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The line fromScreamdrifted through her head.“Do you like scary movies?”
She could ask him. To be neighborly. To be friendly. To finally have a guy over.
But as quickly as the thought hit her, she tamped it down. He was a stranger. Yes, he seemed nice and was supposedly a firefighter with good intentions. But she’d learned not to trust her gut on things like that. Her instincts in that area were notoriously untrustworthy. Lots of people were good atappearingto be nice. Some people knew how to wield “nice” as the ultimate weapon.
Old memories leached into her brain. Whispered compliments from a boy she’d yearned for, one she thought she could trust. Gentle kisses. Locked doors. Fingers sliding a strap down a shoulder.Promise you won’t tell anyone. You’re the only one I trust.
She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut.No. Stop.
She took a few deep breaths, pushing the images back into the vault she tried to keep them locked in. After a moment, she rubbed the goose bumps from her arms and swallowed past the sick feeling that welled up anytime she let thoughts of Evan Henry Longdale sneak into her mind.
No way was she inviting the new neighbor over.Hello, mental trigger, how are you?
As she plopped back down on the couch, she tried to shake off the memories her run-in with Hill had stirred, but after a few more minutes of the movie, she realized she wasn’t paying attention to the screen. Movie night was officially a wash.
She clicked off the television, knowing the only way to get her mind off the old looping track it was now on was to take a sleeping pill and go to bed.
She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and focused on her nightly routine to block out her anxious thoughts. But as she was finishing up, she heard the shower turn on next door. The bad memories that were pushing at the walls of her mind were suddenly replaced by images of the man who’d been standing on her doorstep. Hill was on the other side of the wall,right there. She glanced at the wall separating them, listening to the sounds and imagining what was on the other side. Hill taking off his T-shirt, revealing what she suspected was a very well-built body. Hill sliding those loose sweats down his hips, revealing…
Not cool. Stop. No mentally undressing the guy. Nope.
But her inner protests were no use. She could hear him groan with appreciation, like the hot water had been a relief. Hill was taking a shower. On the other side of that thin wall, only a few feet away, he was naked and wet. Water droplets on bare skin were involved.
Thinking of anything else was suddenly impossible. Her starved libido was now fully in charge, popping popcorn for this new dirty movie.
She quickly finished up in the bathroom, trying to get away from the source of the images, but by the time she’d slipped under the covers of her bed, her skin was hot all over. The mental movie of Hill was there and not going away. And though fantasizing about the neighbor was a terrible idea, visions of him in the shower were a helluva lot better than the horrid memories that had taken over earlier. Maybe there was no harm in her little fantasy reel after all. There was nothing safer than fantasy. It was what had gotten her through all these years without a physical relationship.
It’s not like her new neighbor would ever know.
The dirty thoughts were safely locked in her brain, and whenever she ran into him again, she would just have to employ her poker face. She had a good one.No, of course I’ve never pictured you naked.
She closed her eyes and listened to the water run, letting her imagination take over from there.
She forgot to take that sleeping pill.
