Chapter 1

Iwas watching him through the window again. It had become an obsession of mine, watching him. A drug. Granted, a much healthier drug than I was used to. But was it? It was like I couldn't control my urges when it came to his presence. While I watched TV on the couch, I peered over my shoulder to see if he was home. As I cooked dinner, I stole glances out the window. When I sat on my balcony having a beer after a long day at work, my gaze lingered on his condo. When I should have been focused on something else, anything else, I looked for him to satisfy some curious desire in me that I didn't understand. That I didn't really want to. And tonight, here I was again, looking to score.

Please, Mr. Dope Man, just a little taste.

He casually strolled through the living room into the open kitchen that situated itself along the wall as though he didn't have a care in the world, stopping to open the refrigerator—looking for a snack, I presume. Or maybe something to drink. It was late, after all. Imagining what he might be thinking had become a hobby of mine lately. Strong, sturdy legs bent slightly at the knee. Muscled thighs flexed and tightened as he milled about in the refrigerator. A taut, round ass peeked out from behind the open door. He wasn't wearing any clothes. I found he rarely did when he was home alone.

After a moment in search of sustenance, he backed away and allowed the refrigerator door to swing shut, turning to face the large plate of double-paned glass that served as both wall and window to his home. Palming a glass half full of clear liquid that was dwarfed by the size of his hand, he peered out into the open night sky, seeming to look at nothing before bringing the glass to his lips and taking a sip, his barely visible Adam's apple rising and falling with the unintentionally erotic maneuver. His expression was hardened, like he'd had a tough life. Or maybe just serious. The backlighting made it difficult to tell from this distance. Silver-haired and well-toned, the object of my attention just across the pool deck and two floors down unknowingly looked in my direction, arousing me, tempting me.

It wasn't a habit of mine to lust over my neighbors in secrecy or even to spy on them. Sure, I liked to relax on my balcony and enjoy the fresh air, and in doing so, I sometimes peeked in to see what they were up to. With the positioning of the buildings, it could be difficult not to. But that was usually the extent of my voyeuristic endeavors. I found out a lot about my neighbors that way. Most of them I never met, so it seemed an innocent endeavor.

But this time, it felt different. For starters, I wasn't hanging out on my balcony just happening upon a scene. I was inside, deliberately peering through my window and into his to find out if he was home, awake, clothed. He hadn't lived in the building long, at least not in that unit, but when he appeared, I found that I couldn't take my eyes off him. Something drew me to him, a wild curiosity or some primal urge. I found him attractive, but there were a lot of attractive people in my building. Whatever it was about him that drew my interest so keenly, my attention had glued itself to his existence on many a night, particularly tonight.

It was after midnight, and I hadn't been up this late for a while. I'd gone out to the bars for the first time in a long time in hopes of a fun night out, a lame attempt at recapturing the innocence of my youth that escaped me long ago. The night was a bust; four hundred guys crammed into an understaffed bar playing bad top-forty music all had their faces buried in phones while they sipped vodka sodas, some with lime, some without. It hardly mattered. Not one of them seemed interesting. Not one of them held the promise of anything more than a fling.

I should have been in bed anyway. Shirking responsibility was difficult now that I owned my own business and people depended on me. It had been five years since I became my own boss, and nearly the same amount of time had passed since I'd taken a proper day off. Tomorrow would be no different. I was going to have to get up early to open the shop. I couldn't take the chance of someone dropping the ball. Not that I didn't trust my staff; I just found that I wasn't great at delegating responsibility. Rugged self-reliance was a tough lesson I'd learned years ago, and as much as I may have wanted to put my unconditional trust in someone else, I wasn't even sure how to begin.

Even though it was late, there was plenty of activity on the streets below. It was Saturday, and the unforgiving heat of late spring was slowly giving way to the oppressive swelter of an early Atlanta summer. That torrid sultriness would last for months when it finally settled in, only giving reprieve by way of occasional rain showers. I didn't mind the six months of tropical weather provided by the latitudinal position of the city, but even I had to admit the heat could be torturous. Worse than the heat was the air-conditioning set to sixty degrees pumping through the walls of every business and building lobby in the city. Running errands was its own hell, an endless cycle of sweating and freezing.

The sliding glass door that led to my small balcony was open, allowing hoots and howls and abrupt cheers of reckless inebriation to occasionally echo through the night and into my condo. Gaggles of drunk millennials and messy, middle-aged weekenders lingered at the sports bar on the corner after whatever game had ended earlier in the evening as replays of the night's events glued them to oversized screens and kept them ordering unnecessary libations. They frequently invaded the neighborhood on weekends for what I'm sure most of them considered an exciting night out in the city. A smattering of crackheads and hookers seemed ever present as well, pacing the sidewalks along Spruce Street or relaxing on benches, resting their stilettoed feet before the cops unsympathetically forced them to move on. Evermore noticeable were the endless groups of rowdy gay men that stumbled out of rainbow-flanked bars down the block and back to their condos—or someone else's—in glass-and-steel high-rise towers only distinct enough from one another to have different names and sticker prices.

I lived in one of those towers too, which was how I was afforded my current view. I shouldn't have been able to live at Stratus—a somewhat misleading name since it was now one of the shortest high-rises in the neighborhood—but I did because I was fortunate enough to get in at the right time. When I bought the place after breaking up with my stupid ex, the building was new and nearly empty. Shortly after, the housing market rocketed, and the residents became more and more, well, let's say, cared for, over time. Not that I minded. The neighborhood, and especially this building, attracted mostly single male buyers with its tree-lined streets and proximity to everything you could need: bars, restaurants, shopping, a beautiful park, and metro stations that would transport you almost anywhere in the city you might want to go. Besides, my condo had doubled in value since I moved in.

My building was actually two stunted towers of only twenty stories each, connected by a lobby, parking garage, and that seventh-story pool deck. Those towers were now dwarfed by several soaring skyscrapers more than twice their height. The front of the building faced the city's main avenue, lined with bars and cafés. The back faced a parking garage but provided easy access to the park and the center of the bustling gay village just two blocks away. That back entrance remained busy.

Due to floor-to-ceiling windows in every unit, and because my place directly faced the other tower, I usually got an eyeful from night to night. Looking through my windows was like watching TV: a slow-moving saga on one channel, a romantic comedy on the next, and an adult film on even another. I was unenthusiastically waiting for the day a crime drama got picked up. If I didn't like what was on in one unit, I could usually shift my gaze and find something better to watch in another. Even though I tried not to pry, I sometimes sat on my balcony in the dark and just watched my neighbors live their lives through that double-paned glass. Regardless of what was happening, it surely beat my lackluster social life.

But back to the object of my attention: the mystery man across the pool deck and two floors down. As I stood in my kitchen and watched him under the shield of night, he stepped up to the window, stopping to look out over the world, completely exposed and confident, shadowy but visible. Perhaps he didn't realize anyone was awake and enjoying his late-night, red-light-district-worthy show in everyday, city-life realism. From his perspective, maybe no one was. Aside from his, there were hardly any units lit up in the North Tower, and the few that were didn't seem to be occupied. Perhaps all he saw from his vantage point was a sea of darkened and seemingly unoccupied units in the South Tower. But even though the lights in my condo were turned off, I was completely awake and hopelessly drawn to the mysterious creature across the way.

The mystery man lifted his free hand, casually resting it on his hip while he took another long, slow sip from his glass before lowering it to his side, right next to those sturdy legs. His body appeared to be in good shape, defined and athletic. His flaccid cock hung heavy between smooth, muscled thighs, his calves rounded and masculine.

His gaze suddenly shifted, and he looked in my direction—as though he felt someone watching him—and I quickly turned away from the window, pretending to be busy with something on the kitchen counter. I don't know why I was worried; it was completely dark in my condo. Not even a dim glow from the TV mounted on the wall behind me provided any light, so if he could see anything at all, it would have been a dark outline of a shadowy figure illuminated by the stray lights of the city. A ghost. But dammit if I didn't feel caught.

My heart raced as I stood there, embarrassed, fingers gripping tightly at the solid lip of the granite countertop, my face hidden by a kitchen cabinet and the darkness of night. I turned my head over my shoulder to glance into the living room that opened to the kitchen. It was all one big room, really. Maestro, my nine-year-old black-and-white border collie, looked on with his head cocked to the side, protruding above one of the back cushions of the couch, studying my every move.

"Go to sleep, buddy."

As though he would listen. A sad whimper escaped him as he laid his head on the throw pillow that rested against the arm of the couch. At night, he usually slept on the bed with me, but I needed a minute to myself.

My dick was hard in my jeans, revved up by the sight of the mystery man and oddly excited by the possibility of being caught. Slowly shifting my head back to the window, I covertly glanced down at his condo again, only to see empty space where he'd just been standing. I stepped back to the window to get a closer look into his unit. The empty space felt like infinity, a missing piece, a deep punch to the gut. His absence, even if he'd never truly been present, left a hole, a void inside that one could try to fill with work or food or booze, but none of those things would ever really help. Sex might do its damnedest, but the satisfaction it would bring would be fleeting as well.

Closing my eyes, I pinched my bottom lip between my teeth and imagined him back at the window, the sharp, defined curvature of his masculine frame teasing me. My hard cock throbbed, pushing at the fabric of my underwear, caged by the confines of my jeans as the imagined figure in the window beckoned. I pulled at my hardness through that denim prison and opened my eyes, expecting to once again see empty space. But he was back.

My heart pounded even faster as I shifted away from the window as quickly as I could, striding toward my bedroom as I hastily unbuckled my belt. I walked around the partition wall that separated the living room from the bedroom and tore off my T-shirt, which, thanks to the bar, smelled vaguely of cigarette smoke and the citrusy cologne I splashed on before I went out. That delightfully sickening combination of scents gleefully reminded me of my youth but also made me want to throw up.

I lingered in front of the floor-length mirror that hung on my bedroom wall for a brief moment, admiring the dark outline of my reflection, pretending it was someone else, someone who might approach me. Maybe even touch me, kiss me, take me. Fuck me. Let me fuck them. It was fun to imagine these things.

Kicking my sneakers and socks off and tossing my jeans, I crashed on my still-made bed and rubbed the warm palm of my hand along the outline of my cock, still guarded by the gray briefs I wore, the white waistband displaying the name of some designer brand in thick, black lettering. No underwear was worth as much as I'd paid for them, but I liked the way they looked on my body and felt against my skin. My cock pulsed against the fabric, begging to be released and pleasured as a small wet spot appeared near the tip.

It had been a while since I'd gotten off, at least a week since I'd experienced the intense yet hollow release of a self-inflicted orgasm. Even longer since someone else had brought me to the edge of sanity. Three months, in fact. Three months since I'd felt the touch of someone else. Someone that I didn't know—didn't really care to know—but someone who had been there to bring me feelings of pleasure. Or were they feelings of guilt? I suppose they were one and the same. What else could it be called when you don't know someone's name but you still use them to bring you to completion? Even if the other person uses you for the same reason, the act lacks satisfaction. Maybe it's innocent enough, but it had started to feel empty, coming with someone else for the sake of coming.

Whatever. I'd overthink that later.

I'd seen the mystery man what seemed like a hundred times within the four walls of his condo, without clothes on many occasions, and every time, he turned me on. I had never met him or seen him on the street. Never passed him in the lobby of our building. I knew him though. I knew his shape and the color of his hair. I knew his stances and gestures and movements. They were virile and sure. They sparked desires in me from afar. He could have been a figment of my imagination for all I knew. It had been so long since I felt an emotional connection with anyone, experienced a physical release with another human, that he could have been a mirage, a dream that only existed within a dark, erotic fold of my brain.

Digging a hand into my briefs, I cupped my balls before pulling out my dick and pushing the obstructive fabric of my stupid underwear down my hairy thighs. Everything seemed to be in the way. My skin was hot, flushed with the sheen of sexual desire. I rolled over and grabbed a bottle of lube from the top drawer of my bedside table, aggressively pushing a strip of foil-wrapped condoms and other unnecessary contents out of the way before squeezing a drop into my palm, grabbing my cock, and going to work.

I stroked myself slowly at first, running the fingers of my free hand through the hair on my chest, imagining it was the mystery man touching me instead. I pictured him standing at his window, his cock heavy as he looked at me from across the pool deck, gesturing, smiling, maybe winking. No, not winking. Too cheesy. I pictured him standing at the foot of my bed, then kneeling on top of me, straddling my chest and lowering himself into me, his erect manhood sliding between my willing lips. I smelled him, tasted him, devoured what I imagined him to be as I pinched my eyelids shut and began pulling at myself harder and faster than I had in months.

It didn't take long for me to come. I quietly heaved, moaning as I made a mess of my abdomen, doing my best to restrict my volume. I didn't want to alarm Maestro or wake the neighbors, though knowing the residents of this building, they were all probably out at the bars, tricking in their own condos, or listening through the walls, a vicarious attempt to get a taste of someone else's pleasure. The thought of that inspired its own filthy fantasies, but I was no longer in the mood for illusions. Drained and tired, I needed no further stimulation.

For a moment, I simply lay in my bed as my breathing slowed and I recovered from an intense episode of self-gratification. One o'clock in the morning had found me, and I needed to get some sleep, so I lifted myself from the bed and stumbled around the corner to the bathroom to clean myself up. There was a towel hanging on a hook behind the door, gently used to dry myself off after a shower earlier. I grabbed it and did my best to wipe away the sticky fluid that not only coated my skin but tangled the hair that grew there. I should have just come into a towel to begin with, but I'd been in no mindset for such planning. Running water over the heavy, textured fabric, I attempted to make the task at hand less labor-intensive. Afterward, I tossed the soiled towel into the laundry hamper in my walk-in closet, then returned to finish getting ready for bed.

I brushed my teeth and caught another glimpse of myself. Staring into the giant, rectangular mirror that hung above the newly installed double vanity, this time in the light, I took in my appearance more thoroughly. Nearly forty years were now behind me. Fortunately, they weren't that obvious on my face. Almost six feet' worth of decently shaped frame stood before me. My height had remained stagnant since the ninth grade when most everyone else in my class was in the midst of puberty. I, on the other hand, had started early and ended early, an embarrassment and a teenage dream, simultaneously awkward and able. Getting into clubs had been easy for a fifteen-year-old that looked like a fresh-faced twentysomething.

Maybe I could stand to lose a pound or two around my waistline, but it didn't bother me enough to drag my ass to the gym regularly. I hated the gym. Gyms somehow felt sterile and filthy at the same time, the foul stench of a hundred sweating bodies and the pungent scent of ammonia from a potent cleaning solution clouding the air. They felt like spirited dungeons. Motivational hells. There were rarely any windows, they felt damp, and the cinder block walls were always painted these intense colors: yellows, purples, oranges. Bright colors didn't bother me, but under the harsh glare of fluorescent lighting and accompanied by the off-putting soundtrack of labored grunts, heavy breathing, and pop music, they were nauseating. And just like everywhere else on the planet, there seemed to be an unspoken yet globally understood hierarchy of clientele in direct opposition to the marketing materials that offered encouraging, congratulatory affirmations. Gyms felt like the way American high schools were portrayed in every movie in the eighties: an ever-present faction of quarterbacks and cheerleaders making you feel ridiculous for even trying.

Don't get me wrong. I still went when I wasn't feeling great about myself. I just didn't make it a habit.

Maybe I was just bitter.

My focus returned to the mirror from my fleeting thoughts, my overactive brain that sometimes simply wouldn't stop. Some definition appeared around my pecs and biceps and on my legs, souvenirs from all the partying I did when I was younger. At least something good came of the dancing and drugs. Gray hairs I'd been anticipating for years had mostly kept their distance to date, only a few strands popping up like Whac-A-Moles on a carnival game.

I examined myself, judging every perceived flaw while ignoring the assets, oblivious to the fact that I still looked alright for my age. Some odd mixture of Sicilian-Irish heritage lent me a muted Mediterranean appearance that couldn't quite be identified. Was I exotic or homegrown? My looks had intrigued a lot of guys when I was younger. Most people were too humble to ask, and I'd used it to my advantage.

The wrinkles around the corners of my eyes grew deeper with each passing year—laugh lines, I was told to call them. Or, as was suggested at one point, get Botox injections and shut the hell up about it. They could be helpful when they wanted to be, my friends. That wasn't one of those times. Maybe I should just stop smiling. To be honest, I hadn't been smiling that much lately anyway.

I scrubbed the palm of my hand over my chin and thought about shaving the goatee or beard or whatever it was that covered my jawline and haphazardly grew in over my upper lip. It was starting to look scraggly. I'd been thinking about shaving it off for years, giving myself a new look, but I never did. I was nervous about how I'd look without facial hair. Every time I held the razor to my face, I backed down, thinking to myself that I'd deal with it later. Maybe the next week. Besides, it hid any other possible creases that might be lurking underneath. Instead, I'd probably just trim it down again, a modified five o'clock shadow. Like always.

Maybe it was good genes or the absence of offspring that kept the wrinkles away and my hair from jumping ship. It certainly wasn't due to a lack of stress. But I was almost forty and could pass for thirty. Maybe thirty-five. Okay, thirty-five. I took solace in that observation, considering I felt like I'd done enough shit in my life to look eighty-five. The events that had given me age and provided me with experience hadn't manifested themselves physically but rather emotionally. And I wasn't sure whether to be grateful or not.

After spitting and rinsing, I flipped the light switch off in the bathroom and grabbed a pair of gym shorts from my closet, pulling them up around my waist before climbing into bed and setting the alarm on my phone. I called out to Maestro, who leapt from the couch and clumsily slid around on the polished hardwood floor as he raced to meet me. He turned the corner and bounded onto the bed, quickly curling up at my feet, dramatically announcing his frustration about my night out with a heavy sigh. Despite his disapproval, we both drifted off within seconds, sorely realizing that morning would arrive much sooner than either of us would want.