Mechanic Next Door

by Lauren Milson

  “I was up late two nights ago making the dough for the cobbler,” she says.

  If she were any other woman I’d tell her to get her feet off my desk, even if they’re only hanging off the corner. Any other woman and I’d tell her she shouldn’t be in the back office with me, any other soul and I’d tell her I don’t need any company.

  I know she was up late two nights ago making the dough. I watched her do it. I couldn’t get to sleep until I saw the candles lighting up her kitchen flicker out. She makes her kitchen dark and lights a few candles when she doesn’t want me to be up late looking after her. She teases me, tells me I’m an old man who needs his rest. She uses the candles and thinks it lets me get to sleep early. It doesn’t. Just makes her look all the more beautiful, makes her soft features even softer, makes the shadows on the walls a little blurrier, makes me take notice a little bit more than I should.

  I take a bite of my sandwich. It tastes too good. It was made with too much love. And it’s making me sad to think about how she put so much time and effort into it for me and the boys and how I need to temper my praise.

  Ray pops his head in as I take a bite of my sandwich. Peach is doing something on her phone. She told me a year ago I needed to get on “the apps.” She made me a profile, forced me to pose for a picture sitting at my desk, said that any woman would love a man who owns his own business, especially if they were as cute as I am. Dual emotions of jealousy and gratitude battled inside me that afternoon.

  “Hey,” Ray says, taking a step inside my office. I straighten in my seat and wipe my mouth with the paper towel she’d folded into quarters and nestled between the metal fork and side of the tin. I motion for him to come in.

  “We were just wondering if you were planning on joining us next time,” Ray says, clearing his throat. He throws a look to Peach. “We all know she’d like you there. She sat in the corner by herself all last night, poor thing. Asked about you when I dropped her off at home, too. She missed you, Thomas.”

  My gaze slides past the calendar on the wall, the Chinese menu someone decided would make good wallpaper, the clock, to Peach. Blue eyes meet me and she glides her teeth against her bottom lip.

  “Yeah, I’d like if you came.” She produces a water bottle from her Brooklyn Public Library tote and I watch as her fingers unscrew the cap, as she brings the mouth to her lips, tips it back and licks a drop of water from her lower lip.

  “I’ll see,” I reply.

  “What else do you have to do?” Peach teases.

  I have plenty else I have to do. I need to keep an eye on her garden to make sure her tomatoes are okay. I need to keep guard over her beloved peach tree, the one she likes to sit under. I need to push away all of the things I want to do to her. Push away the image of her coming over to my house where I sit and look out the window from my easy chair, kneeling between my knees and inching her fingers up the worn denim on my thighs. Pretend I don’t want to sink my dick into her pretty little mouth and have her refuse to stop sucking until I’ve come. Drink myself to darkness to keep the thoughts at bay.

  “I have stuff I can do in the house,” I say to her with a hint of a smile. My cock is pressing tight against the zipper of my jeans. Ray excuses himself. I shift my hips to try to get rid of some of the pressure but it’s no use. Every little movement of my body gives me a fresh perspective on Peach and only makes the pressure hotter, tighter, worse and better. I covertly put my hand in my lap and grope the length of my dick through my pants.

  “That reminds me,” she says. “Can you come over tomorrow? I have some new wallpaper I want to hang in the upstairs bathroom.”

  A ripple of anxiety goes through me when she says the word wallpaper. Her house is old and I’ve been thinking for a while now what would happen if she decided to fix it up, sell, and move someplace more cosmopolitan.

  “I’ll be over,” I reply. She smiles, puts her hands on the armrests of the cracked leather chair, and swings her feet to the floor.

  Adjusting her bag over her shoulder, she stands.

  “I hope to see you tomorrow night, too, but I guess I have a whole day and a half to convince you.”

  “See you later,” I say. She sweeps through my office and when she’s gone, I reach onto my lap and an audible groan escapes from my lips when I put my elbow on the table and my forehead in my hand. It’s all I can do to stop myself. This is a bad one, too. I’m too hot for her. She’s just too perfect. I feel my brows knit in the middle as I let out a sharp breath.

  I stand and cross the small room, lock the door, and pull the string on the blinds to make the slats seal shut. The clicking of metal against metal portends the freeing of my dick, and I take it in my hand, heavy, thick, and fist the length. The first pump’s breath is shallow. The second pump’s breath is ragged. Her pretty eyes beam up at me as I squeeze mine shut. Behind my eyelids my forbidden fantasy plays out. Her hands are inching up my thighs, she’s unzipping me, she’s undoing my belt silently, and her eyes never leave mine.

  She takes my dick out. I know it’s the first one she’s seen. She isn’t afraid of it. She pumps the full length twice with both hands wrapped around it, taking the trunk and then moving to the tip. There’s so much come dribbling out already and she’s barely even started. She presses her lips to the tip and paints them with my come and my dick twitches. She opens up her lips and now I can’t resist threading the fingers of one hand through her hair and tugging, my other hand wrapped around the front of her throat. She’s using my dick to make her pussy wet, putting one hand between her legs and reaching her slit from the outside of her shorts.

  And is she wet. When I feel I’m going to come, I pull her lips off my dick and she stands before me, my knees spread wide on either side of her rich thighs. I pull her shorts off and there are no panties on underneath. She peers up at me through those eyelashes again, and I pull her against me to straddle my lap. Her thick thighs lock onto my hips as I lower her onto my cock.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I rasp against her ear.

  “All I’m afraid of is not being with you.”

  I grip her ass with both hands and lower her tight little pussy onto my dick. It chokes the life out of me. I kneed her ass and palm the cheeks, pulling her back up again to ride me. My middle finger finds her puckered asshole that I’ve imagined licking so many times and I nestle it there and she shivers in response, which means she loves it. Then again I pull her down onto my dick. She locks her hands behind my neck and I drag her up. She teases me with a whimper and a small wiggle of her hips and I pull her down again, the blood whooshing through my head to shut out her cries. I nip my teeth at her lower lip and make her ride my lap until she’s begging me with whispers to put my load inside her. That does it.

  I put my hand out in front of my dick to catch my spend, the release shooting up through my heavy balls as my body clenched and freezes. I grunt it out as my fist milks my hand, my jaw clenched, my nostrils flaring.

  But even when I’m leaning against the door and trying to catch my breath, my dick is still hard as a rock in my hand. I make my way to the bathroom inside my office to clean up, collapsing in the chair behind my desk before I’m aware of any time passing.

  I’m going to need another way to wrestle down my desires.

  I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.

  I pray it’s just a phase. A blip. Nothing more than that.

  3

  Peach

  “I’m going to be making lemon chicken tonight.” I drag the tip of my knife against the cutting board and tangle my fingers through the cord of my landline. Thomas laughs and I can see my sweet, friendly neighbor shaking his head, leaning against his counter and taking a sip of his coffee.

  “That’s what you make every Saturday night,” he chuckles.

  “Did you know there was a fad diet in the seventies that prescribed its followers to eat only a couple of hard-boiled eggs, coffee, steak, and white wine every day? And you could drink a whole bott
le of wine a day, starting with breakfast. Wine for breakfast!”

  “I don’t know where you get these ideas from.” There’s a slight pause. “Hang up, Peach. I’m coming over.”

  The nickname he gave me when we first met when I was eighteen still makes me feel as warm and fuzzy inside as it did the first time.

  I lost my parents to a drunk driver three years ago. I was about to be a senior in high school, and I came here to live with my grandfather, my only living relative. The year I had with him before he passed away, though, it rehabilitated my heart in ways I never thought would be possible. And Thomas was there. He helped. He did so much emotional work toward getting me better. It makes me feel indebted to him. Not out of obligation, though. It’s in a way I don’t quite understand. In a way that makes me feel forever close to him.

  And then, when my grandfather died, Thomas was there. He was everything to me. He took care of me. Simple care. He brought me food and forced me to eat even when I tried to push the spoon away. He broke up crackers into my soup and wouldn’t leave my side until I finished the whole bowl. He stayed at my side even if I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, speak.

  “See you soon,” I say into the phone, goosebumps plumping over my arms. I don’t know if it’s in response to his tone, sweet and rough in equal measure, or the way the spring breeze is gliding through the window and making everything inside me sparkle.

  I brush my hands on my apron and leave my knife on the cutting board with the lemons I was slicing. Some for tea, some for the chicken tonight.

  The screen door snaps shut and he walks in, boots heavy against the hardwood. My heart flutters and my palms get sweaty as I watch him go over to my refrigerator to grab a single weekend afternoon beer.

  My gaze roams his body while his back is to me. His jeans are slung low on his hips and his black tee is stretched thin and tight against his thick muscles. He pushes a strong hand through his thick, wavy dark hair, and I feel my lips turn down at the corners as my teeth dig into my lower lip. He isn’t even all that much older than me. I’m twenty-one and he’s thirty-six. Is that too much of a gap? I don’t know. Even if the difference is too much, it’s not insurmountable. What is insurmountable, however, is his hold on me.

  His precise, exact hold on me, one that exerts itself in a unique and uniquely torturous way every day, is getting harder and harder to understand. He’s my fierce protector in all things big and small. He is my best friend. When I was giving out candy last Halloween to the neighborhood kids he insisted on sitting on my front porch from sundown to midnight to ensure that no shenanigans took place. I don’t know if he was more concerned with teenagers throwing toilet paper through the branches of my trees or of me sneaking one of my guy friends through a window and upstairs to my room.

  And two years ago, when a baby deer ate my tomatoes, he erected a fence around my garden to keep my fruits and vegetables safe.

  A unique, torturous hand has gripped my heart with longing. I search it out, the longing. Because it’s not the same kind of longing I’ve ever felt before. But it’s not just longing. It’s a razor’s edge of uncertainty. It feels so good sometimes, and other times, not so good.

  When Thomas starts to turn around I avert my eyes and focus on the letter in front of me. I’m part of an active duty pen-pal program that I signed up for a while ago. I have ten pen-pals, which maybe is too many, but I give each of them the same attention I give the others, and the same attention that I’d give each were they my only pal.

  I start to write my response and Thomas eyes me from his seat across the table. I barely even noticed he’d sat down.

  I like the way he sits. One legs is stretched out beneath the table between us, the other is bent and the toe of his boot is tucked under his chair.

  His over-protective streak is just beginning to show itself to me in a different form. After all, he’s told me there’s more to protect now, let it slip out once. I shift in my seat as I stuff the envelope with my finished letter. But an idea forms. I take it out again and draw a heart in the corner of the paper. I return the letter to the envelope and lick the seal. I watch Thomas’ hand on the table as I lick my lips and put the envelope on the stack to my left.

  His hands. I’ve pictured them locking my knees apart when I rub myself late at night. I can’t imagine all the things he could do with his hands. They make me wet just looking at them. Does he know I’m wet right now?

  He looks like he’s about to blow a gasket, his eyes on the letter.

  You can’t be doing things like that, Peach.

  He just wants to make sure I don’t get into any trouble.

  “What was that about wallpaper?” he grunts.

  But the wallpaper was just a way to get him to come over.

  “Can we go swimming, instead?” I implore, not waiting for him to answer. “I just have my suit hanging to dry in the laundry room.”

  I go over to the key rack hung up next to the phone next to the refrigerator, taking the key down and putting it on the table next to his hand. His fingers move an inch and I leave my hand there to push him to touch me. Any kind of physical contact from him should hold me over for a bit, but he just looks away.

  “Wait a minute for me to get changed and then lock up,” I say as I start to walk away.

  My pulse is pounding through me, thick as honey. I put my chin over my shoulder to see if he’s looking at me. I wore this dress today on purpose. It’s another article of clothing he doesn’t like me wearing. I can pretend I don’t agree with him, but I do agree with him. I shouldn’t be wearing something like this. It’s too short. I’ve grown inches taller in the last year and gained weight, most of it filling in my breasts and hips. I’ll only wear things like this around Thomas, because I don’t want to give any one else the wrong idea. There are no wrong ideas when it comes to Thomas, though.

  I want him to see me as something more. Will he ever?

  I make my way through the kitchen and land in the laundry room at the back of the house, stripping my dress over my head before I’m even past the threshold.

  If Thomas wants to see me, all he has to do is look.

  4

  Thomas

  I lock the front door of the house, wait thirty seconds, then turn around to walk toward the back door. She’s already half-way to the thicket of trees that form a half-moon around the back our houses when I’m locking up the back door, and I have to jog to catch up to her.

  She decided to not put her dress back on over the bathing suit. The waist cuts across the small of her back and the bottoms are a little too small, and the top is tied a little too loosely. She looks sexy as all hell, though, and I decide to hold my comments back, keep them for myself. It’s just the two of us, and if we were anyone else I’d have to tell her not to wear this kind of shit. For now I decide to let her off easy.

  “I have to ask you about something,” she says to me with a turn of her chin.

  “I’m an open book,” I say, pushing a branch away as we get to the edge of the trees. I guide her with a hand on the small of her back as I always do.

  “When I first came here, you know how I had to fight to get into that Advanced Placement math class?”

  “Of course I remember that,” I chuckle. “It was the biggest scandal your high school ever saw. I think the superintendent of the district got your principal into hot water over that.”

  “Shut up!”

  She fakes a protest, hitting me with the back of her hand. She hates the idea of getting anyone into trouble. One time she saw a woman at my garage trying to go into the change jar at the front desk to steal enough quarters to buy a soda from the vending machine. She diverted her away from the change and gave her a dollar from her own pocket, thinking if I saw I’d give her the old death-stare. I saw, but I didn’t say anything because I was too busy observing Peach’s small, simple act of kindness.

  “No, you really caused a stink there,” I tease her. “Legend has it that there are academics all over
the country using the case of your initial rejection from the AP class as a study in how bureaucracy is used to keep smart girls out of the best math classes.”

  “You’re smiling, but if you were really my friend, you wouldn’t think this is so funny.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, throwing my arm around her shoulders. “What do you want to ask me about?”

  “It was you, wasn’t it?”

  It was me, but I smile and give her a shrug.

  “I don’t know what you mean. I don’t have any pull with the people in this town.”

  “Oh really? So your little visit to the school had nothing to do with it?”

  When Peach arrived, she had already taken her SATs. She’d nailed them, too. She received a 750 on the math portion. And she had the transcripts from her high school back in New York and all of the evidence that she should be able to take an Advanced Placement math class. But with all the red tape at the local high school, along with the fact that the class was technically full, the principal wanted her to take a lower-level class. I didn’t think it was a big deal either way. My expertise in all things numerical was attained at community college classes, just a few courses in business, finance and engineering. But Peach was more academically-inclined.

  I visited her principal to see if there was anything that could be done. I was old friends with the principal, a very nice but rather strict woman I’d gone to high school with. But with a little explanation of all Peach had been through, she agreed to give her a seat in the class she’d wanted.

  I’d told Peach I had run into the principal and was old acquaintances with her, and she immediately demanded to know whether I’d had anything to do with the whole thing being resolved to her satisfaction.

  I denied it because I thought it was cute for her to sweat. Anyway, she could see through my lie because there’s no way for me to deny the truth when I’m around her. She’s so sweet that her eyes act like a truth serum.