Page 4 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Guy Next Door

Obviously a wrong number. Some poor bastard is out there tonight wondering where his hot texts are, and it came to me instead.

Then I look across to the cabin next door.

My gorgeous new neighbor is on the swing with her bare feet tucked under her, phone held up in both hands, and the screen lights her face from below. All that dark hair piled on top of her head, half of it escaping. The little curve of her stomach where her shirt has ridden up. Bare legs. The soft press of her thigh against the cushion, and I want my hands there so bad my palms ache.

Her thumbs move. She stops. She puts a hand over her mouth.

I look down at the message on my screen and back at her, and suddenly I get it.

The text is from her.

Her grandmother told half the county her granddaughter Megan was coming. Delphine's niece. The artist from the city with a bad year behind her, looking for peace in the mountains of Snowflake Falls.

She's been here since morning and I've barely acknowledged her. She’s way too young for me, mid-twenties, probably. I split wood with my back to her because looking directly at her felt like standing too close to a fire. But now I'm sitting in the dark staring open-mouthed at the filthiest thing any woman has sent me in years, and she wrote it for another man.

My phone buzzes again.

I am so sorry. Wrong number. Please delete that and also me.

Delete it. Sure, I'll get right on that.

A decent man would typeno problemand go to bed. In the morning, or the next time he set eyes on his neighbor, he’d pretend it never happened.

She’s mortified, with her hands over her face, and I don't want to be a decent man. I want to carry on the conversation, lonely old bastard that I am.

Wrong number?

I sit forward with my elbows on my knees, waiting. This Megan’s a fast texter. Every time I think she'll quit and block me, she comes up with something else. Across the way, her feet come down off the swing and she curls forward over the phone. Something I said did that.

I’ve never wanted so badly to walk across to the neighboring cabin, just to see the look in her eyes. What color are her eyes? Tawny brown like her hair? Blue? Green? Instead I sit there with my rock hard cock pressing into my zipper, staring at my phone.

I have to sleep. I have boxes to unpack.

Goodnight, sexy.

I send it before I can talk myself out of it, and then I stare at it, guilty.

Megan goes inside. The light in her living room comes on, then goes off.

I should tell her. Send her a text and wave at her through the window.

Instead I have a long, cold shower that does nothing, and ends up with me leaning against the shower wall, my hand gripping my cock until I come with a groan, picturing my head between those plump thighs.

She texts me the next morning before I've had coffee.

Do you make a habit of talking to strange women at two in the morning?

You're the one who started it.

I was drunk, what’s your excuse?

Megan tells me about her aunt's stand and something about the construction of caftans. She talks about drawing foxes and how she's drawn something that looks like a slipper.

In these texts I'm somebody else. Somebody easy and fun. Not a grump who barely talks when someone says hello.

In the late afternoon, my neighbor’s out on the porch when I come back from the ridge with the truck, in a little red sundress with the light coming through it, and she lifts her hand and says good afternoon. What comes out of me is a strange growling sound. Not a word. It’s like a wolf with a mouthful of nails.

She goes back inside fast.