I Kissed The Boy Next Door (3 page)

“Yes, and when I’m bored I …”

She cut him off. “Do I want to know this? Or were you going to say ‘annoy the neighbor’?”

He grinned.
“That too.”

She rubbed at her eyes.
“How ‘bout you go to the front door and I’ll let you in. Don’t think my mom or brother would appreciate you climbing in the window.”

No.
Probably not.
He gave a nod and headed toward the front of the house.

She
arrived at the front door dressed in a ratty pair of cut-off blue jeans and an extremely tight tank top. She looked down at herself when his gaze traveled. “What? It was the first thing I could find.”

“I’m not complaining,” he said.

She blew out a puff of air and sank onto one hip. “Do you ever think of anything else?”

He leaned over
her, an action that seemed to throw her sense of balance off. “Let’s see. I’m an eighteen-year-old male. No. Not really.”

She laughed then and whirlin
g around, moved into the house, leaving him to follow.

The living room was homey. A well-loved couch and
matching set of chairs sat before a brick fireplace and white wooden mantel lined with photographs – mostly of Lucy and her brother at various ages. However, there was a family picture on the end. Lucy looked to be about four.

“I was cute,” she said.

He took in her blonde pigtails and thigh-high dress. “And still are.”

This brought a playful smack on his
arm. He laughed and looked back at the image. Her father stood to her mother’s right. He’d heard her father died when she was ten.

“You miss him?” he asked.

She stepped up beside him, her head level with his shoulder.
“All the time. Still sometimes I think he’ll come walking down the hall, lift me up in his arms, and throw me in the air like he used to do.”

Her words struck him, and he gulped. He knew the feeling
, though his mother wasn’t dead. But she was miles away, living her new life without her children.

She glanced up at him.
“You hungry?”

He shoved the thought aside.
“I could eat.”

She waved him forward through a
cluttered mudroom and into the kitchen. The kitchen was wide and spacious like what you’d see in a farmhouse. White cabinets circled the right-hand wall, interrupted by a large bay window hung over a farmer’s sink. A kitchen island sat in the center.

He met the gaze of her brother when he entered.

“Tray, this is Jackson Phillips. He moved in next door.”

Tray
, whose actual name was Travis, jerked his chin upward.

Jackson
stared for a moment, taken aback. He’d only ever seen her brother from a distance, and that was three years ago. But having just looked at her dad’s picture, he had to look twice. The resemblance was unreal.

Lucy
waved Jackson toward the island. “Sit,” she said.

He
claimed a stool in time to see her bend over into the refrigerator.
Nice.
He refocused his gaze on Travis’s face. Polite conversation would be better than what his brain kept doing.

“‘Sup
?” he asked.

Her brother raised his
coffee cup, steam drifting before his face. He took a noisy slurp. “Not much.”

Lucy
straightened and moved to a cabinet, the refrigerator door swishing shut behind her. Travis sat his cup down with a thunk. And Lucy stooped over, reaching onto a lower shelf. She really must stop doing that.

Jackson
tried to stop his wandering gaze, too late.

H
er brother turned around to view his sister’s extended butt then faced forward, one side of his mouth curled upward.

“So tell me,”
Travis said, “you got a girlfriend?”

Lucy
slammed the cabinet too hard, and Jackson jumped in place. “N-no,” he stuttered.

“You
looking?”

Setting
her pan down on the stove, Lucy revolved on her heel and riveted her eyes on the back of her brother’s head. “Travis, cut it out.”

Travis smirked and waved his hands, palm outward.
“Just wondering.”

She turned around and
stretched a groping hand over her head to lift a bowl from an upper shelf. And her top crept up, revealing the slender curve of her waist. “Don’t let him bug you,” she said, setting the bowl on the counter.

“
Ain’t me that’s bugging him,” Travis said to her back.

And h
e was right about that. Did she not know how she looked? Or did she not care? Jackson drew figure eights on the counter with his fingertip.

Lucy flicked her brother
a glance. “Don’t you have to wash your truck or something?”

Ignoring the shake of his head, she
returned to her cooking. Soon the heady aroma of frying bacon wafted through the room. The pop of the toaster and smell of eggs followed. Within minutes, she set a plate before him. She then fetched her own and joined him around the island.

Her brother gave her the eye. “Nothing for me?” he asked.
“You feed the neighbor, but not your own brother?”

She paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “
I like him better.”

Jackson covered his grin with a strip of bacon.

Travis returned to nursing his cup of coffee, and Jackson bent over his plate. For a while the only sound was the clinking of forks and chewing of food. It was as Jackson lifted the last bite to his mouth that Lucy’s phone buzzed.

Twisting around on the stool, she
pressed the button and leaned over the screen. Her face took an on interesting expression.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Jackson asked.

She didn’t respond, but instead pushed the phone beneath his nose. He looked from her to the phone before reading the text.
It true Jackson P lives next door?

His voice
raised. “Jackson P.”

Word spread quickly. He scrolled up the screen. “Esther?” he asked.
“
The
Esther? Esther, ‘Hey, Jackson,’ Esther?”

She nodded.
“The same.”

She laid a finger on
her nose. “Hmm …”

“Oh no,” Travis said, “I don’t like that look or that sound. You are not doing it, whatever it is.”

“Aw, don’t be a spoil sport. You don’t even know what I want to do.”

Jackson stared at her. She hadn’t denied she wanted to do something. But what was it?

“I know how you are,” Travis continued. “And you are not sucking me in this time.” He made to stand to his feet, but she snatched at his sleeve. Coffee sloshed from his mug onto the counter.

“But we need you
r help. Please, just this once,” she begged. “I’ll wash your truck.”

Travis hesitated, his eyes sharp on her face.
“The whole thing this time? Including the tires?”

“The whole
thing, and Jackson here will help.”

Jackson set his fork down on his plate. “
What exactly is Jackson being volunteered to do?”

The visual image of Lucy washing her brother’s truck now lingered in his
mind. Suds. Water. Lucy.

She smiled at him. “Y
ou said you were bored, so I’m thinking we do a reenactment for old time’s sake. Then you help me wash Tray’s truck.”

“A reenactment.”
He wrapped his mind around the phrase.
Reenactment of what?

She fiddled with her phone, calling up the camera, and stuck it out in her palm. “On three take the picture.”

Travis looked down at it as if it was diseased.

“Just do it,” she said. “It’ll be fun.”
She shoved her hand forward. “Take it.”

Her brother
finally gave in, reluctantly pointing the phone’s camera toward her face. “What exactly am I taking a picture of? Esther knows what you look like.”

Yeah, picture of what?
Jackson turned to her. What was working in her fast-thinking brain?

“This,” she said, and she grasped his cheeks in her hands and kissed him.

CHAPTER 4

God-Almighty, kissing Jackson again was a fine thing. He was shocked. My brother was shocked, though not enough to forget to snap the shot, and I was electrified. I can’t explain it otherwise. His lips pressed against mine, all I wanted was for that moment to go on forever.

And he felt it too. His hand drifted to my face.

But Travis had to go and ruin the whole thing.

“That’s enough,” he growled. He slid me my phone. “
If Mom saw what you’re doing, she’d have your hide.”

He was right. B
ut it wouldn’t be the first time; I was always doing some stunt.

I snatched up my phone and called up the picture. There it was in perfect detail. His lips on mine, our faces smashed together. I attached it to a text, tagged Esther, and hit send.

“Sweet,” I said.

“Yeah right.
You’re crazy.” Travis pulled his keys from his pocket and tossed them on the counter. “You owe me now, and it’d better be good or I’m telling Mom. Then your friend here will be exiled.” He pointed at Jackson.

I highly doubted th
at. Mom would like Jackson; she’d remember him from the old days.

“Never fear, dear brother,” I said. “It’ll be clean as a whistle.”

My phone buzzed then and buzzed and buzzed. Esther went and forwarded the picture to all our friends, and I laughed because the next place it would end up was on the internet. I was right too.

I dashed to our computer, dragging Jackson after me, and logged in. And there it was. She’d tagged me in it. “This is the best,” I said, and I spun around in the chair.

I expected him to be smiling, laughing … something. But my face fell because he wasn’t.

“Jackson?” I asked. My voice became quiet.

He’d crouched down to my eye height, and I stared into those eyes feeling like I was free-falling with no net to catch me.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked.

Sometimes my stunts made people mad, and generally speaking, I usually didn’t care. They always got over it. But the thought of Jackson being upset gave me strange pains.

“I’m sorry. I should’ve asked. I should’ve thought,” I said.

“Let me ask you something,” he said.

I waited, my insides twirling around.
I’d do about anything for him not to be mad.

“What if next time you let me kiss you?”

The next time.
That there’d be a next time meant he wasn’t all that mad.

“Would that be okay?” he asked.

I swallowed hard. “That would be … fine.”

“Just
fine
?” he asked.

B
etter than fine. It’d be heavenly. Amazing. Perfect. I ran out of adjectives.

“No, more than fine
.”

He smiled
and took hold of the ends of my hair, rolling it between his fingers. “Okay then. ‘Til next time. Now, I think we owe your brother a clean truck.”

***

Lucy McKinsey in cut-offs and a very wet tank top, her hair covered in suds, completely made his day. Nevermind that she’d kissed him – again – without his permission. But her subdued attitude after and the concerned look on her face said she’d not repeat it.

He wanted to kiss her. Already on the first day of summer vacation, he wanted it, but the timing had to be right. And it’d be the kiss of the century, not the wild things she’d thrown at him, twice.

Having drenched themselves washing the truck, and her way more than him once he got hold of the water hose, they settled on the stoop to dry in the afternoon sun and contemplate the rest of the day. It was his suggestion they go somewhere.

“But we don’t have a car,” she said.

He rose to his feet and extended his hand. She grasped it and popped up like a cork.

“You don’t have a car,” he said, “
but I do.”

He headed back to his house,
not waiting for her, and entered the front door. Moving through and into the garage, he mashed the garage door button and listened as the huge metal doors clicked and clanked in their swoop upwards. Lucy stood there in the driveway, her eyes growing huge the higher they moved.

“This is your car?” she asked.

He smiled and nodded. “Do you like it?”

“Boy, do I!” She dashed in
to the garage and ran her fingers down the arching lines of a 1973 Chevy Corvette convertible, pausing at the hood to plaster herself on it. “How do I look?”

For a moment, his breath wouldn’t come. He hacked and sputtered.
“G-good. You look good.”