The Boy Next Door

by Ella James

  I know I was stupid, because Amelia’s face gentles and she starts to look like she feels sorry for me.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me. One day Manda came over and the pool was warm, it had started getting cold outside. And she took off her swim suit. I was worried, kind of freaking out that someone would come by and see her. They might think that I’d done something…you know, something wrong. She was a married…” I shake my head. My face is hot. My heart is pounding. “I know this is horrible to hear.”

  “It is. I can’t believe this.” I look over at Amelia, and she’s crying. “Why, Dash?” Her voice sounds brittle. My chest hurts like something physical is wrong with me.

  “I don’t know.” I put a hand over my face.

  “I’m sorry.” She sounds quieter. “I shouldn’t have— keep on going,” she says softly.

  “She found out....that I wanted you.”

  “She came over,” Ammy prods, gray-faced. “And it was cold outside.”

  “And she said, ‘Don’t you think I’ve noticed that…’” I blow my breath out. “That I reacted to her. She said she knew I wanted her, and that she never felt that way before about…a younger guy, but she… But I was different.”

  “You were different. You were different! Fuck, of course you were, the guy I wanted, he’s the different one!” Ammy’s jaw is tight. Her eyes glitter with tears. “So go on, Dash.”

  “I can’t.” I shut my eyes. I feel like a weight is on my chest, and I can’t breathe. “I’m a fuckup. I was just a fucking pawn she used, because my stupid ego… I never felt like anything and here she was, wanting to do this shit with me. Shit that I felt bad about—I felt fucking terrible, I was up every night and on this roof, wanting to jump off—but she would come back, wanting me. She wanted me. She made me feel like I was so important. She would talk to me, she’d help me with my homework even. I was so fucked up, I thought this shit was great! That someone gave a fuck, that someone wanted to spend time with me when they could do a bunch of better things.”

  My voice breaks, and I put a hand over my face. “I’m sorry, give me just a minute.”

  “Dash—”

  “Just let me get through it.” She doesn’t speak again, and I can’t look at her. I look down at the shingles. “I guess I needed that, to feel like someone cared. I had a hard time going to sleep sometimes. She would…she’d do different things than other girls did. She taught me all sorts of different things, one of them drinking to sleep.”

  Amelia’s eyes widen. I quickly look back down.

  “She gave me vodka. Said it’s normal if you can’t sleep, just drink it and then if she could, she would come over. Of course, she never could. But it felt like she gave a fuck. When I was with her, I would always drink. She would have me walk over and we’d get in her car and we’d go driving in the country. I was remembering…” I take a deep breath. Let it out. “That’s why I had you pull over,” I say simply.

  “Anyway, it went bad pretty fucking fast. I wasn’t fucking anyone from school. I didn’t really want Amanda, but I wanted her to want me…I think.” I scrub a hand back through my hair. “The worst thing is how much I wanted you. You were amazing that whole fucking year. I thought about you all the time, and that would be the only time I’d really feel the depth of how bad I should feel about what we were doing. Amanda had this long list of the women your dad had been with—”

  Ammy’s jaw drops, and I hold a hand up. “He hadn’t. I found out later that he hadn’t. Am—I told your dad what happened. I told him in 2014. I flew in from my job and sat him down and told him. I couldn’t keep it to myself. I was going crazy.”

  “Fuck.”

  “So…I don’t know. It ended when she started getting weird and…jealous. She would see me taking you and Lex to school and… I shouldn’t— She was jealous. Of you, of other girls she thought—” I shake my head and grit my teeth so I don’t break down, this time out of anger. “She started blackmailing me. If I didn’t do what she wanted, she would say that I’d come onto her. If I didn’t…perform the way she wanted, she would say I raped her.”

  Ammy starts toward me. I move so fast, I almost fall off the damn roof.

  I hold out my hand, because I don’t want her to touch me. I just need to finish. “I didn’t. Rape her.”

  “Jesus, Dash, I know that.”

  “It was all a game to her, and when it ended, even when it did, she didn’t want to let me go. She got enjoyment out of fucking with me. She would taunt me, text me. She would use your dad and get me scared of that. I found out she had…moved on, with someone new. She would still send me pictures…of herself. And if I didn’t text back soon enough, if I wasn’t interested enough to satisfy her, even though she had moved on, she would make threats.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I would get arrested.”

  I stop to breathe, and Ammy shuts her eyes. I see a tear roll down her cheek.

  “By the time that school year ended, yeah…I wished that I was dead. The weirdest thing is, I felt like I had been the one that was raped.” The word sticks in my throat. I turn away so I can keep on talking. Now that I’ve started, I can’t stop.

  “I had been with her. I had been a game to her. I had been waiting for you. I had this fantasy that you would come get in my bed and—yeah, no fucking fantasies for me. I know, it’s all fucked up but…by that summer, I was trying to forget her—and you. I went out as often as I could and got fucked up. Used whatever I could get my hands on, drank as much as I could.” I let out a long breath. “Then I would come home and there were you and Lexie, watching movies. Like, there’s nothing simpler than that. I would come upstairs and see you. Just pretend that I was normal. You would sit there, right beside me, and I’d want to touch you. I wanted to tell you about it, you specifically.” I laugh. “All the people, and I wanted to tell you.”

  “I wish you would have,” she says from behind me. “It was fucked up, but you were a victim. Even though I hate this, I can still see that.”

  “I found a lawyer once, when she was texting all the time, and I was sick all day from drinking all the time. I paid to meet with her—I couldn’t face a man, so I went to a female attorney—and she said…” I laugh. “She said don’t worry, no one gets arrested on those charges. You look like a nice boy, how old is she? For the sake of secrecy, I told her I was twenty and ‘she’ had just turned sixteen, and she said, ‘Well that’s not a problem.’ That’s how I knew that I had to go. Just move away.”

  “Jesus.”

  “So I did. I didn’t want to leave. I would have gone to art school in Savannah, I had people there I knew, your dad’s connections, like I fucking deserved that… But I went to Providence to get away from her. And then she found me there. She came and harassed me. So yeah, I knew I couldn’t write to you or call that first year, my freshman year. There was no way.”

  I turn around and find tears streaming down her face.

  “There was no way I could have any contact with you, but I didn’t stick to that too well.”

  Amelia wraps her arms around me, and I shut my eyes. It feels wrong to let her touch me…but I can’t move away. I never can.

  “Dash…” She presses herself against me, and I wrap an arm around her as I blink up at a bird, a raven flying over us.

  “Do you hate me?” I ask hoarsely.

  “No. Of course I don’t.” I can feel her body shaking.

  “What?” I whisper.

  “Well, I want to murder Manda. I want this…to not be true.” She starts to cry, and I feel like the worst scum. I let go of her, but Ammy grabs me tighter. “Don’t.” The word is muffled by her mouth against my shirt. “Dash, do you love me?”

  She looks up at me with wide, wet eyes.

  “Of course. I love you, Am. I love you more than anything.” I press my lips together, shut my eyes so I don’t have to see the hurt on her face.

  “Manda walked over to my house that morning. The one where I left yo
u after…the night at the lake. She was waiting here for me. She’d heard that I went to that party. She knew you were out. And she suspected. She had known the whole time, I think. When I thought about it…after, I think that she knew. And that…”

  “Say it,” she whispers.

  “Maybe that was why.”

  “That’s why she went for you specifically.” The words are rushed out, like they burn her tongue. “I know it is,” she sobs, “and that’s what I hate most! Dash, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t stand to think this! That this even happened!”

  “It’s okay…” I pull her tighter up against me.

  “No it’s not.” Ammy’s cheek pushes against my chest. “She ruined your life…and mine, too, sort of.”

  I let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry I never told you, Ammy. You deserved the truth.”

  She pulls slightly away, so I can see her face. “You’re right—I did. But I get it, why you didn’t tell me. Dash, it’s awful, but I do see why.” Her brows are pulled together. She looks troubled.

  “I know girls this happened to, and they were innocent, just like you were. You were young and you were fooled by Manda. Let me tell you something: I had diaries.” Tears gather in her eyes again. “I would always write about you in them. I am sure she read them. Once I even found her reading one.” Her lips are pressed together, like she’s trying to hold sobs in.

  “It’s okay.” I stroke Am’s hair out of her sticky face. “Ammy, never feel bad. Never. You were not involved. It’s not your fault. You had nothing to do with it at all, it’s all on me.”

  “It’s all on Manda! She’s a psycho.”

  “She has problems. I can understand it more now that I’m older.”

  God. I shut my eyes. I can’t believe I told her this, and Ammy’s arms are still around me. I feel slightly dizzy.

  “It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s a shit show, but it’s still going to be okay.”

  I pull her closer, press my cheek against her soft hair. “Why do you do this to me?” I ask her hoarsely.

  “Do what, baby?”

  “Why do you…make me need you?” I ask, ragged.

  “I don’t know.” She hugs me tighter.

  “I wish I didn’t, Am. I would have stayed the fuck away and never bothered you again.”

  “Are you kidding me?” she laughs. “I threw a pencil down in front of you and pretty much wore a giant ‘fuck me’ sign, something that I’ve never done for anybody else, by the way. I used to stalk you on the internet.”

  “I don’t know why,” I whisper. I tilt my head back, toward empty, indigo sky.

  “Don’t say that,” Am murmurs. She grabs my face, so that our gazes meet. “Don’t say you don’t know why. It makes me sad.”

  “I know I don’t deserve it. I know you used to be my fantasy, and then I loved you and I couldn’t help it. Even if I wanted to—and I’m fucked up, so I never did—I couldn’t help but love you. Those glasses and your pretty hair that always smelled so good.” I run my hand over it now. “I loved your snail backpack and those awful Jar Jar Binks slippers you used to wear over.”

  “Why did you love them?” she asks, and I can’t read her face.

  I answer honestly. “Because they were you. You know how I feel about Jar Jar Binks, but they were silly. Funny. They were just Amelia.”

  “That’s why this doesn’t really matter, Dash. With Manda. It doesn’t matter, not really, because I love you the same way. I love you because you’re Dash. I have this memory of you hitting me on the back, beside the pool that day when I was so little. I loved the way your hand hit me. As soon as you stopped hitting me, you were hugging me. I loved you way back then, before Manda. I still beat her to it.”

  “Fuck, Amelia…”

  “You were always mine. Not hers.” She holds me tightly, and I let her. I stand still and let her hug me, and it doesn’t seem quite real.

  “Lexie knew about it, didn’t she?” she whispers.

  My fucking eyes burn. “Yeah.”

  “She backed you, of course, and of course, she couldn’t tell me.”

  I try to swallow, but I can’t.

  “It makes sense.”

  “When Amanda came to Burbank last year, Lex came down and stayed with me.”

  “Manda came to Burbank?” Ammy’s eyes stretch wide.

  I nod. “Wanted to move in with me.”

  “Holy shit. What did you tell her?”

  “Threatened to take her to court. I probably couldn’t do it, but I think it scared her off.”

  Am hugs me again, and my legs feel kind of shaky. I don’t want to knock us off the roof, so I say, “Let’s go in.”

  “Can I come?”

  “No, you have to live out here from now on.”

  She smiles a little, and we make our way in silence back to Lexie’s window. I crawl into her room, and it hits me that she’s gone. Lexie is gone. I feel like I can’t breathe. I make it to her bed and manage to lie down—facing the wall.

  “Can I get up here with you?” Ammy whispers, several moments later.

  I need her... Damn, I really do. And so I nod.

  Twenty-Five

  Amelia

  I scoot up behind him and I wrap my arm around his waist. I press my head against his back and shut my eyes and feel his chest move underneath my arm.

  God. Poor Dash.

  I can’t believe all that shit happened, and I didn’t have a clue. I could tell he was unhappy that year. That I do remember. I remember he was vague that night we sat out on the roof—the night before he left. He wouldn’t really say why he was going all the way to Rhode Island.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, and more tears seep out. It makes me sad to know he’s dealt with this for all these years and I had no idea. I was just mad at him. Confused and mad.

  And I was clueless.

  His body is so big and hard against mine—he has always seemed so big and strong to me—it seems impossible to think of young Dash being manipulated like that. God, he said he wanted to die that year.

  I rub my tear-streaked face against his back and wish I could have held him like this then. And then I remember—I did. I held him while he slept that one night on the roof. The night he told me he didn’t deserve to be happy, and I argued that he did.

  I cry against his back, because I can’t believe this awful thing is woven into our love story. I would do anything to erase it, write it out like we might do in one of our films. But that’s not how life is.

  I can’t write my mother back into this world, or rearrange the timeline so my dad meets Harlow sooner. I can’t skip back a few scenes so Dash knows that Lex is having trouble. I can want these things all day, and they won’t happen. My will won’t execute itself and create magic. I would know. I’ve tried before.

  “If I could,” I whisper quietly, “I would have had you come back the next day and tell me this whole story. That’s what I would want.” I feel Dash’s breaths stall, and I squeeze him more tightly. “But you couldn’t. Sometimes we don’t get a choice. The right thing doesn’t happen. People die when they should still be alive, for no good reason. I know—” my voice cracks— “that this shit does not make sense. It doesn’t to me either. But it’s true, what we were saying earlier. We have to take it all. You can’t just cut the part where all that shit happened with Manda. You can’t make it disappear, and I can’t either. You have lived with that for years, Dash—and I can, too. Yes, it fucking sucks. But I can live with it. And, you know, you were a victim. You were innocent.”

  I feel him shake his head and answer, “Yes—you were. I bet Lexie said the same thing, didn’t she?”

  He takes a big long breath, then lets it out.

  “Of course she did,” I say.

  “She called her Rapey McManda.” I can hear the smile in his voice, and it makes me feel relieved.

  “Of course she did.”

  “Of course she did.”

  As it happens, Lexie’s funera
l isn’t until Saturday, and with our many deadlines, Dash and I can’t miss that much work. We drive back home the next morning and spend the week mostly just working. Dash is slammed with one issue after another: tech problems, artist problems, focus group problems. It’s so good for him, I’m almost thankful.

  He doesn’t mention Manda again—or Amanda, as apparently she was with him—and I can’t say I’m sad about that. The one thing he does say is that Lex “hauled his ass to a shrink” last year, so at least I know he’s done a little talking about it.

  I make work for myself so I can be at the office with him after hours. Not because I think he’s oh so fragile, but because I want to be near him. I don’t like the idea of him alone with Lex’s death so fresh. While we were driving back to Nashville, he said he could handle things. That he’d be okay. I never knew if he meant Manda or Lex, but really, I’m not sure it matters.

  Life is full of shit we didn’t ask for, things we didn’t want and wish we could erase. That doesn’t mean you can. And just because you can’t, that doesn’t mean this world is bad.

  Every night when we get back to my place, I help Dash get lost in my body. I act ridiculous and slutty and encourage him to use me just for sex.

  “Who’s my whore?” he’ll growl, and I’ll purr: “I am.”

  It’s fun, and funny.

  “Who’s the little slut next door, with this fine ass?”

  “Will you crawl in through my window? Come inside…”

  In those moments, I can feel it: that we’re going to be fine.

  We drive down to Georgia Friday morning. The Frasiers’ house is packed with all of Dash’s family. We hold hands so people get the drift without a lot of questions. We spend hours with them, talking about Lexie and watching home videos—many of which I’m in—and when night falls, Mr. and Mrs. Frasier have the help pack up the feast, and all the guests leave. Visitation will be midday Saturday, followed by a graveside service.

  And that means the night is ours.

  I’ve been watching Dash like a hawk, so I know he isn’t sleeping or eating. He didn’t eat more than a few bites of the food at his house today, so around nine, I tell him I need something greasy and we get into his car and drive to Sonic. It’s the greasiest; the worst, really. The one food I can think of guaranteed to push us right into an early grave with Lexie. But…I gambled right. He orders a cheeseburger.