The Boy Next Door (18 page)

I nod. “Thank you. Jason was very nice to drive me out here.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Fox says, and I can tell she knows that the reason Jason dropped everything to drive me here went beyond simple niceness or friendship. I guess everyone in the world knew about Jason’s crush on me. Except me.

“Is Jason home?” I ask, even though I know he’s home.

“Of course,” Mrs. Fox says. “I’m sure he’d love to see you, Tasha.”

I wasn’t so sure all of a sudden.

Mrs. Fox leads me down the hall to Jason’s room, despite the fact that I’d probably walked down that hallway a million times in the last 25 years. There’s a knot in my stomach as I knock on Jason’s old bedroom door. When he opens the door, his shirt is back on and I realize I hadn’t imagined the dark look on his face.

“What is it, Tasha?” he mumbles.

“Can I come in?” I ask him.

He shrugs and backs up his chair so I can enter the room. I shut the door behind me. “Look, I’m sorry,” I say. “But I don’t know what you’re so pissed off about. I wouldn’t have even known I could see your room through that window if you hadn’t told me about it.”

“I’m not pissed off, Tasha,” he says, except he sounds pretty pissed off. His voice is practically a monotone.

“Then why are you acting this way?” I say.

He stares at me a minute, then his shoulders sag and he sighs. “I’m not angry at you. I just . . . realized what a complete idiot I’ve been.”

I look at him blankly.

He sighs again. “I spent my teenage years staring at you out that window and thinking what a goddess you were. And . . . you still are. When I saw you watching me get underdressed, I just realized . . . I’m . . .” He lowers his green eyes.

I have no idea what he’s talking about. “That you’re what?”

He lifts his eyes again. “Do you remember that time when we were about nine-years-old and our families went to the beach together?”

I get a sinking feeling in my chest. Even though it was a million years ago, I know exactly what he’s talking about. There are a few things in my life that I’m not proud of, and that beach trip is one of them.

When we were nine-years-old, our families decided to take a trip to the beach together. I had begged my mother for a bikini, and of course, she’d said no, that I was too young, but she’d bought me a hot-pink bathing suit that I thought at the time was very adorable.

At the beach, Jason’s mother was fussing and fretting over him as usual, and he was doing his best to try to get her away from him. He finally begged her to let him be, which she agreed to do as soon as she helped him out of his shirt, shoes, and socks.

Jason and I had been friends for over a year at that point, and I’d come to think of him as a mostly normal kid who used a wheelchair. But when he was sitting in his chair, wearing only his swim trunks, it was obvious that wasn’t the case. His legs were much too skinny, practically bony, and the way his belly jutted out didn’t help matters. He looked so disabled. For the first time, I found myself thinking that he didn’t look so different from the kids you’d see in a Jerry Lewis telethon or something. Definitely not the kind of kid a normal girl like me would be friends with.

As Mrs. Fox was digging through her bag for the sunscreen, I sat on our blanket, doing my best to avoid looking at my best friend and trying to distance myself from him as much as possible. I noticed a girl from my class, Ashley, walk by our blanket, and I excitedly called out her name.

“Tasha,” she said, looking at me coolly. Ashley was, in fact, the coolest girl in our class. She had this silky blond hair and she was wearing a bikini, like I had wanted. And she actually had some breasts developing to fill out the top. By her golden tan, I could tell this wasn’t her first beach trip this summer.

“Hey,” I said nervously. “It’s, um, a great day for the beach.”

“I suppose,” Ashley said, shrugging.

“Are you here with your family?” I asked lamely. It seemed like the more I wanted to impress Ashley, the more I seemed like an idiot.

“Yeah,” she said. “But I was just about to play a game of beach volleyball with some friends.”

“Oh,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I love beach volleyball. Could I play?”

Ashley hesitated for a minute, then her eyes fell on Jason. I felt my cheeks turning pink, wondering what she must think of him, looking like that. I wished I had sat somewhere else, so she wouldn’t realize I knew him, much less was friends with him. “Who’s
 
that
?”

At least she said “who” and not “what,” but it was obvious that was what she meant by the tone of her voice. And I was embarrassed. Embarrassed to be seen with this weird-looking crippled kid, embarrassed to admit that he was actually my best friend. “Um,” I finally said. “It’s just my neighbor.” I made a face. “My parents asked them along.
 
So
 
lame.”

Ashley nodded in sympathy. “Poor you. Okay, you can play with us.”

I was floored. Ashley was, like I said, the coolest girl in the class. If she liked me, then I would be cool by association. It did occur to me that Jason heard the comments we made, but he didn’t seem that bothered. Anyway, he had to understand that I was doing what I needed to do to be popular.

I did spend the entire time at the beach playing with Ashley, but unfortunately, it didn’t ultimately end up doing much to increase my popularity. But Jason never mentioned what I said again, and it didn’t seem like our friendship was affected. I always felt really guilty about it, but I thought he’d forgotten all about it.

Apparently not.

“Okay, I remember,” I say to him now, avoiding his eyes. “I’m sorry about that. But we were just kids . . .”

“And you pretended you didn’t know me most of the time when we were in high school together,” he reminds me.

All right, that’s true too. But seriously, I had a reputation to uphold! Jason was a geek in a wheelchair and I was a cool grunge chick.

“Look, what do you want me to say? I feel awful about it and I’m sorry.”

“I know you are,” he says. “But there’s a reason you acted that way.” He shifts in his chair. “Sometimes I forget the way I look, the way other people see me.”

“You look fine,” I insist. Fine enough that I was touching myself as I watched him undress.

He shakes his head. “I don’t ‘look fine.’ I’m disabled and I look it. And to be honest, I feel like an idiot for even suggesting you might have romantic feelings for me.” He bites his lip. “I can’t believe Melissa was crazy enough to actually want to marry me and I broke up with her. I made a huge mistake.”

“Jason, stop it,” I say.

“Stop what?” he says, his voice laced with bitterness. “Everything I’m saying is accurate. You know it.”

“It’s not. . . .”

“You should marry Larry,” he says. “He’ll treat you well, at least. I’m sorry I ever said anything.”

“I don’t want to marry Larry!” I cry.

Jason looks up at me in surprise. As the words leave my mouth, I realize the truth in it. I don’t want to marry Larry. I don’t love him. I might even hate him. But I definitely don’t love him. The truth, which I just realized this second, is that there’s only one man I love. Only one man I’ve ever loved.

And I’m looking right at him.

“Tasha,” he says. “I know you feel guilty right now. I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t feel—”

“Just shut up,” I say to him.

With those words, I put my arms around his neck and fall into his lap. He looks at me in amazement as I press my lips against his. It occurs to me that we kissed once before, about twenty years ago, but he’s gotten much better at it. I taste his breath, warm and sweet, as he pulls me closer to him and runs his palm up my back and into my hair. “Holy shit, Tasha,” he breathes when our lips separate for a second.

“I know,” I say.

He’s kissing me like he’s been waiting to do this his whole life, which I guess he sort of has. And he is a great kisser. No, not just great. Amazing. I’ve kissed a lot of guys in my life—not hundreds or anything, but a lot, for sure. And of all those guys, this is the most intense kiss I’ve ever been a part of. My lips are tingling and I can feel myself shaking, my heart slamming in my chest like a hammer.

Maybe part of it is that we’re in Jason’s old childhood bedroom. It makes the whole thing feel illicit in a way I haven’t felt in many years. I know that any second, Jason’s mom could do the old one-knock-and-enter bit and catch us like she did when we were eleven. Somehow that knowledge fuels the intensity, and suddenly we’re ripping each other’s clothes off.

Well, actually, he’s mostly ripping my clothes off, and I’m attempting to get his off, but he’s resisting a bit. As he kisses me, he’s wheeling us toward his bed, and when his knees bump against the bed frame, he lifts me up and places me on the bed. Damn, he’s strong. He doesn’t even grunt.

“You don’t know how long I’ve fantasized about this, Tasha,” Jason whispers in my ear. Although I have some idea, obviously.

We kiss a little bit more and then I feel him pushing me down onto the bed and spreading my legs. I feel myself tingling all over with excitement because I know what he’s going to do. He kisses my bare knees, then the insides of my thighs as his hands caress my buttocks. I’m so wet by this point, I feel like there’s got to be a puddle under me, but he’s taking his time all of a sudden. He’s teasing me, coming close to my pussy with his mouth, then pulling back again.

I’m trembling with anticipation by the time his tongue finally makes contact with my clitoris. My eyes start to water and I gasp. I don’t know what in hell he’s doing down there, but it’s the most incredibly thing I’ve ever experienced. I cannot believe this is happening to me and that Jason is the one doing it.

I’ve never had a guy go down on me who seemed to have so much control. He keeps me on the delicious brink of orgasm for so long that when I finally come, it’s an explosion of pleasure like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I’ve had thousands of orgasms in my life, but never anything like this. And just as the first waves of pleasure ebb, I feel another explosion coming, then a third.

When Jason finally lifts his head, I am drenched, literally drenched, with sweat. I feel kind of disgusting and sticky, but he crawls into bed next to me anyway. He puts his arm around me and I wince because I must be cold and clammy to touch. “Sorry, I’m all sweaty,” I say.

“I don’t care,” he says and kisses me on the lips and my sweaty neck and shoulder.

I get Jason to take off his shirt and pants, and I snuggle up to his warm body. I love his naked body. It may not be as perfect as some other guys I’ve dated, but I love it because it’s his. We fit together so well that I barely noticed that Jason’s twin bed is really only big enough for one person. In fact, I feel so cozy that I immediately fall asleep.

Thirteen

I wake up the next morning and Jason is still asleep. He’s adorable when he’s sleeping. His hair is sticking up in all directions and he seems very vulnerable with his glasses off. He doesn’t snore, but I can hear the sound of his deep breathing. I feel like I could watch him sleep for hours, but then I suddenly catch sight of the digital clock in the room reading 9:15 AM. I instantly fly into a panic.

“Oh my God!” I practically scream. “It’s morning! I stayed here all night!”

Jason doesn’t really react at first, because he’s asleep. He rubs his eyes with his free hand and then finally says, “Huh?”

“It’s morning,” I repeat. “I spent the night in your room.”

“So?”

“So . . .” I shake my head. He doesn’t seem to get it. “I don’t want my parents to think I slept with you. I mean, they think I’m engaged to Larry. I don’t want them to think I’m hooking up with a random guy the night before my grandmother’s funeral.”

Jason grins sleepily. “I’m a random guy?”

He kind of has a point. Jason is less of a random guy than Larry is. Nobody’s met Larry before, but everybody knows and loves Jason. I look at Jason now and realize I have fallen into that category as well. So much so that I don’t want to ever leave this bed, regardless of the consequences.

“You’re not,” I admit. “But it’s still weird that I told them I’m engaged to someone else and now I’m spending the night with you.”