I met the Baumgartners because, as my mother was too fond of saying, “Danielle is nosier than a cat in a tuna fish factory.” Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t. But what was I supposed to do when someone started sunbathing nude right outside my back door—just close the blinds?

Besides, a fully-clothed Carrie Baumgartner would have been pretty hard to ignore, let alone a topless, unbelievably bronze one, completely covered in coconut-scented oil. The stuff was so strong I could smell it from the window.

Maybe if I’d been a prude, or if I’d had kids like everyone else in University of Michigan married housing, or if Carrie had been just a little less attractive in her black bikini bottoms, I might have called campus security like a good girl. But I didn’t.

Instead, I was a very bad girl. I knelt up on my bed—our bed still, not that Mason came home to it much anymore—and peeked around the white sheet I’d tacked to the wall as a curtain when we moved in. According to our lease, we were supposed to cover our windows, and I’d just never gotten around to buying blinds. Besides, I didn’t know how to hang them, and I couldn’t rely on Mason for much of anything.

Our backyards were tiny little postage stamps and only semi-private. There was a black wooden head-high sort of half-fence at the end of all of the apartment yards, but instead of a divider between each, there was only a divider between every two, as if the apartments had been meant to connect at some point. The Baumgartner’s yard and ours meshed together and while the blue and yellow U of M blanket was spread out on their side, I could still see everything from my vantage point. And I mean everything.

I watched her drizzle oil over the copper colored flesh of her belly, her hands kneading it over the sloping curve of her ribs and onto the generous swell of her breasts, brazenly bared to the sun. I stayed quiet, swallowing my breath, as her palms made slow, lazy circles over her nipples and then dipped gently into the hollow of her throat, her slender, oily fingers stroking her neck down to her collarbone.

I heard her sigh, saw her hips shift as her hands moved back downward once again, lingering on the fullness of her breasts. She was so beautiful I could barely breathe, her honey-colored hair like spun gold against the navy blue blanket, her limbs long and shapely. I bit my lip when I saw her pinch her nipples, hearing her again, a soft cry.

I ducked down when she sat up on her elbows, sliding the dark glasses she wore down so she could look around. It was nearly noon on a Monday, the late August sun high and bright, still hot although it was moving steadily toward autumn now. The kids were back in school just this week, the neighborhood quieter than it had been all summer.

She glanced around and thought she was alone. She didn’t see me watching from the window as she slid her oily hand down the flat, sloping surface of her belly and under the elastic band of her black bikini bottoms. At first, I thought she was going to take those off too, but when her hand moved under them, fully between her legs, I understood.

And I watched, breathless, as she began to touch herself. I looked around, worried she might get caught, that someone might walk by. Our apartments backed up to a small, wooded area. The kids liked to play there, but today there were no calls of “You’re it!”, no one fighting over the tire swing someone had hung on a tree back there.

We were alone, she and I, two women longing for something, looking to ease a throbbing ache. I should have just turned away and gone back to studying my Italian phrasing, which is what I’d been doing before I heard the sound of her back door opening and closing, that tell-tale squeak and bang. But, as my mother would also attest to, I rarely did the things I should do in life. Instead, I usually did the things people told me I shouldn’t, and more importantly, I did the things I wanted to do.

And I wanted to watch. I was wearing jeans, too confining, but they were quickly unbuttoned and unzipped. I sought my own heat, my pussy moist, still shaved smooth the way Mason liked it. God, how long had it been since he’d touched me? I shoved that dark thought away and turned my attention to the luminous sight of the woman writhing on the lawn next door, taking her own unabashed pleasure.

Her hand moved rhythmically under the stretched crotch of her bikini bottoms, her face turned toward me. The dark sunglasses she wore kept her eyes from me, but I saw the part of her lips, the way the pink tip of her tongue slipped out and licked them. Her chest moved with her increasing breath, her breasts rising and falling, faster and faster.

My clit hid, untouched for so long, in the swollen folds of my flesh, but I managed to find it, shuddering at the sudden sensation, as if I had an instant “on” switch I’d just rediscovered. I teased it to life, back and forth, round and round, my breath coming faster, my nipples hard under my t-shirt as I pressed close to the wall, straining to see out the window.

The blond on the blanket flicked and tugged at her own nipples. They were brown and hard, like my own, although I was far more pale than she was, her breasts a little bigger. We were both pretty well-endowed in that department though, and I cupped my breast though my bra with my other hand, rubbing my thumb over the ridge of my nipple, feeling the weight of it, wondering what her breast would feel like in my hand—heavy, oily, fleshy.

It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d been with a woman. Before Mason, I’d been with Dee. My mother insisted I was “going through a phase,” and when Dee and I broke up in the midst of a huge drama over, what else, some guy, my mother said I’d proven her right, that I wasn’t a lesbian after all. I didn’t know what I was—I just knew that women turned me on and men turned me on, and maybe aliens would turn me on, too, but I’d never met one. Maybe I was just greedy, insatiable. I had always wanted more than the world could ever give me.

“Ohhhh!” The soft cry that rose up from her throat drew my attention back to the spectacle next door. She was biting her lip, her tanned thighs spread and shining with oil, glistening in the sunlight. I wished then that she had taken her bottoms off too so I could watch her fingers plunging into her pussy, as fast and furious as my own, wishing for a cock, a tongue, something, everything at once.

I arched my back and rocked up and down, back and forth, riding my own hand, my nipples rubbing hard against the windowsill, forgetting myself, forgetting that I was supposed to stay quiet, unnoticed. I pressed my nose to the screen, catching the scent of fresh cut grass and coconut oil, imagining that I could smell her too, the pungent aroma of her pussy. Was she shaved, like me? Was she blond down there or dark, I wondered? Just thinking about it was so exciting I had to slow down or I was going to climax right that second, and I wanted to wait.

I wanted to come with her.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” She gasped and gave three short, sharp cries, her hips thrusting upward, her thighs butterflied wide, one hand rubbing herself frantically, the other clutching her breast, tweaking her nipple. The sight of her was enthralling, but it was the low, throaty growl she finally gave and the way her head thrashed from side to side as she came that finally sent me soaring.

I didn’t just fall, I leapt, moaning and thrusting and diving headlong into the precipice, that same delicious edge I’d been flirting with and yet trying to avoid since the moment I unzipped my jeans. I came so hard I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. I didn’t let myself go—there was no choice involved—I simply went, plunging headlong into pleasure.

And that’s when the screen fell out of the window.

I’d been pressing on it so hard, it was no wonder. The springs that held it in just gave way and if I hadn’t caught myself, I would have fallen too. It wasn’t a high fall, but it would have been an embarrassing one, considering that my hand was still plunged into the front of my unzipped jeans. It was embarrassing enough as it was as Carrie scrambled to grab her bikini top, tying it quickly on, and I zipped and tucked and yelled out some sort of apology across the yard.

It was Jezebel who gave me an excuse. I used her wanton lust to defend my own, claiming that it was our cat who had knocked out the screen. She’d been sitting quietly next to me on the sill the whole while, occasionally licking a fat, black paw and rubbing it over one velvety ear, the only other witness to our sin. Jezebel looked askance at me when I offered her up as a sacrifice, her expression even more indignant than usual.

“It should just pop right back in.” The blond walked across her yard and into mine, bending down to pick up the screen. “I’ve knocked ours out a couple times.”

“Thanks.” I took it awkwardly, shoving the sheet-curtain aside as I brought it through the window and dropped it next to the bed. As the screen passed between us, our hands touched—hers oily and smelling of coconut and mine still wet with my juices—and she smiled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“I was just working on my tan.” She glanced over to the blanket she’d been touching herself on and then looked back at me. Did she know I’d been watching? “Want to join me?”

“I—” I searched for some excuse. I didn’t want to embarrass myself any further. “I don’t own a bikini.”

“You can borrow one of mine, if you want. I was only wearing half of one anyway.” She grinned, adjusting her bikini top. She didn’t even flush—but I did. “I’m Carrie Baumgartner, by the way. Nice to meet you, neighbor.”

“Danielle Stuart.” I replied. “They call me Dani.”

“Come on, Dani.” She waved me out, as if the decision had already been made. “Let’s get some sun together.”

And that was how it began.