Episode 1: The man next door 🏡
Every Saturday at nine, he mowed the lawn.
Not eight-fifty-seven. Not nine-oh-three.
Nine.
She never meant to notice.
The first week, she’d only stepped onto her porch with a mug of coffee. By the third Saturday, she found herself checking the clock before opening the curtains.
There he was again. Backward cap. Sunlight catching the line of his shoulders.
The steady rhythm of work pulling his attention away from everything else.
The mower droned across the grass while his forearms flexed around the handle with practiced ease. Sweat traced the curve of his neck before disappearing beneath the collar of a worn gray T-shirt.
Then came the moment she’d secretly started waiting for. He stopped. Lifted the hem of his shirt. Wiped his brow.
Just enough to reveal the hard planes of a stomach earned through work instead of mirrors.
She looked away. At least, she told herself she did.
“You should really stop staring.” The voice came from behind her.
Her best friend leaned against the sliding door, arms crossed and an amused smile tugging at her lips.
“I wasn’t.” She lied
“You’ve been ‘not staring’ for three Saturdays.”
Heat climbed into her cheeks.
“I just… appreciate a man who knows how to use his hands.”
Her friend laughed.
“Oh, honey. You don’t have a crush, No…You have a whole imagination.”
She did.
She imagined what his laugh sounded like when no one else was around. Whether he sang along to old country songs with the radio turned too loud.
If those strong hands were always so gentle when he picked up the golden retriever that greeted him every afternoon.
She imagined conversations they hadn’t had.
Coffee they hadn’t shared.
The easy silence that sometimes grew between two people who simply enjoyed existing in the same space.
The mower fell quiet. He looked toward her porch. For one impossible second, she thought she’d been caught.
Instead, he lifted a hand in a small wave. Simple, casual and enough to make her forget entirely about the coffee cooling between her palms.
She smiled back before she could stop herself.
The fence between their yards suddenly didn’t seem nearly as tall.
