What I Saw Through the Window That Night

My name is Damián, I’m thirty-three years old, and I work as a night watchman in an underground parking garage in Carabanchel. I’m almost six-foot-three, I wear my hair shaved on the sides, and my arms are covered in tattoos I got back when I thought I was going to do something else with my life. I live with my partner, Lorena, on the first floor of an old corrala in the upper part of the neighborhood. The apartment is tiny and smells of damp almost all year round, but it’s the only thing we can afford on two bare-bones salaries.

The story I’m going to tell happened a few summers ago. It’s based on real events, and I haven’t changed more than a few details so no one can be recognized.

The building is exactly what you picture when you think of a rundown Madrid corrala: rusty bars on the windows, an inner courtyard with two wilted potted plants, and a mailbox nobody ever checks. My neighbors make up a mosaic that could fill a novel. In the first-floor apartment next door lives an old man who rents out studios around the area and never says hello. Below me, a large Paraguayan family makes noise day and night. Upstairs there are two girls who work at a club off the M-40 and a retired couple who come out onto the balcony in bathrobes to smoke Ducados. From my living-room window you can see, across the inner courtyard, the ground-floor apartment opposite: two windows side by side, one for the living room and the other for a teenager’s bedroom.

It was August. Lorena was on a long shift at the care home and I had Friday and Saturday off, so the whole night was mine. It was that dry kind of heat that won’t let you sleep even if you get in the shower every hour. Around midnight I opened the living-room window in the hope that some air would come through. That’s when I noticed that the bedroom window in the ground-floor flat opposite, which was usually dark, had its light on and the blind pulled all the way up.

I’ve never been a peeping tom. I mean that seriously, though it sounds like a cliché. But curiosity about who slept in there got the better of me, so I turned off the living-room lamp and stayed in the half-dark, pretending I was watching the movie I had on.

The room was small, with a ninety-centimeter bed pushed against the wall, a white wardrobe, and a desk covered in posters I couldn’t make out from there. After a while she appeared. She crossed the window frame barefoot, wearing a tank top and shorts, and stretched out on her back on the bedspread. Her hair was very long, tied in a high ponytail. She was petite, slim, with small tits that showed her nipples through the thin fabric of the top. When she turned her head toward her phone screen, the light tinted her cheek blue.

I drew back a little when I realized that she, in theory, could also see me. I turned the living-room lamp down to its lowest setting, sat on the sofa, and convinced myself I was being ridiculous. For half an hour I listened to the hum of the neighborhood and peeked over now and then. She was still on her phone, motionless, like a figure hanging in a catalog room.

I thought about going to bed. Before standing up, I looked one last time and saw her change position: she had gotten under the sheet, turned off the overhead light, and the bedroom was lit only by the glow of the phone. Who gets under the sheet in this sauna? I said to myself. I understood two seconds later, when the sheet began to move at the level of her hip in a rhythm that had nothing innocent about it.

My mouth went dry and my cock went hard instantly, pressing against the fabric of my shorts. I stayed glued to the window frame like a kid pressed to the glass of an aquarium. She was biting her lower lip, her hand buried deep under the fabric, and you could see her rubbing her cunt in quick circles, nonstop, like someone who’d already been at it for a while and had no intention of stopping until she came. The sheet rose and fell with every movement of her wrist, and from time to time she lifted one knee to spread herself wider. My heart started racing. I had never seen anyone masturbate in secret, not knowing they were being watched. It wasn’t a decision: I yanked my boxers down, grabbed my cock with my right hand, and started stroking myself too, standing by the window, never taking my eyes off hers.

I could see her press her thighs against her own hand, arch her back slightly, then sink back onto the mattress. At one point she lifted her top with her free hand up to her throat and I got a full view of one small breast, nipple stiff, which she pinched between two fingers while still touching herself below. I jerked faster and faster, breathing out of control, feeling everything gather at the base of my balls. It didn’t last long. Within a few minutes she tensed her back, lifted her hips off the mattress, and stayed arched for three or four seconds, her mouth open in a silent O, before suddenly relaxing. She was coming. The fucking bitch was coming less than twenty meters from me without knowing it. I held on a few seconds longer and came between the curtains, two, three, four thick spurts of hot cum that stained my hand, my boxers, one corner of the sheer curtain, and even the carpet. I couldn’t believe it. It had taken me two minutes, maybe three.

I watched her sit up, lean out with a nightgown thrown on over herself, and look both ways across the courtyard. Then she slammed the blind shut. I flung myself backward like a thief caught red-handed and stayed sitting on the floor in my underwear, with my hands sticky from my own semen and my breathing out of control. I didn’t sleep that night.

***

The next day I took a three-hour nap and woke up at night. Lorena came home for dinner before heading back to her shift. She asked me why I looked like that. I told her I’d slept badly, that it was the heat and anxiety. I wasn’t exactly lying. We ate something quick and she left.

On Saturday I had plans with two coworkers from the parking garage: a beer on a terrace and, if things went well, a few games of pool. I canceled without guilt, ordered pizza, and set up the living room like someone preparing for a shift. Tissues on the coffee table, a low stool so I wouldn’t have to stand, a bottle of Aquarius just in case, and even lubricant I took out of the nightstand drawer in case I lasted several rounds. If the scene repeated itself, I didn’t want any detail to pull me out of the moment.

I stayed at the window from eleven until one-thirty. The opposite window was dark. The blind was down. I thought it had been a one-off and went to bed. I lay there with my phone, scrolled through Instagram for a while, and my eyes closed. When I opened them it was almost three. I was thirsty.

I got up to drink some water and, on the way, took a look out of habit. The bedroom light in the downstairs flat was on again. She was standing there, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, taking something out of a dresser. I felt the same rush in my pulse as the night before. I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and went back to the living room in record time. I turned off the lamp, took off my boxers, and sat on the stool with my cock already half-hard between my legs.

This time it took longer. She changed clothes out of my angle, turned off the overhead light, and the room sank into the blue glow of her phone. Maybe ten minutes passed. I was already rock-hard just waiting, giving myself slow pulls with a little lubricant in my palm. And then the movement under the sheet started again, the same quick, dry strokes of her wrist, the same way she bit her lip. This time, too, her free hand slipped up over the sheet and I saw her pinch one nipple through the fabric of the nightgown. She put two fingers in her mouth, sucked them, and brought them back down to her cunt. She was putting them inside herself. She was finger-fucking herself in front of me without knowing it, head thrown back and mouth open, and I was jerking myself with both hands, one on my cock and the other massaging my balls. I came before she did, with cum spraying over the stool and onto the sofa. When I looked up, she had gotten out of bed and was staring toward my window without even pretending otherwise. I jerked back, my heart in my throat. Shit. She had seen me.

For the following nights her blind stayed down. On top of that, I strung together several late and overnight shifts that made the living room useless for certain things, and when I was off Lorena was home. That August I entered a neurotic state of waiting. I looked for her when I climbed the stairs, when I crossed the courtyard, when I picked up the mail. I never ran into her.

***

It was in the middle of the month that we finally crossed paths. I was going down to the supermarket to buy something for dinner. I crossed the courtyard and saw her leaning out on her living-room sill, elbows on the wrought iron. She was wearing a white top and had her hair down. She looked at me, smiled, and said, in Spanish with a very strong accent: “Hi, neighbor.” I gave her the most awkward greeting of my life, something like “Hi, weird heat we’re having this August,” my voice half-breaking. She nodded and went back inside. I thought maybe she hadn’t understood me and felt ridiculous the whole way to Mercadona.

I came home with the feeling that I had seen a sharper version of the girl at the window. She had freckles across the bridge of her nose, very light eyes, and a half-smile that looked like a hook. She’s gorgeous, I thought, and I’m not the one who can get anywhere near her.

***

On the night of the first Friday in September, I repeated the ritual. Lorena on a night shift; me at home with beers and the last installment of the spy saga I was streaming. At two in the morning, when I was heading to bed, I saw the light on and the blind up. This time there were no mental preliminaries. I ran for the tissues, set up the stool, and turned everything off.

She came into the bedroom in a short nightgown, lay down on the bed, and kept looking at her phone. I was already working my cock like an animal when, without warning, she put her hand inside the pajama bottoms. This time she didn’t turn off the light. She did it in the open, with her cheeks getting redder and redder and her eyes half-closed, moving her hand in a long, shameless back-and-forth.

At one point, without stopping, she lifted her face and looked straight toward my window. I jerked back violently. Through the courtyard I heard the click of the blind dropping all the way down. Shit. Again. I stayed seated on the floor, breathing like I’d just run up the six flights of stairs, my cock aching and about to explode in my hand. I thought I had lost her forever.

A long minute passed. Then I heard the sound of the blind being pulled back up.

I waited a couple more minutes before peeking out. The light was still on. She was looking straight at me, with half a smile, and taking the nightgown off over her head. She let it fall to the floor. She was completely naked, with those small, firm tits and pink nipples, a flat stomach, and a shaved little cunt that was perfectly visible under the overhead light. She lay on her back on the bed, spread her legs toward the window, and brought two fingers to her mouth to suck them before lowering them to her clit. She started touching herself slowly, in circles, never taking her eyes off me. I couldn’t believe it. I moved as close as I could to the glass, stopped pretending, and let her see me with my cock in my hand, thick, red, already leaking pre-cum that ran down my knuckles. She was biting her lip and moving with the ease of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing. Her body was shining with sweat.

I went for a dining chair without thinking twice and placed it right against the glass. I climbed onto it and leaned out fully, naked, with my cock pointed at her window, visible to anyone who might be passing by the street at that hour. She smiled when she saw me and opened her legs a little more, until the soles of her feet were touching her ass and her cunt was completely spread open, glistening with wetness. She took a thick black dildo out of the nightstand drawer, rubbed it over her tits, over her stomach, sucked it slowly as if she were sucking me, her eyes locked on mine, and started to slide it slowly into her cunt while staring at me. I could see the tip going in, the way she opened up completely for it, the way she swallowed it centimeter by centimeter until it disappeared all the way inside and only her hand was moving. She fucked herself with it in and out with an increasingly brutal rhythm, the other hand rubbing her clit like she was trying to tear it off, mouth open, breasts bouncing with each thrust. At one point she rolled onto her side, got on all fours with her back to me, her ass toward the window, and started jamming it into herself from behind so I could see it sinking between her parted cheeks. I had to grip the window frame with my free hand because my legs were shaking. I could see her perky ass, the swollen cunt swallowing the toy, the expression on her face turned over her shoulder looking at me, and I was jerking off with a violence that was hurting my foreskin.

I held out as long as I could. When I came, I pushed to send it as far as possible. It landed in the courtyard, in two long streams that cut through the warm night air and splattered down below, onto the wilted potted plants. She laughed silently, pulled out the dildo, lifted it, shoved it back into her mouth up to the throat, sucking on her own juices, blew me a kiss with her hand, and lowered the blind.

That night I didn’t sleep either.

***

In the weeks that followed we never crossed paths again. August ended and I was moved to the morning shift. The neighbor, according to someone who said so in the elevator, had gone with her parents for a few weeks to the United States. I thought about her every day.

I ran into her on the street in early October, on one of the first cold afternoons. I was on my way to the gym and she was coming toward me with a Primark bag hanging from her shoulder. She walked past me, looked me straight in the eyes with the easy familiarity of someone who knows me more than seems possible, and kept walking. It took me five seconds to react. I caught up with her at the corner.

—Wait, wait —I said, almost out of breath—. What’s your name? I’m your neighbor across the way.

—My name’s Skyler —she said, and smiled—. I know who you are, Damián. Favorite neighbor.

—You speak Spanish really well.

—My mother’s Colombian —she replied—. And I hear your girlfriend yelling your name from my window all the time.

I laughed, but inside I was dying. I asked how old she was. Nineteen. I asked for her WhatsApp. She told me no, that she saw Lorena leaving the building every morning and didn’t want trouble. Then, with that same crooked smile, she added:

—My parents won’t be back until dinner time. Want to come up for a while?

I didn’t even think about it. We went up the stairs of her building, her in front, swaying just enough, and entered a flat with a small living room and an open-plan kitchen. The moment she closed the bedroom door she launched herself at me and kissed me like she’d wanted to for months. She shoved her tongue all the way in and bit my lower lip while she searched for my cock over my track pants. When she found it hard, she gave a little laugh against my mouth.

—I already know how you get it —she whispered—. I saw it clearly that night.

She yanked my T-shirt off and knelt in front of me without taking her eyes off mine. She pulled my pants and boxers down in one motion and my cock sprang up into her face, hard and throbbing. She grabbed it with both hands, brought it to her mouth, and licked it from top to bottom, slowly, like it was an ice cream, while pinching one nipple through the dress. Then she took the tip between her lips and sank down in one go to the base, swallowing it whole until I could feel her nose against my stomach. My vision clouded over. Skyler sucked like she’d been doing it for years, with one hand cupping my balls, her tongue wrapping around the head each time she came back up, her cheeks hollowed out from sucking so hard. She pulled my cock all the way out of her mouth with a wet pop, spit saliva over it, and shoved it back in to the throat, eyes watering and a wicked smile on her face.

—You’re going to make it all purple —I gasped, tugging her hair.

—That’s the idea, neighbor —she said, pulling it out for a moment to lick the head again.

I lifted her off the floor, yanked the dress over her head, and threw her backward onto the bed, the very same bed I had seen a hundred times from the other side of the courtyard. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her pink nipples went hard just from looking at them. I ripped her panties off in one pull and spread her legs wide open. The shaved little cunt was already dripping. I got on top of her and buried my face between her thighs, sucking her clit hard, pushing my tongue deep inside, tasting her. She tasted like salt and caramel. She arched her back and gripped my hair, pressing me against her sex, moving her hips against my mouth.

—Keep going, keep going like that —she moaned—. Don’t stop, fuck, I’m going to come in your mouth.

I put two fingers inside her while I sucked her clit and within seconds she came with a sharp cry, squeezing her thighs against my ears and soaking my chin. When I lifted my face, she licked her lips and looked at me with that crooked smile.

—Now fuck me —she ordered—. Hard. Like I know you can.

I climbed on top, grabbed my cock, and started sliding it into her slowly, looking her in the eyes. She had trouble swallowing the first push. I could feel her opening around my dick, squeezing every inch. When I was all the way inside, I stayed still for a second, savoring how hot and tight that nineteen-year-old cunt was. Then I started really fucking her, with long, deep thrusts, holding her by the hips so she wouldn’t slide up the bed. The nightstand was banging against the wall with every shove. Skyler was digging her nails into my back and asking for more, harder, deeper, biting my neck.

I put her on all fours at the edge of the bed, grabbed one cheek in each hand, and shoved back into her again. From there I could see the window through which I had spied on her, the blind, my own window across the courtyard. It turned me on to think about the nights I’d watched her from there without being able to touch her. I slapped her ass once, making her moan, then again, and kept pounding her faster and faster, watching her perky little ass bounce against my stomach. I grabbed her ponytail and pulled back a little. She arched with pleasure and started throwing her ass back at me, riding my cock from underneath, fucking me herself.

There was a moment, while she was astride me, legs open and hands planted on my chest, when she leaned forward, looked down at me with her tits swinging a hand’s breadth from my face, and said:

—I spent the whole summer waiting for this.

It sounded like the most honest thing a woman had told me in a long time. I grabbed her ass with both hands and pushed her up and down on my cock while she sucked and bit my mouth. I pinched her nipples and she let out a long moan that broke in her throat. She came a second time on top of me, shaking all over, her cunt clamping down so hard it nearly pulled my own orgasm out of me. I held on as best I could, threw her onto her back again, put her legs over my shoulders, and fucked her nearly folded in half, all the way to the hilt, each thrust more brutal than the last. When I felt I couldn’t hold it anymore, I yanked my cock out and came over her stomach, over her tits, over her chin, with four or five spurts that left her covered. She laughed, ran two fingers over her stomach, brought them to her mouth, and slowly sucked them, looking at me.

I lost track of time. When we heard the key in the lock, we both jumped. I grabbed my clothes in a crumpled bundle, climbed out through the bedroom window into the inner courtyard, and crossed in my underwear to my own stairwell, with the semen still drying on my skin. I left my gym bag in her room. I found it the next day hanging from my apartment door handle, with a note inside: Until next time, neighbor.

***

There was no next time. I spent a whole week looking for her, peering out the window at absurd hours. Then I had to go to the village to visit my father, who was having heart trouble, and I was away the entire weekend. When I got back and walked into the courtyard, the first thing I saw was a “FOR SALE” sign hanging from the ground-floor window. A neighbor later told me there had been some very fierce arguments in that house in the last few days and that overnight they’d loaded a truck and disappeared.

I never heard anything else about Skyler. The years passed, I changed apartments, left the parking garage job, married Lorena, we got divorced. Sometimes, when that August heat comes along and won’t let me sleep and I lean out the window, I remember that first dawn and the sheet moving in a room that wasn’t mine. And I tell myself that was probably the best thing that could have happened: that she moved away, that it didn’t happen again, that everything was reduced to an afternoon in October. But I don’t quite believe it.