She finished two throat-hugging necklaces before she surfaced enough from her concentration to be aware of him. Flexing her fingers and easing out the cramps from the finicky work, she glanced sidewise at him, not picking up on the next song. “I can feel you watching me,” she said, instead, and unwound herself to turn the music down. “Am I too loud?” Setting her hands on her hips, Summer turned to look at her neighbour fully, and hoped he couldn’t see the slight shock that went through her.
Damn, he was hot. And not just in the literal sense — in the ‘wow I wish I could get with that’ kind of way. Long practise kept the awareness of it off her face, but she just knew that feeling was going to make things frustrating and awkward for her. It always did.
It seems he’s found another mean of entertainment; something that he could look at for hours and hours silently, in awe almost, but never take up himself.
His hands weren’t so nimble and delicate, in that sense.
Watching as she set aside the necklaces, he felt rather unhappy that his new source of entertainment came to an end as she began to bend and curl her stiff fingers out of crafting position.
“She speaks,” he muttered, gaze dropping to the floor as she got up to turn the song. Suddenly, he felt rather foolish for settling there in the first place to watch his neighbor. He felt like a creep.
“You’re not.”
His responses were short and he generally mumbled, still slightly aggravated by the merciless heat they were exposed to just a few hours earlier.
Am I too… obtrusive?
He wanted to ask, but thought better of it. Why does he care, if so?
Just as she turned to face him, his gaze lifted from the floor and he gave her a very generous once-over.
The feeling was mutual. Very, very mutual. The thought of having his eye on someone else on so quickly spooked him into looking away.
Summer turned away, too, into the kitchen, glad that the heat of the day excused any flush she might have. “Let me get you some water,” she said, taking down two glasses and filling them up with ice. She put the coolness of her fingers after touching the ice on the back of her neck, unsticking the fine hair there, and rolled her neck before adding tap water to the glasses.
Carrying it over to him, she said quietly, “I don’t mind you watching, but you’ll get a better idea of what I’m working on if you come in and sit down. I was just taking a break anyway to stretch.” Picking her way back into the middle of the little heaps of beads and gemstones, she set her glass down carefully on the carpet and stretched her arms over her head, tank-top riding up over her ribs. Helios appeared from the bathroom, lowering his white muzzle to sniff at the craftworks before threading through to inspect her glass.
