Front Load

The washing machine was a front-loader. Jenna had known that when she started the load. She had also known that the door seal was sticky from years of detergent residue and that if you leaned too far in to fish out a sock the whole thing had a habit of catching your hips and refusing to let go. She had done it anyway because the sock was her stepbrother’s and he had a game in an hour and she was already late for her own shift at the café. The laundry room was in the basement. The light was the single bare bulb their parents had never replaced. The dryer was still warm from the towels she had finished twenty minutes ago. The thought brought to mind the line between familiarity and desire.

She was halfway in when the door swung shut on her.

Not hard. Just enough. The rubber seal pressed against the backs of her thighs and the lower curve of her ass. Her hands were inside the drum, fingers brushing wet cotton. Her feet were on the laundry-room floor in socks that had started to slip. She tried to back out and the seal held. She tried again, twisting, and felt the rubber dig in harder. Nothing. The machine was not running. The door was not locked. It was just stuck, the way it sometimes stuck when the seal was damp, and she was wedged at an angle that made leverage impossible. Her shorts had ridden up. She could feel the cool air on the strip of skin above them.

“Ryan,” she called. Then louder. “Ryan!”

He came down the stairs in socks and a T-shirt, still half-asleep, hair sticking up on one side. He stopped in the doorway. For a second he just looked.

“What the fuck.”

“Don’t laugh. Just open the door.”

He did not laugh. He stepped closer. The door was open a few inches but the seal had her. From where he stood he could see the way her shorts had ridden up and the strip of skin between the waistband and the hem of her T-shirt and the way her ass was pushed out toward him. She was twenty-two. He was twenty-four. Their parents had married when they were both in high school. They had spent years not looking at each other in the hallway and not commenting on what the other one wore to the pool. Right now looking was unavoidable. The bulb hummed.

He put one hand on the door and the other on her hip and pulled. The seal released with a wet, sucking sound. She stumbled backward into him. His hands stayed on her hips longer than they needed to. Neither of them moved. She could feel the heat of him through the thin fabric of her shorts. He could feel how warm she was from being bent over.

“You okay?” he asked. His voice was lower than usual.

“Yeah.” Her voice was thin. “Thanks.”

He did not let go. She did not ask him to. The laundry room was small. The dryer was still warm against her calves. When she shifted her weight his cock pressed against the curve of her ass, already hard, the shape of it obvious through his sweats. She made a small sound she didn’t mean to make.

“Ryan.”

“Tell me to stop.”

She did not. He pushed the shorts down. She was not wearing anything under them. The air was cool on her skin. He ran two fingers between her legs and found her wet, slick enough that his fingers slid easily. She made another sound and braced her hands on the top of the machine. He pushed his sweats down, lined up, and pushed into her in one slow thrust. She was tight. He held still until she nodded, forehead against the cold metal, then fucked her in short, careful strokes so the machine would not bang against the wall and wake anyone upstairs.

The sound of it was wet and quiet. She reached back and gripped his wrist hard enough to leave marks. He fucked her harder. The machine rocked. She came with her forehead against the cold metal, cunt clenching around him in hard pulses, a broken noise in her throat that she tried to swallow. He pulled out at the last second and came across the small of her back, thick stripes that ran down and disappeared into the waistband of the shorts still around her thighs. Some of it dripped onto the floor.

They stayed like that for a minute. The dryer clicked as it cooled. Somewhere upstairs a door opened and closed. He wiped her clean with a T-shirt from the basket and pulled her shorts up. She turned around. Her face was flushed. His cock was still half-hard, shiny. Neither of them looked away.

“We can’t—” she started.

“I know.”

They did it again three days later when their parents were at work. She bent over the same machine. He fucked her until she came twice and he came inside her because she told him to, because she wanted to feel it. Afterward she started the load she had never finished and they stood in the laundry room listening to the water fill the drum and not talking about what happened when the cycle ended or what they were going to do the next time the house was empty. The sock was still in the machine. Neither of them went back for it. The next time it happened it was in her room. Their parents were downstairs watching television. Ryan had come up to borrow a charger. The door was half-closed. She was on her bed in a tank top and the same shorts. He locked the door without asking. She didn’t stop him. He fucked her face-down on the mattress with one hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t make noise, the other gripping her hip hard enough to bruise. She came twice. He came inside her again because she reached back and held him there when he tried to pull out. Afterward they lay there listening to the laugh track from the show downstairs and not talking about how easy it had become. The thought brought to mind the complications of blended families.