I don’t mean to keep spying on him, as he strips out of his clothes. But the thing is, I just don’t expect it. No one could expect it. I’ve seen him in hallways and around The Courtyard looking so strange and still and boxed in, in his always buttoned overcoats and his too thick glasses and that face of his, as expressionless as a glacier.

      He just doesn’t look the type to have the body he does. He looks like the type to be doughy underneath, as flaccid and pale as undercooked fish, but once he’s gotten down to his queerly exciting underwear – long in the leg and somehow skintight – I’m transfixed.

      I actually stop pretending I’m drawing the curtains and let myself linger on the taut planes of his body, so perfectly visible beneath that clingy material. And those thighs, God, those thighs. Where did he get those thighs from? And how do they look so good and thick and solid beneath what is, essentially, a pair of longjohns?

      He should look ridiculous. He is ridiculous. Mrs Hoffman from 3F calls him the Serial Killer, because no one knows where he works or what he does, and Kayla from 4D swears blind she saw him opening and shutting his door three times, like something she saw once on CSI.

      But I don’t know. I don’t know about him, and I want to know even less about their furtive gossip sessions around the pool that sits in the middle of our courtyard.

      It’s sitting there right now, giving a dull blue glow to this thing I’m definitely not doing. Like a neon lamp flashing stop stop stop, before it gets as far as, say, him taking off that long-sleeved woollen top.

      Which he does, while I clutch the curtain into one sweaty fist and pretend this isn’t affecting me at all. Because it definitely isn’t. It’s having no more effect on me than seeing him peel an orange did the other day.

      I just looked out of my window, down onto his window across the courtyard, and there he was. Sat at a table, eating a piece of fruit. No big deal.

      Only it is a big deal, because now he’s peeling something else altogether. He’s peeling himself, and after a moment I can see the solid mass of his pectoral muscles. I can see the nearly honeyed hue of his skin, pale from the pathetic weather up here in Darkly Falls, but buttery because of something uniquely him.

      Though his skin tone isn’t the thing that draws my eye. It isn’t even the sight of the rough scratch of hair all over his chest and belly, or the thought of how many crunches he had to do before his abs hardened into that exact shape.

      It’s the way he puts his thumb and forefinger to his lips, licks, and then slicks that wetness over one tight nipple.

      Lord, I don’t even know what to say about that. The urge to slam the curtain shut wells up in me, bright and strong, but the questions filling my head win out. Questions like:

       Do men actually do things like that?

      I can’t quite believe that they do, given the information I’ve previously been given by Sid, my last unfortunate foray into relationships – I got no feeling there, just suck my fucking cock, etc. – and yet there it is, right in front of me. A man, rubbing and pinching and playing with one of his own nipples. And then even more incriminating, his mouth opens slightly – as though touching himself that way feels like the best thing in the world.

      I can almost hear him moaning, through the glass. Though, of course, that’s what makes me realise what he’s going to do.

      I realise it before I let my gaze travel downwards, to the thick, heavy bulge between his legs. I realise it before he tugs at the waistband of those ridiculous longjohns, and everything in me screams, look away, look away now.

      I think I even go as far as to take a step backwards, but it’s far too little and far too late. Besides, if I move too much he’ll undoubtedly see me, even with my apartment all dark like this and his all light. He’ll make out my silhouette, or the slide of the curtains, and then I’ll always be the woman across the courtyard who watched him ease his underwear down over his heavy-boned hips, to reveal his glorious cock.

      Because, by God, it is glorious. I’ve seen enough terrible porn while huddled beneath the safety of my sheets to know what a glorious one should look like, even if I’ve never viewed one in reality. In reality, I’ve seen short stunted ones and big hairy ones and ones that look as though they belong on someone as muted and strange as he is. But I’ve never seen a cock like the one he actually has.

      He isn’t cut for a start. A man as tidy seeming as him should be cut, but apparently his sexual self doesn’t give a shit about things like that. His sexual self is as generous as he seems mean, as lush as he is contained.

      It’s quite a revelation. But not as much of a revelation as the size of him. I want to glance at my wrist just to make a comparison, even though that’s ridiculous. No one has a cock as thick as a wrist, and even if they did they wouldn’t be living in some godforsaken apartment block called The Courtyard, waiting for neighbours to spy on them.

      He should be out there fucking someone, I think. Fucking some tight-bodied, thin-lipped girl with his thick, deliciously curved cock.

      Is it such a crime that I’m picturing it right now? The girl with her legs spread wide, that big, solid thing easing in and out of her wet, willing hole. Him losing some of that strange, serial-killer control until he makes that noise for her – the one I can’t quite hear.

      Lord. Why am I like this?

      I don’t