GENERAL DISCLAIMER: This story contains sexual situations between adult males involving various aspects of the kink and fetish communities. If you find material of this nature offensive then you should not read any further. All characters in this story are over the age of 21. If you are under 18 years old in the US or under 16 in the UK you are not legally allowed to read this story. This is purely a work of fiction, any resemblance to persons living or dead, or to any events that may have occurred, are purely coincidental. The author claims all copyrights in this story and no duplication or publication of this story is allowed (except by the websites to which it has been posted) without the consent of the author. Nifty does not exist without donations. If you enjoy these stories, please donate here: http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html
CONTACT/FEEDBACK: I enjoy getting feedback and I try to incorporate as many suggestions about the story and characters into subsequent chapters whenever possible. Feel free to e-mail me at carterpodeski@gmail.com.
The Brownstone on Union Park
- Chapter Three -
"Hi, my name's Michael and I'm interested in the bedroom for rent in the listing for the three-bedroom apartment. Your place looks wonderful and really well planned out. I'm starting a new job at an insurance firm in the city and am looking to move in towards the beginning of September. If it's still available please give me a call/text at 617 XXX-XXXX."
"That was probably a waste of time...", Michael thought as he hit the send button.
Like most things, however, it was a start. To something or nothing, he did not know. He only knew he was taking what he thought was the right step in the next phase of his life. Michael would continue looking for more places as he had two weeks left to find an apartment and sign a lease. He felt like he accomplished so much since his breakup with Alex: he graduated, found summer housing, an on-campus job, and now a real job.
But he still did not feel secure and was starting to get anxious to the point where his sleep was being affected again. Michael needed to get back to that comforting feeling of security and a sense of belonging but did not have a clue where to even begin looking.
The next morning Michael's phone showed a couple of new texts and notifications. Nothing unusual there, except for one text from an unknown 617 Boston number. He immediately opened it thinking it could be a reply from the ad he replied to on Craigslist about the bedroom for rent in the South End on Union Park. It read in 6 blue bubbles:
"hi michael" "yes bedroom still available" "lets talk first" "we want to make sure its the right fit" "you free around 7 tonight for a phone call?" "im Carter FYI"
Michael wondered what he meant by "right fit" for some time thinking that there was a long line of people trying to get the same great deal on a place in one of the most exciting areas of the city. Whatever. He knew he had to text Carter back right away and let him know he was still interested and free to chat.
"Hi Carter, thanks for the quick reply." "7 tonight works for me. Looking forward to hearing from you."
Michael always appreciated proper grammar in texts even though they were technically informal communications. It drove him insane when he could not get in that apostrophe or capitalize the first letter of a sentence or pronoun. He read over the conversation again.
"Why did Carter lowercase the "m" in my name and capitalize the "C" in his?" he pondered.
Maybe he was just overthinking it. Or perhaps, Michael was being a bit classist; grammar rules were rules and it gave him some comfort to know that language, in any form, had a logical flow that followed a certain order and cadence. At least Carter's texts were blue and not green, that was something!
"Looking forward to hearing from you."
Oh, did that make him sound too desperate? Ugh, if only there was an un-send button. He should have just left off the last sentence. Now he was completely overthinking it. But it probably did not matter.
He looked back at the conversation and could see the three blinking dots indicating Carter was actively typing back. His phone sounded again and the conversation ended with a thumb's up emoji from Carter.
"OK, a phone call at 7 PM this evening. Friday night. Want to make sure it's the right fit, whatever that means," he thought.
All he knew was this guy's phone number, first name, and a few pictures of his place. That was practically nothing to go one to get a sense of what sort of "fit" they were looking for.
Michael went back and looked at the pictures on the listing on Craigslist for any sort of clues. The staging of the photos was cleverly done for the kitchen and living room pictures. They were almost completely empty of any personal touches to appeal to every and anyone. A blank canvas to paint yourself into the picture. Wonderful.
He looked at the two bedrooms again; the first bedroom with the white, creme, and grey color theme full of the architectural photos looked like it might have some clues. He right-clicked and downloaded the individual pictures in hopes the site might have downsampled the resolution for the purpose of shrinking the photos to fit. That did not help much but it did allow him to more easily enlarge the photo to see the spines of the books on the bookshelf in a slightly greater level of detail.
Michael was able to make out a few words here and there: "City Observed" ... "New York" ... "Architectural Guide to" ... "Age of Innocence" ... "Master Builder". Clearly, a design and architecture interest were at play which also gave an explanation to the rest of the framed black and white photos in the bedroom not to mention the modern design of the whole apartment.
One section of the bookcase contained what looked like hundreds of magazines with white spines and the same repeating pattern of the black type against a white background. The replicating nature of the spines gave the illusion of grey stripes from the distance. In the center of the magazine stacks was one that was framed and flipped to display the cover with letters "A D" prominently displayed on the upper left front cover. Architectural Digest perhaps? There must have been hundreds of magazines there on the shelves and if they were all the same magazine series this guy must have been collecting them for years and years.
The second smaller bedroom with the weight equipment was pretty easy to size up--gym rat obviously. Enlarging the original picture, he could see some writing with one of the larger picture frames in the background that showed a red and grey banner with "Chandler" written in white gothic chancery lettering. It had to be same Chandler University near the Boston Common adjacent to the Theater District. Michael wondered what the connection was there; the guy was probably too young to be a student based on the fact that the listing specifically said no undergraduates.
He scrutinized the remaining photos on the wall and found a few others with the now familiar red, grey, and white Chandler banner along with the same smiling face and dark hair. There were other faces in the Chandler University photos as well, but no consistent ones besides the guy with the dark brown hair. Michael astutely noticed that the clothing on the other people in the framed photo was very similar. Team uniforms, perhaps?
So, one guy into architecture the other one was into the gym and some connection with a local college. Still not much to go on. He thought of what other resources he had to give him an upper hand and what information he could leverage. Then it hit him--he had a phone number.
"Fucking google it!" he thought in excitement to see what it would turn up. It was amazing what you could find when you search the internet or social media for a name, phone number, or e-mail.
A quick search for "Carter" and the cell phone number showed a couple of pages associated with Chandler University. He consumed each web page and was able to find out his full name "Carter Podeski" and see that he worked as a physical therapist for the various athletic teams at Chandler. His professional listing profile on the University's main athletic page showed the same beaming smile with dark hair he was able to make out in the low-resolution photos from the Craigslist apartment listing.
Carter truly had a one-hundred-megawatt smile showcasing perfectly symmetrical and white teeth with small dimples on the sides of his cheeks. But his eyes with their intensely dark blue coloring was his real hallmark and single most distinguishing feature. Michael began to wonder if Carter wore colored contacts because they were almost bordering on unnatural with their intensity and azure tones.
Without hesitation, Michael closed his laptop and turned his head away keeping his torso stationary. It was the same sort of thing he did when he had to get blood drawn. He thought, "Just turn your head away from the sight and it will go away."
Even though the image of Carter was out of sight, it was still on his mind, and it was not going away easily. He tried to understand why he was even doing this as he noticed his heartbeat had increased and palms of his hands start to perspire. Why did he go down this road? Why did he try to dig up info on this complete stranger that did nothing more than text him to talk later? Was this really going to give him an advantage over other potential roommates? What if he said something that revealed he was snooping on him? The last thing he wanted was to be one of those creeper guys. He opened his laptop again and the webpage reappeared with Carter's professional staff photo centered in the middle of the screen.
"Damn, even his hair is perfect," he concluded noticing his strong hairline and slight waviness to it. It looked medium-dark brown with some lighter auburn strands appearing in highlights here and there.
Carter was probably one of those guys that rolls out of bed, shakes his head and every single hair magically falls into place. Michael felt he never could find a haircut or style that suited him or his face. It was on his to-do list, but until he actually had some money it was pretty low among his overall priorities.
So, he knew at least one of the guys was hot. Was the other one his boyfriend? Probably not if they had separate rooms, but who knew. It could be a guest room. Michael wondered what the other guy looked like now.
Glancing at his watch Michael realized he had plenty of time to kill before his call with Carter tonight. Luckily the RA hall monitoring rounds fell to the person above him on the next floor so his whole Friday evening was free.
He knew he had to clear his mind after his online stalking adventure and decided to go for a run. Michael was never athletically gifted but it was easy and cheap to run and felt like it never required that much skill. It always helped to clear his head too and he found that after classes were done for the day it was a great way to de-stress and get that endorphin rush.
He changed into some soccer shorts that he used for the gym, an old t-shirt, and his running sneakers. A quick loop around the Charles River, through the Public Garden, and back through Commonwealth Avenue would place him back on campus in time before the dining halls closed down at the end of lunch. Michael grabbed his keys, phone, earbuds, and took off down the dormitory stairs with his streaming music on his cardio mix channel.
Probably more than two months had elapsed since he did this route and his stamina suffered considerably; the first mile and a half left him winded. He took a short rest and walked a bit to recover his breath while continuing over the Charles River. He picked up his pace and crossed the Longfellow Bridge taking him to the corner of Beacon Hill by the MGH T-stop.
Michael continued his path down Charles Street stopping at the red lights when he had to while noting the irregularity of the old-fashioned smaller bricks used to make up the buildings. It was also one of the few neighborhoods left in the city that still used gas lanterns to illuminate the smaller side streets, although they would not be turned on until dusk. Their unique shape from a standard electric street lamp made them stand out and commanded a viewer's attention.
Luckily, he got a walk signal when he crossed Beacon street into the Public Garden. It was crazy that the city gardeners would plant tropical plants like birds of paradise and some smaller palm trees just for the summer months. They would all be decimated come October when the cold weather hit. The city of Boston did it year after year. Passing through the shade of the central pathway of Commonwealth Avenue on the way back to campus was a breeze.
Michael finally hit a second wind and was rewarded with a satisfying endorphin rush. Glancing down at his phone he was shocked to see how much time had elapsed. It was now 1:17 in the afternoon and he had only thirteen minutes to return to campus before the dining halls were locked until five at night.
Michael picked up the pace again; if he hurried he could possibly make it. Not that missing his free lunch would be the end of the world, but he was trying to save every penny this summer. He still had to outfit his new work wardrobe and have some spending money when he finally made the move to professional adult life.
He checked his phone again, "Great, eight and a half more minutes and I'm just under a mile away."
Running faster than he did in the first half of his run, he really pushed it on the final stretch. He knew the quickest path to the dining hall was through some new landscaping work going on at the campus. It all seemed pretty easy to go through, nothing more than new shrubs being planted and new sod being laid down to replace the spots that were reduced to dirt patches on heavily trafficked areas. He jumped over the laughable two-foot tall roped gate and dashed across to the dining hall on the other side. Michael began to ascend the small lip of the hill that was newly covered in gravel when he lost his grip with his left foot, rolled his ankle, and fell.
"Damn it!" he screamed as he winced in pain. He got up right away and hobbled up the rest of the gravel and barely made it to the dining hall on time.
"That was close!" chuckled the food services manager as he let Michael into the main entrance and locked the doors after he entered, "Make sure you get some ice on that ankle, it'll help with the swelling."
"What?" Michael replied quizzically.
"It looks like you took a bad spill when you hit the new gravel they put down this morning. You really should use the detour path the grounds crew set up."
"Yeah, I will in the future."
Michael finally looked down at his left ankle in more detail now that he had time and made the mental connection in his head with the pain he was experiencing. It was indeed sprained but he failed to realize how badly it was injured.
He slowly walked to the start of the tray station and picked up the standard black plastic cafeteria tray and silverware. The manager came over with a large Ziploc bag and gingerly handed it to him. "Fill it up with ice as soon as you can and get it on that ankle," he advised.
He grabbed a couple slices of pizza, which were surprisingly good for a university cafeteria, a bowl of penne pasta in marinara sauce, a small garden salad and then headed for the drink station. He opened up the Ziploc bag and pressed the lever for the ice machine and it popped out cubes until he filled the bag halfway. He got two plastic cups and filled one with ice water and the other with coke. Michael did not forget the fact that he just ran about five to six miles and was parched.
Walking cautiously, he made his way to one of the many empty tables that lined the windows of the cafeteria. Only about fifty or so random summer students remained mostly chatting at this point after having finished their lunch a while back. The majority of the food stations were beginning to be cleaned and wiped down by the kitchen staff signaling the end of the lunch hour.
The coldness of the ice felt wonderful on his ankle as it numbed away the pain. He adjusted his left leg to cross his right knee allowing the bag to rest comfortably enabling him to eat without having to hold it with a hand.
"It's only a sprained ankle, it will be better in no time. Or at least it would surely heal up by the time his job started," he thought.
After he drank an entire glass of water and felt his stomach begin to relax a bit he started in on the pizza.
"Why did food always taste so much better when you were hungry?" continued his internal dialog.
He finished the rest of his meal and gradually drank the coke. The sugary sweetness of the soda satiated his carb craving after the intense cardio.
All this just to take advantage of his RA provided lunch? Life would be so much different when he started work and actually had money for the basic things in life. Life would definitely be different for Michael.