Authors Note: As most of you who frequent my stories can guess, these entries are typical length for me. Lots of story development and of course LOTS of good titillating action. I hope you all enjoy them and of course VOTE (Preferably with 5 starts)! Enjoy! M.
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William was a tired, quiet man but not really all that old, only in his mid-fifties. He wasn't always this quiet or quite this tired, but when his wife, his one true love, died suddenly from a heart attack William retreated into his quiet world, simply marking the passing of the days until he would join her where he believed she had gone.
William's friends had tried to draw him out, encouraging him to date, but to no avail. The constant bombardment of dating site commercials on TV promised to find him a new true love and a lasting relationship, but that too seemed hollow. "How could one replace what he had found with his late wife?" He asked both his friends and the TV, never receiving anything close to a good answer.
William and his wife lived in a simple twelve hundred foot two story house in the suburbs. It was like many subdivisions built in the seventies and early eighties, cookie cutter houses lined up in neat rows, side by side, only small front yards, nicely sized back yard and of course very little side yard. The houses were so close that you could almost jump from roof to roof.
Each little house was set with an equally cookie cutter privacy fence for the back yard with tall thin trees planted between the houses to shield them from each other. William's house was the exact mirror image of those on either side. Kitchen, dining room, family room and one bathroom on the ground floor, two large and one small bedroom on the second floor with a single full bathroom. What made the houses in this development a bit unique was the second story deck, taking place of a corner of the main house. The ground floor had a nice concrete patio accessible from the kitchen and also from the dining room through large glass sliding doors. Above that was a ten foot square wooden deck that was accessible by identical sliding glass doors off the master bedroom and surprisingly, the upstairs bathroom.
This unusual arrangement turned out to be one of the things William's wife loved about the house. In the summer mornings she would step from the shower, wrap a towel around herself and step out on the patio to enjoy the sunrise coming over the distant hills. She always claimed it soothed her and got her morning off to a perfect start. When the weather was too cold to allow her to stand on the patio William would frequently find her looking to the east through the sliding glass door, soaking in the sunshine as the rays peeked over the hills. She never set an alarm clock, but uncannily she only missed the sunrise when she had to be up and gone before the sun did.
Now William got up each morning, as he always had with her, but instead of watching the sunrise he watched the hardwood planks of the deck as the orange rays angled down through the railing around it and lit the favorite spot where she loved to stand.
Yes, it was easy to see that William had lost the ability to see the brightness in the world, choosing instead only to see the brightness of the past and the gloom of the future.
*****
When Shelly moved into the house to the east of William, she didn't know what to expect. It was her first house, having moved from a twenty fourth floor apartment in New York. She had visions of what suburban life would be like, meeting neighbors and making new friends. Most importantly she was looking for a quiet safe place to raise her two small children. She liked the quiet surroundings, having a safe place for her boys to play, pretty much everything about her new home. She'd been in the house for a good six months and had met many of the neighbors around the neighborhood, but not the quiet man next door. She'd been told that he was a vibrant and active man until his wife suddenly passed. Each morning she saw him as she stepped out of the shower and looked out the sliding glass door. He stood there staring at the little deck, just standing and staring at the boards.
She wondered what he was thinking each morning, and also why he was so quiet. He didn't seem to be a bad sort, just very quiet, as if he were always contemplating something consuming. She had waved at him many times when he was leaving and even on some mornings from her own deck, but he never seemed to respond. She could see down into his back yard, what looked like flower beds mowed down as low as the surrounding grass, a pool and built in spa meticulously maintained by some service, but seemingly never used. She wished she could afford a luxury like that. Her boys would have loved to have a place to swim all summer instead of running through the sprinkler, but it was what she could afford.
Shelly stepped from the shower as usual, and looked past the dying branches of the dying tree between their houses and saw him standing there in his underwear, the sun shining brightly in through the glass doors, illuminating him as he stood and stared for long quiet minutes at a spot on the deck. At times he seemed almost as if he were in tears.
She opened the door and stepped onto the deck, the bright pink fluffy towel wrapped around her body, her double D cup breasts pushing it out far enough that it would be hard to tell that the rest of her body was slender and trim. For some reason she was drawn outside today, the morning less than chilly but not exactly warm either. Goosebumps sprung up on her arms and chest as the late October morning air caressed her shower warmed skin.
"Hi!" she called, waving her hand at him to attract his attention. He wasn't bad looking, especially in the boxers he had on. He was older, maybe mid fifties, slightly graying around his temples, but otherwise he looked strong and what she would call ruggedly handsome. She walked all the way to the railing, getting as close as she could to him, only thirty or so feet away, and waved again to get his attention.
"Good morning!" she called a bit louder.
