then my shoes. I scrambled out of my jeans until I was only wearing my boxer-briefs.

“Good,” she said, like a nurse giving instructions to a patient. “Now jump in the hot tub and—”

She cut off as I bent down and yanked my underwear off. I stepped out of it and tossed it aside with my toe, then struck a pose with my hands on my hips. I didn’t need to flex much, but I sucked in my gut to make sure my abs really popped.

My move had the desired result. Molly gawked at me. She was unable to look away. Her eyes were wide behind her plastic suit as she took in my nude body, eyes moving down my chest, then my abs, then pausing extra long at my groin.

“If we’re going to be safe,” I said, “we might as well be totally safe. Right?”

Her eyes shot back up to my face like they were pulled by magnets. “Right. Good idea.” Even with the plastic suit on I could see that her cheeks were as red as a Miami sunburn.

I paused for three long heartbeats. Only then did I turn toward the hot tub and slowly step inside. I took my sweet time so she could get a long look at my ass before I finally dipped all the way beneath the surface. The water was scalding, right on the edge of too hot, but after a few seconds my skin adjusted.

Only then did Molly unzip her hazmat suit and climb out of it. She was wearing normal clothes underneath. She sat on the edge of the hot tub, rolled up her jeans, and dipped her feet inside. Then she handed me a bottle of body wash.

“Scrub everything,” she said.

“I know how to clean myself,” I pointed out.

“Just making sure you do it right. If you get sick, then I’ll probably get sick too.”

“Good point,” I said casually. “I’d hate to give you an excuse to not grind your ass up against me.”

She cleared her throat. “I was talking about the food. If you get sick, I can’t keep mooching dinners off you.”

“Food, right,” I said with a smirk.

When my body was pink, I climbed out and toweled off. This time Molly had enough willpower to totally face the other direction until I had wrapped the towel around my midsection. She picked up my old clothes with a big pair of tongs.

“I’ll take these to the laundry room and wash them.”

Where’d you get those tongs?” I asked. “The same place you got the funky hazmat suit?”

Molly’s eyes brightened. “Oh, yeah! I forgot to tell you. I have a surprise.”

“I like surprises.”

She picked up the ring of keys and gave them a jingle. “There’s another place these keys open. And it’s going to make you the happiest man in Rome.”