The observed life

I'll admit it was his body that first attracted me.  There is something about the way the line of his torso flares up from muscular waist to shoulders broad and flat that excites me.  No outfit masks that beautiful taper, even winter coats reveal the sumptuous dip of lower back before it swells out into buttocks.

It may have been his body to first catch my eye, but since first moment my passion has been anything but shallow.  I look past the well-toned figure to see a generosity of spirit as he greets his colleagues, a potentially proud father as he plays with the children of friends, and an inspiring joy as he revels in the bars and nightclubs.  

Our time together now is interrupted often as I become overwhelmed by the certainty of future happiness.  I see us galloping horses on a beach in Corsica, the warm evening air scented with sea.  I see us brewing tea for each other as the winter evenings draw in, quiet conversations in our cosy lounge.   And I see us laughing as we push the pram containing our precious newborn through summer parks.

I'm not the only one who notices these things.  When we walk down the street, I sometimes spot others performing double-takes, unable to drink enough of him in at first gulp.  More than once I've passed young women clustered in a hateful coven and gossiping easily with the cadence that speaks unmistakeably of murmured expressions of lust followed by knots of distasteful cackling.

I bathe in this cascade of impression and feeling again as the front door of his house opens to let light fall into the evening.  He stands, silhouetted against the hall light, clad in running kit and ready for evening exercise.  As he locks the front door I shift lower into the gloom of the car seat.  This is not a suitable place for us to meet for the first time.

Another creative writing exercise, this time with the goal of unsettling the reader through an unreliable first-person narrator.