Bleeding Heart

He tilted his head back to the scene on his screen. Like most porn, the focus was on the woman. Blonde. Pouty lips. Big blue eyes. A little like…

He groaned and cranked his wrist faster.

April.

‘Now we’re talking,’ he murmured to himself and picked up the pace.

Not that he wanted to become that grizzled old landlord who got an erection every time he thought of his hot young tenant, but it was hard not to when she was so damned cute.

The sundress she wore had been bad enough, but getting a look at that tiny robe…

God bless that fucking cat. When she was holding Marco, her robe was open just a little. Nice tits. Fantastic tits.

And that blush, like she had been doing something really naughty before he came up the fire escape.

He slowed his strokes, picturing her puckering those plump lips around the head, eyes on his as she took him deeper, then speeded up as he imagined that messy hair spilling everywhere as she bucked on top of him.

Or I’d fuck her half-dressed, he thought to himself as he jerked his slippery length faster. I’d put her down on the edge of the bed, pull down her panties, open her legs and tease her a little, then turn her over and make her scream.

His balls tightening, Seth gripped harder. He imagined her squeezing her trembling thighs together as she came. He lifted his hips, and euphoria raced through his body as he came. One hot spurt after another landed on his thighs and he kept jerking until there was no more.

Gasping, he sprawled out in the chair and stared at the ceiling. Through the beat of his pulse filling his head, he was vaguely aware of the music above.

‘God damn,’ he murmured breathlessly. ‘Taylor fucking Swift.’

He grabbed a tissue from the box by the computer and dabbed away the milky fluid he’d left on himself, then groaned as he made a couple of attempts to get up. Once he was in the bathroom, he stripped and took a quick shower.

Marco, draped across the windowsill, eyed Seth with contempt when he entered the bedroom to put his pants back on, then followed into the living room. The cat zoomed to the dining table, and Seth followed and surveyed the neat stacks laid out across the surface.

This was the last thing he wanted to do tonight, but the project had become his go-to for the past two weeks, especially when he was hit with a nicotine fit. There were sixteen piles of photos so far, organised by date. Thankfully Rita had been pretty disciplined about marking the month and year on the back of the pictures, which made his job easier.

It had been her project, to tell the truth. Before she’d gotten too sick to get out of bed or off the couch, his wife had started to pull out the plastic bins on the bookcase. Rita didn’t have any regrets in the end, but when she was in hospice care she had a teary moment that she never got to sort and scan all those pictures.

‘It was important to me,’ she’d said when he told her not to worry about a bunch of pictures. ‘I wanted to have them all on one of those digital frames right here so I can watch them come up when I’m by myself.’

Not that she was by herself much. Seth had become the master of the power nap, sleeping in chairs and in the bed with her when she would let him. He even slept in his truck when she told him to go home. He didn’t want to venture too far in case the end came, and that’s where he had been when he got the call.

He pulled one of the bins closer and paused to banish the pepper in his sinuses before reaching in.

Christ almighty, that woman took pictures of everything that caught her eye. The biggest pile he had was nothing but pictures of rocks and trees, ducks in the park, the comings and goings in the alley below the fire escape. There was also a small tower exclusively of pictures of Marco from kittendom to adulthood, and another that was just Seth on the job, always throwing her that look that said, another picture?

He worked through the bin and tried not to linger on any one picture. If he did, like she used to do, he’d be taken right back to the time when it felt like his life meant something.

God, he still missed her terribly.

The idea of taking up with someone else made him a little crazy. It just didn’t seem possible. How could he ever be as comfortable and in love with someone as he had been with Rita? They’d been together for fifteen years. They’d been made for one another.

What are you going to do, Wolfman? Just sit around jerking off until you’re an old man and the rest of your life has just passed by?

Once Rita knew there was no coming back from her illness, they’d talked about the after. He didn’t want to hear it, but with her usual bossy flair she had decided to insert herself into his future without her. She made him promise he wouldn’t shut down, like she knew he would.

‘Fuck a lot of pretty girls, baby, because it would be a terrible waste if you didn’t. They’ll be lining up.’

Well, he’d fucked a lot of pretty girls, hadn’t he? That’s what that hook-up website was for. He’d found it surprisingly easy to find a playmate for a night or two and he was just fine with that, but he knew that Rita hadn’t meant just getting his dick wet. He knew that, even though it made her angry to say it, she really wanted him to find someone special who would love him like she did.

Impossible. That woman had taken his heart into the grave with her.

He finished one bin and then began another, one that was a little more organised, with rubber bands tied around small stacks, and with notes stuck on the front in Rita’s messy handwriting.

Christmas 2005.

After AC/DC concert 2010.

Seth’s new truck 2008.

He looked at the storage closet, where there were still about seven boxes left. He could probably get through them all this evening, but then the job would be halfway done. Then he’d have to start on scanning them, and once that was wrapped up he’d be done.

Then what? What would he do with himself when there were no more pictures? He’d either have to find a new project to put off getting his ass moving on the rest of his life, or, well, get on with the rest of his life.

So he left them, and instead grabbed his iPad and headed for the sofa.

Katy Perry started up again as he opened the bug-squashing app.

‘At least I’m not the only loser sitting here on Friday night,’ Seth said to the cat as he hopped onto his lap.

‘I say you go downstairs and invite him up here,’ Vanessa said as she moved away from the window. ‘Have him bust in Magic Mike style, dressed like a plumber.’

Now April was just sorry she’d told her friends about Seth and that chest that just went on for ages. They’d planned to meet at a pub around the corner, but once she’d let it slip that she had a Greek god with a toolbox living in the apartment beneath her, and that he would sit on the fire escape with his cat, they all wanted a look.

Abigail cackled from the sofa and curled a strand of red hair around her finger. ‘We could break something, if that helps. Oh, no, the kitchen faucet just exploded! There’s water everywhere! Please, Mr Landlord, can you take your shirt off and help us?’

She stuck out her bottom lip and fluttered her lashes, and April giggled.

‘You guys, if I was going to do that I sure as hell wouldn’t want you two here for it,’ she countered, and took a sip of her…whatever the hell this yellow rum drink was that Vanessa had rolled in with…then eyed the speaker dock as Abigail’s iPhone shuffled to yet another candy-coated greatest hit from Katy Perry. ‘Can we change the music, please? I’m going to vomit rainbows and cotton candy in a minute.’

‘No, turn it up!’ Vanessa leaped from the chair and beat April to the remote. ‘Loud enough that he has to come up and tell us to turn it down.’

‘I don’t think so. I am not going to be the neighbour everyone hates.’ April set aside her drink, jumped at Vanessa and wrested the remote from her, until the other woman squealed about messing her makeup.

She left the terrible music, but turned it down and looked at her half-empty bottle. ‘We should just go already. It’s almost ten o’clock.’

Her friends booed, and she sighed.

This wasn’t how she’d wanted to spend her first Friday night at Winsloe Court. She’d wanted her beer and her comfy pyjamas, a Sons of Anarchy marathon and another round with her vibrator. Her friends had insisted. She had moved to somewhere within walking distance of some great bars – not the booze-soaked clubs they usually frequented, but nice places. Live music and trivia. Excellent food to snack on between pints.

Winsloe Court was located just off the student ghetto, but in the nicer part of the neighbourhood where families lived in townhouses and cheerful Victorians, families who could overlook a bit of noise every so often but didn’t take kindly to rowdy frat parties. April was never one for getting drunk and making mayhem, and she’d picked this neighbourhood specifically because it had that certain sophisticated vibe.

After all, she was no longer April Kaye who still had to mow the lawn to earn her keep. She was April Kaye, civil servant and independent woman, for whom a crappy apartment in a crappy neighbourhood would not do.