19 - Drawn to the Neighbor
MF / BDSM / Dom/sub / Bondage / Flogging / Spanking
I spent most of my days keeping to myself.
I never liked to bother anyone, and I didn’t like anyone bothering me.
I lived in a small apartment block in the middle of the city, although it was located on a winding back road, so it felt as though it was in another world.
The sounds of the city were whispers in the distance, and most of the time, I could pretend that I was a hermit living in the forest. Thick, verdant bushes acted as fences, separating the plot of land from the other houses and apartment blocks around us.
Tall trees grew, their branches reaching out like great hands, caressing the rooves of the apartments.
These were home to twittering birds and scurrying squirrels, making it seem as though I had furry neighbors as well as human ones.
My human neighbors never seemed to bother me that much.
They were quiet, which is what I liked, and I assumed they liked that about me, as well.
I occasionally saw them outside. I would exchange a polite smile and a kind word or two with them before I went on with my day, and that was just about all the social interaction I needed.
Or so I thought.
Because then a new neighbor arrived, and I wasn’t prepared for him at all.
There was the initial flurry of excitement that came with seeing the boxes being unloaded from the truck and hauled upstairs. Amid the removal men, I could not see the new resident. From the beginning, he was a mystery. It was a trend that was going to continue.
For the following few days, I tried to get a glimpse of him, but all I saw was a light in the window and a vague silhouette moving around inside the apartment. Even now, I’m not sure what inspired my curiosity this early on. It was so unlike me, at least the person I had become.
When I was younger, I was always asking questions about the world.
At night, I used to sit in bed and pore through encyclopedias, absorbing as much knowledge as I could about as many useless things as I could.
Over time, that sense in me diminished. Perhaps it’s because I learned that knowing many facts about the world was not going to make a damn bit of difference to the nature of it.
Knowledge was not a fundamental aspect of the world, only power was, and I did not crave power at all.
As I grew older, I felt my world shrinking. It was the only way I could cope with the growing uncertainty of it all. I had my apartment and my job. That was all I needed. Anything else was only going to bring chaos into my life, and there was nothing less I wanted than that.
But then there was him.
The more he hid from me—I was aware that it was not a conscious choice by him—the more I became transfixed. He became the first thing I thought about in the morning and the last thing at night. Sometimes, I would stay up, just to wait and see if that light would go out.
If I had told anyone about this obsession, they would have told me that I needed to get a new hobby, or a man, or anything.
The thought terrified me. The thing with relationships is that they are so uncertain.
People never say what they mean or mean what they say, and I simply cannot deal with that level of torment in my life.
My last boyfriend, and this was some years ago now, had created a web of lies where I knew he was cheating on me, but he denied it to the point where I seemed like the crazy one.
I was afraid that another man would do the same.
And yet, there I was, sitting at my window, gazing across the small courtyard to this stranger whom I hadn’t even met yet. I suppose the mind does need something to fill the time.
***
A couple of weeks had passed before I actually saw him properly for the first time.
Oh, there had been glimpses before, of a dark mane of hair, a broad back, a sinewy forearm, but on this twilight evening, he emerged from his apartment, carrying a pad of paper and a stool.
He wore pale pink shorts and sandals, with a cotton shirt that was only held together by a few buttons.
The sleeves were rolled up, revealing the dark shadow of hair that ran down his arms. Tufts of it were visible from the top of his shirt, as well, and it made me wonder about the rest of the hair on his body.
There was something so primal about it, so animalistic.
His black hair was swept back out of his eyes.
His face was tanned and angular, with high cheekbones that would have made a model envious.
His square jaw was clean shaven, although I suspected he would look good in a beard.
He would probably look good in anything.
I was too far away to see the color of his eyes.
Every movement of his was deliberate and slow. He was not in a rush at all, as though he was telling the world that it could move at his pace rather than he at its.
He unfolded the stool then placed the pad of paper on his crossed legs. He pulled a pencil out from a pocket then looked up at the horizon.
Breath caught in my throat, for I thought he was looking directly at me. I stepped back, wondering if he saw a twitch in my net curtain.
I remained hidden from him, but he was exposed.
I watched him as he drew. He was an artist. I had never known an artist before.
I always heard they were wild, sensitive types.
I wondered what secret desires lay hidden within his creative heart.
He looked slightly older than me, weathered in a good way.
I always did like a man seasoned with experience, a man who knew what they were doing and how to treat a woman right.
Part of me wondered if I liked it because I had no idea what I was doing in life.
He stayed out there for a good hour or so, and then he picked up his stool and went back into his apartment.
He started doing this every other day, and I would always stand by my window and watch him, always tempted to pull back the net curtain and reveal myself, but never quite summoning the courage to do so.
***
I was having a rare glass of wine. It was my birthday.
I always had wine on my birthday. It was a sad tradition that began many years ago, when in truth, I was a little too young to drink.
I hope that you’ll keep my secret. Wine always seemed to taste better in the company of other people, but that didn’t stop me drinking it, anyway.
I had my favorite music playing in the background, but as I looked around at my empty apartment, I was filled with self-pity.
Was this truly all there was to my life?
For most of the year, I was able to cope with the fact that my life was depressing, but around my birthday, I fell into a slump.
As the year rolled over, I thought about myself as a girl and how I had such high hopes of so many things, so many ambitions that were never fulfilled.
I never managed to get a high paying, high powered job.
I never managed to marry. I never managed to have kids.
All these years had passed, and I had managed to do absolutely nothing.
It was almost enough to make me weep, but that would have just made my birthday pathetic.
If my parents were alive, it would have been different.
They always made a fuss over me, and they held out hope until the end that I would get my life together in some flurry of magic that would fix everything.
I suppose, in a way, it was good that they died while believing that rather than living to see the sad truth.
If they had survived, then I might have pushed myself into doing something to change things for their sake.
They say that parents are always willing to do anything for their children, and sometimes I think that’s true for children, as well.
After they died, I didn’t have to worry about disappointing them any longer.
But, deep down, there was still a gnawing sense that I should try to do something different, purely because it was my birthday. I wondered if it was my parents whispering to me from beyond the grave.
I swirled the wine in the glass and looked outside. He was there again. I didn’t even know his name, and yet he had become such a big part of my life. If there was ever a day to actually meet him, then today was it.
I took one step toward the door, and then another. I asked myself what I was doing and, for a few moments, it seemed as though I wasn’t in control of my body. Terror seized me as I turned the handle of my door and stepped outside into the cool air.
I wore a summery dress, a white one that flowed down my body and accentuated my natural curves. My dirty blonde hair was loose, falling to the small of my back. I was not holding the wine glass any longer.
I walked toward him. He didn’t look toward me until the last possible moment, and when he did, I felt this surge of energy wrapping around me, as though it was holding me in place. There was no going back now.
His lips were full. He offered me a smile.
There was a slight crinkling around his eyes.
He leaned forward, and I saw the drawing on the paper.
It was a pencil drawing of the area. I noticed that he had caught the corner of my apartment in the sketch, including the window that I looked out from.
In a way, he had been looking at me, too.
“Can I help you?” he asked. His voice was a low drawl, rumbling like thunder before a storm. At that point, I did not know the kind of passionate storm that was going to ensue.
“I’m Caitlin,” I blurted out.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Caitlin. I’m Rick,” he said.
“I saw you move in a while back. I live here, too. Up there.” I pointed to my apartment.
I felt myself floundering. Being around him made me think I had forgotten how to speak.
“And I live just up there,” he said, tilting his head back to look at the window above him.