The Boy Next Door (17 page)

I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath for a minute. I feel an almost forgotten tingling in my panties, the way I feel right before I know something is going to happen with a guy I’m really into. I don’t know why I’m feeling this way, because it’s just Jason. All I know is that I haven’t had this feeling once in the entire time I’ve been with Larry. And I’ve missed it.

I think that’s all this is. There’s nothing between me and Jason, it’s just that Larry and I don’t have enough romance in our relationship. Well, maybe not romance, but heat. Once I get back, that’s just something we’ll need to work on once we get married.

I clear my throat. “I don’t think that will be necessary. I’m fine, thank you very much.”

“So you say,” Jason says, not looking like he believes a word of it.

We make it to Pittsburgh in a record six hours, including our trip to McDonald’s. Jason drives fast. It’s the one way in which he’s a little reckless, since he seems so careful and conservative in most aspects of his life. Our conversation about sex gets quickly forgotten as we listen to the radio, and he lets me reminisce a little about Nana. I don’t feel so sad anymore, because I know she had a long life, but I do miss her.

Jason parks in his own driveway, next door to ours, then transfers himself out of the car. There are a few layers of bricks that divide his family’s property from my family’s, which I can step over easily, but I know from experience is too high for Jason to jump over in his wheelchair. He’ll have to go around them to get to my house, but I see him hesitating.

“I should probably let you go home yourself,” he says. “I don’t want to intrude.”

“Intrude?” I blink at him. “Jason, you just drove me hundreds of miles, and you’re practically family. You should come inside.”

He frowns at my comment. I don’t know why he’s so reluctant all of a sudden, but I finally convince him to come in. But of course, right after he agrees, I remember what the problem is and why we always used to hang out at Jason’s house and not mine. We’ve got two steps to get up our front porch.

Not that Jason can’t handle two steps or anything. He can. But just barely. I watch him do a wheelie in front of the steps and his front wheels just barely catch the top step and slide off. He tries again and has the same problem. “Fuck,” I hear him mutter under his breath.

On his third try, he makes it, and I’m certain for a second he’s going to slip and fall backwards or something.
 
I’ve seen him wipe out before, but he doesn’t this time
. As his back wheels land safely on my parents’ porch, I hear him breathe a sigh of relief.

I ring the doorbell because I don’t have the keys anymore, and my mother answers within ten seconds, as if she’s been waiting by the door for us. Her eyes light up at the sight of me and she gives me a big hug. “Tasha!” she cries. “It’s so good to see you!”

She doesn’t seem particularly sad about Nana. Of course, Nana wasn’t her mother, and I think she’s a little relieved to finally have her out of the house, one way or another. I don’t think Mom had counted on Nana living so long when she agreed to let Dad move her in with us.

“Jason!” she says. “Oh my God, it’s good to see you too! It’s been over a year, hasn’t it?”

He nods and gives her his half smile. “It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Moran.”

“You should call me Jill,” she says to him, even though she’s now told him that at least a dozen times. “After all, you’re all grown up now.”

I know there’s no way Jason will ever call my mother Jill after twenty years of Mrs. Moran.

I walk into the house and see that my mother has re-carpeted the house. It’s this fluffy white carpeting that you can only buy after your kids are already grown up and no longer in the phase where they spill every drink you pour them. I notice my mother is in her socks and I quickly take my shoes off at the door. I look behind me and see Jason hesitating in the entrance.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him.

“My wheels are pretty dirty,” he says in a low voice. “I don’t want to mess up your mom’s carpet.”

“Oh,” I say.

He’s running his wheels back and forth over the welcome mat and looking nervous. “Maybe I should just go,” he says.

Mom comes out and sees what the problem is and she insists that he stay, bringing a towel out from the bathroom to give him a longer space to go back and forth over to clean his wheels off. She looks kind of embarrassed and says that nobody was very happy when she got that white carpet, and that it’s been impossible to keep clean. “Also, what about when Lydia has a baby? It’s going to be a mess.”

My face burns. When Lydia has a baby? What about me? I’m going to get married too!

“So where’s Larry?” Mom asks me, as if reading my mind. “I thought we were going to get to meet him.”

“Um, no, not right now,” I mumble. “He . . . he really wanted to come, but things were extremely busy at work.” I’m not about to tell her that I asked Larry not to come because I felt like I couldn’t deal with both him and my family.

“Oh,” Mom says. She looks at Jason. “But don’t you and Larry work at the same company?”

Damn, when did my mother get so smart?

To my surprise, Jason replies, “No, not anymore.”

What?

“Oh, really?” Mom asks. “Did you move to a different company?”

Jason shakes his head. “No, I quit investment banking. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Are you kidding?” I practically yell. “Why didn’t you say something?”

He blinks. “I don’t know. It never came up.”

“Well, when did this happen?” I sputter.

“Last week,” he says. “I got accepted to NYU for a PhD program in computer science and I decided I was sick of being miserable at work. Plus, I don’t really want to be a forty-year-old student. So . . . you know, now or never.” He adds, “It’s not like I’m going to have a wedding I have to pay for in the near future.”

My mother catches that last statement and says in a gentle voice, “Jason, honey, I’m sure you’ll meet a wonderful woman someday.”

He ignores her patronizing tone. “Anyway, I’m going to start in a few weeks, so I figure I should take a break so I’m not burnt out on my first day.”

I’m blown away. Jason has been talking about doing this for years, but I was beginning to feel pretty sure he’d never actually do it, especially when he said that Melissa wanted him to hold out at the company till he was forty. I figured at this rate, he’d be totally gray by age forty, and way too worn out to consider going back to school. I guess breaking up with Melissa did him some good. I’d noticed he seemed in a good mood during our trip, but I egotistically thought it was because we were spending time together.

“So what do you think?” he asks me. He sounds a little nervous. He always wanted my approval.

“Are you kidding?” I say. “I’ve been telling you to do this for years. I think it’s great.”

Jason smiles, and it’s not a half smile, but he gives me the whole smile. In the last few years, I’ve been noticing his eyes crinkle a bit when he smiles. I guess it’s a sign of aging, but to be honest, it’s incredibly sexy. I try not to think about that, though, as I return his smile.

Jason ends up staying for dinner. Even though Dad is too upset about his mother to say anything, I can tell he’s also wondering why I’m here with Jason instead of Larry. But of course, my family loves Jason and they’ve known him forever, so dinner is spent reminiscing about some of the dumb things the two of us did when we were kids.

After dinner, Jason goes home and my mother immediately comments, “That poor boy.”

“What are you talking about?” I say.

Mom shakes her head. “Alice keeps saying she thinks he’s lonely,” she says. Alice is Jason’s mother. “I’m sure it’s very hard for him to meet women.”

“You know he had a serious girlfriend for the last year and a half,” I say. “They only recently broke up.”

“You’re kidding?” Mom seems amazed. I’m not sure what’s so amazing. Okay, Jason is disabled, but he’s also pretty good looking. And nice. And funny. What girl wouldn’t want to be with a guy with all those qualities?

Except me, of course. But I’m with Larry.

I help my mother wash the dishes and we watch some television. I’m dreading going to sleep, mostly because sleeping in my old room always creeps me out a little. It gives me this unsettling sense of déjà vu. But I’m exhausted from waking up so early and from the drive here, so I end up turning in earlier than I usually do.

My old bedroom hasn’t changed much from when I used to live here. Considering I haven’t lived here in fourteen years, that’s a little creepy. Even though I’d be a little insulted, I almost wish my mother would turn it into a sewing room or at least a normal guest room. I just feel ill when I walk into the room and see Kurt Cobain’s face plastered on the wall. I feel like I’ve stepped into a time warp.

I look into the full-length mirror where I spent pretty much half my adolescence staring at myself. When I look at myself now, I don’t think I look all that different than I did then. I feel like I could still pass for sixteen, although obviously I probably couldn’t. I don’t have many wrinkles, though, and no gray hairs, because I’ve yanked them all out. Yet . . . I know I must look older somehow.

My hand brushes against a dresser and I open the top drawer. Jeans. Ripped jeans. God, did I really ever think it was cool to wear these? Well, it beats eighties fashions, I guess. I pull out a pair of well-worn blue jeans and check out the label. Size two. Size two! Was I ever actually a size two? I’m not even going to attempt to squeeze into these. It would just be depressing.

I remember how I used to obsessively try on all my clothes in front of the mirror and I instinctively glance over at the house across from mine. Jason’s window is just below mine. It never even occurred to me that anyone might be watching me.

I crawl onto my bed next to the window and press my face against the glass to eliminate the reflection of the light in the room. He was right—I’ve got a great view of his room from here. I can see him in there right now, reading some giant book, probably about computers or something. He doesn’t know I’m watching him. I wave but he doesn’t look up.

I keep watching as Jason puts down the book and yawns into his hand. I expect him to disappear and go brush his teeth or something, but instead he grabs the hem of his shirt and lifts it up over his head in one swift motion.

In the past, I can’t say I was ever titillated by seeing my best friend with his shirt off. Like I said, I’ve dated some guys who were incredibly built and Jason . . . isn’t. He doesn’t work out, and even beyond that, he’s got no muscles below the mid-chest, so he’s got a gut that he probably doesn’t deserve to have, which seems out of place on a young guy who’s fairly fit. Plus, he’s really white. White like the kind of guy who knows he doesn’t have a great chest so he doesn’t spend much time exposing it to sunlight.

That said, I’m finding Jason oddly sexy right now. Maybe it’s the fact that he doesn’t know I’m watching him—I’ve never spied on a guy through a window, after all. Or maybe it’s the tight muscles in his arms and upper chest that I’ve felt a few times through his shirt. I don’t know what it is about the feel of a firm biceps that makes me tingle all over, but it’s something I’ve been missing since I’ve been with Larry. As I peer out the window, my hand finds its way into my pants and I discover that I’ve become incredibly wet.

I start to rub myself and then I realize what I’m doing: I’m masturbating while watching Jason undress. Jason.

And it’s so fucking hot, I can hardly breathe.

But at that moment, Jason suddenly looks up and out the window. And he sees me sitting there, watching him.

I expect him to . . . I don’t know what. Smile knowingly? Cock his finger at me and invite me down? Except he doesn’t do either of those things. A dark look comes over his face and he reaches over and shuts his blinds with a resounding snap I can hear all the way in my room.

What the fuck?

I hesitate, wondering if he knew what I was doing below the lower border of the windowsill. No, he couldn’t have. Except why is he so pissed off?

I push my feet into an old pair of comfortable loafers that I haven’t worn in so long that they
 
felt a bit stiff, then I hurry
 
downstairs. It’s a bit late to be knocking on the Foxs’s door, but I feel an almost desperate need to talk to Jason. I step over the bricks dividing our lawn from theirs, cut across their grass, trampling it like I used to do as a kid, and knock on their front door.

After a brief hesitation, Mrs. Fox opens the door dressed in her housecoat. Since I usually came home in the winter, when the Foxes were in Florida, I haven’t seen her in years. I’m a little surprised by how old she looks. Her formerly black hair is threaded with at least fifty-percent gray strands and she has bags under her eyes. I’d always thought Mrs. Fox was very pretty, so it’s a bit of a shock.

“Tasha!” Mrs. Fox cries. I almost forgot how I spent the majority of my childhood at her house. “How are you? It’s so great to see you again!”

“I’m fine,” I say politely. “How are you, Mrs. Fox?”

“Wonderful,” she says. Then her voice lowers. “Tasha, I’m so sorry to hear about your grandmother.”