The Girl Next Door

For as long as I can remember, I lived right next door to Jennifer Newell. We never really talked, but she was always just there; we saw each other constantly coming or going, and our bedroom windows faced each other. I could see straight into her room whenever she left the curtains open. My desk offered the best view; from it I could see her cluttered desk and most of the tiny bed shoved into one corner. From my bed I could see most of the rest, although it wasn’t as interesting, just her closet and dresser and whatever she had up on the walls at the time.

When we were young, it felt almost like a game, both of us watching the other. By the time we entered high school it was more of a habit, and that helped to smooth over a lot of the weird feelings I was starting to have. It helped that she was already so familiar; I didn’t think about her body, just the way she was dancing to alt rock blasted so loud I could hear it in my room.

When we graduated high school, she went off to the illustrious heights of journalism school, and I stayed in our hometown to work at my dad’s electrical company. Two years later she came back with a new haircut and word quickly made it around that she was a lesbian. All that really mattered to me about the situation was that she settled back into her old room, and I settled back into our old habit.

I was partaking in my favorite pastime again – watching her instead of the movie on my laptop – as she tapped away at hers. I could just see the side of her face, the little scrunch of concentration and frustration. A scene on my own screen briefly caught my attention and when I looked back, her screen was filled with black and orange for a moment before a video filled it.

I was too far away to see what it was, but I could see the motion as it started playing. Her eyes were glued to the screen, and I briefly had the thought that this was something I shouldn’t be watching. But I felt glued to my chair.

Her skirt hiked up, too far for me to see what she was doing, only a pale stretch of thigh. She started to gently rock back and forth, lips parting just slightly before she bit the bottom. Suddenly I was utterly hypnotized by her, the steady motion of her body, and I wished that our windows faced each other a little more directly so I could be seeing her in profile instead of at an angle. A deeper part of me wished that she was facing me. And then – I wasn’t sure exactly when it happened, but she became a lot less urgent, eyes shut as she relaxed into her chair.

I became aware that I had just watched my neighbor get herself off, and quickly left my room while thanking every deity in the world that my parents weren’t home. I took a cold shower to calm down and did my best not to think about Jennifer Newell.

With her hands between her legs. Hips rocking against her hand.

Fuck.

By the time I got back to my room her curtains were shut. I kept glancing back that way, but they didn’t open again.

* * * * *

I was out picking up groceries when I ran into Jennifer. Literally, checking my phone to tell my mom that yes, I picked up bread, and then jumping halfway into the air as I collided with another body. I apologized profusely even before I saw that it was her, and then I felt my words dry up as I suddenly remembered the way she bit her lip with her hand buried between her legs.

She looked at me with wide green eyes, also mid-apology, and I said, “Seriously, it’s my fault, let me…” I helped her gather her stuff back into her bags, and sorted my own stuff into mine. I expected her to get up and go as soon as it was all done, but she didn’t.

Instead she said, “I heard you stuck around after high school, but I didn’t really believe it when I heard it. And I definitely didn’t think you were still living with your parents.”

I didn’t really know how to respond to that for a few seconds, burning with embarrassment. I decided to shoot back with, “Well, you had to move back in with yours.”

A crooked grin spread across her face. “Fair enough, dude. Cheers to being poor in our twenties, I guess.” I could see her starting to pull back, to leave, but she stopped abruptly and said, “Do you still, you know, look across sometimes?”

Heat flooded my face immediately. She knows, she has to know, there’s no other reason to ask that question… I said, carefully, “Not really.”

Something flickered across her face and I wasn’t sure if it was relief or disappointment. It was gone too fast to get a good read. “Oh, yeah. It’s something that’s fine when you’re younger and gets creepy when we’re older, right?” She looked like she wanted to say something else, but she just muttered, “See you later, Zack,” and headed for her car.

That night I kept my curtains closed. The urge to look was unbearable; she could be doing anything, from simply reading to… what she did the last time. But Jennifer was cool and I really didn’t want to cross her boundaries. The whole situation had crystallized in my mind: She’d forgotten to close her curtains, and I’d watched her getting herself off like an absolute creep, and she just didn’t know how to outright ask if she accidentally gave me a show. So, I resolved, I’ll just have to make sure I don’t see it again.

I lasted for two entire days of glancing up and only seeing thick cloth. It helped that they were busy days, and I spent most of them out on call with my dad, rewiring an old house to be up to modern code. But on that third night, as I was bored out of my skull writing up the invoice, I finally broke and nudged open the curtains.

Jennifer was laying on her stomach on her bed, reading a book. I kept one eye on her as I continued with my work. The simple, familiar sight of her doing something utterly mundane helped me keep my focus. The fact that she wasn’t masturbating helped a lot.

I was double-checking my math so I didn’t see when it happened, but by the time I looked back Jennifer had turned around and her jeans were bunched around her ankles. Her book was set aside and I had an amazing view of her ass as her panties slowly shifted and flexed in a way that completely eliminated any doubt as to what she was doing.

The invoice was completely forgotten as I watched her finger herself again. She rocked back and forth gently, and once again I was rapt. Hypnotized by the slow and deliberate movement of her body.

She stopped abruptly, and I instinctively moved to close the curtain again, thinking that she’d remembered me and was going to get up and check if I was watching. Instead, I watched as she pulled up her shirt, unhooked her bra with one hand, and moments later threw it away. It was a simple, efficient set of motions that made me wish that I could see more of her.

I knew that if I moved, I could see more of the bed. See more of her. But that felt wrong. For one thing, it would mean standing in the middle of my room watching my neighbor masturbate. For another, it felt like doing that would be violating the trust it felt like she was placing in me.

My eyes were locked to her, seeing the movement of her hands in my mind’s eye – was she rubbing or fingering herself? Was she playing with her nipples? – for what felt like an hour, but was realistically only a few minutes at most. I was painfully hard by the time she had an orgasm. I didn’t fully appreciate last time how animated she was when she came: Back arched down into the bed, arm gently flailing as she worked herself through it, quakes that smoothed out as she spread herself across her bed in the afterglow.

She laid there for a moment, maybe just basking, maybe recovering from what seemed like a pretty intense session. Then she abruptly kicked her jeans off her legs, revealing their full, naked length to me, sat up and tugged her shirt back down over her breasts, crossed over to her window and looked across at me for a moment. And then she shut her curtains.

After a few shocked seconds, I closed mine too.

* * * * *

I was reading a book on the history of electric power and glancing across the way every few seconds, wondering if she was going to do it again. But Jennifer just wrote in a notebook and sometimes glanced over at me. Her eyes were always carefully down by the time I was fully looking.

It didn’t take me long to get the message. Of course whatever this was, it should be mutual; if I got a show, then so should she. It was equality, or something.

Maybe it should have taken me longer to think about it, but a few seconds after I had that realization I was booting my laptop straight to my porn collection.

I started slow. Giving her enough time to notice, to pay attention. I didn’t look over to see if she was watching. Not knowing whether she was watching – knowing that she could if she wanted to – made the entire thing feel more intense. I wondered if she was turned on by this. Not by me – I wasn’t arrogant enough to think that the sight of me could flip some magic switch in a lesbian – but by the situation. I imagined her staring into my room, thinking about what I was doing for her, the way I’d done before.

Pure curiosity finally made me look up. There was a startled moment where I locked eyes with Jennifer – those bright eyes drilling straight into mine until she realized that I was looking back – and even from a distance I could see her blushing. She was perched in the little nook beneath her window, body in profile as she stared.

I spent a few moments trying to figure out the protocol for locking eyes with your lesbian friend while you were giving her a show before realizing that there really wasn’t one, and just gave her a little wave. I could hear her embarrassed laugh in my mind as she waved back. And then I went back to my show.

I didn’t last very long after that – acknowledging what was happening made everything more intense, more real, and even if we didn’t lock eyes again, we were watching each other. I could see the little ways she shifted, and I could tell when she bit her lip, and when I finished she waved again before going back to her notebook, leaving her curtains open.

* * * * *

Jenny turned a slow circle in the middle of my room. “Huh,” she said, before she fell backwards onto my bed with a huff.

“What?”

“I’ve just never actually been in here, I realized.” She was propping open her laptop as she spoke, but she took a moment to give me a crooked grin. “It’s like, deja vu for something you know you’ve already seen. Or something. I’ve seen this room every day for twenty years and never been in it.”

I rolled my eyes at her and grabbed the pages she’d set aside and one of my pens. We worked together in silence, me editing and her writing, until I realized that the sounds of typing had stopped. Jenny was staring across to her room, brow furrowed a little bit. I was about to ask what was up when she stood and crossed the room to my desk. She stared for a little bit while I held my breath, afraid that saying anything would ruin something, somehow.

Her eyes were unfocused, seeing something in her imagination. I wished that I had the courage to ask her what she was thinking about, but I didn’t, and after a few minutes she stood up and walked back over to my bed and picked up her laptop. Her face was deeply red.

We worked in silence the rest of the evening.

* * * * *

Like anything related to our mutual peep show, we never talked about it, but our sessions started to get rarer. When she was gone from her room on an increasingly regular basis, I knew the writing on the wall even before Jenny invited me out to the diner and I saw her sitting with another girl.

It took me a second to recognize Yuki Larsson, because I hadn’t seen her since high school and she was really different to the shy nerd I remembered. Her black hair was up in a high ponytail, and her face was full of mischief as she leaned in close to Jenny, who leaned away with a giggle. I didn’t even know Jenny was capable of giggling.

They both looked up as I approached. Jenny was nervous, but Yuki looked curious. I could already imagine the way the conversation was going to go: Hey Zack, sorry but I’m a lesbian and I don’t want a dude jacking off to me, here’s my hot girlfriend, bye!

But when I sat down, Jenny just said, “Hey. You remember Yuki, right? We ran into each other at the store and got to talking. And then, uh, to dating.” She blushed when Yuki grinned at her and whispered something in her ear. “I’m…” Her voice was unusually high, and she cleared her throat before trying again. “I wanted my girlfriend to meet my best friend. Well, again, or whatever.”

Yuki was back to examining me. She stuck a hand out across the table and said, “It’s nice to meet you again, or whatever.”

I couldn’t help my laugh as I reached out and shook her hand. “You too, or whatever.” Jenny buried her head in her hands.

We got to actually talking after that. Yuki was pre-med halfway across the country before a nervous breakdown brought her home, and she was starting to take classes at a community college now. She was incredibly interested in the technical details of my work, and I found her a much better conversationalist when it came to electrical engineering than Jenny.

Suddenly Yuki said, “Hey, babe, can you get me some more fries?”

Jenny just snorted. “Get them yourself. I’m not your maid.” She said it with a grin, obviously teasing.

“Oh, give me like thirty bucks and three to five business days and you will be.” As Jenny blushed–something that Yuki was very good at making happen, apparently–she leaned forward and said, “Pretty please? You don’t want your loving girlfriend to starve to death, do you?”

Jenny rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling. “Oh, fine.” She kissed Yuki swiftly and squirmed out of the booth to head over to the counter, leaving the two of us alone. I sipped my soda while Yuki watched me.

Finally she said, “What’s it like jacking off while she watches?” and I nearly spat out my drink. I got away with coughing a few times as some of it went down the wrong hole, while she watched with the same faintly amused expression she had when she teased Jenny.

When I could speak again I said, “You know about that?” I was expecting it to quietly stop and never be mentioned again to anyone. I certainly wasn’t expecting Jenny to tell her new girlfriend.

“Of course I do. It was our fifth date I think? I asked her what kind of porn she liked and she confessed the whole thing.” She took a sip of her own soda and added, “I think it’s hot.”

Whatever I’d been expecting was as far from this as it was possible to get. “What?”

“I think it’s hot,” she repeated. “The whole voyeur thing. And honestly I’m proud of Jen for committing to her kinks like that. I don’t know if I could have, and I’m bi.” She shot me a smile, but I could see the nerves in it.

After trying to figure out what she wanted me to say for a few seconds I gave up and went for honesty. “If you’re worried I’m secretly in love with her or something, I’m not. And I’m really happy for the two of you. You seem really great together.”

Yuki examined me again, and I resisted the urge to squirm under her gaze. “Yeah,” she said as Jenny came back with more fries. “Baby! Thank you so much.” She pulled Jenny halfway into her lap as she was sitting down, and the conversation went back to normal things.

* * * * *

About an hour after I heard cars leaving from next door, Jenny showed up in my bedroom door. I spared a glance away from the resume I’m looking over, and then a second one when I saw that she was full of nervous energy, bouncing on her heels a bit. “Hey, what’s up?”

“My parents are leaving for the weekend,” she said. “Anniversary thing, cabin up north, all that. So Yuki’s coming over to keep me company.”

“Okay,” I said, not quite sure why she was telling me.

She started playing with her necklace. “She’s going to be spending the night. Tonight, and tomorrow.”

The fact that it took that long for it to click in my head was either a sign that I was a total dumbass or a complete gentleman. “Oh,” was all I could say at first. Then, “Jenny…”

She put up a warning hand. “Dude, don’t. If you try and talk about it I’m gonna chicken out. She didn’t pressure me or anything. Or the other way around. We kind of… egged each other into it. And it still might not happen! Just… you know.” She gestured towards the window.

There were a lot of things running through my thoughts at that moment. I knew that if I told her she didn’t have to do this she’d back out of it, and I knew that I did really want her to do this, actually. And if both of them wanted to… Maybe it was selfish, but I just nodded, and she nodded, and left in a hurry.

That night, I kept glancing towards the other house, trying not to think too hard about it. This was new territory for all of us. They might decide not to do it anyway. Then Yuki bounced into Jenny’s room, giving me a little wave, and I gave her a little wave back. Jenny followed a moment later, arms wrapped around her midsection.

They sat on the bed. Yuki leaned over and kissed Jenny, and she started kissing back before pulling away. She said something, and Yuki grabbed her hand. I turned away to give them some privacy, let them talk through whatever they were going to talk through, fully expecting the curtains to be drawn when I looked back. But they weren’t. Instead, the girls were kissing.

Well, kissing was a very polite term for what was happening. Yuki seemed like she was trying to devour Jenny whole, and Jenny looked like she was intent on returning the favor. I could hardly keep track of their arms, all tangled up with each other until Jenny broke off to pull her shirt off. Yuki started to do the same and Jenny started to help her, which led to a moment where the shirt got tangled on Yuki’s arms. I could almost hear Jenny’s breathless giggles before they sorted it out and got it off. Watching it felt strange. The first time I felt like an actual voyeur.

Neither of them was wearing a bra underneath. I didn’t get a good look at either of them, both because of the distance and because they immediately went back to kissing. Then Jenny started kissing a line down Yuki’s jaw, to her neck, to her chest, and started lavishing attention on her breasts. I imagined being close enough to see both of them, Jenny with her lips wrapped around Yuki’s nipple while she ran a thumb gently over the other, teasing until she switched focus. I could see Yuki’s back arching, the movements of her mouth in what became, in my imagination, desperate pleas for her to do more.

In my head, Jenny said, “You’re going to have to earn it.” Because Yuki tackled Jenny backwards onto the bed and started tugging her pants off. At my angle, all I could see was one of Jenny’s legs trapped under Yuki, the other splayed wide while Yuki’s hand disappeared between them.

Were they kissing? Not for the first time I found myself wondering what noises Jenny made when she was on her way to an orgasm. Because she almost certainly was: I could see her arching up into her girlfriend, lifting both of them just slightly off the bed, and I could see her hands desperately reaching for a solid handhold and eventually arriving at Yuki’s hair.

She must have said something, because Yuki stopped her furious assault and flopped down onto her back. Jenny threw her leg over and sat on her girlfriend’s face.

Facing me.

She had her hands over her breasts, either covering them or holding them. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if she was, either. Her eyes lifted, met mine briefly, and then skittered away. But her hands lowered as her hips started to rock, and her eyes fluttered shut as she began to play with one of her nipples. Her breasts weren’t nearly as big as Yuki’s but they were formed perfectly, and I was hypnotized by them as she rocked back and forth.