Cold plaster pressed against Beata’s forehead, sending a shiver straight down her spine.
Peeling floral wallpaper, damp from the humid autumn air, scraped her cheek as she leaned closer to the drywall.
Every sound from the adjacent room vibrated through her skull, sharp and agonizingly clear.
In this cramped, communist-era block apartment, privacy was a luxury they simply couldn't afford.
Only a single sheet of cheap plaster stood between Beata’s small bedroom and the one she had surrendered to her daughter, Natalia, and Natalia's boyfriend, Tomasz.
Right now, that thin wall felt thinner than a sheet of paper.
"Please, Nat," a muffled voice begged.
Tomasz sounded utterly desperate.
His tone carried the heavy, thick weight of a man who had spent months begging for scraps of affection.
Beata held her breath, her heart hammering against her ribs.
She closed her eyes, picturing him in the dark.
Tomasz was twenty-four, broad-shouldered, with thick forearms covered in dark hair and dark eyes that always seemed to search for something he couldn't find.
He worked construction, always smelling of sawdust, cold sweat, and cheap cologne.
A raw, masculine energy rolled off him, the kind that made Beata’s stomach tighten whenever he walked into the tiny shared kitchen wearing nothing but grey sweatpants.
"Get off me, Tomasz," Natalia snapped.
Her voice was a sharp blade, cutting through the silence of the night.
"I told you, I have a headache. I’m tired."
"It's been three weeks," Tomasz muttered, his voice cracking slightly with a mix of anger and sheer humiliation.
"We live in the same bed, and you won't even let me hold your hand."
"Go to sleep."
A rustle of heavy sheets followed.
Natalia was turning her back on him, cementing the invisible barrier between them.
Listening from her side, Beata let out a silent, bitter laugh.
Stupid girl.
Her daughter was frigid, blind, and utterly foolish.
At twenty-two, Natalia had the world at her feet and a hot-blooded young man in her bed, yet she treated him like an annoying chore.
Beata felt a sudden, roaring heat flare in her chest.
Forty-five years old, and her own body was a furnace, burning with a hunger that cheap beer and quiet nights could never extinguish.
She stared down at the green glass bottle of warm, cheap lager gripped in her right hand.
Her knuckles turned white under the yellow light of her bedside lamp.
Twenty years ago, she would have devoured a man like Tomasz.
She would have kept him awake until dawn, mapping every inch of his skin, leaving him breathless and bruised in the best way possible.
Instead, she was stuck in this quiet domestic purgatory, watching her youth slip away like sand through her fingers.
Wrinkles were beginning to nest around the corners of her eyes.
Her skin, though still soft and olive-toned, felt like a ticking clock.
"To my darling daughter," Beata whispered to the empty room.
She raised the warm bottle toward the peeling wallpaper in a silent, mocking toast.
"For keeping him hungry."
Taking a long, slow gulp of the bitter liquid, she let the alcohol burn its way down her throat.
Warmth spread through her belly, but it did nothing to ease the ache lower down.
She was so incredibly, painfully lonely.
Since her husband had walked out a decade ago, her bed had been a cold, empty desert.
Her husband, Andrzej, had been a quiet man who eventually drifted out of her life like a ghost, leaving behind nothing but empty drawers and a lingering sense of inadequacy.
She had spent her prime years cleaning up after others, sacrificing her own desires to build a home that now felt like a prison.
Now, with every tick of the cheap plastic clock on her wall, she was reminded that time was a predator.
Sometimes, the sheer weight of the silence in her room made her want to scream until her lungs bled.
Another heavy sigh vibrated through the plaster.
Tomasz’s groan was low, guttural, and laced with such raw desperation that it made Beata’s thighs ache.
He was starving.
She could feel his hunger through the wall, a physical entity pulsing in the dark air.
How could Natalia be so blind to it?
She couldn't understand how Natalia didn't feel the tension vibrating off him like static electricity.
Sitting back on her mattress, Beata listened as the springs in the other room creaked.
Tomasz was shifting.
He was probably staring at the ceiling, his jaw clenched, his body tense with unused energy.
She knew that feeling all too well.
It was a slow poison, eating away at your mind until you couldn't think of anything else but the touch of another human being.
Memories of the past few weeks flooded her mind.
Living in such close quarters meant they were constantly bumping into each other.
Narrow and cramped, the hallway was barely wide enough for one person, let alone two.
Just yesterday, she had been washing dishes when Tomasz walked in to grab a glass of water.
His bare shoulder had brushed against hers, a brief, accidental contact that felt like a jolt of electricity.
He had frozen, his chest rising and falling quickly as he muttered an apology.
Beata had caught the scent of his skin—warm, musky, completely male.
She hadn't stepped back.
Instead, she had let her gaze linger on his lips, watching the way they parted slightly as he registered her closeness.
Did he feel it too?
Was she just his girlfriend's mother to him?
Sometimes, when Natalia was busy staring at her phone, Beata would catch Tomasz looking at her.
It wasn't a respectful look.
It was the look of a starving man staring through a bakery window, watching the warm, sweet pastries he couldn't afford.
Beata had dressed up for dinner more often lately, wearing shirts that sat a little lower on her chest, letting her dark hair fall loose over her shoulders.
She justified it by telling herself she just wanted to feel pretty.
But deep down, she knew the truth.
She wanted him to look.
Craving to feel desired again, she would do anything to break the monotony of her existence.
Another long swig of beer did little to calm her racing thoughts.
Cheap lager tasted like copper and yeast, but it was the only comfort she had tonight.
She thought about her daughter’s coldness.
Natalia had always been distant, even as a child, preferring her own company to anyone else's.
As she grew older, that distance turned into a haughty indifference.
She treated Tomasz like an accessory, something to show off to her friends but ignore when they were behind closed doors.
It infuriated Beata.
To have such a prize and throw it away, to starve a man who was willing to worship the ground she walked on.
It was a sin.
---
Slowly, Beata set her beer bottle down on the nightstand.
Worn wood was scarred by years of water rings and dropped cigarettes.
She slid her legs out from under the faded duvet, her bare feet touching the cold linoleum floor.
A shiver ran up her legs, but her core remained burning hot.
She stood up and walked over to the full-length mirror hanging on the back of her closet door.
Speckled with age, the glass reflected a woman who refused to fade quietly.
Forty-five.
Her breasts were still full, pushing against the thin lace of her black nightgown.
Her hips were wide, curved in a way that Natalia’s boyish figure could never match.
She traced the line of her collarbone, sliding her fingers down to the valley between her breasts.
Her skin was warm, pulsing with life.
Why should she spend her remaining years in the dark, pretending she was dead?
There was no reason to starve just because her daughter was too foolish to eat.
Through the wall, a sudden rustle of blankets broke her trance.
She pressed her ear back to the plaster, her heart hammering.
"Tomasz, stop," Natalia grumbled, her voice muffled by a pillow.
"I said no. Go sleep on the couch if you're going to keep tossing and turning."
A heavy silence followed.
Beata could practically hear Tomasz’s teeth grinding.
Palpable rejection hung in the air, a thick, suffocating cloud that drifted through the cracks in the doorframe.
She felt a pang of intense sympathy for him, mixed with a dark, dangerous thrill.
He was completely alone in his frustration.
Just like her.
Quiet settled over the apartment once more, but it was a tense, fragile quiet.
Beata returned to her bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress.
She picked up her beer again, but her hand was shaking.
Raw desperation in Tomasz's muffled groans had triggered something deep inside her, a wave of unquenched, suffocating loneliness.
It was a physical ache, a hollow void in her chest that demanded to be filled.
She realized, with a sudden, terrifying clarity, that her youth was slipping away in this quiet domestic purgatory.
If she didn't grab onto life now, she never would.
She would end up an old, bitter woman, dying alone in this rotting apartment.
Footsteps suddenly echoed from the other room.
They were heavy, deliberate, and entirely lacking the stealth of someone trying not to wake their partner.
Beata froze, the beer bottle hovering inches from her lips.
She listened, her entire body rigid with anticipation.
Opening with a sharp click of the latch, the bedroom door swung wide.
Tomasz was leaving.
He had finally had enough of the cold back, the silent treatment, and the endless rejection.
A sharp creak from the hallway floorboards signals that Tomasz has left the bedroom in the dark, and his heavy footsteps stop directly outside Beata's half-open door.