A gentler effort from me this time. Here we have Alan helping the neighbour pack up her house. He's there because he's recognised she's a very desirable lady, with carnal urges unlocked inside him.
I hope you enjoy what follows. I apologise now for any errors which [likely] remain in the text.
Feedback would be appreciated.
Most important of all β thank you for reading.
GA β Perth, Western Australia β 2nd of August 2016.
***
"That's the last," I said.
June looked around at the boxes. She seemed stunned almost. She blinked and shook her head. Then sucked in a deep breath before letting it all out in one long sigh.
"I can't believe I'm leaving this house," she said.
June looked at me over the rims of her glasses. Black frames. Not especially stylish. A purely functional necessity which still managed to stir me up on a carnal level.
To see her perched on the foot of the bed with her blonde hair loosely pinned up, a few fine strands floating free at her temples, June and her glasses put me in mind of an old-fashioned schoolmarm. A look that sent a frisson of something illicit slithering through me as dark urges uncurled.
"Thirty years I've lived here," she said. June surveyed the boxes again, sighing once more. "God, it's a lifetime."
I said, "It'll be weird not having you as a neighbour anymore, Mrs West." Which was my way of saying I'd miss spying on her as she sunbathed in her back garden. Our houses were fully detached, a high wooden fence dividing the properties at the rear. We lived in a quiet cul-de-sac in well-to-do Surrey. Our house and hers at the six-o'clock apex, the positioning giving June West complete privacy. There were no neighbours overlooking her place at the back.
Except for the attic window in our house. It took an effort to do it, but, if I knelt on the desk my father had installed when he converted the attic, I could see a wedge of next door's garden. The very spot June chose to lay herself out in the sun.
June fixed me with another look over the rims of those glasses, her expression reinforcing the school-teacher aspect.
She said, "I've been here since they brought you home. Since you were born."
I thought the way she said it was odd. June had a distant look in her eyes, speaking as though I wasn't there. Like she was talking to herself.
Not knowing what to say, I kept my mouth shut. It was enough just being in the same room with her; being close to her; being able to look at her in her canary yellow dress and recall her trim figure when I'd spied from the attic window. The colour complemented her light summer tan, her shoulders and arms bare while I took a quick, sneaky glance at her boobs. To where June's nipples stuck out. The pebble-sized points clearly outlined beneath the close-fitting fabric. Although the scooped neckline was modest enough, it was obvious June West wasn't wearing a bra. From there, inevitably, like night follows day, my focus went to her legs. Tanned and smooth and crossed at the thighs, the dress pulled taut at its hem as she leaned back, her arms straight behind her, palms against the quilt.
When she next spoke her words brought fire into my cheeks.
"You've been looking at me a lot lately, haven't you, Alan," she said.
It wasn't a question so much as a simple statement of fact.
I looked at her face and knew she'd seen me checking her legs. My eyes slid away from June's intense gaze. Her stare came at me from behind the glasses, sending another slither of sexual arousal inside me, the feeling mixed in with a dose of chagrin. I was embarrassed at being caught, mortified because she'd noticed my previous interest.
"Nuh-no," I stammered, trying for the lie.
June laughed. A mocking scoff. An emphatic refusal to believe my denial.
"Don't try to give me that old codswallop," she said with a shake of her head.
Her tone that made it quite clear she wasn't having any of it.
"I'm fifty-two years old, Alan. I
know
when a man's interested. And," she went on, amusement apparent in the sound of her voice, "you do make it so obvious, sweetheart."
*
"Come here, Alan," she said, patting the bed beside her.
I stood there and gawked for a few beats, my mind unable to function on any logical plane. I knew I was doing it, just gaping at her, vaguely aware I was staring in shock, dimly aware of the weight of my own hanging jaw.
"Come on, sweetie," June added, cajoling me to her with a curl of an arm. "This is important," she said. "I want to talk to you. I've been thinking ... a lot. I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with how best to approach this. I've been waiting for you to make a move," June continued. She shrugged and rolled her eyes and then grinned at me. "But you're just too shy, aren't you?" she said. "I should have known, really. I know what you're like, Alan. So I'm going to use the direct approach."
I gulped as the implications percolated through. I had an idea of what she meant, but the impossibility of it was too much for me to process. It couldn't be true. Despite my fantasies and masturbatory frenzies while imagining the very scene I found myself in, my brain refused to accept it was really going on.
So I just continued to stand there like the idiot removed from the village.
"Alan?" June crooned. "Hello? Earth calling Alan..."
"Mrs Westβ?" I said.
"I haven't been a Mrs for over two years," June put in, cutting me off. "I divorced him, remember?"
I nodded, the wheels in my brain starting a slow rotation again. It wouldn't be an immediate process, but my thoughts were beginning to clear.
"I know," I said with a shrug. "Butβ"
June stopped me again. "Look, it's like this..."
She paused and winced and sighed again.
"God, June," she said to herself, her eyes fixed on her lap. "Calm down and tell him," she added, chin coming up so she could fix me with another look from behind those glasses. "Alan, I know you've been looking at me." She held up a hand as a warning. "Don't interrupt," she said. "Let me say what I have to."
Time warped into a very strange and paradoxical state. It seemed to slow down, the moments stretching out like some cinematographer's trick while also rushing by so quickly it would be difficult for me to recall just what occurred between us in the next several minutes.