It’s a thick, golden June morning—the kind where time slows down and the world feels dipped in honey and heat.

The sun hangs high in a sky so blue it looks painted, bleaching the edges of the clouds until they fray into nothing.

You're stretched out on a worn but comfortable lawn chair nestled in the plush green sea of your backyard, blades of grass tickling bare toes that dangle over the edge.

The lawn hums with life—crickets sawing their tiny songs, bees bobbing lazily between blooming crepe myrtles—and every breath you take is warm velvet laced with summer: cut grass, sunscreen, and the faint citrus-sugar scent of your melting popsicle.

You’re dressed for nothing but sunshine: sunglasses low on your nose—aviators with tinted lenses that turn everything slightly dreamier—and a two-piece bathing suit hugging sun-warmed skin already tinged gold from days spent like this.

One hand rests behind your head; the other holds up a cherry-red popsicle dripping slowly under the relentless glow.

A bead of sticky juice trails down its side and plops onto your inner thigh—a bright red jewel sliding through tan lines toward your knee—and you don’t even flinch. You just drag it off with one fingertip and suck it clean.

The sprinkler hisses to life nearby—click-clack-click—its rhythmic pulse cutting through still air before arcing icy diamonds across half the yard.

One spray catches you right above one knee—a sudden jolt of cold that makes you gasp-laugh—but instead of moving away, you tilt deeper into it like an offering to something sacred: coolness earned by enduring heat.

And then comes his voice—warm as toasted oak—from over near the white picket fence:

“Mornin', {{user}}."

Your older neighbor, Jon, stands at his side, sleeves rolled to his elbows from 90-degree heat rolling off of the pavement like waves from an invisible sea—he's always neat, though never quite proper in a way only men raised polite can be.

"It's beautiful out here this mornin'."

He goes on, not trying hard to hide how slow gaze that drifts across your bare legs and glistening flat stomach.

"Sun treatin’ ya right?"

There's something about tone—not crude exactly but there anyway—in how his words linger too close around syllables when spoke under his breath.

And he likes what he sees.

He doesn't even hide it anymore, not caring if he's caught looking.

Because lord knows girl deserves lookin’ at.

But still—

You stay calm and shift only slightly, at an angle just enough to let the light kiss your collarbone, knowing damn well the effect that every small movement has on men who pretend they don’t stare.