The Neighbor Next Door

The best cheating sex stories start innocently enough. A borrowed cup of sugar. A wave from the driveway. A conversation over the fence that goes on a little too long. Mine started with a power outage and a glass of wine.

My name is Rachel Torres. I'm thirty-four, a high school English teacher, married to a man who travels for work three weeks out of every month. This is the story of how I fell into an affair with my neighbor, and how it forced me to face the loneliness I'd been pretending didn't exist.

Jake Morrison moved in next door two years ago. Recently divorced, early forties, worked from home as some kind of consultant. He was handsome in that unassuming way, kind eyes, easy smile, the kind of man you'd trust to help you move furniture or watch your house while you were away.

Which he did. Often. Because my husband Marcus was never around.

I told myself the marriage was fine. Marcus was building his career, providing for our future. The distance was temporary. The loneliness was the price of ambition. I told myself all the things women tell themselves when they're slowly disappearing inside their own houses.

Jake and I became friends first. Real friends. He'd come over when Marcus was traveling and we'd drink wine and watch movies and talk about books. He read actual literature, had opinions about Hemingway and Woolf that made me remember why I'd become an English teacher in the first place. Marcus thought fiction was a waste of time.

The night of the power outage, Jake knocked on my door with a flashlight and a worried expression.

"You okay over here? Whole block's out."

"I'm fine. Just startled. I was grading papers."

"I have candles and a bottle of Merlot. Seems like a better way to wait it out than sitting in the dark alone."

I should have said no. Marcus would have wanted me to say no. But Marcus was in Denver, and I was alone in a dark house, and Jake was offering light and company.

"Let me get my papers."

Jake's house smelled like coffee and cedar. Candles scattered around the living room made everything soft and golden. We sat on his couch with wine, waiting for the power to return, talking about everything and nothing.

The conversation drifted to relationships. His divorce, she'd left him for her personal trainer, the cliché of it still stung. My marriage, the words came out before I could stop them, truths I'd never spoken aloud.

"I feel like I'm married to a stranger who visits sometimes. Like I'm just the person who maintains the house between his real life somewhere else."

"Have you told him that?"

"I've tried. He says it's temporary. It's always temporary. Five years of temporary."