A Fleeting Glimpse

AUTHORS NOTE: The following short story has been submitted as a part of the 750 Word Project 2023.

This will be a familiar tale; a young man with an unrequited crush on the girl next door.

I'd known Adrienne since we were kids. We'd see each other often when her parents, who'd attended the same church, would invite my single mother and I over on Sundays.

We'd watch TV, run around outside, and often join with our parents in playing a variety of card games.

As we got older, our once close friendship had grown distant. While she was never mean, or rude, I could tell something had changed between us.

Perhaps my feelings towards her had become too obvious, despite never having spoken of them directly.

I saw her less and less during our last years of high school, and by the time we'd graduated in the summer of 1986, our interactions had become limited strictly to the Sunday visits, if she was actually home and not out with her friends.

When she was around, Adrienne remained polite, even friendly. Yet there was a barrier I could sense between us, a specific effort on her part to not engage with me on anything other than a surface level.

My heart would ache whenever she rambled on about whatever guy she was currently crushing on, or worse, the boyfriend she was now dating.

But the worst part was when she would go out of her way to affirm what a "good friend" I was to her. Two words that can crush any young man's soul.

It wasn't my fault I saw her half naked that night.

We'd arrived for yet another Sunday get together, her parents greeting us at the door.

The stairway from the second floor ended right there at the lobby, and it was only by chance that I looked up when I did.

Adrienne was passing by, on her way from the bathroom to her bedroom. She froze in her tracks when she saw me.

She wore nothing but a pair of pale blue panties and a towel on her head.

The smooth, creamy whiteness of her breasts stood out in contrast to the rest of her tanned skin, a perfect outline of the bikini she'd always worn by the pool.

They were sublime in their perfect femininity. Round and firm, capped by pink nipples that bore their way into my memory.

They were the first glimpse of real breasts I'd ever seen; my only other knowledge of them came from dirty magazines found in filthier gutters, hidden away from my mother in the garage she hadn't entered since my father left us.

Time froze as my eyes wandered over her supple, nubile teen body, moving down along her flat, firm stomach to the puffy, rounded mound hidden beneath her panties. The snug cloth teased the barest hint of her cleft, along with the tuft of hair I was sure matched the natural blonde, curly locks of her head.

My hypnotized stare was broken by the sound of her terrified squeal. What I found in her crystal blue eyes horrified me; surprise, accusation, and finally anger. Her face flushed scarlet with embarrassment.

Time resumed to normal, and in a blink, she was gone.

"What was that about?" her father asked.

"No idea," answered her mother. They had heard her cry, but with their backs to the stairs, neither had noticed what had happened in that fleeting moment.

Nor had they registered the look of utter shock on my face.

"I'll go check on her."

Her mother returned to the kitchen minutes later. "Adrienne isn't coming down; she said she's not feeling well. Sorry, Robby, guess you're stuck playing cards with the old folks tonight."

I wouldn't see Adrienne again for years. That fall, she'd gone off to college. Unable to afford further schooling, I instead went off to work what would be my first in a series of boring, unsatisfying jobs before finally finding my calling as a wedding DJ, eventually starting my own quite successful business.

I wound up performing at her wedding a decade later.

As I watched her share that first dance with her husband, eyes shining bright with love for him, I felt a tinge of regret that I'd been unable to turn the friendship of our youth into something more.

Still, I often look back on that fleeting glimpse she'd inadvertently given me so many long years ago quite fondly.

I don't know if she even remembers it. We lost touch long ago.

But she forever lives in my memory.