Caught Again: The Balcony

It was the hottest night of the summer and my air conditioning had picked exactly that week to die. By midnight my apartment was an oven, and I'd given up on sleep entirely. So I did what any overheated, restless girl would do. I wrapped myself in my thinnest silk robe, poured a glass of ice water, and stepped out onto my little balcony to catch whatever breeze the night was offering.

The city hummed below. My building's balconies are staggered, mine and my neighbor's sit side by side, separated by a wooden partition that stops about a foot short of the railing. I'd lived there eight months and barely exchanged more than hallway nods with him. He was cute in a quiet way. I'd noticed. Of course I'd noticed.

The breeze lifted my robe. The night air on my bare skin felt like the first good thing all day. I leaned on the railing, closed my eyes, and let my hand drift, just a little, just absentmindedly at first. The heat, the night, the anonymity of the dark. My fingers found their rhythm and my breathing changed, and for a few minutes there was nothing in the world but the city lights and my own body waking up.

Then I heard it. A sharp intake of breath, not mine, from the other side of the partition.

My eyes flew open. There he was, my neighbor, frozen halfway through stepping onto his own balcony, staring straight at me. The partition hid most of him, but not his face, and certainly not the fact that he was looking right at me, at my hand, at my open robe, at everything.

Every caught masturbating by neighbor phone sex fantasy I'd ever whispered into a phone suddenly felt very, very real.

I should have covered myself. I should have gasped, fled inside, died of embarrassment. That's what a normal person would do.

I didn't move. I held his gaze, and slowly, deliberately, I let my robe fall a little further open, and I didn't stop touching myself.

He didn't look away. He stepped fully onto his balcony and gripped the railing with both hands, watching me with an intensity that made my whole body flush hotter than the night air. I could see the outline of him in the dark, see how affected he was, and knowing he was watching, knowing he couldn't stop watching, pushed me higher than I'd been alone. I slowed down, drawing it out for him, letting him watch every shudder, every gasp. I arched against the railing. I let him see everything. I wanted him to see everything.

A car alarm went off somewhere below, ridiculous and distant, and neither of us even flinched. It was just us, and the string lights, and the terrible wonderful thrill of being watched doing the one thing you're never supposed to let anyone see.

After what felt like forever, he moved along his balcony to the end nearest mine, where the partition falls short of the railing. He leaned there, close enough that I could have reached out and touched him. He was breathing hard. I could tell he was asking himself whether he dared. So I made the decision for both of us. I reached through the gap and crooked my finger at him, beckoning.

He came over the railing like he'd been waiting his whole life for permission.

What happened next, on my little balcony under the string lights I'd hung in spring, with the whole sleeping city below us, was reckless and filthy and perfect. He kissed me like he'd been imagining it for months, and judging by the way his hands already knew where I liked to be touched, he had been. He pushed my robe off my shoulders and it pooled on the balcony floor, and he took me right there against the railing, one hand over my mouth to keep me quiet, the other holding me exactly where I needed him. I came with the city spread out beneath us and his heartbeat hammering against my back, and it was the single most exposed, most thrilling moment of my life.

He slipped back over to his side before dawn, barefoot and grinning, and I fell asleep in the first cool hour of morning with the taste of him still on my lips. I woke at noon to find my robe folded neatly on the balcony chair, he'd tidied up after himself, the gentleman, with a scrap of paper tucked in the pocket. His number. And three words underneath it that I keep rereading: same time tonight?

Tonight the heat wave finally broke. It's cool and clear, and my AC is fixed, and there's absolutely no reason for me to be out on my balcony at midnight in my silk robe.

But my balcony door is open. And I'm waiting to see if he's watching.