FORBIDDEN LOVE

He watched her from afar, never thinking this could happen. He was close with her family and looked at her, as someone to watch over, as she'd play along his sidewalk out front of his house. 

He was a sane young man when the connection started she'd introduce him to her friends along the block returning smiles and asking about her family, her mother, her father. The only child in the family she looked to others when she couldn't find the attention she so craved. 

As time passed and rightly turned a young man into a thirty-something  nearing forty bringing all the realizations of life, his view of her changed as she also changed. Now the attraction began to take shape. In general, as a man, one begins to see patterns in life that, when you are young, life is about experiences, and as you age, you begin to see these things on repeat over time you can see the patterns as they become clear living day today. The trend he was seeing was the girl he had known changing into a woman. Soon he'd look out his window to wonder whom the attractive woman was gathering up the mail from the group mailbox firmly planted at the foot of his driveway. Thinking a new family had moved in only to watch her walk back to the house, he had seen her run to many times after getting off the school bus. 

He questioned himself vehemently how right or wrong this was always siding on the side of his own damnation. He never had any sick fantasies or tried to lure this young girl to him, but he had to ask where the line was?

Soon the summers became wrought with desire as hot as the sun as he'd see her coming home with friends young and nubile like her beating the heat with trips to the river or kicking it poolside where less clothing meant he could view her taut body openly in bikini tops and jean shorts. 

One evening getting his mail, he watched her and a boy her age walk by making their way to a community cookout. She greeted him using his first name, and she introduced the young man as her boyfriend. He remembered those carefree days as a teen and envied them both just a bit at that moment. 

Times again changed everything. He saw he was less like he used to be. He never married, fearing this would be forever when he met someone online. They scheduled to meet up. There was some age difference, and she did live some ways away from where he was, but people do stupid things to find love, so he went with it. 

Upon meeting face to face at a restaurant that had a broad ocean view, he realized who she was to him. After she had left to go to college, he had somewhat forgotten her but tucked away from the desires he had of a forbidden love he could never really test the waters of. Yet she never did, and now upon being of age and finding his profile online, she figured she would give him a shot.