The Baumgartners Plus One

Selena Kitt

Prologue

I met the Baumgartners because, as my mother was too fond of saying, “Danielle is nosier than a cat in a tuna fish factory.” Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t. But what was I supposed to do when someone started sunbathing nude right outside my back door-just close the blinds?

Besides, a fully-clothed Carrie Baumgartner would have been pretty hard to ignore, let alone a topless, unbelievably bronze one, completely covered in coconut-scented oil. The stuff was so strong I could smell it from the window.

I’d seen her around before-we waved to each other on the way to the mailbox, had even said, “Hi,” and had brief conversations about having to lug laundry across the street and guests parking in our reserved spots-the usual neighbor stuff.

Maybe if I’d been a prude, or if I’d had kids like everyone else in University of Michigan married housing, or if Carrie had been just a little less attractive in her black bikini bottoms, I might have called campus security or just turned a blind eye like a good girl. But I didn’t.

Instead, I was a very bad girl.

It had been a long time since I’d even thought about anyone sexually, but I had to admit, she perked my formerly dormant libido. She was so sexy, even fully clothed just passing me on the way to the mailbox, that her presence alone practically bordered on pornography. She probably would have made a ninety-year-old man remember what other function his cock was made to perform, aside from peeing the bed. She certainly made me wish for a moment that I had one myself, just so I could imagine it inside of her.

I knelt up on my bed- our bed still, not that Mason came home to it much anymore-and peeked around the white sheet I’d tacked to the wall as a curtain when we moved in. According to our lease, we were supposed to cover our windows and I’d just never gotten around to putting up the blinds. Besides, I didn’t know how to hang them, and I couldn’t rely on Mason for much of anything.

Our backyards were tiny little postage stamps and only semi-private. There was a black, wooden head-high sort of half-fence at the end of all of the apartment yards, but instead of a divider between each, there was only a divider between every two, as if these one-story apartments had been connected or meant to connect at some point.

The Baumgartners’ yard and ours meshed together and while the blue and yellow U of M blanket was spread out over on their side, I could still see everything from my vantage point. And I mean everything.

I watched her drizzle oil over the copper colored flesh of her belly, her hands kneading it into the sloping curve of her ribs and onto the generous swell of her breasts, brazenly bared to the sun. I stayed quiet, swallowing my breath, as her palms made slow, lazy circles over her nipples and then dipped gently into the hollow of her throat, her slender, buttery fingers stroking her neck down to her collarbone.