Girls Next Door

by Sandy Lowe

  She gave Kris a lingering kiss that made her entire body feel like it could burst into needy flames. “I mean it, though.”

  Haven leaned back and gave her a soft smile. “I believe you.” She moved away and headed toward the front door. “I’m away for a shoot for a couple of days. Dinner when I get back?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Haven shot her a quick smile before the screen door slammed closed behind her. Kris blew out a breath and headed upstairs for some quality time with her vibrator.

  *

  She showed up at Haven’s door three days later with a bottle of wine and a case of nerves. Over the previous three days they’d sent more than twenty texts. Though there’d been plenty of innuendo, there’d also been a lot of texts that were simply getting to know one another. Fun, casual conversation that made Kris ache for Haven to come home again. She missed her presence, missed knowing she was right next door. Not to mention, Reed was desperate for an introduction to Haven’s employees and couldn’t stop talking about her. When the text came asking if Kris wanted to have dinner at Haven’s, she’d jumped at the chance. Now the butterflies in her stomach seemed like they were on speed.

  Haven answered the door, and Kris nearly dropped the bottle of wine. A tight white tank top hugged her perfect breasts, and low-slung jeans showed the top of black lace panties when she led the way into the kitchen.

  “Good trip?” Kris had to do something to distract herself.

  “Mostly. Two of the models didn’t speak English, so it turned into a kind of farce at times, but I think we got what we needed.” She handed Kris a glass of wine and took the other bottle from her to put it in the fridge.

  “I suppose sex is mostly about body language anyway, right?”

  Haven set her drink down and moved slowly toward Kris, her head tilted and the look in her eyes ravenous. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Kris set her own glass down and welcomed the feel of Haven’s waist under her hands. She met Haven’s mouth with her own, and desire swamped her. Haven moaned softly against her mouth.

  “I missed you,” Kris murmured.

  “Take me to bed,” she said, biting Kris’s lower lip.

  “Are you sure? I wouldn’t want you to think—”

  “I think I’ve got you pretty well figured out, Romeo. I’m not worried. Now fuck me into an orgasmic coma.”

  Kris didn’t need to be asked twice. She scooped Haven into her arms and carried her into the bedroom. She threw her onto the king-sized bed and quickly climbed on top of her. Clothes flew through the air as they pulled them off one another, until Kris stopped for a second to take in the beauty of Haven’s softly rounded curves, full breasts, and the dark patch between her legs that already looked wet. She carefully settled on top of her and whispered in her ear, “Tell me what you want, baby. How do you like to be fucked?” She ran her fingertips down Haven’s sides and liked the way she shivered at her touch.

  “I want your mouth on me. Slow and steady, and then suck me in.”

  Kris did exactly as requested after settling between Haven’s legs. She loved the way she moved, how sensually she reacted, the way her thighs tensed and relaxed. And, finally, the way she cried out and arched when she came. Kris didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone so beautiful. She entered her slowly, first with one finger, and then another, and when Haven moaned, she fucked her deeper and faster, until, her hands balled in the sheets, she came again, coating Kris’s hand.

  She pulled out and moved to lie beside Haven, who curled up against her. She’s a perfect fit. Kris wrapped her arms around her and they lay silently for some time. Finally, Haven looked up at her. “That’s way better than porn, if you were wondering.”

  Kris smiled and kissed the top of Haven’s head. “I wasn’t, but thanks for letting me know.” She lightly caressed Haven’s back, tracing the rose tattoo on her shoulder.

  “So, does that mean I’m the kind of girl you would take home to mom?”

  While her tone was light, Kris could sense the vulnerability in the question. “Are you kidding? My mom would be so ecstatic we’d never hear the end of it.”

  “And what about my job?”

  Kris tilted Haven’s chin up so she could look at her properly. “We’ll tell her exactly what you do. You’re an amazing woman, and I’ll hang around until you know just how amazing you are.”

  Haven snuggled closer with a contented sigh, and Kris closed her eyes. My own safe haven.

  Gold

  Giselle Renarde

  You look at me and say, “That butch could never be a gold digger.”

  Shows what you know.

  If they handed out awards, I’d be goddamn Gold Digger of the Year. Of the decade! I’ve been at it a good long time.

  Picture a gold digger right now. She’s leggy and blonde, right? Tall and slim. Long hair, meticulously coiffed. Nah, man. That’s my target demographic. These ladies of the house, lounging by their pools between collagen injections—they’re my prey. They’re sitting ducks.

  And maybe they’re gold diggers in their own right. Sure, okay, you got me there. Their much older husbands paid for these mansions they live in, paid for me to be here cutting the grass and weeding the gardens, planting new life in the springtime and tearing it out in the fall. Winter, I take it easy, watch my huge-ass TV—a gift from Lady Muck the Third.

  Not all gold diggers are in it for the jewellery. No woman in her right mind would buy me diamonds. Do I look like I’m gonna wear a goddamn tennis bracelet? I got a nice watch, one time. That was a good call. Suited me to a T.

  I still sold it, though. Damn thing paid my rent for the next eight months.

  Looking back, I should have kept that watch as an investment, like how people buy art or coins. Money’s easy to come by when you sleep with the right women. In my case, the right women are the wrong women: married to dudes who are loaded, always away on business, entertaining mistresses on the road.

  These women I work for, the poolside loungers, they’d deny it to your face if you asked them straight out: “Hey, you think your husband’s screwing another chick?”

  “Goodness, no!” they’d say, and they’d laugh the way only rich women can. “Haw-haw-haw, dear me, no. My Wellesley would never stray. He loves me, you see.”

  Yeah, sure he does. Just like he loved his first wife when he started seeing you on the side.

  Second wives always act oblivious, but they know the score.

  That’s why they fall into my trap so easy.

  Easy isn’t even the word, man. They’re putting out vibes the second me and Marco and Petey and Pip set foot on the property. Course, the vibes aren’t meant for me. Rich ladies got their eyes on strapping young men. Too bad for them Marco and Petey only have eyes for each other.

  Still, the rich ladies are shameless flirts, bringing out lemonade, swinging their hips, wearing nothing but black bathing suits cut high on the hips and low on the chest. Leaning over just right and raising their eyes and saying, “Is there anything else I can get you?”

  And by the time she says those words, I’m the only one left. The guys have taken their drinks and gone off together. Pip’s sitting across the yard nursing that reusable water bottle she brought from home.

  So now it’s just me and Lady Muck. She put it out there for the guys, but I’m the one who looks her up and down with my patented stare. I’m the one saying, “I bet it gets lonely in this big ol’ house at night.”

  She looks at me like she’s seeing me for the first time: my strong calves cut to shreds by the weed whacker, the muscular gold of my arms, short hair so sun-bleached it’s almost white. She’s a little afraid, but she likes the taste of fear. Makes her feel alive, or at least a little less bored.

  You think looks like these can’t make bank? Think again. A pretty girl would never get a cent out of these poolside women. Take Pip over there, with her skinny limbs and that face like a doll, like it would break if you looked at it too hard, and t
hat smooth brown skin glistening in the sun as she pulls grass clippings out of her perfect curls. What would Lady Muck’s rich husband do if he found out his wife was getting down with a girl like Pip?

  That’s right: He’d pull up a chair. “Go at it, ladies. I’ll get the popcorn.”

  But with me? No way. I’m a dirty secret, in every sense. What husband wants his collagen-injected wife screwing around with a hulking hunk of muscle-mama? What wife wants her high society friends finding out she’s been slumming with a gardener like me? Her knees buckle when I step inside her garden, but she doesn’t want the world to know.

  It plays to my advantage. If I make the slightest suggestion I might tell anyone we’ve been going at it like rabbits, she’ll pay me handsomely to keep my trap shut.

  Then on to the next.

  On to the next…

  I’m sitting with my back against the Millingtons’ fence, surveying my surroundings, when Pip lowers herself beside me. She doesn’t want to get her khaki shorts dirty, so she hugs her knobbly knees, keeping her feet on the ground and her butt raised off it. She opens her bag in the shade of the oldest tree on their property and says, “Finally lunchtime. This morning went by sooo slow.”

  “The Millingtons have a daughter who just got home from college.”

  I’m really just talking to myself, but Pip says, “Oh, yeah?”

  I point out the plain-looking girl reading a book in the upstairs window seat. “It’d be good to get my hands on some young blood for once. She’s not exactly a looker, but a trust fund could be just what the doctor ordered. I could retire from all this, live in the lap of luxury.”

  “Is the Millington girl a lesbian?” Pip asks.

  I give her a look like “as if that matters” while she takes two sacks of cut vegetables from her lunch bag. It’s mostly carrot sticks today. Better when she brings me snap peas and red peppers, but I’m sure she’s on a budget.

  Pip hands me a chicken wrap, and I can only hope she left out the hummus today. Before I can ask, she sighs and says, “Don’t you ever want a relationship that’s based on love instead of money?”

  “Sure,” I tell her. Take a bite of the wrap. No hummus today. Pipsqueak’s learning. “After I snag the Millington brat, that’s when I’ll worry about love. I want to be set for life before I start thinking about all that.”

  Pip asks, “Are you saying you would marry someone you didn’t love?”

  “If she’s got Millington money, you bet. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Not if I didn’t love her. I’d rather live in a shack with someone I love than live in a mansion with someone I hate.”

  I gnaw at the wrap Pip made me, gazing at the Millington girl all the while. “I doubt I’d hate her. She looks like an okay kid. And if she’s anything like her mom in the sack…”

  “Eww!” Pip slams her fist into my side so hard it hurts, but I don’t react. Don’t want to give her the satisfaction. Still, she says, “I can’t believe you slept with Old Lady Millington. She’s a million years old!”

  “She’s barely sixty. And with all the work she’s had done, she doesn’t feel a day over forty.”

  “Shut up!” Pip squeaks—hence the nickname, by the way.

  Once the girl gets riled up, I can’t help myself. “Old Lady Millington got her pussy tightened, you know.”

  “Gross!” Pip stands and kicks dirt at me. “I don’t want to hear about this.”

  “What’s the surgery called, where they make you a virgin all over again?” I can’t help myself. “You think the daughter’s still a virgin? I bet she is. Look at those glasses.”

  Pip launches her foot at my ass, and gets me good with her steel-toed boot. It’s a shocker. Enough for me to hop up and walk away, saying, “Jesus, get a grip!”

  I’m heading for Marco and Petey when Pip shouts, “You get a grip, Devon.”

  She’s never raised her voice to me before. I’m halfway across the yard, but I turn. I can’t stop myself.

  Gesturing to the Millington girl in the window, she says, “You think a girl like that would ever marry someone like you?”

  I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face, and even though I’ve been called much worse, I can’t find it in me to retaliate. I just cling to the wrap she made for me, and the carrot sticks in a baggie.

  “Bored housewives are one thing,” Pip says. “You’re not part of their real lives. You’re just a bit on the side, the human equivalent of day drinking and a mild addiction to painkillers. You marry a girl and boom, you’re real. You’re there at dinner parties and society dos. I don’t care how good you are in bed—that Millington girl wouldn’t take you to a charity ball if you were the last dyke on earth.”

  Every word makes me madder than hell, but I can’t lash out at the little doll. What’s worse is…she’s right. That’s what hurts the most. Not the words. Words are just words. It’s the truth of the matter. That’s what really gets me.

  Pip’s right. This long-term plan of mine will never work out. No blue blood in the world wants to be seen with a crass and calloused landscaper.

  I’ve always prided myself on being everyone’s dirty secret. I can’t change gears now.

  Pip doesn’t speak to me for the rest of the day. I don’t even look at her. I can’t. But I can’t stop thinking about her, either. First I’m stuck on what she said. Later, after I get home, I’m thinking about…about her. Which is something I’ve never done before. Never gave the girl a second thought.

  Who is she? Why’s she doing this work? Pretty girls usually opt for indoor vocations, and she’s scrawny for a landscaper.

  Next morning she doesn’t show up for work. Can’t help thinking it’s because of me. I call her cell but she doesn’t answer, doesn’t call me back. I don’t leave a message.

  At the end of the day I call Vik, who does the scheduling for our company. I ask him if Pip switched pods. He says, “Pip?”

  “Pipsqueak,” I tell him, then remember that’s just my nickname for her. “The girl. What’s her name? Laetitia?”

  “Lorinda?” Vik asks flatly.

  “Yeah, her. Did she switch to a different pod?”

  “No.”

  I’m waiting for more information, but none is forthcoming. So I pull a pen from the glove compartment and say, “Give me her address.”

  “Email address?”

  “Street address.”

  He does, reluctantly, and I write it on my arm. I’m about to get out the map when I realize I don’t have to. She lives right down the road. How is that possible? The houses in this neighbourhood cost an arm and a leg. Unless she’s a live-in—a nanny, maid, personal support worker, house-sitter, who knows?

  It’s a two-minute drive. The house is spectacular. Manicured lawn and all. I park on the street and walk up to the door, feeling nervous as hell. Itchy too, and not just from the sun and the grass clippings stuck to my skin.

  Maybe I should go. What am I even doing here? If she’s staff, she’s probably not allowed to have visitors. I don’t want to get her in deep shit just by showing up.

  Too late. The door opens and there’s a black man in a suit on the other side. He’s got a soft-topped leather briefcase tucked under his arm and he’s facing away from me, calling up the stairs, “I’m heading out to that investors’ group. Back by eleven!”

  Pip’s voice calls back, “Okay!”

  My heart pounds against my ribcage.

  The suave older man turns and spots me and jumps. He says, “Thanks, we already have a service. If you’ll excuse me, I’m just heading out.”

  “No, I’m not selling…I’m here for Pip.”

  He cocks his brow.

  Dammit, not Pip. What’s her name? Not Laetitia…

  “Oh!” He laughs like he’s in on a joke I don’t get. Then he says, “You must be Devon.”

  Not sure how he knows that, but I say, “Yeah.”

  He sticks his head inside and calls, “Honey, it’s your friend from work.” Th
en he says, “Head on inside. Lorinda will be right down.”

  As he makes his way to the luxury vehicle in the driveway, he glances back at my dirty boots.

  I say, “I’ll take them off.”

  He gives me a gracious smile as I enter his house. I haven’t even closed the door when Pip appears at the top of the grand staircase like a goddamn vision. She’s wearing this designer suit, tailored, fine fabric.

  That’s when it hits me: I’m not the only gold digger in our pod. Look at this girl playing house, queen of the castle! She’s got her hooks in a good one. That old guy wasn’t bad-looking. Nice dresser, too. God only knows why she’s been toiling in the sun with me all summer.

  Late-afternoon sunlight cascades across her shoulders, coming in through the rose window above the staircase. She looks like an angel with these wings of light, super-human. She’s gorgeous.

  “You weren’t at work today.”

  She says, “I told you last week.”

  “Told me what?”

  I’m standing on the jute mat. Haven’t taken my boots off yet. Don’t know whether it’s worth it. She might just kick me out.

  “I had that interview today, for the internship.”

  “Internship?”

  “At the art gallery. I told you.”

  It hits me that I haven’t listened to a word she’s said all summer. Her voice is like the twittering birds in the trees. We plant shrubs, and her voice blends in with the chipmunks nattering to one another across the yard.

  “How did you find my house?”

  “Vik gave me the address.”

  She sucks her teeth, then says, “You might as well come in now that you’re here.”

  I squat down to take off my boots.

  Pip says, “Oh, don’t worry about that.”

  “I told your husband I’d take them off.”

  She throws her head back and laughs. “You mean my dad?”

  “Oh. Your dad?”

  “You think I’m married?” she says. “To a man?”