The Boy Next Door

by Ella James

  “I know you worked at Dreamworks last summer,” he says as I pull out my iPad and stylus. “I got your CV this morning, also an assessment of your strengths by our department head, Weiss, who must have hired you—and your own assessment of potential areas of improvement.”

  I watch his Adam’s apple bob along the column of his tanned throat, and I can’t help wondering what he did to get the tan. Does he still water ski? Does he have that motorcycle he wanted in eighth grade? Does he have a girlfriend floating in the pool beside him?

  NO, Amelia. STOP IT!

  “We do things a little differently than Dreamworks. I’ll explain our process and both of our roles. We’ll be in the lead this time, with smaller teams than full production staff. Weiss has fleshed out all the teams’ projections so we’re aiming for about a reel, as are the other teams with interns. I’m sure you’re familiar with the next few months’ timeline, but we’ll go over that too. Did someone let you know potential themes?”

  I’m tempted to shake my head, but I feel the need to use my voice. I tell him, “No.”

  His hand, slightly curled beside his notepad, spreads, showing me his long, familiar fingers. He taps them lightly on the desk as he lifts his head and projects his voice, so the others in the room can hear him.

  “Quick discussion of potential themes,” he says, and they nod, pulling out notepads and tablets. “We’ve got little critter on the move. Think flea on a coat, hopping around New York. There’s fairy tale with light intrigue, and hapless zoo animal tours the city. Think the cast of the children’s book Goodnight, Gorilla.” I inhale slowly, nodding slightly, my shoulders still squared, my back still politely stiff. “I have several twists on these, and you can spend today brainstorming some as well.”

  My heart is beating so unsteady, I think I might faint, but Dash would never, ever know as I ask, “What are yours?”

  He looks around, acknowledging the rest of the staffers, then at me. His eyes are hard. “The flea is one of them. Marketing might shoot it down in prelims, though.” His lips curl slightly for the first time, causing brain-melt for me. “Nobody likes fleas.”

  “That’s true,” Carrie says.

  “Little, itchy fuckers,” dread-locked Bryan puts in.

  Mallorie shakes her frizzy, red bob, giving Bryan a small smirk.

  “We could try a frog, a green tree frog—one of the thinner ones you see on windows sometimes.” Dash taps his fingers once more. “Or…” he says, sitting up straighter. I notice his pencil in his hand before he flips to a clean page in his pad. “We could go bird.” I watch Dash’s skilled strokes of lead on paper turn a bird into… My throat knots up. “Something like a dove. A bird that can live out in the wild or as a pet.”

  It takes me a moment to realize he’s stopped speaking and is looking right at me. I hate myself as I swallow, barely steadying my voice enough to keep my façade intact as I ask, “What happens to the dove?”

  “She’s small and not very well cared for. Maybe in a busy household. One day, someone leaves her cage open. Someone comes to clean the house and leaves the window open. She flies out. She’s scared at first, but she has an adventure. Kind of Finding Nemo.”

  “Why a dove?” I bore my gaze into his and keep my mouth firm.

  “Why not?” He lifts one shoulder. “Doves are beautiful, unique. Also, they don’t screech.”

  “What do you mean?” Ashley, with the black braid, asks.

  “They make a cooing sound, doves. It’s pleasant.”

  I blink a few times.

  “Okay,” Carrie says. “I like a Finding Nemo vibe.”

  “But not too Nemo,” Meredith says. She’s small and slender, almost child-sized, with a fluff of natural curls and a gold nose ring.

  Dash sketches a ring around the bird’s neck, then does something to its wings. “Ring-necked doves are sometimes pets. They don’t like a whole lot of interaction, but they can be trained to eat from someone’s hand.”

  “I like a girl who’ll eat out of my hand,” Adam drawls. I flick my gaze over his UT ball cap and his short moustache.

  I can feel my cheeks flush, even as I keep my breathing even and my shoulders back.

  “So…what do you think?” Dash asks, staring at me.

  I want to slap his face for suggesting our film feature a dove. Instead I ask, “Do you have any story yet?”

  “That’s your job.”

  “Yes—it is.” I turn away from Dash, glancing from Bryan to Meredith to Carrie. “We’ll get working on a story arc if that’s what you think should be our focus right now.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” he asks rudely.

  My throat tightens: that stinging feeling right before you cry. My face is so hot, I think I might be steaming. “No, that sounds just fine. We’ll go get started.”

  I start to roll my chair away from our shared desk space, and Dash stops me with a hand on the chair’s arm. “Let’s let the others start—” his gaze roves over them— “while I go over all the boring stuff with you.”

  He says it like it’s something awful. My cheeks throb with heat, and for a too-long second, my eyes sting, too.

  Then I tell myself to put my big-girl panties on. I’m an officer in my sorority, damnit. When my dad and Manda divorced last year, following us finding out she’d been cheating on him with the entire city of Atlanta, I called her a whore and told her if I saw her face again, I’d slap it. I’m not Ammy anymore. I’m an adult, by God, and if Dash thinks he can treat me like a child, he’s got another thing coming.

  He casts his eyes down to his pad, where he fills in some of the bird’s feathers.

  I don’t say a word, just sit there with my lips pressed tightly together, then trying to look more neutral so none of the others notice our weird tension.

  I struggle to behave normally over the next hour, listening to Dash go over protocol and details. Every time he shifts, it’s as if he’s pulling on a string to something anchored deep inside me. I start sweating. I can’t keep my eyes from roving all the contours of his body. He’s filled out a lot. His body is a man’s now, forearms hair-dusted, his hands wider and thicker, nicked with small scars. I notice a scar on one temple.

  Even his voice is different, I think, as I listen to him talk in boring work terms. Like me, I guess, he sounds less Southern. More confident. Like he’s used to being in charge.

  Despite everything, I find myself a little lulled by his low, familiar voice, even as I keep my posture rigid and my face blank.

  So I’m surprised when he stops speaking, looks down at a phone he’s cupping in one hand, and stands up.

  “Did you get all that?” he asks me, in a way that makes me think he thinks I didn’t.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Good.” He casts his gaze around the room. “I have a meeting for another project, folks. Adam and Ashley, if you could work on prototyping doves and other pre-production stuff.”

  “Yessir,” Adam says.

  “You writers do your thing,” Dash says, lifting an eyebrow in the direction of Carrie, Meredith, and Bryan.

  “Sure thing, boss,” Bryan says.

  I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but it’s not Dash striding to the door and opening it without a glance my way. “I’ll see you all tomorrow,” he says flatly.

  The door shuts with a sharp click.

  All the air has left my lungs. I can’t move. Belatedly, I clutch my iPhone, thinking of hurling it at the door. In the end, of course, I pull myself together. I sit there for a tiny moment, dying inside, until I’m calm enough to roll my chair across the room.

  Seven

  Dash

  “Shot of Jameson.”

  “All-righty…”

  The pig-tailed blonde turns to pour my whiskey, and I try to let my breath out.

  “Here ya go.”

  I slam it back while she watches from beneath her eyelashes. A small smile plays along her lips.

  “You need another one?”


  “Please.”

  She’s turned her narrow back to me again, and I decide to make it easy on her. “One more and an Irish Car Bomb.”

  She slides both drinks over the pocked wood bar counter, and I nod. “Thanks.”

  I down the Jameson, drop the car bomb shot into the glass of stout, and slide off the bar stool, palming the drink. A quick scan of The Wasted Quarter Horse reveals nothing but strangers’ faces.

  Good.

  The Quarter Horse is in an old warehouse. The room you walk into is a little on the narrow side—booths on the left, bar on the right—but if you head toward the back wall and hang a left, it opens up into a larger pool room.

  I let my gaze caress that big wall as I head toward the pool room. It’s a spray of color, sporting a whole mess of warring faeries. Why the fuck a bar called The Wasted Quarter Horse would want a mural of fighting faeries, I don’t fucking know, but when I got the commission two years ago, I didn’t ask.

  “Hey, Dash!” My head turns as I step into the wider pool room. It’s Poppy, a wispy, red-haired girl who’s not much over 21 and always over-friendly when I’m here for Trivia Tuesdays. “It’s not Tuesday night,” she calls over a full tray. I take in her dimpled smile and try to return it.

  “Got here a little early.”

  She winks, and I find an empty booth to drain my drink.

  I live in Burbank, but since Disney acquired Imagine last year, I’ve been in Nashville enough to have a company-paid penthouse at Birchwood Towers down the block. When I fly in, I’m here Sunday through Wednesday, so a couple of us always hit up Trivia Tuesdays. Winning team gets free tabs, and we usually win.

  An aproned guy I recognize stops by the table, offering a menu, but I shake my head. He takes my glass.

  “Another drink?”

  “Pint of Guinness.”

  “No prob.”

  I watch the flat-screen on the wall till he returns. Then I pull back half of the drink. I can feel my knotted shoulders deflate, feel my eyelids tug a little in that good, relaxing way. I give a little laugh and sink my fingers into my hair.

  Fuuck.

  I take another long swallow and laugh.

  Made it to the Quarter Horse—still breathing, so that’s something.

  I finish the drink while my thoughts drift around like dust motes in a sunny window: real, but barely. None of this feels real yet. That’s a good thing, I think, as I tabulate my bill and leave some cash under my empty glass.

  With a brief glance around the Horse—for what? Amelia?—I head toward the door. It’s hot as fuck on Broadway, all that thick-ass, sticky Southern air. I never miss this shit in Burbank, I think, as I amble toward the river.

  My car’s still at the Horse, but I can’t drive now, on account of my usual teetotaler status. Since I never drink, it goes right to my head, and that’s a good thing; I don’t drink unless I want it that way.

  Distantly, I know I’m going to have a headache by tonight, but I don’t give a fuck. I almost want it. Homage, I think with a miserable smile.

  I cut down Ryman Alley, listening to country music drifting through the doors somewhere. Sounds like a Rascal Flatts cover.

  I pull out my phone as I move toward the sound.

  I tried Alexia earlier this morning, and I didn’t get her. Maybe now. Even drunk, I worry when it rings three times—but then she answers on the fourth.

  “Brother!”

  I’m so relieved I stop and lean against the brick wall of a restaurant.

  I chuckle. “Lex. How ya doing?”

  “Just fine, and yourself?”

  “How was the shoot?” She had a photo shoot for a swimsuit designer in Puerto Rico this past weekend.

  “Good. No one asked why I pushed it back last month, like what the family emergency was.”

  “That’s good.” Alexia spent three weeks in rehab, her second time there since last October. The first time, she stayed all of November and December, telling her social media followers that she’d be taking a break while she visited family and spent time at an ashram. I did some globe-trotting, snapping landscape shots in Switzerland and India for her Instagram account. The clinic wanted her to stay more than eight weeks, but she didn’t feel like she could leave her work that long, so she left early. She had a relapse this spring. “So—you feeling okay?”

  “I am, Captain Obvious. Keeping clean and healthy, thank you. Where are you? I think I hear some Nashville in the background.”

  “Yep.”

  “You there now for the summer?”

  “Yep.”

  “And? How’s it going? Do you like the writer intern?”

  I clamp my teeth down on my cheek, then let my breath out. “The intern is Amelia. Frank,” I bite out.

  “Welllllll…”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn, that’s wild. So how’s it going?”

  “How do you think?”

  “Fucking weird?” she asks.

  “Yeah. Fucking weird.” I rub my hand over my face.

  She laughs. “Are you drunk?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Are you out somewhere? I hear a horn honking.”

  “Was at a bar.”

  “Goddamn, Dash.”

  “You’re like a sailor, Lex.”

  “I wish.”

  I frown down at my shoes. “You wish you were a sailor?”

  “Sure. It sounds like fun. Maybe I should call her up… Amelia. Tell her not to wreck my big brother.”

  That earns her a snort. “No way. You should definitely not call Ammy.”

  “Aw, that was her nickname, wasn’t it? Ammy or Dove. How cute.”

  “Shut up, Lexie.”

  “Are you going to keep working with her?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a glutton for punishment, Dashy.”

  “You’re dramatic.”

  Lexie sighs. “I know. You love me anyway.” I can almost see her making a face at me through the phone line. “Call me soon, okay? I want to hear more but I’m kind of busy right now.”

  Before the line goes dead, I think I hear her sniff. I slip the phone into my pocket, tell myself it’s my imagination.

  I have the impulse to call an Uber, and for that reason, I don’t allow myself. Why should things be easy for me?

  I consider killing time until I’m good to drive, but I don’t feel like pool or trivia or partying. It takes me half an hour to walk to Birchwood Towers. I stall at the revolving doors, thinking she’s here somewhere—and it’s true; I know she is. Imagine puts up everybody here at Birchwood. Short-term workers get a smaller unit on the first eight floors, with a lot of the young, single perma-staffers on the upper four floors.

  Amelia is living in my building.

  I could probably find out where if I tried.

  Fucking nuts.

  Upstairs, I chug some water then throw some healthy shit into the blender, shutting my eyes as the thing scrapes and screeches. I take the drink out to the deck and stare down at the city. Still sunny. Benignly busy.

  Back inside, I do six miles on the treadmill, relishing the headache I get afterward. I break a couple of plastic sparring boards, kick the bag, and lift as much as I can handle. Nothing satisfies me. Finally—my stroking hand and memories.

  It’s wrong. I know that. I don’t fall asleep until the sun comes up.

  Eight

  Amelia

  I arrive at work on Tuesday morning sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, and irritable—and my morning takes a giant nose-dive the second I step into the gorgeous, circular lobby. Dash is waiting at the elevator bank.

  I know it’s him not because I can see him clearly through the sunglasses still perched on my nose, but because my body does this little zingy thing that feels the way I imagine a seizure must.

  Ugh.

  I take my sweet time walking around the little indoor grove of maple trees, praying that he’ll go ahead and go, but no dice. By the time I make it to
him, he’s already pushed the “up” button, so I see no reason to speak or give him more than a slight tightening of my lips when he turns my way.

  My goal had previously been to behave neutrally, but since that doesn’t seem to be possible, I’ll settle for rude, same as him.

  It will be good for me to be around Dash. This is what I told myself last night. My brain can’t help but think of him the way he used to be, because that’s all I’ve really known so far. The way he disappeared that day, the time I finally broke down and tracked down Lexie on a Friday night when she was snorting coke at some Atlanta club, only to have her tell me, “Just leave him alone,” as if she needed to protect him somehow… These things heightened his mystique and softened my stupid little lovesick heart, even when they should have done the opposite.

  For years, I had this imaginary narrative running through my head in which he couldn’t help but skip town. Maybe the mafia was chasing him, or he had some kind of health crisis.

  My friendship with Lexie all but dissolved during our senior year: she getting more into coke and pills, me clinging more tightly to my tamer friends: Lucy, Charley, Mags.

  The elevator opens, and Dash steps in.

  I wait a second before following. The small space feels too tight for both of us. His shoulders seem to fill most of the space. I settle in the back, right corner as he presses the key, hoping I look nonchalant in my black jumpsuit. It has a deep V-neck that’s lined with lace, and I know I look hot in it. I’m five-foot-five, and still as skinny as I was when I was a kid; for some reason, my body type is really suited to these jumpsuits. They’re kind of like pants suits, but weirder. More high fashion.

  I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and use the second that my hand’s in front of my face to get a peek at Dash. He’s wearing charcoal shorts and a light blue, stripey t-shirt, fitted, like the one he wore yesterday. Also, different sandals. These are brown, and even though the outfit shouldn’t work, it does. He looks casually sexy.