Windows lit from the inside

There was a new girl here today, at the student house next door. The house next to mine hadn't always been a student accommodation house. The middle aged owner had converted it a few years after the small branch of a famous university had opened up in our town. It was easy money. Though, or maybe as a by product of that, he hadn't done any big renovations and thus the boarding house was really just a regular house converted slightly for student use. The rooms were small and old and the insulation was shitty. I know this because my house, next door, is exactly the same. It was probably because of these reasons that the student residents of the house constantly changed, shifting in and out as they found new, better accommodation only for new students to take their places once they left. This year, as with every new year, there was a new girl. I watched her from my back porch, over the low wall separating our houses, as she hung up a bucket of washing on the white cord stretched across two poles which acted as a washing line. Evidently, like mine, the house next door didn't have a tumble dryer. The girl was petite with straight light brown hair. The colour of her hair was slightly too light to be the natural shade of someone with her medium brown skin tone so I assumed she’d dyed it. It was cut in a neat bob style with a fringe that, true to name, bobbed with the movement of her head. She wore a tight brown vest that showcased her slender shoulders and small breasts and her shorts were of the puffy, high-waisted athletic types that all former high school girls wore for years. I had a pair just like them from my high school athletics team except mine were dark green while hers were navy blue. On her feet were fluffy blue slippers. They looked worn and comfortable and gave me the feeling I often got from looking at things that were well loved or well used. It was similar to the feeling I got from glancing into the lit windows of houses as I walked past them at night while coming home from my aunt or from a late night trip to the corner store. It wasn't like I intentionally looked into peoples houses. I'd just be drawn to the light, like a moth, and sometimes I'd catch sight of domestic scenes that had nothing to do with me. They gave me a sense of being ‘outside’. Of being ‘other’. Knowing I'd probably never get to know those people and that other people had entire lives outside of my own. It's not like before accidentally seeing into one of those windows I had been under the impression that everyone's lives revolved around me. But don't we all have times where we realise there are entire worlds around us? Worlds we’ll never understand or be a part of? I thought of this as I looked at the girls slippers. I pictured her at home, in her own home, eating dinner with her family or sprawling out on a couch in front of the TV while wearing those slippers. I wondered if she felt homesick now. As I got lost in my own sentimental thoughts, the girl had begun to hang up her wet clothes. It seemed that the boarding house didn't provide pegs because she'd brought her own brand new looking ones in a small bag she took out of her pocket every now and then. She faced my yard as she neatly spread out a t-shirt and then a button up shirt by their ends and then clipped the pegs on to pin them to the line. She had an efficient way of using the pegs. Instead of using two pegs per item of washing she overlapped the edges of the t-shirt and the button up and placed a peg over the overlapped edge and then another for each of their outside edges. In this way she used three pegs on two items instead of four. I continued to watch her as she made her way across the line, there were three lines in total spread across the yard so she seemed to have no qualms in taking up one with her own washing. It was when she was directly across from me, painstakingly placing and pegging her socks, that we locked eyes. I looked away immediately. It felt kind of perverse to have been staring at her as she hung out her underthings. Sitting back on my porch as though I were watching a show. So I busied myself by rousing my dog who was asleep beside me. Pulling on his long ears and jangling his collar. "You're getting dirty, old boy, you need a bath soon. Don't you? Don't you?". My act seemed to have worked because when I looked up again she was near the end of the line hanging up a dress. I looked away. I wouldn't allow myself to be caught looking again. I thought about leaving but then thought that might just look weird, and besides, it was hot inside my shittily insulated house and there was a bit of a cool breeze outside. So I stayed put and did my best not to look her way again. But of course, It's a well known fact that as soon as you tell yourself not to do something, you’ll feel compelled to do it. And trying not to look at something or someone is one of the hardest things (not) to do. And thus, a few seconds later, I looked towards her again at exactly the same moment she looked up. This time I didn't look away as fast. I hadn't expected to look, that was all down to my traitorous, defiant subconscious, so when I suddenly found myself locking eyes with the girl again I felt like I couldn't look away. This little interaction between the girl and I where we just held eye contact felt like minutes to my anxious mind when in reality it had probably lasted a second. I was debating whether to throw myself to the ground to break the staring contest when the girl smiled. There was no meaning behind that smile.Nothing flirtatious or suggestive - just the pulling up of the corners of her mouth, like an instinct. I felt the corners of my mouth pull up in a similar fashion, the same human instinct. We don't even have to think about it. When someone looks at you, you smile. When someone smiles at you, you smile back. We looked away in unison, she returned to her washing and I went back to annoying my dog in order to look busy. I definitely couldn't go inside now. Wouldn't it look suspicious if, right after we smiled at each other, I just got up and left? What would she think? The more I thought about it the more I realised how much I was over thinking. She probably wouldn't even notice. Still, I stayed outside, patting my dog and trying to enjoy the breeze. A few seconds later and she finished hanging up her washing. I didn't look up but I felt her look in my direction - maybe to smile at me again in a polite goodbye. Though maybe I imagined it. Then she went back inside the boarding house with the empty bucket. As soon as she left I got up too, planning to go inside my own house. Maybe another girl would come out to hang up her washing on this hot day and I'd be compelled to look at her too, resulting in another awkward moment. I decided I'd rather sit inside my stuffy house and think about the idea of windows lit from the inside.