Dear Paris:

The Dream Man Next Door

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Copyright © 2019 - Laura Paulsen

All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

Sharon made herself comfortable in her fluffy pink house suit, with a plate of chocolate muffins and a cup of Capucchino, with lots of whipped cream on it, on her cozy couch in the living room. Criminal Minds, one of her favorite series. Today she had already seen "News 24", a few soaps and "The perfect dinner" and after the crime thriller the celebrity magazine "Red, stars and lifestyle" would follow.

It was a perfectly normal, average day in Sharon's life. Television consumption today was limited. She had repeatedly taken TV breaks and in the course of the day cleaned the apartment, washed laundry and had been shopping. But there were other days as well. Days on which she sat down in front of the television for breakfast in the morning and only switched it off in the evening to go to sleep. Only interrupted by toilets and kitchen corridors.

Tomorrow the annual "Jungle Camp" would start again. She was really looking forward to it. It was always fun for her to watch the more or less prominent participants arguing, passing disgusting exams or just talking. Even though it was trash TV, a television program with little level, she had her pleasure in it. For her it was good entertainment that sweetened the evening she spent alone in her living room on the couch. Why shouldn't I?

What else did she have to do but sit in front of the TV? Of course she took care of her household, and that even very neatly, and she went shopping. After all, people do not live by watching television alone, they also have to eat something. Whereby the "eating something" with pleasure degenerated into regular eating orgies. She lived alone, was single for four years. So there was no one with whom she shared her life and who could tell her about her and their eating orgies. Someone who did something with her and maybe even kicked her in the ass in a friendly way if she was so phlegmatic and let herself go. Although also the parents and her sister Melanie made some remarks about her appearance and her inertia from time to time. But how she really lived, sitting in front of the TV all day, she didn't tell anyone. The contact to her family was not very close, especially not the contact to her parents. She saw and spoke these only sporadically.

Sharon had never been the slimmest. She had always been a little overweight. Even as a child she had been a little dumpling, which earned her one or the other bad remark of other children already at that time. Now that she was unemployed and no longer had a regular working day, she had gained even more weight within two years due to the little exercise and her unrestrained desire to eat. She was now at a weight of 122 kilos with a height of 1.65m. She even understood it when she was not seen as the ideal candidate for a new position in sales. In the meantime, she had applied for about 250 positions. Ten applications per month were mandatory. It was in her integration agreement with the job center. Of course there were not so many vacancies in bakeries and she was obliged to apply as a salesperson in other areas as well. She had already applied to discounters, snack bars, delicatessens, beverage stores and boutiques. But also as a kitchen aid and for serving food in schools.

No one had wanted to hire her. Sometimes she cheated a little, and in her application list for the job centre she also mentioned a few companies where she had only copied the address from the Internet, but had never applied. Finding ten vacancies a month that matched her was not easy, especially after such a long time. She couldn't have to the same companies she had already applied to.

From tomorrow, however, there would be a change in their daily routine for a short time. From tomorrow she had to go to application training, to which she had been ordered by the job center. They called it an "invitation", but if you stayed away from the "invitation", you had to reckon with sanctions, which meant that part of your unemployment benefit was cancelled - for up to three months. So she bit the bullet and would take part in these five days of application training starting tomorrow. Although she didn't think it would get her anywhere. What she lacked was no knowledge of the competition but a handsome figure. Surely nobody expected a bakery saleswoman or a saleswoman in general to have model measurements, but also not to look like a walrus.

At least the application training would make sure that she got out of her apartment and among people. For a long time she left the apartment almost exclusively to do her shopping. Sometimes she would visit someone. That was usually her sister. Or there used to be an appointment at the job center. But otherwise she avoided going out since she got fatter and fatter. So she didn't have to listen to stupid comments about her looks or endure the disparaging glances she kept meeting.

But she also knew that if things went on like this, she would gain more weight and at some point she would hardly be able to move. She already noticed that climbing the stairs was more difficult for her and that her joints were aching and that she was very tired very quickly when she walked a little bit. She was out of condition - and that at just 32 years of age! What if she should actually get a job? How should she manage the work with her overweight and her current bad condition at all? The work in sales was physically exhausting, because you could hardly ever sit down, at most in a short breather when there was no customer in the shop or during lunch break. But these thoughts she pushed aside with pleasure, just like again tonight.

She bit off one of the chocolate muffins with relish and licked the chocolate crumbs from her mouth.

"Yum!"

Freshly baked, still lukewarm inside and peppered with chocolate chips. If she could do anything, then it was bake and cook.

Well, at least something I'm good for, she thought and put the rest of the muffin in her mouth. Also the other five muffins on her plate had to believe it on this television evening. For a short moment the guilty conscience arose to have eaten all six muffins in a row again. She could have divided the muffins into two evenings or eaten half of them for breakfast the next morning. That would certainly have been better for her figure and a first beginning to lose weight.

But the guilty conscience only lasted for a moment. She was full, it had tasted good and she felt a bit happy somehow. The fact that chocolate released happiness hormones was well known - so you could also see that she had done something good for herself. She had done something for a little luck. Even if this happiness lasted only for a short time. The cat's jammer usually followed.

He also did not miss this evening. For when she slipped out of her jogging suit at midnight and into her pyjamas, she took a look in the mirror of her wardrobe. What she saw there she didn't like at all - and all of a sudden the feelings of happiness and the good mood that she was in just a few minutes ago, on her couch in front of the TV, fell over.

Sitting had had and turned into the opposite.

"That's not a figure, that's a disaster!" she sobbed shaking her head.

"No wonder I'm single and unemployed. Who wants to do something like that to themselves and have to see me all day or even touch me?"

She reached into her non-existent waist with both hands and turned a little back and forth to look at herself from all sides.

"Just look at that swimming tire around your belly and those thighs and that fat ass!" she shouted to her reflection.

Though fat asses were trendy right now. Yes, if only he were alone!

"If the Kardashians or Nicki Minajs of this world had these swim rings around their waist and these rammers as legs besides their fat ass, they wouldn't be so hot!"

So this day ended in a sea of tears and Sharon cried himself frustrated to sleep. Not for the first time, because the rage about her appearance and her regular craving for food overcame her regularly, in more or less large distances. Each time she decided to eat less and healthier from now on. But only a few hours later the good resolutions were mostly forgotten and the greed for the delicacies so great that they were again delightfully bitten into the next piece of cake or into a bar of chocolate.

That's exactly how it was the next morning. When she got up with big eyes at half past six because her alarm clock was ringing, the frustration of yesterday evening was almost forgotten. The memory of it, tried to repress it. She would have liked to have stayed in a cuddly, warm bed a little longer, but today her application training began and she had no choice. She had no choice but to get up.

When she pulled up the blinds and opened the window, the sun was already shining from the blue sky and the air was springlike mild.

"What a beautiful sunny day! Winter is coming to an end, at last." She stretched and stretched yawning. "It's worth going right out there. But first, have a nice breakfast. There's plenty of time before I have to go.

It doesn't start till nine o'clock, the course."

She enjoyed her breakfast, consisting of a large cup of coffee, four slices of toast bread with Nutella and a bowl of cornflakes, and surfed the Internet like every morning. There she read the latest news from all over the world on Twitter and Facebook.

"Oh shit, it's Marc's birthday today, I would have missed it if Facebook wouldn't show it to me. But you can't remember everything. Write a nice greeting right away - although I hardly hear anything from him. Actually, I might as well drop it and congratulate him on his birthday. Always those fake friends you're not really friends with....... How long has it been since I last saw him! I haven't worked with him for years Well, I'm just a nice person and think of my former colleagues".

After all, she was so absorbed in her timeline and the cute animal videos that were shown to her that she almost forgot that today was not a normal day, where she had plenty of time, but she had to go to application training. Why did time always have to go by so quickly when you were sitting at your laptop? The time seemed to become independent and to have one minute not 60 seconds more but only 30 seconds left. Everyone who surfed on the Internet probably knew this phenomenon.

Nevertheless, she managed to get ready in time, took the subway to the S-Train station on time - and there she stood waiting for the train that usually came every ten minutes, but just didn't want to come today. Suddenly a loudspeaker announcement sounded:

"Due to a technical malfunction, there are unfortunately delays in train services on the S42 line. We ask for your understanding"

Oh, great! Technical malfunction on the first day of her application training, exactly on the line she had to drive!

Sharon 's good mood, which she had still had when she got up, when she had been smiled at so beautifully by the radiant sun, vanished by the way. After a felt eternity of waiting, a train finally arrived, which was of course overcrowded with annoyed passengers. Luckily she only had to stand four stations in the crowded S-Bahn until she reached her destination. After another five minutes on foot she finally reached the building where the application training took place.

It was ten minutes after nine when she opened the door to the training room. All participants and the lecturer focused their attention on Sharon.

"Good morning. I'm Mrs. Schröder. I'm sorry I'm late, but there was a technical incident on the subway. I waited there forever."

"Good morning. Sit in an empty seat. The S-Bahn has also become really bad, these constant failures. But everyone else made it on time. The best thing to do tomorrow is to start a little earlier and include this in your schedule, which could happen something unforeseen. This is part of the foresighted planning, which I teach you here in application training, among other things. You never know what's gonna happen and what's coming."

The lecturer's voice had an instructive, strict undertone that Sharon didn't like at all. This could become something, with that!

From one of the seats she heard the muffled voice of a man who apparently spoke to his seat neighbor.

"Maybe it wasn't the S-Bahn, but the masses she was carrying around with her. You can't move that fast." Giggling followed.

Sharon gave him a nasty look. "It certainly wasn't that," she whispered to him, feeling her bright red.

Actually, she was rather reserved and not necessarily the one who reacted quick-witted. But she couldn't hold back from remarks like that. Too often she'd been hurt because of her looks.

What an asshole! She thought, but didn't want to say it. The lecturer abstained from commenting and continued with her introductory lecture, which she had interrupted because of Sharon.

It turned out during this first day of class that the man who had blasphemed Sharon was called Kai and was generally a pain in the ass. Again and again he attracted attention with cheeky sayings and comments.

"Well, this can be cheerful, with this quay," Sharon whispered to her table neighbour Sabine.

"Yes, terrible the guy!" Sabine agreed with her. "Luckily, I don't have it at home, so I'd get a divorce right away. Oh, nonsense, what do you mean, divorce? I wouldn't let that happen in my life."

Sharon giggled. "No, me neither."

Sharon got along with Sabine at first go. She was a few years older than herself, almost forty, not exactly the slimmest either, but by no means as overweight as Sharon. Beside her she could bite into her bread, which was thickly covered with meat sausage, without expecting a stupid saying I have to.

When it was finally over at 3 pm, not only Sharon found that the first day had been quite tiring. And that should go on for the rest of the week! Hopefully the next few days will be less boring. From tomorrow they wanted to start writing applications and get the right polish, as the lecturer had expressed herself.

"You'll see, with the right application. They won't be sorted out right away. You are one of the short-listed and have a good chance of receiving an invitation for an interview."

But Sharon was rather skeptical. Sure, the application should be good, not slammed. But whether what the lecturer taught them would really have such a success? Well, she'd see if it made a difference on her next applications. Today there had been primarily information on how to apply properly. You could hardly imagine what you could do wrong and what people actually did wrong! It was a mystery to Sharon how adults came up with the idea of applying without a name or address, not adding a phone number, or simply applying on a detached check sheet, handwritten and full of spelling mistakes. Either these people didn't want to get the job they were applying for and they only applied because the job center forced them to, or they simply lacked intelligence. In any case, the lecturer assured that all the applications she had submitted had actually taken place in this way.

Chapter 2

On the way home, Sharon quickly went into the discount store to buy some groceries and was happy when she finally arrived home shortly after four o'clock. From the exhausting first day of job application training and dragging the shopping all done.

Her eyes fell on a removal van standing in front of the house. Two people were about to carry a couch into the house. That must be the entry of the new neighbors among her. The apartment had been empty for the last two months after the old Mrs. Lehmann had moved to the senior citizens' residence. I hope they were nice people.

As Sharon slowly followed the men up the stairs with the couch, she saw a young man standing in the door of Mrs. Lehmann's former apartment. The two men put the couch upright in front of the apartment door.

"Go by first, young lady," said the older of the two men.

Sharon thanked and greeted the handsome blonde man standing at the front door.

"Are you the new tenant? I'm Sharon Schröder and I live right above them." She hoped that didn't sound too curious.

"Hello! Yes, I'm the new tenant. Joshua Miller. Well, here's to good neighborhood!"

He smiled at her friendly and Sharon noticed his bright blue eyes. She would have liked to have stopped and exchanged a few words with this Mr. Miller. But that seemed a little too pushy for her.

The men were certainly more interested in the couch and all the other furniture and cartons that were still in the removal van, in the than chatting with her. But as soon as she was in her apartment, her curiosity did not let her go and she could not help but run to the window and, standing behind the curtain, watch as the men unloaded the transporter.

"Joshua Miller," she murmured to herself. "Not bad. He'd be something for me."

But in the next moment she gave her joy about the new acquaintance a damper herself.

"As if he'd even look at me! He greeted me friendly, why not, as a new neighbour, but there probably won't be anything more. He certainly doesn't like the hippopotamus I am."

She turned her eyes away from the window and went into the kitchen to finally unpack her groceries and prepare dinner. Spaghetti with Bolognese sauce should be here today. Freshly boiled Bolognese sauce, no instant sauce. She didn't put anything like that on the table. Even though she had little money and let herself go, she at least cooked with fresh ingredients as far as possible and was not a fast food junkies. Well, the one or other frozen pizza also found its way into her stomach, just like she liked to get herself a kebab. But since cooking was her passion, she rarely had ready meals.

While she was cooking, she was constantly thinking about her new neighbour. Again and again she ran to the window and took a look at the transporter that was still standing in front of the front door.

I don't even know this guy! Maybe he has a wife or girlfriend, maybe he isn't as likeable as he seemed at first glance, she tried to persuade herself. But her thoughts just didn't want to wander away from him.

"This hasn't happened to me for a long time, that somebody fascinates me like that".

Shaking her head, she wrapped some spaghetti on the fork, led it to her mouth - and jumped open immediately when she heard the door under her open and the men said goodbye to each other. She pressed her ear against the apartment door to hear better. But then the door under her closed and she heard the footsteps of the men down the stairs.

She ran quickly to the window. The two men who had just carried the couch up the stairs got into the furniture van and drove away. The move was obviously done. It was quiet under her. A woman's voice had not yet been heard and there had been no woman to be seen. At least Joshua Miller seemed to have moved into the apartment alone.

She sat down again at the table and ate on. The tabloid magazine "Taff" ran on television, but she didn't listen at all today. While eating the dessert, a chocolate cream pudding, she suddenly paused and dropped the spoon into the cup.

"If I keep eating like this, he won't look at me! I have to stop stuffing myself like this!"

She felt a tear rolling down her cheek. "My whole life would be different if I wasn't so fat! I might have a chance with Joshua and I might finally find a job again - and besides, I wouldn't always sweat so fast and get out of breath so fast. My knees already hurt when I walk stairs. I'll ruin my health if I don't finally do something. But it is the only thing I enjoy - eating, cooking, baking, and of course watching TV and surfing the Internet. What else have I got?"

As more tears ran down her cheeks, she picked up her chocolate pudding again and ate it further.

"Now I've started it, now I'm eating it too. He won't end up in the garbage. But at least I could start with some sport today. Afterwards, when I watch a movie, I'll do some exercises."

That was easier said than done. It wasn't her first attempt at sports. Again and again she had failed and gave up her plan before she had really started. Around 8 pm, when she was sitting in front of the news, she still felt too full of dinner and postponed her sport exercises to 9 pm. At 9 pm, in the middle of the film, she thought that she wanted to start sports today, but didn't feel like getting up and starting. It was just so nice and comfortable on the couch and the film exciting! At 10 pm, when the film was over and she was zapping on another programme, she wondered if she shouldn't start playing sports tomorrow. One day is no longer important.

But then her guilty conscience began to move. She knew she would have the same excuses every night, shifting the sport to the next day every day if she didn't just start. She knew herself and had to admit that this had always been the case. So she decided to start with very simple exercises from the couch, set the timer on her phone to ten minutes and did some loosening and stretching exercises on her arms and legs while sitting. The ten minutes seemed to drag on forever and seemed almost like an hour to her. But she at least held out - and when she wanted to get some sweets from the kitchen afterwards as a reward, she pulled herself together, overcame her desire for sweets and simply drank her cup of tea instead. Then she surfed another one a bit on the Internet, until she finally went to sleep around 11 pm and fell asleep with the thoughts of her new neighbor.

The second day of application training was as boring as the first. Sharon would have preferred to drop out of the course and not go back. She didn't see much sense in this class. She knew how to write an application and how to behave in an interview. Anyway, she didn't think she'd learn much in this course. Even if the lecturer emphasized again and again that they would be amazed at how much the training would bring them. A large part of the participants seemed to have no interest at all in the application training and to participate only forcedly in it. These participants seemed correspondingly unmotivated. While the teacher was trying to give lessons, some participants were busy with their mobile phones and did not listen to the teacher at all. Until he burst his collar and she had an absolute ban on mobile phones during lessons. Which in turn led to heated discussions. Even though Sharon was only compelled to participate, she was at least quiet, listening most of the time, unless she was absent with her thoughts, and tried to take at least a little bit of knowledge with her. As on the first day, however, she was happy when the lessons finally came to an end at fifteen o'clock after six long hours. She said goodbye to Sabine, wished her a nice remaining day and hurried home. You might have thought someone was waiting for her at home. But she just wanted to get away and make herself comfortable on her couch at home.

Arriving home, she noticed a motorcycle outside her front door that had never been there before. I wonder if it belonged to the new neighbor. If so, then he must have been home by now. Maybe she met him right in the stairwell.

She felt a little nervousness coming up, bit herself on her dry lips, stroked a strand of hair from her face and didn't know how to look inconspicuously up at his window without him noticing if he stood at the window and saw her. What was wrong with her? How could this strange man she knew nothing about make her so nervous?

She slowly pulled her key out of her handbag, then spent a lot of time looking for mail in her mailbox to increase the chance that she would meet him in the stairwell. But nothing happened. There was no mail in the mailbox, only advertising from the pizza service, which she immediately threw into the waiting trash. Slowly she walked up the stairs, stopped for a moment in front of his apartment door. Nothing. Nothing. No noise came out of the apartment and the door didn't open either. She couldn't stay outside his door for long, she knew that, because it would look a little strange if he suddenly opened the door, and she would stand in front of him. It would look like she was listening. Which she did somehow, even if she didn't put her ear to the door, as she had done at her own door, but just stood in the stairwell. So she didn't stay long in front of Joshua Miller's apartment door and walked on, one staircase higher into her own apartment.

But only five minutes later she was walking through the stairwell again, a garbage bag in her hand. It was the first time she had grabbed the garbage right after coming home to take it down. Normally she took a break before she started with the household chores. But today was different. She really wanted to see Joshua again and hoped to meet him. This time she did not stop at Joshua Siebert's door but simply walked past it. Everything else would have been a bit conspicuous, if he had noticed something, she said to herself. She didn't even know if he was in the apartment at all. Back in her apartment from the garbage dump, she shook her head about her behavior.

"Man, what's my problem? I don't even know this guy! I've seen him once before, for a minute, that's it - and I'm pretending here it's my great love!"

On the other hand, she had to admit that it was not reprehensible to fall in love with someone at first sight - or at least to develop sympathies for someone at first sight and to find him interesting. What spoke against that? Besides, this Joshua had a positive effect on her. She had started off with a little exercise, which she hadn't done for years, and yesterday she had managed to give up the candy she had wanted to get from the kitchen after exercise, and even now while she was preparing dinner, bratwurst with potatoes and sauerkraut, she decided to skip the portion a little smaller than it would normally have been. Instead of three there were two sausages, she had cooked one potato less and the portion of sauerkraut with deliciously crispy fried bacon was not as big as usual. Instead of choosing her beloved large chocolate pudding for dessert, she decided on a small fruit yoghurt. After all, it was a start.

After dinner, she googled her new neighbor. She didn't find out much about him. He was on Facebook, just like her, but she couldn't find out anything about him except his profile picture because his profile wasn't public. He had protected it, as she herself did with her profile. Only his profile photo was able to see her as well as his place of residence. She would have had to send him a friend request first, and he would have had to confirm it to find out more about him and get insight into his chronicle.

"What a bummer! I can't just send him a friend request. Nah, I can't...He's wondering why I've been so.

We'll send a friend request to our neighbor, even though we don't know each other yet. We haven't talked more than the words of welcome when we moved in. I let the search be for him now times and look what there is on Youtube in sports videos. But it's a nice picture of him. His blue eyes are showing to advantage."

After playing a few sports videos, she decided on one where Pilates for beginners was taught. That seemed the best thing for her. So she put on her sweatpants and started her first Pilates training. The video went half an hour, but already after ten minutes she had had enough and gave up wheezing and sweating. It was something else to participate in the training on the video than simply doing ten minutes of movement exercises.

"I can't go on! How am I supposed to hold this shit for 30 minutes? I can't take any more, it's too much for me!" Breathing heavily, she leaned on the couch and paused for a moment until her breath became more even and calm and her pulse stopped beating so fast.

Furious at her inability to keep up the whole video, she stomped into the kitchen and ate the chocolate pudding she had renounced after dinner. While she ate it, she encouraged herself a little.

After all, I did something at all and ten minutes are quite nice for the beginning, better than nothing. Yesterday I already did ten minutes of gymnastics on the couch. The only thing I shouldn't have eaten was the pudding, that's what's going to put back the calories I've just trampled on. On the other hand, I would normally have eaten the pudding without exercising. So it did do something, I guess."

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