Neighborly Love

by Christine L'Amour

  Amy bit her lips and said nothing. It sounded sensible and doable when Chelsea said it like that, but Amy had no confidence that people would hire her, even as a freelancer, when she had no “proper” experience or anything related to the area to put on a resume.

  “It’s worth it to try,” Chelsea told her, winding an arm around her shoulders. “Look, forget about Meghan for a moment, all right? So, she’s high-strung and too focused on work to pay attention to you, and you feel like you can’t go to her with your problems. You don’t have to think about that right now. Just focus on doing what you can. It’s not like your folks are going to literally boot you out the door in a month’s time or something.”

  “Right,” Amy said with a sigh. “You’re right. I should go after those things you said. Would you… help me a bit?”

  “Of course,” Chelsea said brightly. “Amy, that’s what I’ve been waiting years for you to say.”

  ***

  Amy waited and waited, kneeling by the slowly recovering strawberries. The air was growing chilly even inside there, and it made Amy remember, suddenly, looking at the water streaming out of her watering can, that Brenda had talked her into housesitting with talk of an indoor pool. She had never seen it, but Meghan would know where it was, and maybe they could go there together, warm up in the water and forget about their problems for a bit.

  Amy wanted to stop thinking about her parents and money for a bit. It felt like no one ever thought or worried about anything but money and she was exhausted with it. And Meghan, who last Amy had seen her had been wearing half a suit, half pajama pants and eating some leftovers that looked like the mashed up, unholy mix of three different kinds of foods, could do with getting some rest.

  It was true that at her heart, Amy was a lazy person, but it also meant she knew exactly how much rest was important.

  But as Amy plucked old leaves from the strawberries and moved to pick mealybugs from the herbs with a carefully sterilized toothpick, then went to trim the ferns and water the orchids, Meghan didn’t arrive.

  She didn’t show up at the greenhouse at all.

  Amy received an apology through text when her shift—what was supposed to be their shift—was almost over, though Meghan didn’t really explain why she didn’t show up. At least she invited Amy over for lunch the next day to make up for it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Meghan felt bad about not showing up at the greenhouse. The time there had become in her mind her time with Amy more than a time to do anything with plants, and she was sorry to see, when she woke up, that she had overslept and that it wasn’t worth it to go down there anymore. She couldn’t help it—she was too tired. She had stayed up until late the previous night.

  She had taken a few more freelance jobs and they were starting to weigh on her, but it was how she was trying to deal with her need for money. She was considering branching out to ghostwriting as well. Surely, she knew enough about stories after years of editing them to write something. It would be some extra money if she could do that…

  As it was, she stood up, fired off a text to Amy to apologize for sort of standing her up, and went to the kitchen to inhale some coffee. She settled in front of her laptop and fretted over her finances and worked for hours before she realized the clock had struck midday and Amy would probably be coming by soon, since Meghan had called her over to have lunch with her.

  She shoved on some clothes just in time for her bell to ring and made her way to the door with a sweater half-on. She settled it before opening the door. It was indeed Amy, and Meghan smiled at her, bending down for a kiss. Amy sighed against her lips, like she had been waiting for this for hours.

  “I’m sorry for not showing up,” Meghan apologized, even though she had done it already through text. “I woke up late, I was up all night yesterday working on some new stories I received from new clients. Come on in, I didn’t really make anything, but we can order something out.”

  “All right,” Amy said, and followed her in. “How are things, by the way…? You haven’t said anything else about your dad or the money. Is everything all right?”

  “I’m dealing,” Meghan said with a shrug. She sat down on the couch and Amy sat beside her, immediately snuggling up to her side. The apartment was toasty because Meghan had heating, but winter always made people want to stick together like this, no matter how warm it was at home.

  “Oh,” Amy said, and clearly waited for more, but Meghan didn’t say anything else.

  She didn’t want to get the same answer she had gotten last time, that there was simply nothing Amy could do and that they should focus on something else. She kissed Amy instead, drawing her girlfriend in with a hand on her chin and another on her hair, tugging at it until the bun came undone and her hair fell messily to her shoulders.

  The kiss wasn’t long, since neither of them were in the mood to deepen it, and when they drew away, Amy smiled.

  “You got my pink lipstick on, now,” she said, amused, which was when Meghan realized how subdued she was.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the bell ringing again. Meghan looked at the door with confusion. Maybe it was Carlos? They hadn’t arranged to meet today and she was pretty sure he was at work, but there was no reason for any of her neighbors to talk to her and anyone else would have had to go through the doormen, who would have warned her that someone wanted to come up.

  Well, Carlos was also technically a visitor, but he came by so often that they usually just let him up without word.

  “Did you order something already?” Amy asked. “I thought you said you hadn’t.”

  “No, it must be some neighbor,” Meghan said vaguely, standing up.

  She wiped half-heartedly at her lips, hoping her girlfriend’s lipstick didn’t look too messy, and answered her door.

  Her family stood on the other side.

  “Sorry for coming without warning, the doorman recognized us and let us up,” her mother said brightly, making her way in without a care, like she often did; sure of her welcome. “We were just finished with lunch and we were so close by we decided to visit. It’s been so long since we’ve seen you! You wouldn’t believe what Andy managed to do last week—”

  Meghan wasn’t really paying attention to her mother. She was too busy staring at her father, who was staring back at her. Meghan knew the picture she painted was pretty damning: the lipstick she was wearing had obviously been either applied and then smudged by a kiss or applied by a kiss, and Amy, who was sitting on the couch and visible from the doorway, had her hair tumbling down to her shoulders messily, like hands had been carded through it.

  Meghan bottled up all the terror and anxiety welling up in her chest and smiled her brightest smile.

  If I say nothing, she told herself as firmly as she could, he’ll ignore it too.

  “Hey, Dad!” she exclaimed, taking a step back to allow him and her brother through. “Please, come in! I wish you guys had warned me you were coming, I would have made something. I barely have coffee for everybody here, I haven’t been grocery shopping in so long!”

  “I knew it,” her father said in a low voice, eyes trained somewhere beyond her shoulder, at Amy.

  Andy, who was standing a step behind their father, gave her a grimace; like he knew her secret already and was sympathizing over what would undoubtedly happen now.

  “Knew what? That I would be a terrible host?” Meghan tried a bit desperately, making her way to the couch.

  Amy was sitting there hunching so deeply that she looked half her actual weight, and she had managed to wrestle her hair back into her control, for all the good it would do now. Meghan’s mother was looking at them with a reproachful look in her eyes, like she knew there was a storm brewing and she had hoped they would have let it rage on when she wasn’t there.

  “You’re… with that woman, aren’t you?” her father asked, his pause more born out of awkwardness than hatred. Meghan thought so. She hoped so. “I knew it. Look at the state of you two! I knew t
here was something wrong. I knew there was a reason you pushed us all away, that you never call, that you never visit us.”

  “Wait,” Meghan’s mother said, finally looking from Meghan to Amy. “You don’t mean…”

  “Dad, Mom, let’s not talk about this,” Meghan said, letting her eyes fall closed. She felt dread pool around her check like something black and sticky that threatened to fill her lungs and drown her. “Let’s talk about something else. Amy will go back home, and you can pretend you didn’t see her, and things can go back to normal.”

  “You know this is wrong, or you wouldn’t be hiding like this,” her father told her, taking a menacing step forward.

  “Dude, you are way out of line,” Amy snapped, and even Meghan turned around to look at her in surprise. “You can’t just say something like that to her!”

  Her father’s scowl was full of hatred, like he was showing Amy what he didn’t have the heart to show Meghan, and Meghan felt like crying. She wanted to go back a few minutes and not kiss Amy, she wanted to make this unhappen.

  “Come back home,” her father told her bluntly, turning to her and ignoring Amy’s words entirely. “I’ll stop asking you for the money if you stop all this and come back home to us. You don’t even have to sell this apartment; you can rent it out and use the money to help you get back on our feet.”

  Meghan stared at him in shock.

  “What? You’ll…”

  “If you stop seeing her,” her father said firmly. “Or else, I want all my money now. I’ll take it back from you, I’ll get everything you have, and you’ll see where this lifestyle choice lead you!”

  “Jesus Christ,” Amy said, disgusted and horrified at his words.

  “Dad!” Andy snapped, charging forward to grab his wrist. “Christ, stop saying that. Meghan, I’m sorry. We’re leaving now, okay? We’ll leave you alone. Don’t think about anything Dad’s saying, he’s just being stupid.”

  But Meghan looked her father in his eyes and knew he had meant every word.

  ***

  Amy and Meghan sat on the couch not touching each other and not looking at each other and, quietly, despaired.

  “He can’t actually just take the money from you, right?” Amy asked in a quiet voice after a few moments of silence.

  “He has access to my bank account. He can,” Meghan told her hollowly.

  “Oh,” Amy said.

  Meghan was desperate for something. She wanted Amy to storm after her parents, to shout at them, to tell them off for daring to talk to her like that. She wanted Amy to come to her with a solution on her fingertips, with an idea who would fix everything or at least put Meghan’s nerves at ease. But Amy was obviously as downtrodden as her, sitting there with a blank and distant look on her face.

  Lazy, sweet Amy who revived strawberries, drew people’s characters kissing on the internet, and played video games all die wouldn’t know how to deal with any of this, and she just wasn’t going to grow motivated out of nowhere and try to think of a solution either.

  Meghan stood up suddenly.

  “I’m going to,” she started, then stopped, because she didn’t actually have anything in mind. She straightened up her spine and walked up to the kitchen to make herself some coffee. “I’m going to do something,” she decided. “I’m going to come up with something. I can talk to him. I can convince him to—I don’t know, give me more time. I’ll be able to fix it.”

  “Meghan, what are you going to talk to him about? All that stuff he said about your lifestyle choices… This isn’t about the money anymore,” Amy said.

  “Isn’t it?” Meghan asked, her tone coming out more snappish than she had meant it to. “If he gets the money from my account, I will have to close my publishing house. I don’t care, I’ll lie, I’ll do something, but I can’t close my press—”

  “Meghan,” Amy said softly, sliding her hands around Meghan’s waist to hug her from behind. “There’s nothing you can do right now, and drinking coffee is only going to rile you up. Why don’t we go to my place instead and watch a movie or something?”

  Meghan felt anger rising inside her like the tide. She knew it was misplaced and closed her eyes against it, modulating her tone so Amy wouldn’t notice it. It was just that Meghan wanted to solve this, not that Amy would stand here and tell her to let things go and let the disaster happen while doing nothing about it.

  “I need to think about it,” Meghan said. “I need to… do something.”

  “We can come up with something in my couch instead,” Amy tried. “We can come up with something after we’ve eaten something—”

  “No, I just—I just need to think,” Meghan said, closing her eyes. “Raincheck on this lunch? I’ll see you later, okay, Amy?”

  Amy was silent for a moment, and slowly, her hands slid away from Meghan’s body. Meghan’s back felt cold without Amy’s body touching hers, but Meghan didn’t turn around to look at her.

  “All right,” Amy said, and walked away.

  ***

  Of course, Meghan tried to call her father and reason with him, but nothing came of it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Amy curled up on her bed and stared at the wall. The guilt was eating her up something awful, and she didn’t know how to deal with it. Should she tell Meghan that she had met her father, that maybe her words were why he had had that reaction, why he had been so sure? At the same time, a part of her felt wounded at how Meghan had dismissed her the day before.

  Amy could read her words perfectly. Meghan didn’t think Amy could help her. She didn’t think Amy was competent enough to help her with anything, not with work and not with money and not with this. More than that—Meghan was obviously letting the stress eat her alive.

  Amy would bet an arm that Meghan had just drunk the coffee she had started making and not eaten any food the day before, when Amy had left.

  The truth was, a part of Amy felt like maybe they could have brainstormed together. Amy could have talked to her about her problems with her own parents, as small as they felt in face of what was happening between Meghan and hers, and they could have found solutions for each other—getting out of theirs heads and focusing on something different could have helped them both, couldn’t it?

  But it felt so presumptuous of her to say something like that. It was obvious that Meghan could help her way more than she could help Meghan. Was she taking advantage of her?

  But at the same time, a part of her raged. Amy’s problems were less bad, she could admit that, but they weren’t less important. Why couldn’t she go to her girlfriend for help, even if her girlfriend had her own problems to deal with? Why did she have to feel like she was bothering Meghan whenever she wanted to talk to her about something important to her?

  Amy sighed, burrowing deeper into her blankets. Those thoughts weren’t going anywhere.

  ***

  Chelsea would have liked to burst dramatically through the door, but as it were, the doormen had to warn Amy that she was coming, and the surprise was lost. But she still made a point of opening the door with a flourish and a beam on her face bright enough to nearly blind Amy where she stood.

  “Chelsea, what is up with you?” Amy asked, following her best friend into her own house. “I haven’t seen you in this good humor since Christmas.”

  “I have a solution for us!” Chelsea exclaimed, gripping Amy by her forearms and twirling around.

  “You have a way to get money for Meghan?” Amy asked with a furrow between her brows.

  “What? No,” Chelsea said. “I have a solution for us. How many times do I have to tell you to focus on your own problems for once? What I mean is, I know one of your major problems with college is how expensive it is and how you feel it wouldn’t teach you much, right?”

  “Well, that sounds a bit presumptuous,” Amy admitted.

  “It does,” Chelsea said dryly, letting go of her, but her good humor stayed and her words came out playful. “But if you are willing to compromise on on
e thing, I’ve got a solution. I know you didn’t want to move away from your parents, but the big city is an expensive place to live anywhere, and a smaller town not two hours away from here has a, wait for it… community college.”

  Amy stared at her.

  “What?” she asked, baffled. “Chelsea, I didn’t even know community colleges gave illustration courses. And two hours is far too much—”

  “Just compromise on one thing,” Chelsea asked her—nearly begged. “Stand to be away from your parents for a couple of hours and things will work out. You can get lots of credits in the community college, doing classes related to art to get most of your degree, and the cost of living will be small enough that you’ll be able to save some good money, and I’m fucked with my commuting already, it would just go from taking me an hour to taking me an hour and a half to go to work, and I’m willing to stand that. For you.”

  Amy’s mouth fell open.

  “You would—you would live with me?” she asked. “But you always said you never wanted to leave your roommates, that you got super lucky with them, that rent is as small as you’ll be able to get it to go—”

  “But if you accepted this, I’d be willing to go with you,” Chelsea told her, softly but firmly, like a mother to a child. It racked on Amy’s nerves and set her annoyance on fire, but Chelsea didn’t sound patronizing, not exactly. She, Amy realized, quite simply, sounded like someone who wanted the best for her.

  Amy stared at her and didn’t know how to answer. She had never considered community college—she tried not to be prejudiced, but a part of her had always thought they weren’t proper college—but now that Chelsea had framed it as a cheaper, smarter option, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before. And she had never wanted to be apart from her parents, but weren’t they the ones kicking her out right now?