The Neighbor's Son

I'd known Marcus since he was fourteen years old.

He used to mow our lawn during summers, a gangly teenager who talked too fast and tripped over his own feet. His mother Diane had been my neighbor for fifteen years, one of those comfortable friendships built on borrowed sugar and watching each other's houses during vacation.

Then Marcus went to college. Then I got divorced. And when he came back four years later, everything was different.

I was Priya Sharma, forty-three, single for the first time in two decades, trying to figure out who I was outside of being someone's wife. And he was... not gangly anymore. Not fourteen. Not anything like the boy I remembered.

He was twenty-two, six-foot-three, with shoulders that filled out t-shirts in ways I definitely shouldn't have noticed. He'd grown into himself, traded the awkwardness for an easy confidence that came from whatever he'd figured out during those four years away. And he looked at me like I was something worth looking at.

I told myself I was imagining it.

The first time it happened, I was in my garden. Sweat sticking my kurta to my back, dirt under my nails, definitely not thinking about looking attractive. I was just trying to save my roses from the brutal July heat.

"Need some help, Mrs. Sharma?"

I looked up. Marcus was leaning over the fence, all easy charm and white teeth against dark skin. He'd been home for a week, and I'd been carefully avoiding him because something about the way he said my name made me feel like I was still capable of blushing.

"You don't have to call me that anymore, Marcus. It's just Priya now."

His smile shifted. Just slightly. Something more present in his eyes.

"Priya, then. Do you need help?"

"I've got it. But thank you."

"My mom said you're doing everything yourself now. Since the divorce."

I didn't answer. Turned back to my roses because it was easier than looking at him.

"If you ever need anything. Lawn work. Heavy lifting. Whatever. I'm right next door."

"I appreciate that, Marcus."

A pause. Then, quieter: "You look good, Mrs. Sharma. The garden suits you."

I definitely blushed that time. Forty-three years old, and a twenty-two-year-old's compliment had me flustered like a schoolgirl.

This was going to be a problem.

Summer stretched on. I saw Marcus almost every day—working out in his driveway with weights he'd set up, washing his car with his shirt off (every woman on the block had suddenly become very interested in gardening), helping his mother with groceries.

And finding excuses to talk to me.

He'd appear when I was checking my mail. When I was taking out trash. When I was sitting on my porch with my evening chai, trying to convince myself that forty-three wasn't old, that being single wasn't a failure, that I still had a life to live even if the life I'd planned had fallen apart.

"What are you reading?"

he asked one evening, settling into the chair beside me like he belonged there.

"Nothing interesting. Just a novel."

"Can I see?"

I handed it over. Watched his eyebrows rise as he read the back cover.

"This is a romance novel."

"Your powers of observation are remarkable."

He laughed. Handed it back. "Didn't peg you for the type."

"What type did you peg me for?"

Dangerous question. I knew it the moment the words left my mouth. His eyes met mine, and something electric passed between us.

"Someone who deserves better than reading about it."

I didn't respond. Couldn't. He held my gaze for another long moment, then stood.

"Goodnight, Priya."

First time he'd used my name. It sounded different in his voice. Deliberate. Intimate.

I couldn't sleep that night.

The August heat was relentless. My air conditioning died on a Thursday, and the earliest the repair company could come was Monday. By Friday evening, my house was an oven and I was sitting on my back patio in a thin sundress, wondering if I should sleep in my car.

Marcus appeared at the fence like he had a sixth sense for when I needed something.

"Hey. Mom said your AC is out?"

"It is. I'm surviving."

"It's ninety-five degrees, Priya. That's not surviving, that's suffering. Come stay at ours. Mom's visiting her sister in Cleveland. There's plenty of room."

The smart answer was no. The sensible answer was that I'd figure something out, that I didn't need to be alone in a house with a young man who looked at me like I was still worth looking at.

I said yes.

I told myself it was just practical. Heat exhaustion was real. I was just being smart about my health. It meant nothing that I changed into a fresh sundress before going over, one that maybe showed a little more skin than strictly necessary. It meant nothing that I'd shaved my legs in the shower earlier, for the first time in weeks.

Nothing at all.

His childhood home felt different with just the two of us in it. Quiet. Full of possibility I shouldn't have been entertaining.

He made us dinner—grilled fish and vegetables, surprisingly competent for a recent college graduate. We ate on the back deck as the sun set, talking about everything and nothing. His plans for the future (a job offer in New York he wasn't sure he wanted to take). My past (a marriage that had slowly gone cold until it shattered entirely). The way life sometimes veers in unexpected directions.

"Can I ask you something personal?"

he said as I helped him clear the dishes.

"Depends on what it is."

"What happened? With your marriage. If you don't mind."

I was quiet for a moment, stacking plates in the sink. "We just... grew apart. Or maybe we were never that close to begin with. I married who my parents expected me to marry. Ravi was a good man. He just wasn't..."

"Wasn't what?"

"Wasn't someone who made me feel seen. For twenty years, I tried to be who he wanted. Who my family wanted. The perfect Indian wife. And then one day I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize myself."

Marcus was standing close. Closer than I'd realized. When I turned from the sink, he was right there, his dark eyes searching my face.

"I see you, Priya."

"Marcus..."

"I know I'm not supposed to say this. You're my mother's friend. You're older. There's a hundred reasons why this is wrong."

"At least a hundred."

"But I've been attracted to you since I was seventeen and you came to my high school graduation in that blue sari. I convinced myself it was a crush. That it would go away. It didn't. And now you're standing in my kitchen, looking at me like maybe you feel something too, and I need to know if I'm imagining this."

I should have said he was imagining it. Should have laughed it off, made a joke about old ladies being flattered, retreated to the guest room and locked the door.

Instead, I said: "You're not imagining it."

Something shifted in his expression. Relief and desire and something almost reverent. He stepped closer, giving me every opportunity to stop him. I didn't.

"Can I kiss you?"

"Yes."

The first kiss was tentative. Testing. His lips brushed mine so gently it was almost chaste. But it lit something inside me that had been cold for years. I grabbed his shirt and pulled him closer.

The second kiss was not chaste at all.

His hands found my waist, then slid up my back, pulling me against his broad chest. He was so tall I had to stand on my toes, and he solved the problem by lifting me onto the counter like I weighed nothing. Suddenly we were the same height, and his mouth was everywhere—my lips, my jaw, my neck.

"Marcus... we shouldn't..."

"I know."

He kissed my collarbone.

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No."

The word came out breathless.

"Don't stop."

He pulled back to look at me. His eyes were dark with want, but there was something else there too—a tenderness that made my heart ache.

"I want you to be sure. Because if we do this, I'm not interested in pretending it didn't happen."

"What are you interested in?"

"You. All of you. For as long as you'll let me."

Twenty years of marriage, and my husband had never said anything like that to me. This twenty-two-year-old, with his earnest eyes and his capable hands, was offering me something I'd almost forgotten I wanted.

"Take me to bed, Marcus."

He lifted me off the counter like I weighed nothing. Carried me down the hallway to his childhood bedroom, now decorated with college pennants and framed sports photographs. He set me on my feet at the edge of his bed, his hands finding the straps of my sundress.

"I've imagined this,"

he admitted, sliding the straps down.

"More times than I should have."

"Tell me."

"When I was seventeen, I used to watch you through the window. When you did yoga on your patio in the mornings."

The dress pooled at my feet.

"I felt guilty about it. But I couldn't look away."

I stood before him in just my bra and underwear—modest cotton, nothing sexy about it. But he looked at me like I was dressed in silk and lace.

"You're more beautiful now than you were then."

"Flatterer."

"Truth teller."

He stripped off his own shirt, and I forgot how to breathe.

His body was magnificent. All lean muscle and smooth dark skin, the body of a young man in his prime. I reached out to touch his chest, tracing the lines of his pectorals, and he shuddered under my hands.

"Priya..."

"You're gorgeous. You know that, right?"

"The feeling is very mutual."

We undressed each other slowly, reverently. He kissed every inch of skin as it was revealed—my shoulders, the swell of my breasts, my softening belly that I'd been self-conscious about until he pressed his lips to it like it was precious.

"Don't hide from me,"

he said when I tried to cover myself.

"I want to see you. All of you."

I let my hands fall. Let him look his fill. Let him see the body of a forty-three-year-old woman who'd borne no children but had lived a full life—stretch marks from weight fluctuations, the beginning of crow's feet, breasts that weren't as perky as they'd been at twenty.

He looked at all of it and kissed me like I was perfect.

"I want to taste you,"

he murmured against my mouth.

"Will you let me?"

"Yes. God, yes."

He guided me onto the bed, settled between my thighs, and made good on his word. His mouth was skilled—where had he learned this? I didn't want to think about it—and patient. He explored me like he had all the time in the world, learning my responses, adjusting his technique to what made me gasp.

"Right there—oh God—Marcus—"

He stayed exactly where I needed him. His tongue circling my clit as his fingers slid inside me, finding that spot that made my vision blur. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been touched like this. Maybe never. My husband had treated intimacy like a chore; Marcus treated it like an act of worship.

"I'm going to—I'm—"

The orgasm crashed over me. I cried out, gripping his hair, my thighs clamping around his head as waves of pleasure rolled through me. He gentled me through it, his tongue soft now, easing me down.

When I could see again, he was kissing his way up my body with a satisfied smile.

"You're beautiful when you come."

"You're very good at that."

"I'm just motivated."

He kissed me, and I tasted myself on his lips.

"Can I...?"

"I need you inside me. Now."

He reached for his nightstand, produced a condom. I watched him roll it on, my body already aching for him. He was big—bigger than my husband had been—and I felt a moment of nervous anticipation.

He positioned himself between my thighs, the head of him nudging my entrance.

"Tell me if you need me to slow down."

"I will."

He pushed in slowly. The stretch was exquisite—just enough pressure to make me gasp, not enough to hurt. I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, and we both groaned when he bottomed out.

"Fuck,"

he breathed.

"You feel incredible."

"Move. Please move."

He did.

There's something intoxicating about being desired by someone younger. About feeling his energy, his stamina, his raw enthusiasm as he moved inside me. He wasn't tentative or careful—he fucked me with the confidence of a man who knew what he was doing and wasn't shy about it.

And God, he knew what he was doing.

He shifted angles until he found the spot that made me moan, then stayed there, driving into me with long, deep strokes that built pleasure in waves. His hands were everywhere—my breasts, my hips, tangled in my hair.

"You're so tight,"

he groaned.

"So wet. I could stay inside you forever."

"Don't stop—don't ever stop—"

I was climbing again. That second orgasm building from somewhere deep, pushed higher with every thrust. He felt me tightening around him and responded by going harder, faster, his breath coming in gasps.

"Come for me, Priya. I want to feel you come on my cock."

The words sent me over. I shattered around him, my whole body convulsing, and he followed moments later with a groan that sounded like my name.

We lay tangled together in the aftermath, sweaty and satisfied, his heart pounding against my back where he'd collapsed behind me. His arm was wrapped around my waist, his lips pressing lazy kisses to my shoulder.

"That was..."

"Yeah."

"I need to know this isn't just tonight."

I turned in his arms to face him. His expression was earnest, almost vulnerable. This was not a young man looking for a conquest. This was someone who wanted more.

"What about your mother? The neighbors? What people will say about the divorced Indian woman seducing boys young enough to be her son?"

"My mother wants me to be happy. I'll handle the conversation. And honestly, Priya? Fuck what people say."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. He was so young, so idealistic, so certain that love conquered all.

"It's not that simple."

"Doesn't it deserve a chance to be?"

He kissed me softly. Tenderly. Like I was something worth fighting for.

"Stay,"

I said finally.

"We'll figure out the rest in the morning."

"Okay."

He pulled me closer, tucking my head under his chin.

"But just so you know, I'm not going anywhere. I've waited five years to hold you like this. I can wait a little longer for you to believe me."

I didn't answer. But I let myself, for the first time in longer than I could remember, hope for something I'd thought was behind me.

⏳ One year later

Diane took it better than I expected. There were tears, initially—confusion, worry about what people would think. But Marcus sat with her, explained how he felt about me, and eventually she came around. "I just want you happy," she told him. And then, looking at me with something like acceptance: "Both of you."

My own family was harder. My sister stopped speaking to me for three months. My parents sent disapproving messages through relatives. The community gossiped, of course—the divorced Sharma woman with her young Black lover, scandal of the century.

I stopped caring.

For the first time in my life, I was living for myself instead of for approval. I was with someone who made me laugh, who made me feel beautiful, who made love to me like it mattered. The age difference, the cultural complications, the whispers behind hands—none of it touched what we had.

Marcus took the job in New York. I sold my house and moved with him. Started over in a city where nobody knew our history, where we were just another couple holding hands on subway platforms and arguing about takeout orders.

Sometimes, late at night, he still calls me Mrs. Sharma. Just to see me blush.

And I still can't believe this is my life.

The best things, I've learned, often come from the most unexpected places. From a neighbor's son who saw something in me I'd forgotten was there. From a summer night that should never have happened but changed everything.

I was forty-three when I started over. Forty-four now, and happier than I've ever been.

Age, it turns out, really is just a number. What matters is finding someone who makes you feel alive.

Marcus does that. Every single day.