I did not taunt him anymore after that, nor did I try to make friends, although there were not many serendipitous opportunities to do that anyway. It almost felt like he was going out of his way to avoid me. In the few times that we happened to bump into each other, I would offer my greetings, and I would receive his cold silence, but I did not mind. He was dealing with it in his own way. I actually felt sorry for the way I acted with him before, the way I taunted him. It was immature. One thing I noticed, however, was that my neighbours weren’t fighting as much anymore, and I did not hear their daughter bawling as often as I did before. And lately, they had become model neighbours, never a squeak from their apartment again. Another thing that I did not expect was my feelings for my neighbour to grow.
I was not in love with him. I could leave town and never think of him again once he left my mind, but lately, I would find myself hoping to bump into him or find him waiting in the elevator, day dreaming of a reconnection, of the conversations we would have. But even in my day dreams I was realistic. I would imagine us having meaningful conversations and nothing beyond that, because at that point, I was sure that this was it for him, his curiosity had been satisfied, and he probably hated the memory of it. Hated me. And he was married anyway. He had a wife who probably loved him, and a daughter too, and it seemed like their family was growing healthier by the week. I did not want to disrupt that. I did not want to be a homewrecker. And I was not in any lack of physical attention from others anyway. But I did wonder, if an opportunity presented itself again, would I say no? And I did wonder, what it would be like to suck him, to fuck him, to have him fuck me.
I was on my way home from work about three months after that day. He was in the elevator. I did not wave for him to hold it for me, but he did.
We stood awkwardly inside as the elevator rocked us up all the way to our floor. I wanted to say something, but I held my tongue. He did not even look my way once.
When we were at our doors, our backs turned to each other, our keys jingling, and just as I opened my door, I heard him say, “Hey.”
I turned.
“If you want,” he said, and hesitated, but continued a second later, “if you want, why don’t you come over later. I have a few beers, we can hang out, watch the match. Are you into football?”
“Yeah, sure. Yeah, I’d like that,” I said, the rhythm of my heart interrupted. “It’d be great to properly meet your wife and daughter too finally,” I added, trying to mask my unreasonable excitement.
“Oh, she left,” he said as he got his door open. “Took our daughter too.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. That was why their apartment has been so quiet lately. I ventured to say, “Do you mind if I ask what happened?”
He paused, as if trying to come up with the best possible way to say whatever he was going to say. Then he took a deep breath, turned to me, and said, “I came out to her.” He smiled sadly. “Yeah, I’d been lying to myself, and worse, lying to my wife. But there’s no animosity, at least not more than the usual. We share custody of our daughter. I think it’s what’s best for everybody.”
“Yeah,” I said dumbly, not knowing what else to say, but my mind going a mile a minute.
“Alright then,” he said with a smile, “I’ll see you later?”
“Yeah. See you,” I said.
He entered his apartment and the door closed softly behind him. I entered mine and began getting myself ready to “watch the match.”