The New Neighbor | NEON LIT

I hear the moving truck before I see it.

Saturday morning, coffee in hand, and the hydraulic groan of a lift gate pulls me to the window. The apartment next to mine has been empty for two months. I'd gotten used to the quiet.

She steps out of a modest sedan, and I nearly spill my coffee.

She's maybe forty-five, maybe older, with warm brown skin and natural hair pulled back in a wrap. She's wearing a sundress that flows over her body like water over river stones—and there's a lot of body to flow over. Full breasts that strain the fabric. A belly that rounds soft and proud beneath them. Hips that could stop traffic.

She looks up at the building, shielding her eyes from the sun, and I step back from the window like I've been caught.

An hour later, I'm in the hallway pretending to check my mail when she appears at the top of the stairs, breathing hard, a box in her arms.

"Need help?"

She looks at me. Brown eyes, deep and warm. Laugh lines at the corners. "You offering?"

"I'm offering."

Her smile breaks slow, like sunrise. "Then I'm accepting."

Her name is Denise. Forty-six. Divorced two years. No kids. She works as an office manager downtown, just transferred from Atlanta.

I learn all of this carrying boxes up three flights of stairs.

I learn other things too. The way her dress clings to her back when she sweats. The way she hums while she works—old R&B, Anita Baker, Sade. The way she says "thank you, baby" every time I set down a box, like the words are muscle memory.

I'm twenty-five. She's old enough to be my mother.

I can't stop looking at her.

The last box is books. Heavy as sin. I carry it to her living room, set it down, and stretch my back.

"You're a lifesaver," she says. She's standing in the kitchen doorway, backlit by afternoon sun, and I can see the outline of her body through the thin fabric. The heavy hang of her breasts. The soft swell of her stomach. "Let me at least make you dinner. Tomorrow night?"

I should say no.

"I'd like that."

Week One

Dinner is jerk chicken with rice and peas. She cooks like she's feeding an army. I eat like I've never seen food before.

"Slow down," she laughs. "It's not going anywhere."

"Sorry. It's just—really good."

"Mmhmm." She watches me eat, chin in her hand, something soft in her eyes. "When's the last time someone cooked for you?"

I have to think about it. "My mom. Before I moved out. Four years ago?"

"Four years." She shakes her head. "That's too long."

After dinner, she insists on sending me home with containers. At her door, she hugs me—a real hug, her body pressed against mine, soft and warm and overwhelming. I can smell cocoa butter and something floral.

"Thank you again," she says. "For today. For the company."

"Anytime."

I mean it more than I should.

Week Two

I knock on her door with a bag of groceries.

"What's this?" she asks, but she's already smiling.

"You cooked for me. My turn."

Her kitchen is small, and we keep bumping into each other as I make pasta. Her hip against mine. Her hand on my back as she reaches past me. Each contact sends electricity through my skin.

"You're not bad at this," she says, watching me sauté garlic.

"My grandmother taught me. Said a man should know how to feed himself."

"Smart woman."

The pasta is decent. The wine is better. We sit on her couch after, and she tells me about her marriage—how it ended slowly, then all at once. How she'd spent twenty years being someone's wife and forgotten how to be herself.

"Starting over at forty-six," she says. "Never thought I'd be here."

"Is it scary?"

She looks at me, really looks. "Sometimes. But sometimes it feels like freedom."

Week Three

We fall into a rhythm.

Tuesday nights, she cooks. Thursday nights, I do. Weekends, we grocery shop together, arguing over produce like an old married couple.

I tell myself it's neighborly. I tell myself I'm just helping out. I tell myself a lot of things.

But I notice everything.

The way her robe gaps open when she answers the door in the morning, showing the deep valley between her breasts. The way she touches my arm when she laughs. The way she says my name—Marcus—like she's tasting it.

I notice the way she looks at me too. Quick glances when she thinks I'm not watching. Her eyes on my arms when I carry groceries. The way her breathing changes when we're close.

We're circling something. We both know it.

Neither of us mentions it.

Week Four

Friday night. Her couch. A movie neither of us is watching.

"Can I ask you something?" she says.

"Anything."

"Why are you here?"

I look at her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean—" She pauses, chooses her words carefully. "You're twenty-five. You should be out at bars, meeting girls your own age. Not spending every free night with a woman old enough to be your mother."

"You're not old."

"I'm forty-six, Marcus."

"And?"

She laughs, but there's something fragile in it. "And you could be with anyone. Someone young and perky and—"

"I don't want young and perky."

The words hang in the air. Her eyes find mine, and I see it there—the same thing I've been feeling. The same gravity pulling us together.

"What do you want?" she asks, barely a whisper.

I should lie. I should make a joke, break the tension, go home and take a cold shower and pretend this isn't happening.

"You," I say instead. "I want you."

She doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Just looks at me with those deep brown eyes, and I can see the war happening inside her.

"Marcus..."

"I know." I move closer. Not touching, just close enough to feel her warmth. "I know all the reasons we shouldn't. But I've been thinking about you for a month. Every night. Every morning. I can't stop."

"We're neighbors. If this goes wrong—"

"What if it goes right?"

She closes her eyes. When she opens them, something has shifted.

"I'm not some fantasy," she says. "I'm not a MILF from a website. I have stretch marks and cellulite and parts that sag. I'm real."

"I know you're real." I reach out, finally, and cup her face in my hand. Her skin is impossibly soft. "That's what I want. You. All of you."

"You don't know what you're asking for."

"Then show me."

She kisses me.

It's not tentative. Not testing. She kisses me like she's been holding back a flood and the dam just broke. Her hands are in my hair, pulling me closer, and she tastes like wine and want and something that feels like coming home.

I pull her onto my lap, and the weight of her—God, the weight of her—grounds me in my body like nothing ever has. She's heavy and soft and warm, her belly pressed against mine, her breasts pillowing against my chest.

"Bedroom," she breathes against my mouth.

"You sure?"

She answers by standing, taking my hand, and leading me down the hall.

Her bedroom is soft—cream sheets, low lighting, the smell of lavender. She turns to face me and reaches for the hem of her shirt.

"Wait," I say. "Let me."

She watches as I lift her shirt over her head. Her bra is functional, white cotton, holding breasts that spill over the cups. I unclasp it, let it fall, and just... look.

She's beautiful.

Not in spite of her body. Because of it. The full hang of her breasts, dark nipples pebbling in the cool air. The soft roll of her belly, the stretch marks like lightning across her hips. The thickness of her thighs, the deep curve of her waist.

"Well?" she asks, and I hear the vulnerability beneath the bravado.

I drop to my knees.

"Marcus, you don't have to—"

"I want to."

I kiss her stomach first. Soft, reverent kisses across the expanse of her belly, feeling her shiver under my lips. I hook my fingers in her waistband and look up at her.

"Please," she whispers.

I pull her pants down. Her underwear. And then I bury my face between her thighs and make her understand exactly what she means to me.

She comes with my name on her lips, her fingers gripping my hair, her thighs trembling around my head. I don't stop until she pulls me up, pulling my shirt over my head, unbuckling my belt with shaking hands.

"Inside me," she says. "Now."

I guide her to the bed. She lies back, and I climb over her, and when I finally sink into her—slow, so slow—she makes a sound that I will remember for the rest of my life.

"Oh," she breathes. "Oh, Marcus."

I move, and she moves with me, and everything else falls away. There's just this—her body and mine, finding a rhythm, building toward something inevitable. Her nails in my back. Her legs wrapped around me. Her voice in my ear, telling me how good it feels, how long it's been, how she's thought about this too.

When she comes again, I'm right behind her, and we fall into it together.

After, she traces patterns on my chest.

"Well," she says. "That happened."

"It did."

"Any regrets?"

I pull her closer, kiss the top of her head. "Not a single one."

She's quiet for a moment. "What happens now?"

"Now?" I smile against her hair. "Now we figure it out. Together."

"Together," she repeats, like she's trying out the word.

"Unless you want me to go back to my apartment."

She laughs, soft and real. "Stay."

So I stay.

Week Five and Beyond

We don't tell anyone. Not yet. It's too new, too fragile. But every night, my door opens or hers does, and we find each other.

She teaches me how she likes her coffee. I learn the sounds she makes when she's close. We fight over the remote and make up in the bedroom and build something neither of us expected to find.

I'm twenty-five. She's forty-six. The math doesn't make sense.

But when I wake up next to her, her body curved against mine, her breath soft and steady—

It doesn't have to.

Some things just are.