I made my way down the hall and across the living room. It didn’t take long to cross a one-thousand-square-foot home, and I found myself wishing I’d walked a little slower.
I stood on my tiptoes and peered through the small window on the door, nerves shooting through my limbs and making my fingers shake. There was no one there. I paused, refusing to blink, waiting for someone to step into my view. But nothing happened.
“Don’t open it,” I told myself. “It’s probably someone waiting off to the side, ready to kidnap you and chain you to a basement wall.” I stared at the doorknob. “Oh Lordy, I’m an idiot,” I muttered, unlocking the door and cracking it open an inch.
“Hello?” No one answered. No shuffling, no crickets. Nothing.
I pulled the door open a little wider, dredging up the small amount of bravery I was surprised I actually possessed. But I was promptly put right back in my place of cowardice when I spotted movement in my peripheral.
I flinched violently, smacking the side of my head into the door frame, and shrieking in an undignified manner. Heaving, I clutched at my chest, positive I was about to have an aneurysm.
It was a ripped piece of notebook paper. The little square of gray tape at the top indicating it’d probably been attached to my door before I so elegantly arrived.
Bending slowly, just in case anything jumped at me, I snatched it off my porch, holding it up to the light to read the chicken scratch.
Some of us are adults with jobs and need sleep. Be more considerate and turn down your music.
My face heated, and I glanced around anxiously. I didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t still out there. It’d only been a minute or two since I’d heard the knock. The someone obviously being the neighbor I shared a wall with.
Having only moved into the duplex a week ago, I still hadn’t met the person sharing the duplex with me, aka my wall neighbor. I’d caught a quick glimpse of a man sitting in the forest green Chevy Nova parked out front once, but that’d been it. I didn’t even know if anyone other than him lived there, or if he was actually the person living opposite me.
A sudden crunch to the left of the porch caught my attention, and I snapped my head to the side, squinting into the dark.
“Hello?” I called, clenching the note tighter in my hand and waiting, but I didn’t see or hear anything else.
Keeping my spine straight, I backed up, letting my rear push my propped door open so I could slip back inside without turning my back to the shadows.
I was embarrassed. I knew the set up for the other side of the duplex was likely the same, meaning my room would share a wall with the other master room, but I never really thought much about it. I certainly didn’t think my music was that loud. I had Jamie sleeping down the hall for God’s sake, I wasn’t blaring it.
I tried to brush it off. Neighbor man, or whoever lived there, was the one keeping himself awake by writing a damn letter and stalking over to my door in the middle of the night. Joke was on him.
Lost in thought, I fanned the paper back and forth, the motion chilling the large damp spot on my chest and making me shudder. I wiped at it subconsciously only to freeze when I grazed my nipple.
I looked down in horror, my eyes locking onto the hardened peak beneath my fingers. It was glaringly obvious through the wet fabric of my white sleep tank. Standing under my porch light, I might as well have had a neon arrow pointing right to it. Come one, come all, to the nipple show.
I groaned, my embarrassment hiking up to humiliation status. It was fine, no one had been out there. The sound I heard was either a cat or my irrational anxiety playing tricks on me. Probably the latter.
All I knew for sure was I was too tired for this shit. Frustrated, I slapped the paper onto the bar, the sound echoing out louder than I’d anticipated and setting off Rugsy’s insufferable yapping again.