by Katie McCoy
2
Jake
Beer, bed, babes. Beer, bed, babes. Beer, bed, babes. That was the chant in my head, each word accompanied by a slightly sloppy step. I had taken care of the first item on my list, and was on a path straight towards the second, but sadly, I didn’t think I was going to have any luck with the third. At least not tonight.
It was a damn shame, I thought, the city in a rare state of quiet around me. This was my favorite time of the day—when it was just me and the nighttime and the city lights. The less perfect parts of the world were hidden, cloaked in shadows or barely illuminated by streetlights.
As I reached my building, I didn’t see any lights on in any of the apartments, which made sense since it was after four in the morning. Not many people were up after I finished up at the restaurant, which is why item number three on my list was usually a difficult thing to find these days. Unfortunately, the same thing that kept me away from meeting women in the usual ways—my odd hours as a chef—was also the thing that usually got my adrenaline pumping and on a good night (and tonight had been a gooooooooood night), I usually came home totally riled up and completely horny.
Another night, another cold shower, I thought, gritting my teeth as I climbed the stairs. Not that I had any problems finding women to go home with me, but my hours didn’t allow for the traditional dinner and movie dates that started at seven p.m. Since I was seventeen, I had done pretty well for myself in that department. Women liked me and I liked them. I liked everything about them—the curve of their ass, the bounce of their breasts, the sway of their hips. But lately, I just hadn’t had the time, and one-night stands didn’t have the same appeal they used to. No, the most important thing right now was work, and a lot of women didn’t understand that.
I gave my shirt a sniff when I reached my apartment and found that it stunk, usually the case after a long day. But I couldn’t help grinning, thinking of how full the restaurant had been tonight. Only a few weeks with me as head chef and the reservations hadn’t even faltered. I knew the owner had panicked when the head chef, Patricia announced she was leaving—after all, she was the big name that had drawn people to the restaurant in the first place—and had loudly voiced her hesitation about me replacing her. And they weren’t any fears I hadn’t already had. But if I wanted to open up my own place by the time I was thirty (only three years away), I had to grab opportunity by the balls. And this opportunity had a big set of cojones for me to grasp onto.
I had worked my ass off to get this far, and even though it was true that I didn’t have as much experience as some of the other chefs Patricia had been considering, nobody could match me in sheer stubbornness and determination to succeed. I had done everything short of begging to convince my former boss to let me step into her very large, hard-to-fill shoes. Even after a few weeks, I was still waiting for someone to burst into the kitchen one night and shout “gotcha!” and reveal the whole thing was some messed up reality show. The soul-crushing version of Top Chef.
Still, even though I was grateful for my new position, I still wasn’t completely satisfied. I itched to try out my own menu. Marilyn, the owner, wanted me to keep cooking Patricia’s classics, at least for a few months, and while I understood the hesitance, I was still frustrated. I wanted to serve my own dishes—to make my mark and draw the attention of investors. Becoming head chef was a step in that direction and there was something invigorating about finally running my own kitchen, but I knew that I wouldn’t be satisfied until I owned my own place. Where I could control everything.
Lately satisfaction was a long time coming. Coming being the imperative term.
But by the time I reached my door, I was so exhausted, I barely had the energy to undress. I was pulling off my shirt and about to turn on my lights when I realized I had left the curtains open. Unless I wanted to be woken by the sun first thing in the morning—which I absolutely did not—I needed to shut them before I went to sleep.
I went over to the window, preparing to tug them closed, when I happened to glance down into the apartment that was one over and down.
And I saw her. All smooth satin and creamy skin, sitting on a piano bench. Her black hair obscured her face, as she furiously wrote in a journal. She hadn’t put up any curtains and the moon was on my side tonight, so I got a damn good look at my new neighbor. Hadn’t I seen her that morning, on my way to work?
Right. Yeah. She had been with a kind of serious looking blonde guy with a grimace on his face. Her boyfriend? I hadn’t had much time to think about it then, since I was already running late, but I did remember passing her in the hallway, that same shiny hair pulled tightly back, her thin frame swimming in black clothes, and her eyes. Those big, big eyes had caught mine and there had been a bit of a jolt. Enough that it took half a block for me to realize my heart was racing. I chalked it up to the steady pace I was keeping, but now, standing completely still, I didn’t have the same excuse for the same symptoms. Who knew I had a thing for pale brunettes with big eyes?
Then again, if I knew she had been hiding that body under those clothes, I would have stopped on the stairs and introduced myself, boyfriend be damned.
Suddenly, she stood, and I took a step back, but not far enough away that I couldn’t still see her walk in front of the window. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I could see a whole lot of everything else. There had been a lot she had been hiding under those baggy clothes. Long slim legs with a firm, round ass and shapely hips.
Fuck. I imagined myself there, in the room with her, sliding my hands over the slippery smooth lingerie before quickly stripping it away. Laying her down on the bench, kneeling down between her thighs with her gorgeous legs draped over my shoulders as she’d moan and shudder from my hands and mouth. She might be skilled with the piano keys, but a woman’s body was an instrument I was more than experienced with. After she’d cry out her pleasure, I’d pull her to her feet, crushing my mouth against hers, our tongues hot and wet, mine tasting intimately of her. Then I’d bend her over the smooth surface of the piano and . . .
Damn. I couldn’t remember the last time a fantasy had gotten me so riled up. I was as horny as a teen boy watching his first porno.
Did she know I could see her? A part of me wanted to believe that she could, but her lights were off and I had no doubt that she thought she was invisible in the dead of the night. So even though I ached to keep watching her and ached to take care of the very large problem I currently had in my pants, I stepped away from the window. Pulling the curtains closed, I stripped off the rest of my clothes. With my cock standing at attention, I headed towards my bathroom. My own hand was a poor substitute for what I craved—black satin and smooth skin—but if a fantasy was what I had, a fantasy was what I’d use.
3
Jake
I woke to classical music playing. What the fuck? My head ached, and still half asleep I felt around for my phone—was it eleven already? The only time I was up before then was after my days off, or when I had to go shopping for produce for the restaurant. But when I squinted at the bright screen—way, way too bright for my groggy, hung over state of being—it said eight a.m.
I then remembered that the ring tone for my alarm was “I Like Big Butts,” which Dakota had programmed into my phone a year ago and I was too lazy to change. So where the hell was the classical music coming from? And not only that, it seemed to be on repeat.
Some of my confusion lifted and I realized, yep, whatever song it was, it was playing over and over again. In fact, it seemed to be skipping or something because it got to a certain point, hit a sour note and abruptly stopped. For about two seconds. And then it started all over again.
“Ugh,” I groaned, grabbing my pillow and shoving it over my head, hoping to block out the noise, but it didn’t work. I threw the pillow at the wall, and when it fell it accidentally hit a picture on my dresser, knocking it to the ground, the glass shattering on my hardwood floor. It was too goddamn early for this.
Then, for a
moment, there was silence. I held my breath.
“Fuck!” I swore as the music started up again. Then I remembered last night when I was looking down into my new neighbor’s apartment as she sat at her piano. Was this punishment for checking her out in her underwear? As far as I was concerned, the crime did not match the punishment. I had just taken a little peek. And constructed an entire fantasy around her. A super fucking hot fantasy. And, okay, yeah, looking in on your neighbor when she doesn’t know you’re watching her is kind of a creeper move, but I hadn’t mean it that way. Maybe she didn’t know that she needed curtains. I fell back on my mattress with a groan.
All of my neighbors knew that I was a chef and that I needed to sleep in. Most of them went off to work early, but were really good about not slamming doors or stomping down the stairs—an important courtesy in an old building like this with pretty thin walls. Perhaps no one had let our new neighbor know.
The song started up again and I dragged myself out of bed, grabbing last night’s clothes and yanking them on. Well, there was no time like the present to introduce myself and let her know a little bit about neighborly decorum.
Even though I knew where it was coming from, I followed the music and as expected it led me right to her door. 1A. From inside, I could hear her make the same mistake she had been making all morning and I made a quick prayer that she would just cut her losses and take a walk or read a book or do something that was considerably more quiet.
But I apparently must have pissed someone off in a former life because after the same short break, the music started up again, exactly as it had been doing all morning. Curling my fingers into a fist, I gave her door a good pounding, when I’d rather be giving her a good pounding. God, she had looked so fucking hot in those sexy panties last night.
The music abruptly stopped.
“Thank God,” I muttered to myself, though the tune was still continuing in my head. With my luck, I was going to be hearing it in my head all day. Fuck my life, I thought, rubbing sleep from my eyes as I heard footsteps coming towards the door. They paused and I guessed she was looking out her peephole at me. I could only imagine what she saw. A tired, annoyed dude barefoot in yesterday’s wrinkled clothes. I guess I couldn’t blame her for not opening the door immediately.
“Yes?” a small, but steady voice asked.
I cleared my throat. “I’m one of your neighbors,” I told her, the rasp in my voice clearly indicating the rough night I had had. Why had I drunk so much beer? “2B.”
“Oh,” she said, but still didn’t open the door. Smart girl, I thought, though I really didn’t want to have this conversation through the door.
“I was hoping to talk to you about your playing,” I said. “Could you open the door please? So I can at least introduce myself?”
There was a pause and then I heard her undo the locks. The door opened slowly and a face peered out. Yep, same big brown eyes I remembered from yesterday, and the sight of them gave me the same strange gut punch. Ridiculous, I told myself. I was hung over. This was nausea, nothing more. Okay, maybe a little horniness, but who could blame me after what I had seen last night.
I tried to give her my most winning smile, but the exhaustion made it more difficult than usual. Still, she seemed to relax a little and the door opened a bit wider.
She was pretty—there was no doubt about that. Her hair was still down, thick black locks that fanned out over her shoulders and down her back, giving her a sexy, disheveled look. I imagined sliding my fingers through that hair, tangling it in my hands as I took her mouth with mine. But when I glanced down, I was disappointed to find that she was wearing the same kind of boxy black clothes as yesterday instead of the silky nothings she had been in last night. She looked a little bit like a nun. But kind of a sexy nun.
My imagination was happy to help me out with that. My fantasy of bending her over the piano, of sliding myself deep inside her, her hips flush against mine, came back at me in vivid Technicolor.
I cleared my throat, trying to get the image of her shapely hips and the long, smooth expanse of her back, her hands flat against the surface of the piano as I thrust . . . dammit. This was not the time to be entertaining fantasies about my new, annoying neighbor. Her looks didn’t change the fact that she had been playing the same song for at least twenty minutes, probably even longer.
“Can I help you?” she asked, and fuck, her voice was sexy too. Low and husky. I imagined the way my name would sound on her lips.
My pants tightened and I shifted on my feet. The last thing I wanted to do was introduce myself to my new neighbor with a raging hard-on. Think of pigs’ feet, I told myself. Pickled pigs’ feet. When in a pinch, the thought of my least favorite food was as effective as a cold shower, though this time it barely seemed to register, completely overwhelmed by the fantasy of fucking this girl on her piano. Jesus. Get it together, man. I took a deep breath and willed myself to focus.
“I’m Jake,” I said, holding out my hand.
“Ella,” she said, opening the door even wider to take it. Her fingers were long and slender, unsurprising given the instrument that dominated her apartment. How in the hell had she gotten the piano in here? I wondered. The thought of maneuvering the thing reminded me how exhausted I was.
“I couldn’t help noticing you play piano,” I said, trying to force my smile back on my face.
Ella nodded, looking at me cautiously, but offered no apology.
“Can I help you?” she asked again, sounding irritated.
Suddenly I was annoyed. I was the one who had been wronged here. She had woken me up with her incessant playing. I needed my sleep.
“I just thought I’d let you know that there’s kind of an understanding around here,” I told her. “I usually get home pretty late, which means for the most part I sleep late.” I waited, hoping she would connect the dots and apologize. But if she realized what I was getting at, she said nothing, just watched me with those big eyes. I took another deep breath. I just wanted to go back to sleep. “The walls here are really thin,” I tried again. “So most everyone is pretty understanding about my situation.”
“I thought they were all at work,” she said. “I tried to wait until everyone was gone.”
“Yeah, well, I’m still here.” I gritted my teeth. “And I usually am in the mornings.”
“Well, I’m practicing for something quite important,” she told me, clearly missing the point. “And ten a.m is not that early.” She gave me a long, assessing look that I did not appreciate. “At least for most people.”
I could feel my temper rise. “Well, it might not be early for you,” I said through my teeth, “but it sure as hell is early for me.”
“Well, maybe you should get to bed earlier,” she retorted. “Your late nights are not my problem.”
Whoa, I thought. This little nun has attitude. But I wasn’t one to back down.
“Actually, lady,” I told her, “they are your problem. One call to the superintendent . . . ”
“And what?” she snapped back. “You’ll have me evicted? I signed a lease.”
“Leases can be broken.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Is that a threat?”
“It’s a warning.” I pointed at her. “And one you should listen to.”
“I don’t have to listen to you.” She began to close the door, but I stuck my foot in her doorway, stopping it.
“Just be reasonable,” I tried, but she ignored me and began shoving the door against my shoe. Ouch.
“Move. Your. Foot,” she ordered.
“Maybe we should start over,” I tried, even though I realized there was no coming back from this.
“Maybe you should get out of my apartment.” She slammed the door against my foot again.
“Maybe you should learn another piece of music,” I shot back, trying to hide my wince.
She glared at me. “Maybe you should learn to appreciate classical music.”
Though I might have app
reciated her fire another time, at that moment, I was exhausted and crabby. And my foot really hurt. “Maybe you should get curtains on your windows before you give the neighbors the same show you gave me last night,” I said and watched her face turn bright red.
4
Ella
My mouth dropped open. Oh no. OH NO. Yesterday, I had told myself to buy curtains and then promptly forgot. So of course it made total sense that I then spent hours last night at my piano in my underwear. My best underwear. Something my new neighbor had gotten a front row seat to. My incredibly handsome new neighbor. It was the guy I had seen yesterday—wearing the same clothes he had been wearing then, only more rumpled. In fact, all of him was a bit more rumpled—his hair was a mess, his face covered in what could only be considered a 7 o’clock shadow. And somehow that didn’t detract from how drop dead gorgeous he was.
His ratty Astros T-shirt was stretched taut across his chest. And what a chest it was. The shirt was so thin that I could pretty much see every pack in his six-pack. And I couldn’t take my eyes off his arms—lean and dusted with dark hair, decorated with half a dozen tattoos, several which I could only see half of, the rest hiding away underneath his shirt. I felt the urge to discover the rest of them. An urge I quickly pushed away.
This was the guy who had seen me half naked last night. At least I had been wearing something sexy. What? No. That’s not what I should be thinking.
I wanted to disappear into the floor. But instead, I squared my shoulders and tried to ignore my red-hot face. No doubt I was as bright as a tomato. There was no way I was going let this guy—this Jake character—come down here and embarrass me. He shouldn’t have been looking in my window in the first place. And who did he think he was, coming down here and demanding I adjust my schedule to fit his? It wasn’t my fault if he liked to go out drinking every night. I wasn’t going to waste precious rehearsal time so he could sleep off his hangover every morning. So what if he was cute? I had the right to practice in my own home whenever I wanted. Well, not whenever, but I had waited several hours for everyone else to leave. I needed to practice. The next round of the competition was coming up and I kept screwing up the same section. And I was not going to let this cute but totally annoying guy keep me from what I had been practicing for months. He wasn’t my type. Not at all. But somehow, that message hadn’t made its way between my legs.