Bad Neighbor

by Molly O'Keefe

  I arched my back. My neck bowing off the bed. So much. Too much, maybe. It had after all been a long time. Such a long time…

  “Shhhh,” he was breathing in my ear. “Take it. Take me. You can. You can, baby.”

  And I did. I took him all the way into my body.

  Every time he moved, I moved. Every time he exhaled, I inhaled. Nothing in my life had ever prepared me for sex with Jesse. Nothing could have prepared me for what was I feeling. The connection. And when I tried to retreat from it, protect myself from this unbearable intimacy, his big thick hand grabbed my jaw, clumsy and rough and so perfect I felt like I might evaporate right out of my skin.

  “Here,” he groaned, like sentences were beyond him. “Stay here. With me.”

  How could I not? How could I not just throw open the edges of my body? How could I not just let him in, not just to my body but into all of me? Into my head and my heart?

  In the end it was easy. It was the simplest thing I’d ever done.

  I just stared into his eyes and I came and I came and I came, and he slipped inside my skin and ribcage. He found a home somewhere impossible.

  Lying there ecstatic and replete, boneless and infatuated, I stroked his back and his sides while he pounded into me and then growled as he came. Every muscle in his body so tense and beautiful I put my arms around him because I had to hold him… for a while anyway. And I’d thought that as much as I’d taken him into my body, maybe he’d taken me into his.

  It was a nice fantasy. The kind of dream a woman like me would make up. Half real, half not real at all. That was my specialty, after all.

  My infatuation tipped into something more and I lay in his bed, listening to him breathe, sure that he had to feel the same way.

  Jesse

  Charlotte was strong under all that soft skin. She was smart under all that soft hair. And making love to her had been… intense. She liked it with a hard edge that maybe shouldn’t have been so surprising, but I still felt sucker-punched by her surrender. I felt… lucky. Lucky to be the guy she trusted like this. Lucky like I’d been given an unexpected gift.

  I hadn’t expected to feel so sweet afterwards. Like I’d smoked a joint in the sunlight.

  Like I’d had the shit kicked out of me but won the match.

  Victory and submission all at once.

  My chest heaving, I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. My damp cock flopped against my leg. I reached down and took care of the condom. Tying a knot in the end without looking.

  “Old pro at this,” she said.

  “I’m a slut, what can I say?”

  She smiled. I smiled. We were two goons smiling at each other.

  “Thank you,” she said. “That was…” She trailed off like she just didn’t have the words for what had happened between us, which made sense. I didn’t really either.

  She was staring at the ceiling, grinning like a fool and I felt some pretty chest-beating pride that I’d fucked her like no one else had. And she didn’t even know… she didn’t know the half of the shit I wanted to do to her. She didn’t even know, right now, how much she would like it.

  But I knew, and it was a sudden fever in my blood.

  “Great,” I said, filling in her blank with a lame-ass word, but my brain was pretty broken too.

  “Was it?” She turned her head to face me, her eyes darting to mine and then away. “For you?”

  I rolled over onto my side, my fingers stroking her hair and immediately getting tangled in the curls. She tried to help me get untangled but I just grabbed a fistful of her hair, careful not to hurt her and turned her face back toward me.

  “You were so good, Charlotte,” I told her. “So fucking perfect. Just like I knew you would be.”

  She beamed at me and to my surprise leaned forward and kissed me on the mouth. “You weren’t too shabby yourself.”

  At the touch of her mouth, her hair in my fist, I felt interest in another round building but she pulled away with a sigh. “I have to get some work done today.”

  “You sure about that?” I asked, slipping my hand down over her hip, rolling her toward me so I could get a good grip on that beautiful ass of hers.

  She gasped at my touch, her eyes going wide and unfocused, and I liked it. I liked it so fucking much.

  “Maybe…maybe not right now,” she whispered.

  I laughed and kissed her with my open mouth, showing her what I liked. The earthy beast inside my skin. And she met me with her own earthy beast.

  “I’ve never…” she whispered as I kissed her neck. Her ear. The skin under her chin. She really was soft all over. “This isn’t like me.”

  I leaned back. Looked deep into her startled and wary blue eyes.

  “You looking for permission to fuck the way you like?” I asked. “It’s yours.”

  “And taking a day off work and…all of it. All of this.”

  “You keep doing things that aren’t like you. Have you stopped to think that maybe you’re finally acting the way you really are?”

  Her eyes opened wide as though what I said hit her in a soft spot.

  “How’d you get so smart?” she whispered.

  I shook my head. “I’m not smart.” I rolled over on top of her, my body soaking in the feel of her soft silk skin like a man drinking water before heading off into the desert.

  She wouldn’t be here forever. It was painfully obvious she didn’t belong at Shady Oaks, much less in my bed. But I was going to enjoy the fuck out of her while she was here.

  “I just don’t believe in bullshit,” I whispered. “If you want something, take it. Do it. Have it. What does pretending you don’t want something get you?”

  “Keeps me safe,” she whispered. “Keeps me from getting hurt. And I know you understand that.”

  I shook my head, denying it even as I knew it was true. She did too.

  “The trainer?” she asked. “Sponsorships. You want that stuff.”

  I did. And I’d never let myself want that stuff before. Not until her. And with that thought I realized I had a ton of dreams and wishes hidden away, unsaid, barely thought about, in fear of the pain having them ripped out of my hands would bring me.

  “What are you afraid of?” she asked, her hands rubbing through my hair, first one way and then another. Goose bumps rose up on my back and I closed my eyes because it felt so good to be petted like that. Her fingers traced my ear, the side of my jaw, and then wandered back up into my hair again.

  “My brother.” With my eyes closed, resting up against her body, it was easy to talk about.

  “You’re scared of him?”

  “No, I mean, not really. Not that way. He’s a bad guy, but he’s not after me.”

  I’m afraid he might be after you.

  What am I doing? I need to be getting her out of here, not keeping her in my bed.

  “Sounds scary,” she whispered.

  “I’m scared that he’s so far gone that way, I’ll never get him back. That…it’s over for us.”

  I’d never said this out loud. I’d barely even thought it in a sentence. It had just always been this thing in my stomach. This vague pain, sharp at times. Mostly dull. But always there.

  But I said those words out loud and nothing happened. There was no lightning bolt or stone rolling toward me.

  I just said the words and felt better for having said them.

  She hummed and kept stroking me. So I turned my face into her neck, inhaled the smell of her—sweat and sex and something under that that was girly and sweet.

  “I’m scared I’ll get hurt in that basement and I’ll never have a chance to be anything more.”

  “So stop,” she whispered, her breath in my ear. I expected those words, they were the same words I would have said to her. The same words any sane person would say.

  I opened my eyes, shaking off the power of her spell.

  “I don’t want to stop fighting. I just…” These were things I never said. Never even thou
ght.

  “I get it,” she whispered. “You just want a little more for yourself.”

  That was it. Exactly.

  “It hurts sometimes,” she said, “trying to have more.”

  She parted her legs for me, her knees bending up against my sides. I kissed her neck. Bit her other shoulder. Sucked her skin until she moaned, until I felt the blood rise up against her skin.

  “What’s a little pain?” I asked, because this is where I lived—she lived there, too. I could see it in her face. Her eyes. The way she carried herself.

  In the place between what we wanted and what we had.

  And this is where all the pain lived.

  Her blue eyes were wide and uncomprehending, so I spent the afternoon giving her a lesson in how a little pain could feel so fucking good.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Charlotte

  I was twenty-five years old and I had just figured out how I liked to have sex.

  I wasn’t a virgin. I lost that in Matt Chapman’s basement after a high school dance. I’d had a few boyfriends. I masturbated. I’d even, in college, kissed a girl. So, how…how in the world had I not known what I liked, what I wanted?

  He’d put a finger in my ass and I’d seen stars. STARS! I’d come so much I pulled a muscle in my thigh. He’d moved me around like I was full of feathers.

  He’d fucked me until I sobbed and he stroked my hair and told me how beautiful I was.

  I was spending the day after being fucked silly trying to act normal. I answered emails. Did some edits on the pages. I called my parents.

  But underneath everything was this constant hum of memory. Of my body on fire.

  My body being sore. On the inside.

  I stared at my mailbox, the cool October breeze lifting my hair and settling it down around my neck, and I remembered exactly what his hand felt like on the arch of my foot.

  “Hey.” Jesse’s voice snapped me out of my daze and I actually jerked, that was how deep my daydream had gone. I turned away from my mailbox and found him behind me. My body shaking and warm and at the sight of him, wearing the hoodie and the sweatpants…ready.

  Just like that.

  I was sore. My body bruised and chafed and raw from yesterday and still I would have more if he let me.

  I was an addict.

  “Hey,” I said with a forced awful laugh.

  He grinned at me, his eyes knowing. “What are you thinking about, Charlotte?” he whispered.

  Your hands. Your body.

  Nothing, rose to my lips. The lie I would have told. But instead I caught myself and said, “You.”

  He leaned forward and kissed my shoulder. My neck. “Good,” he said.

  He opened his mailbox and took out some junk fliers. I did the same, reaching into my mailbox only to find an envelope from my agent.

  The next part of my advance.

  Five grand. Enough to get me out of this place. I could rent an apartment in my old neighborhood. Or at least in a neighborhood more like my old neighborhood.

  This was how I got back to my old life.

  The octopus and the coffee girl that didn’t know my name. The fruit stand fantasy.

  That had been my plan all along. Shady Oaks was temporary.

  But what was I supposed to do when that old world wasn’t nearly as satisfying as this one?

  “Something good?” Jesse asked and I jerked my gaze away from the envelope toward him. My fantasy made real. My flesh-and-bone addiction.

  I wasn’t done with him. With this… with who I was becoming in this place.

  “You’re staring at that envelope like you can see through it,” he said.

  “Just… publishing stuff.”

  I could feel him watching me, as if waiting for me to tell him more. But I didn’t. Because I shoved that check in my purse and picked up my grocery bags at my feet.

  After the tremendous calorie burn that had been yesterday, I woke up this morning craving steak and chocolate cake. And now I had a bag full of those things, plus the stuff for a spinach salad and a baguette.

  Because even in the bad neighborhoods in the Bay Area, you could get fresh bread.

  “You having a party?” he asked.

  “No. Just…dinner. I had a craving for steak and chocolate cake.”

  “Good craving.”

  “You want to come over?” I asked. Brave and bold, just like I was learning to be. “I have more than enough.”

  “You gonna cook dinner for me?” he asked, stepping up to me like he liked the idea. Like he wanted to cuddle up with the idea.

  “Sure,” I said. “You gonna make me come, if I do?”

  He growled and laughed low in his throat and I could not believe this was me. And I could not be happier. Seriously, I was giddy as this person.

  I kissed his smiling lips and decided I would hold onto that money a little bit longer.

  This world…it suited me just fine right now.

  Later that night, after we’d eaten dinner at his apartment and come back to mine to have sex, we lay in my bed, sheets pushed down to our feet. Sweat cooling on our bodies.

  “You’re so comfortable in your skin,” I said, pulling the sheet up to cover myself.

  He pulled the sheet out of my hands. “You should be too.”

  “I don’t live like you do,” I said. “In my body like that. I live in my head.”

  His soulful eyes took me in and then he nodded, like he could see that about me.

  “Wrestling,” he said, like that was the reason for his comfort.

  “Illustrating,” I said, like that was the reason for mine.

  We both laughed and I took some comfort in knowing—or at least thinking—that he was laughing more with me than he had before. Just like I was laughing more with him.

  “I want to see that picture,” he said, rolling toward me.

  “What picture?”

  “The one of the Where’s Waldo thing, but with the woman? In the park?”

  “You want to see some of my work?” I asked. “Now?”

  “Why not now?”

  “I…I guess… sure,” I said.

  I got up off my bed and shrugged into the dress I’d been wearing before Jesse all but ripped it off me. He started to get up too, pulling on his underwear that I’d almost ripped off him.

  He clearly intended to follow me to my desk, and I thought of that picture of my sister and me on my desktop.

  What harm, I wondered, would it cause for him to know about Abby? It would be a relief to tell him. I hated this secret between us. Not that I wasn’t sure he had his own, but this… she was my twin. The most important person in my life and the entire reason I ended up here, at Shady Oaks.

  But I imagined telling him. I imagined somehow letting my sister into this thing that we had between us. I imagined telling him the stories of how we grew up. The jokes and the way I mothered her. Or really… what I imagined was letting myself, the version of myself I was when I was with my sister, into this thing with me and Jesse, and I shook my head.

  Hating the idea.

  I liked this version of myself. This not-drag me.

  And if Abby was here, even in spirit, I didn’t know if I could hold onto this new me.

  “Stay here,” I said. “I’ll bring a printout.”

  He lay back down, arms behind his head, looking so perfect in my flowered sheets.

  “Go,” he said. “You sex fiend.”

  I smiled, delighted all over my body. In every square inch I was flush with happiness. With a kind of giddiness I’d never felt before.

  I grabbed three of the printouts from my easel—Newgate Prison, Hyde Park, and the Palace. They were the three I was proudest of.

  Back in the bedroom, I spread the three of them across the foot of the bed and Jesse, in that kind of animal way he had, shifted around so he was sitting in front of all three of them.

  “Who am I looking for?” he asked.

  “Her.” I pointed at the Jane
Austen in the palace. Her red bonnet, the book in her hand. The sort of knowing grin she wore, like all was according to plan.

  Jesse grunted and looked over at the prison.

  “Jesus,” he breathed.

  “Dark, huh?”

  “Good.” He looked up at me with wide eyes. “It’s so fucking good. It’s creepy and it’s cool.” His fingers ran over the galleries and then he found Jane, near the area where the female prisoners could be outside for limited times each day.

  He looked over at Hyde Park and found her almost immediately in the rowboat with the gentleman working the oars.

  “Well, that was maybe too easy,” I said.

  “She looks like you.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. That grin of hers. It’s like you.”

  “Stop,” I laughed.

  “I’m not joking.” Carefully he stacked up the pages and set them down beside the bed and then he grabbed my hand, pulling me off balance, and then across his body as he sprawled backwards.

  He pushed my hair off my face, holding it back in his hand like he did when I was giving him a blowjob. Just that tension, that sting made me pant.

  “You going to tell me now?” he asked.

  “Tell you what?”

  “What you’re doing here. What you’re hiding.”

  I blinked at him, struggling to find the words to keep the lie going. But then all of a sudden, I put my head down in his neck. My nose right there at the spot under his ear.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “But you will.” It wasn’t a question and I nodded.

  I would. Someday. When I was convinced that this version of myself would still be here when I was done.

  Jesse

  Ramirez was apparently tweeting shit about me. Amber was big on letting me know what was happening on Twitter or Facebook.

  “Seriously, dude,” Amber said from where she was stretched out on my bed, scrolling through shit on her phone. “You can’t let this stuff go without comment.”

  “Yeah,” I said, dropping my towel and pulling on some underwear. I’d just finished working out and my body was loose and tired. “I can.”

  “You know,” she said with a sigh, “if you went legit and had sponsors and shit—”