Page 73 of The Man Upstairs

Rosie didn’t belong with me, or to me. I wasn’t going to be the man of her life and the man who deserved her future. He was still out there somewhere, craving his soulmate. I only hoped he was worthy from day one when he found her.

I took a seat on the sofa and took hold of her wrists, rubbing the rope marks to ease them.

“What happens now?” she asked me, slightly hesitant, as though I was in any way likely to backtrack on her exit from work and change my mind.

The poor girl had no idea just how firmly she’d snared me.

I kept it simple. “You stay here until you decide to leave.”

She laughed. “Thanks.”

Another cute message of appreciation where none was warranted. She was a beautiful innocent temptress in my shitty apartment, the appreciation was all was mine.

I ran my finger over theslutscrawled on her face, still soaking in the sight of her. Her lips were swollen puffy from kisses, and she was battered, tainted, used. Perfect.

It was her who made the move towards me, shifting herself onto my lap to brush her lips against mine.

“Steady,” I told her. “You’ll be reawakening the filth.”

“That’s what I want,” she whispered back, and we plunged straight back in.

The night was a blur of whisky, cigarettes, croissants, cereal, and sex. We were nothing but flesh exploring flesh, soaking up every single sensation. I traced marker pen scrawls all over her body with my tongue, and she sucked at my cock with the ferocity of a desperate slut. We fucked. We played. We teased and tempted, driving each other into the realms of insanity.

We were still a tangle of limbs on top of the bed sheets together when the morning came, and there we resumed, kissing as I pinned her down and used her pussy all over again. She was nothing more than whimpers and willing, and I was besotted by them. The angel from downstairs was a dirty drug, and I was a filthy addict, but she was just as hungry as I was. She couldn’t stand even the slightest distance between my body and hers. I soaped her down in the shower without giving a shit about the taste of suds as I sucked on her nipples. I knelt and ate her pussy under a cascade, almost choking at the streaming water, and she held my head to her, begging. She returned the favour straight back.

The hours blurred, contact with the outside world forgotten. We made boring sandwiches and laughed together, eyes twinkling with humour between long rounds of bodily pleasures, and then the night came again, long and dirty. I knew every single taste of her. I knew every dainty inch of her body. I adored every tiny part of her.

She called in sick at college and didn’t bother to get dressed for five solid days. Neither of us did. We didn’t step out through the front door. Not even to the shops for food supplies, or to the trash bins.

Her pussy was a delicate flower with a very good aptitude for taking cock, and her ass was always willing. Her mouth was a treasure. But so was her laugh. So was her smile. So was the way her eyes would light up over jokes and conversations. In those first few days we were superficial around our closeness, focusing on the physical pleasures without the risk of diving into the depths of mind, but that changed. We talked about everything from the wider world, to our views on the afterlife, to favourite characters in TV shows, books, movies. We talked about annoyances, and politics, and laughed about our quirky little habits. I smirked every time she pushed her glasses up her nose and she’d point out every time I tapped my chin when I was speaking.

It was only a matter of time before our chat turned towards the past. Not so much as to my family, or irresponsible choices this time, but to my career ones. It took me aback when Rosie asked if she could see one of my old thriller manuscripts after breakfast one morning. I had to dig my old laptop from the case it had been holed up in for months, and search back through old directories. My novels and attempts at them hadn’t seen the light in years.

I was in nothing but an open shirt with my laptop on my lap. I spun the screen to face her with my oldest manuscript on display, less than proudly.

“Feel free to take a look,” I said, but she shook her head, her eyes sparkling in her beautiful fascination.

“No. I love audio. I want to hear your voice, please. Can you read it to me?”

I wasn’t sure about that, but she carried on asking, spinning my screen back to me.

“Please, Julian, you have the best voice in the world.”

That was enough of a compliment. I cleared my throat and began to read my story. One I’d written around college, when I was about her age. A thriller, about a man who wakes up to find his wife gone, with nothing more than a note on their sideboard sayingsorry.

My little goddess was transfixed right the way through the first few chapters. I paused after chapter four, but she shook her head with a smile.

“Keep going! I love it!”

Her enthusiasm was addictive.

“I’m serious!” she said. “I love it. It’s amazing.”

As it turned out, I loved it too. I loved reading my words out loud to her. My taste and style had changed a lot during my years in the lecture halls, but the story pulled me back into the memories. I remembered my creativity eating me up as I sat for hours every evening with my ashtray at my side, smoking and typing, lost in my imaginary world.

Sometimes surprises can hit so hard, they knock you sideways, and this was one of mine. I’d given up the writerly part of my soul a long, long time ago, but it was still there, like a shadow in the corner of my unconscious, waiting for me.

Rosie encouraged every second of it. Her enthusiasm was infectious. I kept reading through lunch and into the afternoon, even taking the laptop into the kitchen with us while Rosie made us a snack. The twists and turns of the plot was consuming her, her eyes fixed on me with every word.