The Grumpy Neighbor Wants the Size 22 Girl Upstairs, and the Walls Are Thin novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: What the Walls Carry
Costa shows up with a tape measure, admits he has heard every word she has recorded, lifts her off a chair by the waist and kisses her against the doorframe until Loretta shouts up the stairs.
The knock came at nine the next morning, and I knew it was him before I opened the door.
Nobody else in the house knocked like they were trying not to break it.
I had slept four hours and dreamed about a hand on my hip.
I opened the door in leggings, a faded Towson tee and my hair in a messy knot, with a toothbrush in my mouth.
Costa Karras stood on my landing holding a tape measure.
He wore a fresh white T-shirt that strained across his chest and gray work pants.
He held a roll of gray foam under one arm.
"I'm here about your closet," he said.
I took the toothbrush out.
"You banged on my floor at midnight and now you want to see my closet."
"I want to measure it."
"That's what they all say."
His mouth twitched, just once, and then went flat again.
"May I come in?"
I stepped back.
He ducked under my doorframe, and my apartment got smaller.
It's a one-bedroom with slanted ceilings, a couch the color of mustard, and every wall covered in framed book covers I've narrated.
He looked at none of it.
He looked at me, then at the bedroom door, then at me.
"Closet's in there?"
"Obviously."
He went through my bedroom like he owned the floor plan, and I followed, furious that I was embarrassed.
The closet is a walk-in the size of a phone booth.
The quilt hangs on a rod over the door, and a mic stands in the corner.
He crouched at the grate and ran his thumb along the iron.
"This is the problem," he said.
"It's decorative."
"It's a hole into my bedroom."
"So you've been listening."
He looked up at me from the floor.
The morning light caught his lashes and the hard line of his jaw, and I forgot what I was angry about.
"Molly, I've been listening since February," he said. "Every night. I'm not going to lie to you."
My stomach dropped and my whole body went warm.
"All of it?" I asked.
"The books, the phone calls, the laughing."
"The laughing."
"You laugh at your own jokes before you finish them," he said. "It's the best sound in this building."
I stared at him.
He stood up slowly, and he kept standing until the top of his head almost touched my slanted ceiling.
"I'm not sorry," he said. "I'm telling you so you know why I'm angry."
"Why are you angry?"
"Because when you stop, I want you to start again."
I didn't know a man could say a thing like that in the voice of a landlord.
He held up the foam.
"I'll pad the grate and hang this behind the quilt. It won't fix everything. It'll fix enough."
"Enough for what?"
"For me to sleep."
I laughed, loud and bright, and I watched his face change.
It wasn't a smile.
It was a man hearing a favorite song.
"There it is," he said.
I turned red to my ears.
"I need to hang the quilt higher," I said, because I needed to do something with my hands. "Hold this."
I dragged a kitchen chair into the closet and climbed up.
It wobbled.
"Molly."
"I've done this a hundred times."
The chair rocked, and I reached for the rod, and two huge hands closed around my waist.
He lifted me off the chair like I was a stack of laundry.
My feet left the floor.
My back met his chest, his hands met in front of my belly, and his thumbs and fingers nearly touched around me.
I am a size 22, and nobody had ever picked me up off the ground without a groan.
He didn't groan.
He set me down, and he didn't let go.
"You could've called me," he said against my ear.
"I'm not calling a man who bangs on my floor."
"Call me."
His breath stirred my hair.
His hands slid from my waist to my hips and spread, a slow grip.
"Costa."
"Say it again."
I turned in his hands and looked up.
He was so close that I could count the black lashes.
There was no hiding what he wanted.
It was pressed hard against my belly through two layers of cloth.
"I think about your voice all day," he said.
"I think about it in the shower. I think about it at three in the morning."
"That's not appropriate neighbor behavior."
"I'm a terrible neighbor," he said, and kissed me.
It was not a polite kiss.
His mouth took mine.
He backed me into the closet doorframe, one hand in the small of my back and one cupping my jaw.
I grabbed his shirt in both fists.
My head hit the wood and he caught it in his palm, and I moaned into his mouth, helplessly.
He made a sound I felt in my stomach.
"Again," he said. "Louder."
He dragged his hips against mine, slow and heavy.
I felt every thick inch of him through his work pants, long and hard against my softness, and I rolled into it.
"You're so soft," he breathed against my neck. "You're so fucking soft."
"I'm big," I said.
"I know exactly how big. I've been dreaming about it."
His hand slid up under my tee and spread across my bare ribs.
His thumb brushed the underside of my breast, and I shook.
"Molly Hartigan," called a voice from the bottom of the stairs, bright and ringing.
"Is that Costa Karras I hear up there? Because I know that man isn't banging on my ceiling again."
We froze.
"That's Loretta," I whispered.
"I know."
"She can hear everything."
"I know," he said, and bit my earlobe, very gently, before he let me go.
He stepped back and adjusted himself with perfect calm.
I fixed my messy knot with shaking hands.
We went out onto the landing together.
A man was standing outside my door with a roll of blue tape and a smile that was all teeth.
He had gelled sandy hair, a pressed quarter-zip sweater and a clipboard.
He was taping a piece of paper to my door.
"Morning, big girl," said Chandler Rudd, my landlady's nephew and the building manager. "Hope I'm not interrupting."
He finished taping, and I read the paper over his shoulder.
NOTICE OF NOISE VIOLATION. THIRTY DAYS TO CORRECT OR LEASE REVIEW.
Costa's door, one floor down, had an identical notice.
"Both of you," Chandler said, and his smile widened. "Funny, that."
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