Page 21 of The Stranger's Voice

She never came home. I hadn't seen her for two weeks, and I worried from the next morning. It was fourteen nights since Adaline showed her face. Scottie teased me that I’d made her up, telling me she wasn’t real and a figment of my imagination. He dismissed he’d met her and pretended that he hadn’t. If it weren't for Elliott reassuring me that Adaline disappeared like this often, I would have called the police. Steph had told me she knew where Adaline was and that she was fine. I quizzed Steph to the point that she turned the tables and questioned me about why I was asking.

I’d plumbed in a washing machine and installed a new cooker. The old decaying fridge was dumped, and a new one had arrived.

Scottie insisted that he choose the TV on the basis I didn’t want one. When it came, I’d never seen a TV so big, giving him my credit card was not the best idea. Within the hour, he’d got it installed, tuned in and working. If it were up to me, it would still be in the box. My new home was looking good. A sofa and two recliner chairs, also Scottie’s idea, were in the living room. He seemed more interested in the new flat than I was. Without Adaline’s presence, I didn’t want to be there. I hadn’t slept in the bed and preferred to go back to Elliott and Steph’s place until Adaline came back. I missed our routine in the mornings and evenings. She’d come with me for two weeks in the morning to time me swimming. I still cooked for her while she worked. The night before she disappeared, she was bent over the keyboard, frantically clicking and typing. When I asked her what she was doing, she answered that she was following leads.

Last night, Steph told me as I headed up the stairs to bed that Adaline would return home the next day. I couldn’t wait to show her the new flat, hoping she’d approve.

“For the love of God, Callum, is it straight?” Scottie yelled over. I was sitting crossed legged in the middle of a plush rug by the TV, threading the curtain hooks into the top of the set of red curtains. I looked up to Scottie who was standing on a ladder holding a second curtain pole stopper above the double window.

“Why haven’t you measured it?” I asked him.

“I have, but the floor and ceiling aren't level,” he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck stretching left and right.

“Then measure from the window frame instead.”

“You want the curtains to rest on the carpet, yes?”

“Of course.”

“Then stop being a dick, come over here and give me a hand. Adaline is coming back tonight so stop being a bitch.”

He stared me out, I couldn’t stop the laugh bubbling up through my chest. I was crabby, but I wanted him to do these things on his own. When he started his business, he wouldn’t have my assistance to do these things.

“Are you serious about Adaline?” He asked me.

“Deadly, why do you ask that?”

“Because if you’re not then don’t pursue her,” he said.

“Is this about your dad? What happened to him?” I countered the questioning.

“He left my mum because he couldn’t cope with her deafness. Dad left her while she was pregnant with me. Be sure, just promise me that.” He asked.

Struggling to my feet I’d discovered my legs had gone to sleep from sitting too long. I ignored the pins and needles and stood in the centre of the window.

“I’m positive, and if she’ll have me, I’ll never leave her. Now, this is the fourth time you’ve given me this lecture. Will you tell me why?”

“No, it’s not my place to speculate,” Scottie said, drawing a line with his pencil.

Taking the white wooden pole I threaded it through the stopper, Scottie had already screwed one in on the other side of the window and gave me the other end. He put it through the stopper and held it up once more.

“Half an inch higher mate,” Adaline said from over my shoulder. Her throaty voice had my dick growing hard. I daren’t turn around for fear of embarrassing her and me.

“She’s gone, you can turn around now,” Scottie said and moved the pole higher. He took the screw out of his mouth and slid it into the hole and then the screwdriver from his back pocket. I turned to look toward her voice, and she had gone. Disappointment laced through my heart.

“Go after her. I’d forgotten how beautiful she is. Is her blonde hair real?”

“Yes, it’s real, stop thinking about her, she is off limits to you,” I pointed a finger at him in warning, and all I got in return was a raucous laugh.

“I have a girlfriend, she is the love of my life, you need not worry about me, but I can still appreciate a beautiful woman.” He concentrated on screwing in the attachment and then looked back, nodded to the doors and nodded. “Don’t fuck it up and remember what I told you.”

He returned to fixing the curtain pole, and I ventured off to find Adaline.

I found a path of sorts, stepping over the piles of magazines in her living room. Standing at the entrance to the hallway, I called out her name. I heard nothing and called out again but still nothing. Then the best thing happened and the worst. Adaline walked out of her bedroom stark naked and wandered into her bathroom with an electric toothbrush in her mouth. She was reading her phone in her other hand. I couldn’t move. I should have backed up, left the living room and gone back to my flat.

But I didn’t.

Her flawless skin, her long, lithe legs were alluring as she moved. She had a peach of a bottom, biteable and spankable. Man, I wanted to see her again. That’s when she came back out of the bathroom, toothbrush now discarded but her phone in her hand, this time she was tapping at the screen. My cock pressed hard against the zipper of my shorts. Her breasts were perfectly rounded, her tight rosebud nipples pointed to the ceiling, begging to be caressed, as they peaked. While I was checking out her breasts and making my way down her toned torso, I heard the scream.

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