I Kissed The Boy Next Door Read online

  “We’re moving to Texas,” his dad had announced.

  Texas. Dry. Hot. Dusty. He hadn’t found anything he liked about Texas, and he didn’t fit in there from day one. It was just as well because the only purpose of going there seemed to be for his parents’ marriage to crumble.

  Now what? Now, he was here with dumb ol’ dad because Mom didn’t have her life together yet.

  “I can barely support myself,” she’d said, “much less you and your sister. Go with your father. Your old friends are there, and the town you remember. Play basketball and enjoy your senior year. Maybe by the time you graduate, I’ll be better situated.”

  Yeah right. And maybe by then she won’t want him any more than she does now.

  He picked up his cell phone and typed in a text. He attached Lucy’s number to it. U good at unpacking?

  His phone lit a minute later. Need me 2 do your dirty work?

  Unashamed he sent his reply. Yes.

  A thump at the window brought him up from the bed. He stared into her face through the glass. Her hair was damp and stuck to her cheeks, and her face was flushed. He pushed up the sash. She extended her hand through the opening, and taking hold, he hauled her inside.

  “I can see we’re going to make a habit of this,” she said. She scanned the boxes in the corner. “You have any idea what’s in what box?”

  He shook his head. “No, my sister packed it all.”

  She leveled her gaze at him. “Your little sister? Isn’t she here?” Her look said and-she-could-do-this.

  “My ‘little sister’ is fifteen,” he replied, “and no, she’s staying with our aunt for the summer. She wanted to help with the move, but I told her not to bother. So it’s just me and dad.”

  “Dad? Where’s your mom?” She turned her back to him and yanking the tape from the flaps of the top box, pulled it open. She then eyed the dresser drawers.

  “Texas. They’re divorced.”

  She stopped in place. “Oh. I’m sorry. I …”

  He waved his hand. “Forget it. You didn’t know.” And you would have found out anyhow. He held the thought in.

  “Well,” she said, “I won’t ask, but you know, it’ll be a long summer if you think on it too much.”

  Leaning back on the headboard of his bed, he folded his hands behind his head. “How about you take my mind off of it?”

  She pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest, an action which thrust her breasts higher, a not too unpleasing effect.

  “How exactly am I to do that?”

  “Well, what were your plans for the summer?”

  She apparently noticed the direction of his gaze because she lowered her arms. “I’m not sure I had any plans past the usual – sleep in, watch TV, maybe go swimming.”

  “Aw, c’mon,” he said, “Boys aren’t knocking down your door? You don’t have three dates lined up already?”

  He found it hard to believe she didn’t. Were the guys in this town blind?

  She placed one hand on the bedpost, seeming to pause and think because her brow wrinkled and her eyebrows drew together. “No one’s knocking down my door. But there was a boy who I caught watching me from his window.”

  He grinned. “Oh? And what did you think of that?”

  “I thought he looked familiar, yet he didn’t,” she said.

  Jackson traced the curve of her waist with his eyes. “What wasn’t familiar about him?”

  “He’s older, more serious, and super tall.”

  His pulse throbbed steady in his fingertips. “And what was familiar?”

  She approached him, and he gazed up at her. “He has beautiful eyes and great lips.”

  At that, Jackson peeled himself from the bed, standing so close the heat from her still damp skin kissed his. “Why do I think this will be the best summer ever?” he asked. “At least, the best since a pretty girl kissed me.”

  She licked her lips, and he followed the flick of her tongue.

  “And why,” she began, “do I feel like I’m going to really like the boy next door?”

  CHAPTER 3

  When Jackson sent his third text and received no response, he rechecked the time. What was she doing? Pocketing his phone, he climbed out the window and crossed the lawn, the dewy grass moistening his feet.

  He stopped at the base of her window. Her drapes were drawn. Maybe she wasn’t in her room. She could be somewhere else. But if that was the case, why was she ignoring his texts?

  He gave a peremptory knock on the glass and after a few minutes, the drapes quivered and the window slid up.

  Lucy covered a yawn with her hand.

  “You’re sleeping?” he asked. She’d definitely been sleeping. Her hair was mussed and a red mark trailed down her left cheek.

  She blinked through sleep-thickened lashes. “Yes, I was.”

  “But it’s nine o’clock.”

  Nine o’clock, and he’d been up since six. He’d waited until eight to text her.

  She stared at him, her mind evidently befuddled, then a sudden light came to her pupils. “Didn’t I say my summer plans involved sleeping in?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But I’m bored.”

  “Bored.” Repeating the word, she gathered her hair in her right hand and lifted it off her neck. The edge of her pajama top rose in his view.

  “Yes, and when I’m bored I …”

  She cut him off. “Do I want to know this? Or were you going to say ‘annoy the neighbor’?”

  He grinned. “That too.”

  She rubbed at her eyes. “How ‘bout you go to the front door and I’ll let you in. Don’t think my mom or brother would appreciate you climbing in the window.”

  No. Probably not. He gave a nod and headed toward the front of the house.

  She arrived at the front door dressed in a ratty pair of cut-off blue jeans and an extremely tight tank top. She looked down at herself when his gaze traveled. “What? It was the first thing I could find.”

  “I’m not complaining,” he said.

  She blew out a puff of air and sank onto one hip. “Do you ever think of anything else?”

  He leaned over her, an action that seemed to throw her sense of balance off. “Let’s see. I’m an eighteen-year-old male. No. Not really.”

  She laughed then and whirling around, moved into the house, leaving him to follow.

  The living room was homey. A well-loved couch and matching set of chairs sat before a brick fireplace and white wooden mantel lined with photographs – mostly of Lucy and her brother at various ages. However, there was a family picture on the end. Lucy looked to be about four.

  “I was cute,” she said.

  He took in her blonde pigtails and thigh-high dress. “And still are.”

  This brought a playful smack on his arm. He laughed and looked back at the image. Her father stood to her mother’s right. He’d heard her father died when she was ten.

  “You miss him?” he asked.

  She stepped up beside him, her head level with his shoulder. “All the time. Still sometimes I think he’ll come walking down the hall, lift me up in his arms, and throw me in the air like he used to do.”

  Her words struck him, and he gulped. He knew the feeling, though his mother wasn’t dead. But she was miles away, living her new life without her children.

  She glanced up at him. “You hungry?”

  He shoved the thought aside. “I could eat.”

  She waved him forward through a cluttered mudroom and into the kitchen. The kitchen was wide and spacious like what you’d see in a farmhouse. White cabinets circled the right-hand wall, interrupted by a large bay window hung over a farmer’s sink. A kitchen island sat in the center.

  He met the gaze of her brother when he entered.

  “Tray, this is Jackson Phillips. He moved in next door.”

  Tray, whose actual name was Travis, jerked his chin upward.

  Jackson stared for a moment, taken aback. He’d only ever seen her brother fr
om a distance, and that was three years ago. But having just looked at her dad’s picture, he had to look twice. The resemblance was unreal.

  Lucy waved Jackson toward the island. “Sit,” she said.

  He claimed a stool in time to see her bend over into the refrigerator. Nice. He refocused his gaze on Travis’s face. Polite conversation would be better than what his brain kept doing.

  “‘Sup?” he asked.

  Her brother raised his coffee cup, steam drifting before his face. He took a noisy slurp. “Not much.”

  Lucy straightened and moved to a cabinet, the refrigerator door swishing shut behind her. Travis sat his cup down with a thunk. And Lucy stooped over, reaching onto a lower shelf. She really must stop doing that.

  Jackson tried to stop his wandering gaze, too late.

  Her brother turned around to view his sister’s extended butt then faced forward, one side of his mouth curled upward.

  “So tell me,” Travis said, “you got a girlfriend?”

  Lucy slammed the cabinet too hard, and Jackson jumped in place. “N-no,” he stuttered.

  “You looking?”

  Setting her pan down on the stove, Lucy revolved on her heel and riveted her eyes on the back of her brother’s head. “Travis, cut it out.”

  Travis smirked and waved his hands, palm outward. “Just wondering.”

  She turned around and stretched a groping hand over her head to lift a bowl from an upper shelf. And her top crept up, revealing the slender curve of her waist. “Don’t let him bug you,” she said, setting the bowl on the counter.

  “Ain’t me that’s bugging him,” Travis said to her back.

  And he was right about that. Did she not know how she looked? Or did she not care? Jackson drew figure eights on the counter with his fingertip.

  Lucy flicked her brother a glance. “Don’t you have to wash your truck or something?”

  Ignoring the shake of his head, she returned to her cooking. Soon the heady aroma of frying bacon wafted through the room. The pop of the toaster and smell of eggs followed. Within minutes, she set a plate before him. She then fetched her own and joined him around the island.

  Her brother gave her the eye. “Nothing for me?” he asked. “You feed the neighbor, but not your own brother?”

  She paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “I like him better.”

  Jackson covered his grin with a strip of bacon.

  Travis returned to nursing his cup of coffee, and Jackson bent over his plate. For a while the only sound was the clinking of forks and chewing of food. It was as Jackson lifted the last bite to his mouth that Lucy’s phone buzzed.

  Twisting around on the stool, she pressed the button and leaned over the screen. Her face took an on interesting expression.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” Jackson asked.

  She didn’t respond, but instead pushed the phone beneath his nose. He looked from her to the phone before reading the text. It true Jackson P lives next door?

  His voice raised. “Jackson P.”

  Word spread quickly. He scrolled up the screen. “Esther?” he asked. “The Esther? Esther, ‘Hey, Jackson,’ Esther?”

  She nodded. “The same.”

  She laid a finger on her nose. “Hmm …”

  “Oh no,” Travis said, “I don’t like that look or that sound. You are not doing it, whatever it is.”

  “Aw, don’t be a spoil sport. You don’t even know what I want to do.”

  Jackson stared at her. She hadn’t denied she wanted to do something. But what was it?

  “I know how you are,” Travis continued. “And you are not sucking me in this time.” He made to stand to his feet, but she snatched at his sleeve. Coffee sloshed from his mug onto the counter.

  “But we need your help. Please, just this once,” she begged. “I’ll wash your truck.”

  Travis hesitated, his eyes sharp on her face. “The whole thing this time? Including the tires?”

  “The whole thing, and Jackson here will help.”

  Jackson set his fork down on his plate. “What exactly is Jackson being volunteered to do?”

  The visual image of Lucy washing her brother’s truck now lingered in his mind. Suds. Water. Lucy.

  She smiled at him. “You said you were bored, so I’m thinking we do a reenactment for old time’s sake. Then you help me wash Tray’s truck.”

  “A reenactment.” He wrapped his mind around the phrase. Reenactment of what?

  She fiddled with her phone, calling up the camera, and stuck it out in her palm. “On three take the picture.”

  Travis looked down at it as if it was diseased.

  “Just do it,” she said. “It’ll be fun.” She shoved her hand forward. “Take it.”

  Her brother finally gave in, reluctantly pointing the phone’s camera toward her face. “What exactly am I taking a picture of? Esther knows what you look like.”

  Yeah, picture of what? Jackson turned to her. What was working in her fast-thinking brain?

  “This,” she said, and she grasped his cheeks in her hands and kissed him.

  CHAPTER 4

  God-Almighty, kissing Jackson again was a fine thing. He was shocked. My brother was shocked, though not enough to forget to snap the shot, and I was electrified. I can’t explain it otherwise. His lips pressed against mine, all I wanted was for that moment to go on forever.

  And he felt it too. His hand drifted to my face.

  But Travis had to go and ruin the whole thing.

  “That’s enough,” he growled. He slid me my phone. “If Mom saw what you’re doing, she’d have your hide.”

  He was right. But it wouldn’t be the first time; I was always doing some stunt.

  I snatched up my phone and called up the picture. There it was in perfect detail. His lips on mine, our faces smashed together. I attached it to a text, tagged Esther, and hit send.

  “Sweet,” I said.

  “Yeah right. You’re crazy.” Travis pulled his keys from his pocket and tossed them on the counter. “You owe me now, and it’d better be good or I’m telling Mom. Then your friend here will be exiled.” He pointed at Jackson.

  I highly doubted that. Mom would like Jackson; she’d remember him from the old days.

  “Never fear, dear brother,” I said. “It’ll be clean as a whistle.”

  My phone buzzed then and buzzed and buzzed. Esther went and forwarded the picture to all our friends, and I laughed because the next place it would end up was on the internet. I was right too.

  I dashed to our computer, dragging Jackson after me, and logged in. And there it was. She’d tagged me in it. “This is the best,” I said, and I spun around in the chair.

  I expected him to be smiling, laughing … something. But my face fell because he wasn’t.

  “Jackson?” I asked. My voice became quiet.

  He’d crouched down to my eye height, and I stared into those eyes feeling like I was free-falling with no net to catch me.

  “Are you mad at me?” I asked.

  Sometimes my stunts made people mad, and generally speaking, I usually didn’t care. They always got over it. But the thought of Jackson being upset gave me strange pains.

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve asked. I should’ve thought,” I said.

  “Let me ask you something,” he said.

  I waited, my insides twirling around. I’d do about anything for him not to be mad.

  “What if next time you let me kiss you?”

  The next time. That there’d be a next time meant he wasn’t all that mad.

  “Would that be okay?” he asked.

  I swallowed hard. “That would be … fine.”

  “Just fine?” he asked.

  Better than fine. It’d be heavenly. Amazing. Perfect. I ran out of adjectives.

  “No, more than fine.”

  He smiled and took hold of the ends of my hair, rolling it between his fingers. “Okay then. ‘Til next time. Now, I think we owe your brother a cle
an truck.”

  ***

  Lucy McKinsey in cut-offs and a very wet tank top, her hair covered in suds, completely made his day. Nevermind that she’d kissed him – again – without his permission. But her subdued attitude after and the concerned look on her face said she’d not repeat it.

  He wanted to kiss her. Already on the first day of summer vacation, he wanted it, but the timing had to be right. And it’d be the kiss of the century, not the wild things she’d thrown at him, twice.

  Having drenched themselves washing the truck, and her way more than him once he got hold of the water hose, they settled on the stoop to dry in the afternoon sun and contemplate the rest of the day. It was his suggestion they go somewhere.

  “But we don’t have a car,” she said.

  He rose to his feet and extended his hand. She grasped it and popped up like a cork.

  “You don’t have a car,” he said, “but I do.”

  He headed back to his house, not waiting for her, and entered the front door. Moving through and into the garage, he mashed the garage door button and listened as the huge metal doors clicked and clanked in their swoop upwards. Lucy stood there in the driveway, her eyes growing huge the higher they moved.

  “This is your car?” she asked.

  He smiled and nodded. “Do you like it?”

  “Boy, do I!” She dashed into the garage and ran her fingers down the arching lines of a 1973 Chevy Corvette convertible, pausing at the hood to plaster herself on it. “How do I look?”

  For a moment, his breath wouldn’t come. He hacked and sputtered. “G-good. You look good.”

  “Can we drive it?” She rose from the hood and circled around to the driver’s seat. “Can we drive it and make sure Travis sees?” She altered her question.

  He smiled. “Yes, but maybe you should change.”

  She glanced down at herself. “Right. Something dry.”

  Something less revealing.

  Hopping across the ground, she spun around and ran backwards a few steps. “Be back in five.”

  Jackson watched her go, shaking his head, then gazed back at the car. It always drew attention, as she’d suggested, especially from guys. It was really more his dad’s car than his, but the way he figured it, his dad would have no room to complain where he took it given the state of things between them.