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I’d never felt like this before, gotten this horny this quick. But then again, I’d never met a man like my neighbor before. A man whose mere presence was like someone was sucking all the air out of the room, whose gaze was heated and steady, and whose words made me heady. The fact that a man so seemingly straight-laced and in control was saying something so unbelievably filthy added an extra layer to the desire, like it was something illicit and forbidden. His presence had me on edge, and it took everything within me not to ask him to say those words again in that same tone.
“I…” My voice was breathy, and I cleared it. But then I didn’t know what to say next. Even if I did, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to say it. My throat felt impossibly dry, and my brain was scattered. I swallowed and tried to breathe properly again, to level out the pounding of my heart, but no such luck. All I could do was stare at him like an idiot while desire raged a storm in my own body.
The moment broke when he looked away, glancing out my window. I followed his gaze to the mountain of trash I’d placed in the backyard. Roscoe had gone crazy a few days ago and torn up a bunch of bedding and clothes. He broke a few plates, too, and ripped up one sofa. It was the first time in a long time he’d done something like that, and it was a testament to just how much of a workout he wasn’t getting. I couldn’t even yell at him because I felt so guilty. It was my fault, really.
So I’d silently packed it up and put it in my backyard. I’d been meaning to ask trash pickup to come to get it since I couldn’t carry it all to the dumpster, but I kept forgetting.
And now my neighbor was looking at it, and he probably thought I was a slob. I sighed in disappointment because I couldn’t even blame him. I just couldn’t help giving him wrong impressions of me.
“I’m going to call them to pick it up,” I said because no matter how much I tried to deny it, for some strange reason, his opinion of me mattered. Now that my dislike of him had significantly reduced, I could admit to myself that he seemed like a good person. He didn’t deserve a dirty neighbor. “I don’t usually leave my trash to pile up like that.”
He looked back at me, but instead of saying anything, he simply stated, “Tell me about your father.”
The statement was so out of the left field that it had me blinking in shock for a few seconds. “Huh?”
“You said he passed away,” he continued. “Yesterday, when you were crying.”
“I said that?” Boy, I must have been more out of it than I thought. “I mean, yeah. He passed away a few weeks ago.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, but unlike when most other people said it, his words didn’t make me cringe. Maybe because he didn’t put on that exaggerated sorrowful countenance, as if I was the most pitiful person on the planet. He didn’t say it automatically either, like it was something he was meant to say. He said it as though he meant it, but in a more matter-of-factly way—like yeah, something shitty happened, but it was a shitty part of life. Death struck whenever it wanted, and it sucked a lot, but it wasn’t the worst thing. He said it with perfect honesty.
I think that was what prompted me to be honest back to him.
“It’s fine,” I said with a shrug. “We weren’t that close anyway.”
“Why not?” I couldn’t tell if that was curiosity in his gaze or if he was simply trying to make conversation and switch the subject away from us potentially fucking.
Gosh, don’t think about that.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. We just never saw eye to eye on many things, I think.”And when we argued, he called me a fucking bitch and told me that I should never have been born. Oh, and last thanksgiving, he gave me a black eye.
But those weren’t things I could just tell a stranger, much less one like my neighbor. Besides, wasn’t there a thing about speaking evil about the dead? I’d always thought that was a ridiculous standard, but now I understood. Because I could think of all these horrible things about him, but I had a problem saying them out loud.
“You sure that’s all there is to it?” he asked, giving me a searching glance. His gray gaze seemed like it could look right through me, and I shifted a little uncomfortably.
I noticed for the first time that he seemed very interested in the conversation. He was seated, leaning forward on the couch, and while it had seemed casual at first, I noticed his gaze blazed with interest. Not to mention that he kept coming back to the topic and kept pushing when most people would have let it go.
“Why are you asking?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Well, you seemed pretty broken up about it yesterday, and today, you’re saying you don’t care because you weren’t close.”
“I didn’t say I don’t care.” I got defensive. “My father died. I can’t not care about that. It’s just that I’m not going to go around playing the part of the weeping daughter for someone who I barely spoke to when he was alive.”
“Why?”
“Why won’t I play the mournful daughter?”
“Why did you barely speak to him?”
“As I said, we didn’t get along.” I was starting to get frustrated now and started picking at my fingers. “Why do you care anyway?”
He glanced down at my fingers and raised an eyebrow. I stopped immediately, and he gave me a look of approval, almost as if to say, “Good girl.”
Oh, come on, stop fantasizing about him.
He cracked a knuckle. “Just want to make sure you’re not repressing some shit. That can make your recovery longer.”
Repressing? Recovery? What on earth was he talking about?
