Through the
Blinds

The neon glow of her phone screen is the only light in her studio apartment, illuminating the fire escape landing one floor down where she perches, bare feet hooked through the iron grate, the city's ambient hum a low thrum beneath her racing pulse. He's there, a silhouette against the warm spill of his own living room, the nightly ritual unfolding with a deliberateness that has become the spine of her days. For the past two months, the rhythm has been the same: his truck pulling into the lot at 11:47 PM, the clink of his keys, the square of light that is his bathroom window flickering on, the longer, softer glow of the bedroom blinds. She never meant to look. Or, she tells herself, she meant to look once, a flicker of curiosity at the new neighbor. But once became twice, became the anxious, hollow feeling in her chest when he was late, became the sharp, electric certainty when she saw him pause, saw him see her back — a shadow across the alley that matched his own. Now, this is their language. The slow unbuttoning of his work shirt is a sentence. The rough sound of his zipper is punctuation. Tonight, when he palms himself through his boxer briefs, his eyes are on her, a silent, burning question. The dark shape of her on the cold metal is her answer. She slides one hand under the hem of her thin t-shirt, letting her head fall back against the brick wall, a silent exhale carrying across the ten feet of open air. This is no longer about watching. This is a collaboration. And tonight, when he steps back, revealing the raw hunger on his face, and mouths, so clear against the glass, 'Come down,' everything shifts. The game changes from a solo ache in the dark to a promise of contact. She has two choices: retreat to the safety of her unseen room, or follow the pull, the dangerous, magnetized cord that has been stretching tighter and tighter with every glance, every shared, secret climax across the alley.