The man next door had a habit of boiling his kettle at precisely 3am. The kettle would be followed by thumping footsteps and wild, untamed music flowing through the paper thin wall between his kitchen and my bedroom.
He had a husky voice when he sang and sometimes I’d stay up just to hear him crone a few tunes as he clinked cutlery on benches and crockery on a table.

The day I helped my lover carry box after box inside my little house with paper thin walls and an orange tree in the front yard I learnt three things.
The first was that the faint smoky taste on his tongue came from his excessive smoking habit. The smell of smoke stained the curtains as he balanced a cigarette between his lips, lugging box after box into rooms.
The second was that he drank like a fish. From the bottle.
Third, when I woke up at three am to press my ear against the wall to hear the man next door sing, he woke up as well and offered in a hard, demanding tone to speak to him about boiling the kettle at three in the morning.

We sat down to very strong coffee the next morning.
“You should call your parents. I’ve always wanted to meet them.” he sat slumped backwards in the orange vinyl chair, smoking and clutching his morning coffee against his chest. His brown hair flopped down and his chiseled fingers pulled along the hem of his white singlet.
“We don’t talk.” came my simple reply as I continued to observe him, now running his hands along the wood of the table. He was a simple looking man. ruggedly hugging the line between youth and middle age.
“Why not Violet?”
“We just don’t. I’m not the sort of daughter my parents dreamt of. We find it easier not to keep in contact.” I stood up and tipped the grainy remains of the coffee down the drain, opening a window to filter some of the accumulating smoke. “I wish you wouldn’t smoke inside.”
“And I wish you talked to your parents. We can’t all get what we wish for.”
“You’re right.” the repetitive W’s were getting on my nerves, “like for example living in a house with a lover.”
Mark blinked twice.
“Fine. I’ll smoke outside. Maybe you’ll think on contacting your parents. Family is important.”
His chair scraped across the floor and the door flung itself closed after him.

I missed laying next to the wall, listening to the man next door dance, sing and boil his kettle. I still woke up every morning at three to hear the whistling, but never the singing or the stomping of his feet against the floor.
Mark woke too. And every time, he would cuss and swear he was going over there.
He never did.

He never drank from the wine glasses he brought for me as a gift. He preferred his wine out of the bottle, cheap and plentiful.

I didn’t like the way he ate cherries.

He sat with two bowls, their sides kissing, one full of plump juicy fruit and the other their pips.
His teeth would bite down to their core, leaving crimson juice lingering on his lips like sacrificial blood. The fingers on his left hand alternated with his mouth. One held a cherry as the other held a lit smoke.

“I thought I asked you not to smoke inside.” I dug my fingernails into my palms in agitation, watching his teeth as they formed around the wine bottle in his right hand.

“I thought I asked you to call your parents.” He ground the butt of his cigarette against the table.

I lifted the mug he drank coffee out of every morning and sent it smashing to the ground.
“And I thought I told you we don’t speak.”

“Yeah? well sweetie, I smoke inside.” his lips pressed against each other, mashing a cherry between his teeth.

Plate after plate smashed against the floor.

Cherry after cherry was eaten till I went to the sink, filled a pot with water and dumped it over his head.

“Get out of my house.”

He scurried away, leaving me to my three am secret serenade and drinking my morning coffee out of the wide wine glasses he left behind.