One: My phone rings from inside.
Two: A cool breeze hits my skin. My fully exposed skin.
I realize that’s likely fucking David calling, but more irritating than that is how my robe is now sprawled wide-open and my asshole new neighbor is getting a front-row view of me in nothing but my unmentionables.
Awesome. What nightmare would be complete without this?
4
In my previous life, I must have killed a priest. Or a nun. Or maybe Jesus himself. Because I’m forever tortured in this one. It’s like life has a vendetta against me. A secret pledge to make anything that could potentially be good—wonderful even—bad.
Not just bad. Awful. Fucked to the worst degree.
You’d think there would be a limit on that sort of thing, but evidently, there isn’t.
I stand immobile except for my hand that’s restraining Gulliver. I’m like a coach trying to hold back a prizefighter from flying back into the ring for another round, and Gulliver is not happy about being kept away. He’s going nuts. Barking and lunging with his front paws kicking wildly in the air as I’m forced to contain him by his collar.
He’s half choking, sniffing, while making that strangled noise dogs make, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.
“Fuck,” is all I can manage because even though I try looking away, I can’t.
I stare for exactly three full seconds. Three solid seconds longer than I should before I finally tear my gaze away. Three seconds of pure, unrestrained heaven. Of flashbacks to last night in rapid succession.
Of all the ways I took her, how she tasted on my tongue, the sounds she made.
Now, I can’t get the images out of my head. My new neighbor—I can’t even go there yet—is still on her back in her thin, white, lacy panties and bra with her small, perfect tits spilling out of the top. Her long, honey-colored hair is strewn about. Her cheeks are flushed. Her lips parted.
She’s the ultimate vision of sex.
My live-action porn, only better. Definitely better.
It’s why my eyes are now trained up on the gutters lining her roof.
Her body is like… nope. Not gonna think about what her body is like. Because I’m already sporting a chub from those three perfect seconds. Any more introspection into our shared night, and I’ll very obviously be in trouble.
But Gulliver. My youngest brother Oliver’s dog. He unequivocally knows a good thing when he sees it and did what I’ve been desperate to do since the moment I laid eyes on her again.
He licked her. He de-robed her. He climbed on top of her like he was staking a claim to the entire male population.
I mentally shake myself. The hell is wrong with me?
Truth, I think I just need to get out more. That’s all this is.
Her phone is ringing from inside her house, but if she notices it, she doesn’t seem to care. Elle scrambles to sit up, closing her robe and tying it off.
Then she races to gather up her scattered garments, and I follow suit, feeling guilty about this predicament and what happened with her box. Except… I spot a red lace thong. And a hot pink one. And a baby pink one that has tiny pink and white polka dot bows up the string in the back of it. And something black that is basically assless, which goes to show you they have created panties I haven’t even begun to imagine yet.
Except now that’s precisely what I’m doing. Imagining them. On her.
My eyes flitter about her underwear, some hanging from a bush, others littered about in every damn color of the rainbow. Then back to her. Her cheeks are dusted in pink, but I can’t tell if it’s embarrassment or anger.
She doesn’t bother peeking up at me, though I know she can tell I’m staring.
“Do you want help?” I offer. I had meant to help, but then I realized I’d have to touch her panties and bras and that ended that.
“I think you’ve done enough,” she snaps. “Just go.”
“Elle—”
“Shut up,” she seethes, visibly at the end of her rope. Her eyes sear a path up to mine. “Just shut up. Don’t say my name. You don’t know me, and I sure as hell don’t know you. Now go!”
I stumble back a step, unblinking, still holding on to Gulliver, who’s finally calming. Fuck.
She returns to her underwear, shoving thongs and bras into the box, hoping, praying I’ll just leave. I should. I need to. She hates me and has every right to. But more importantly, I need to let her. Last night was last night, and this isn’t that. This is the real world. My world.
A world where the only woman in my life is my daughter because I killed the only other one who mattered.
Before I can do something else stupid, like apologize again, I storm off.
Gulliver resists me as I drag him back into the house and slam the door shut. For a dog that’s typically well behaved, he’s throwing a toddler-sized tantrum now.
“Knock it off,” I demand. “Do you have any idea what you just did? The trouble you got us into?”
Only it wasn’t Gulliver’s fault. It was mine.
If she didn’t hate me for giving her Luca’s name instead of mine, she certainly hates me now that my brother’s dog disrobed her on her front porch.
I saw her last night, but that was in the dark. Tonight with the porch light on her…
I release Gulliver, who quickly books it through the house, scurrying over to his water dish in the kitchen. He laps it up like he hasn’t had a drink in years.
“You deliver her package?” Stella calls out as I drift toward her voice. She’s sitting at the bar in the kitchen, her face in a book and a half-eaten cookie on her plate, though her milk glass is empty.
“Yes.” I walk over to the cabinet and take out a glass, filling it with ice and water from the door of the Subzero. My back is to my daughter as I do, but I can feel her staring into me. “Gulliver got out. I must have left the door open a crack without realizing it.”
“I didn’t notice. Sorry. Was she nice?”
“How did you know she was a she?”
Stella snickers. “If the name on the box wasn’t a dead giveaway, only a woman would have a box labeled unmentionables. Such a weird way to call your underwear.”
True, and when Elle saw the label, she rolled her eyes derisively, so I wonder if she was even the one to write it. It’s sort of prudish, and I already know there’s nothing prude about that woman.
“So, was she?” Stella presses when I don’t answer.
“What?”
“Nice, Dad. Was she nice?”
“You thinking about dating her?”
She snorts at that. Stella came out to us a few months back. One night at dinner, she told me she was a lesbian, and I hugged and kissed her, told her I loved her no matter what, and that I was proud of her for telling me something so important. I explained I don’t care who she loves as long as she’s happy. That seemed to give her confidence because she went on and told the rest of our family, including her aunt and uncles, my parents, and her BFF Layla, who also happens to be Oliver’s girlfriend Amelia’s little sister.
Everyone had the same reaction I did.
“Yeah, Dad,” she smarts. “I’m sure she’s of a perfect age for me to date. You’re deflecting.”