Bit by bit I pushed the limits. Now I’ve only got one line left to cross.
I’m beginning to think I made a mistake moving out here. This neighborhood is just so boring and I’ve got nothing to occupy my days so I’ve taken to fantasy, to pushing my limits bit by bit in ways that my husband wouldn’t approve of.
He wants me to be quiet and reserved and demure. He wants me to be his pretty little housewife. But a good housewife wouldn’t do anything like this.
At first it was just stepping out and feeling the sun on my bare skin. It was in the safety of my backyard and no one could see, right? So who was I hurting?
I was wrong. He could see everything. The quietly intense and handsome neighbor who just moved in had been watching me day after day as my clothing got smaller and smaller until it wasn’t there at all.
And he’s still watching now. He’s watching as I push the limits even more. He’s watching as my fingers curl and beckon him over to me and now he’s not just watching anymore.
Now we’re about to do so much more.
So much for being a devoted little housewife. I think it’s more fun this way.
Excerpt
Standing in my backyard at the end of my run. Breathing heavily, standing there. Waiting. Staring up at him.
Him, yes him. Him in the upstairs window staring down at me and all the ways Marcy described him are now echoing in my brain but they’re just filling in the details for me because all that he is, is a silhouette in the dark. He is a black outline, filled in solid. He is nothing but potential and I blink and I turn and I head inside wondering whether I’d imagined this all.
I can’t make sense of it. None of it seems real. None of it seems like something I would really do but maybe that’s the point. Maybe this is just a dream, some kind of break in my psyche where the person I know I can be and the person I know I am are in such a riotous conflict with each other and all they do is break me down, tearing me into pieces and shattering me so that I could spend a lifetime picking them back up again.
Maybe I’m all the way back at the beginning, finding out that Leon has a whole life planned for me and wondering whether I can really go through with it and maybe this is all a cautionary tale.
But I’m inside now, the cold air on my sweat-kissed skin. I’m pulling a drink from the fridge and I’m stepping through the familiar path to the shower upstairs. I’m peeling off the clothing from my body and exposing more and more of myself. Inch by inch revealed in all my beautiful glory until the water is rushing over me now, cleansing me of everything.
And this feels real. This feels like something I can hold onto.
This feels like a moment I can center myself in, charting out all the moments that are to come as I step out of the shower and take my long walk downstairs. As I grab the beer and crack it open and step out into the sunlight warmth of my backyard and scream with every part of me but my voice for him to notice me, to stop denying it for his and for my sake.
And then he is there, a vague shape of a man but I can feel him in the absence of himself. He’s right there beside me and above me and around me and he takes me in the sunlight shock of my backyard.
And it’s good. Every part of me is dedicated to feeling every part of him.
And it makes me gasp. My body strained to its very limits, the edges of me blurring as he thrusts and grasps and pulls at me.
And it satisfies me. All of me, even the parts I don’t want to admit exist.