What I Do with My Neighbor’s Flip-Flops at Midnight

I moved into this little house just two months ago, and from the first day I knew something was going to mess with my head. It wasn’t the neighborhood, or the noise from the train in the distance, or the damp that seeps through the walls. It was her. Or rather, it was her feet.

The house I rent shares the back lot with another, smaller one, separated only by a patio of worn tiles and a grapevine that no longer provides any shade. Carolina lives there, a woman in her early thirties who works an office job and has the blessed habit of walking barefoot or in flip-flops all the time when she’s at home.

The first time I saw her was on a hot afternoon. I was hanging laundry and she came out to water some plants by her doorway. She was wearing shorts and a tank top, but I didn’t look at any of that. I looked at her feet. White, with softly pink soles, nails always painted and neat, slender toes arranged so tidily it was as if someone had drawn them with care. I froze, a wet T-shirt in my hand, like an idiot.

This cannot be happening to me again.

Because this was nothing new to me. Since I was a teenager, women’s feet have undone me in a way no other man I know understands. It isn’t something I choose. It’s something that grabs me in the stomach and doesn’t let go. And Carolina’s were, without exaggeration, the prettiest I had ever seen in my life.

***

During the first few weeks I became an expert at pretending. I learned her schedule without meaning to. I knew what time she left for work, which closed shoes she wore—what a shame, those shoes—and what time she came back and took them off the moment she crossed the door, like someone being freed from a cage.

I made up excuses to be in the yard when she was in hers. That I was watering a pot that didn’t need water, sweeping leaves that didn’t exist, looking for a tool in the shed. Anything to steal two seconds’ worth of a glance at those feet moving barefoot over the warm tiles.

“Hi,” she’d say sometimes, with a friendly smile, suspecting nothing.

“Hi,” I’d answer, swallowing hard, praying she wouldn’t look down at my pants.

And then I discovered the detail that finished ruining me. Carolina had the habit of leaving her flip-flops outside, by the door, when she went inside. A pair of Hawaiian-style flip-flops in a faded pink, thin, with the strap already a little loose from so much use. There they stayed all night, out in the open, a few feet from my door, marked with the exact shape of her feet.

The first time I saw them alone, without her, I felt a heat at the nape of my neck that kept me from sleeping. I knew perfectly well what I wanted to do. I also knew it was wrong. The two things coexisted in my head without much of a fight.

***

I held out for several days. I told myself no, that it was madness, that if she caught me she’d move out or call the police or, worse, look at me with disgust forever. But every night, before going to bed, I’d peek through the window and there they were, the flip-flops, waiting with the mute patience of objects.

On Thursday I couldn’t take it anymore. It had been a heavy, stifling day, one of those when the air doesn’t move, and I knew what that heat did to feet trapped in flip-flops all day. I sat in the kitchen and drank three beers, one after the other, looking for the courage I’d never have sober.

At midnight exactly, Carolina’s house was dark. I turned off all my lights, opened the door slowly, careful not to let the hinge squeak, and crossed the patio barefoot. The tiles still held the day’s heat beneath the soles of my feet. My heart was pounding so hard I thought I was going to wake up the whole neighborhood.

There they were. The pink flip-flops, one slightly tipped over the other, with the marks of each toe and heel pressed into the rubber from months of use. I bent down, picked them up with both hands as if they were made of glass, and crossed the patio back without breathing. Only when I closed my door and shot the bolt did I allow myself to inhale.

***

I took them to my room and placed them on the bed under the yellow light of the bedside lamp. I stood there for a few seconds just looking at them, like a kid opening a present and not daring to touch it. They were perfect. The rubber still warm, the straps loosened into the shape of her instep, the soles marked with the exact negative of her feet.

I picked up the right one first. I brought it slowly to my face, closed my eyes, and breathed in deeply.

God.

There’s no way to explain what I felt. A warm, intense smell, of feet that had spent the day closed up in the heat, but cared for, clean, scented beneath that rawer odor. A mix that hit me straight in the crotch, no stopping to think about it. I inhaled once, twice, three times, filling my lungs until I was dizzy.

I ran my tongue over the footbed, over the place where she rested her heel, over the hollow left by her toes. The rubber had a salty, faint flavor, and I licked every centimeter as if through that sandal I could touch her. My pants were already about to burst.

I yanked them down. I was rock hard, throbbing, and the mere idea of what I was about to do had me on the edge before I even started. I grabbed the left flip-flop and passed it slowly over my cock, feeling the rubber still warm against my skin. With my right hand I covered my nose and mouth, breathing in that aroma, while with the other I started moving.

I smelled one and jerked off with the other. I closed my eyes and saw Carolina walking barefoot through the patio, her toes spreading against the tiles, her violet-painted nails shining in the sun. I pictured her taking off her flip-flops with a tired gesture, stretching her feet, not suspecting that a neighbor a few meters away was desiring her in this sick, silent way.

It didn’t take long. It was an orgasm that doubled me over on the bed, made me clench my teeth to keep from making a sound, left me empty and trembling with the flip-flop still pressed to my face. I spattered the rubber without meaning to, marking it with my own mess.

***

When the shaking stopped, guilt left my heart squeezed tight. I grabbed a piece of paper, carefully wiped away the excess, checked that no trace was visible. Then I got dressed, waited for my breathing to steady, and crossed the patio again on tiptoe.

I left the flip-flops exactly as they had been, one tipped over the other, at the same angle, in the same place by her door. I memorized the position before taking them precisely for this. I went back to my house, locked up, and threw myself on the bed with the smell of her feet still in my nose and a strange mix of pleasure and shame turning over in my chest.

I slept better than I had in weeks.

***

The next day I came back from work with my stomach in knots. What if she had noticed? What if the flip-flops had been left differently, if I had left some mark, if she had a detective’s memory for the position of her sandals? I crossed the patio pretending to be casual and almost ran into her head-on.

Carolina was standing in her doorway, having something cold to drink, with the flip-flops on. The same ones. The ones I had had pressed to my face the night before. I felt my legs go weak.

“How was work?” she asked me kindly, wiggling the toes on one foot over the tile in a way that dried my mouth.

“Good, good,” I said, and my voice came out rougher than I would have liked. “Crazy hot today.”

“A total heatwave,” she replied, and laughed, and as she laughed she shifted her weight onto one foot and let the other lift halfway, with her heel out of the flip-flop, showing me that pink sole I knew better than she could ever imagine.

I stared at her feet without even trying to hide it for an extra second. The nails, this time painted violet. The perfect little toes, neat, resting against the rubber that was still carrying my secret. The excitement hit me so hard I had to cut the conversation short before I gave myself away.

“Well, I’m going inside, I’m beat,” I said.

“Go rest,” she smiled. “See you later.”

***

I went into my house, closed the door, and leaned against it, breathing hard. The image of her feet, now fresh, just shown off, had stamped itself over the memory of the night before. I went straight to the bathroom without thinking, pulled my pants down, and jerked off standing up, biting my lip, reliving every second: the smell of the flip-flop, the salty taste of the rubber, her little toes moving against the tile, that pink sole peeking out from the heel.

I finished in a couple of minutes, leaning against the tiles, my forehead sweaty and an idiot smile I couldn’t control on my face.

That was my experience, exactly as it happened. I know a lot of people are going to think it sounds sick, and maybe it is. But there’s nothing I can do against this, against what those feet provoke in me, against the way I give myself over to this desire like an obedient dog every time I see those flip-flops waiting for me in the dark.

And honestly, I’m already counting the days until the next hot night. Carolina doesn’t know it, but her little flip-flops and I have a date pending. Soon I’ll be telling how it continues.