The Boy Next Door (21 page)

“I thought I knew most of the working girls who come here,” he goes on. “You must be new.”

Oh God. Oh GOD. Does this guy think I’m a . . . a prostitute? Seriously? Ew, ew, ew! Okay, yes, it’s a little suspicious that I’m checking into a hotel in the middle of the day with no bags for the obvious purpose of having sex. With a guy who’s clearly disabled. But seriously, I’m wearing jeans, sneakers, and a sweater! I don’t think I look at all hooker-like.

Thankfully, Jason finally finishes getting us the room and wheels toward me with the keys in his lap. “We’re good to go,” he says.

“Here, let me give you my number,” the guy says to me, much to my horror. “Maybe when you finish up here, you can give me a call.”

I’m going to throw up. Really.

Jason is staring at the guy, looking baffled. “What are you doing?” he asks.

The man laughs. “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to steal her away from you or anything. You can have your hour or however long you paid for.”

Jason looks as sick as I feel. “She’s not . . . I mean, I’m not . . .”

“Don’t feel embarrassed,” the man says. “It’s all right. Hey, I know that crippled guys gotta get laid just like the rest of us. It’s just lucky there are women like her around, huh?”

Okay, I’ve had enough of this. Jason’s still too stunned to respond, but I’ve recovered enough to get to my feet and say to the man, “Not that it’s any of your business, but this is my
boyfriend
. And he’s fantastic in bed and would
 
never
 
have to pay for it.”

Well, that shuts him up.

Jason is kind of quiet as we search for room 126. I’m so angry at that sicko for ruining our buzz. I wish I could have punched him. When we finally get to the room, Jason is still kind of quiet and pensive. The room itself is clean, at least. It’s got the usual cheap-looking television, cheap furniture, bed with a mattress covered in plastic, and a faint smell of moldy cheese. I wouldn’t want to vacation here, but it’ll do for a few hours.

I don’t so much feel bad about what that guy said to me as much as I’m worried Jason is upset by it. I’m not sure what to say about it to make him feel better, so I sit down on the bed, which is rock hard, and try to catch his eyes. That’s when I notice he’s holding back laughter.

“Jason!” I cry. “Are you laughing?”

“No,” he says, but then he chuckles slightly.

I cross my arms and try to look angry, even though I’m not. “You think it’s funny that guy called me a prostitute?”

“Of course not,” he says. He picks up my hand from the bed and holds it in his own. Jason’s hands are rough and warm. He wears gloves a lot when wheeling outside, but he couldn’t really protect them from years of wheeling as his primary mode of transportation. “You look nothing like a prostitute. He only thought that because you’re totally gorgeous and I’m disabled, and we’re hitting up a Motel 6 together. He couldn’t figure the whole thing out.”

“And that’s funny?”

He smiles. “Tasha, if I couldn’t find humor in other people’s idiotic assumptions about me, then I wouldn’t be a very pleasant person to be around.”

He has a point. Jason has a great ability to laugh at himself. When he was younger, he got embarrassed more easily, but now things bother him less. I remember a couple of years ago, he was trying to hop a curb that was steeper than he thought, and he hit at a weird angle, and both he and the wheelchair toppled to the ground. I felt terrible, but he just laughed and got back up.

And now he’s holding out his arms to me and I come into them eagerly. It amazes me how normal kissing Jason feels. It seems like after knowing him so long, there should be some awkwardness to it, but there isn’t. It feels like the most natural thing in the world, almost as if I can’t believe we haven’t been doing this all along. But then every minute or so, I think to myself, “I’m kissing Jason!” And at that moment, a tingle goes through my body.

And who knew he was such a good kisser?

He slides his hand up my shirt and I work at the button on his pants. Jason, apparently, wears boxers. I get my hand inside and I get a thrill as I think to myself, “I’m touching Jason’s penis!” I know that’s a weird thing to think, but it was something I never thought would happen.

I can feel him getting hard in my hand, but to be entirely honest, this is one way in which he’s sort of paling in comparison to ol’ Larry. Larry would have been hard like two hours ago. But Jason is much slower to get there, and he’s nowhere near as hard as I’m used to. If he hadn’t already told me he’d had sex before, I’d be pretty worried right about now.

“I want to go down on you,” Jason breathes in my ear.

“Are you sure?” I say teasingly. “Because I’ve got condoms in my purse . . .”

Jason’s jaw tightens. “Maybe another time . . .”

I look at him in surprise. “But I thought you said you could—”

His shoulders sag. For a minute, I wonder if he was lying to me when he said he’d had sex. Was it possible he couldn’t? That he was a virgin? That would . . . well, it would give me a lot of pause, that’s for sure.

“Listen, Tasha,” he says, his green eyes avoiding mine. “You know I can’t feel anything down there. Sex . . . it takes some planning. And it’s not my forte.” He flashes me a half smile. “What I really enjoy is pleasuring you. I want to see you get off. That’s what turns me on.”

I frown at him. “Well, what if that’s what turns me on too? Seeing you get off, that is.”

Jason stares at me as if he never considered that. I wonder for a moment about him and Melissa, if their whole relationship just consisted of her getting eaten out.

“You sure?” he says.

I nod eagerly. “Just tell me what to do.”

I get off Jason’s lap and he transfers onto the plastic mattress. I’ve seen him transfer thousands of times in our lives, but I’ve never watched with so much anticipation. I can barely wait until he’s arranged his legs on the bed and I practically pounce on top of him. He’s grinning as I unbutton his shirt and I run my hands over his chest. His skin is so familiar to me, yet not in this way. I’ve watched him topless a hundred times and never really thought about what it would be like for my lips to touch his bare skin, to feel the hair on his chest between my fingers. I keep touching him and being amazed by the idea that this is Jason. Jason, who I’ve known my whole life, my best friend. And God, he’s so sexy.

I lower my lips onto his left nipple and I can tell this is the money spot by the way his fingers squeeze my shoulders. I lift my eyes and I see that his lips are parted and his breathing has quickened. Over all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him like this, with his eyes squeezed shut from pleasure. I love the way that a layer of sweat accumulates at his hairline and the fact that I’m the one doing this to him.

“Oh, Tasha,” he breathes. “Tasha, Tasha, Tasha . . .”

At first I wasn’t sure if I’d know when to stop. Ejaculation is usually my cue that the festivities are over, and that obviously wasn’t going to happen here. But as I continue to work on Jason’s nipples, I can see from his face and his breathing that he’s working toward some sort of climax. Finally, he throws his head back and breathes, “Oh, Tasha, oh my fucking
 
God
. . .” Then his body goes limp.

I lift my lips from his body and look at his face, which is shiny with sweat. He’s smiling. “That was unbelievable,” he says.

“I’m very skilled,” I say with a wink as I flop down next to him on the uncomfortable mattress.

“It was unbelievable because it was you,” he replies.

Jason’s looking at me in a way that I don’t think any guy has ever looked at me before in my life: with complete devotion. I’ve dated a lot of men, but none of them have been this obviously crazy about me, including Larry. And I can’t help but wonder why. Why does Jason feel so strongly about me? Okay, yes, I’m pretty. But so was Melissa. That can’t be all there is to it. Yet . . . the truth is, I’m just not all that great.

“I don’t get it,” I say, tracing a line up his chest with my fingernail. “What’s so great about me?”

“You’re Tasha,” he says simply, as if that explains everything.

And the funny thing is that it sort of does. Because it’s exactly the same way I feel about him.

On the drive back, Jason and I are acting goofy in the kind of way I haven’t acted in a really long time. You know how it is . . . when you’re just totally floored to be with a guy and you can’t keep your hands off each other. It was annoying, because Jason needed both hands to drive, but we really couldn’t stop touching each other. At every red light, we kissed.

Amazingly, we made it back to the city without dying in a car crash. Jason found a spot in front of my building, and we got out of the car together. It was cute that he wanted to carry my bags, which he did by putting them in his lap. The weight of the bags made it a little harder for him to jump the step to get inside my building, which somehow made the whole thing more endearing.

“I just need to check my mail,” I tell him.

He nods and takes his hand off a wheel to slide it under my shirt and up my back. My whole body tingles when he does that. “Hurry,” he says.

My mailbox is filled with the usual accumulation of bills and junk mail. I toss the junk mail in the garbage and wish I could do the same with the bills. Then I see one other thing: a key. It’s the key to the large mailbox that contains packages.

“I got a package!” I say excitedly. Because I’m still like five-years-old.

I put the key in the large mailbox, and my heart sinks when I see the impressive array of flowers inside. It would have been great if I knew Jason sent them. But he didn’t. There was only one person who could have sent these flowers.

“Wow,” Jason comments, sounding a little uneasy. “That’s a lot of flowers.”

I pick up the card nestled between a rose and a daisy. I open it up.

“Larry?” Jason asks.

I nod.

He sighs. I hate to admit it, but this huge bouquet of flowers from my fiancé has kind of killed the mood. Larry may not be the man for me, but he’s very sweet and thoughtful. He doesn’t deserve to be cheated on. What Jason and I are doing to him is really wrong.

“I can’t cheat on Larry,” I blurt out. “It’s a horrible thing to do.”

A shadow falls over Jason’s face. “I see . . .”

“That’s not what I mean,” I quickly amend. “I mean that . . . I can’t see you while I’m still with him. It’s not right.”

“So . . . you’re going to break up with him?”

I take a deep breath. “Yes. I will.”

“When?”

“Soon,” I promise. “The next time I see him, I’ll do it.”

Jason gives me this look that I can only describe as pure longing. “I guess I should go then.”

I don’t want him to go. I really, really don’t. But one thing I’m not is a cheater.

Okay, actually, I guess I am a cheater. But I’m not going to cheat again, at least.

“Yes, I think you probably should,” I say. I see the doubt on Jason’s face and say, “I swear I’m going to do it. Tomorrow.”

He sighs and nods. I feel awful sending him away, but I’ve got to do this the right way. Anyway, it’s not like I’d really consider staying with Larry. Jason’s got nothing to worry about.

I pick up the phone to call Larry like a hundred times the next day. And each time I put it down.

It’s not like I’ve never broken up with a guy before. In my twenties, I was way picky about guys, and I once dumped a guy because his Valentine’s Day gift to me was a heart-shaped box of chocolates, probably from the drug store, which I thought was really tacky and unoriginal. Okay, I was a bit shallow back then. No wonder Lydia thought so little of me.

But it’s different with Larry. I mean, he wanted to marry me. He wanted to spend his whole life with me. I need to do this right. But is there really any right way to break up with a guy?

Finally, I chicken out so many times with the phone, I decide to just go to Larry’s apartment. I figure once I actually see him, I’ll somehow miraculously know what to say.

I take a cab over to his apartment in the evening, because I’m way too nervous to sit through a subway ride. Unlike me, Larry has a building with a doorman rather than an intercom, which is a sign of the upper echelon of New Yorkers. Fortunately, Larry’s evening doorman knows me, so he waves me upstairs without my having to wait for the usual buzzing upstairs ritual.

Larry’s apartment is on the 19th floor, high enough to have a very good view, which is yet another sign of the upper echelon. Growing up in Pittsburgh, I would have thought that being on a high floor wasn’t good, because you had to spend more time in the elevator getting to your apartment. And what if the elevator broke down or something? (This was something I was desperately afraid of when I first moved to the city.) But no. The higher up you live in this city, the more money you have. So 19 wasn’t bad at all.

I ring Larry’s doorbell and he doesn’t answer right away. For a minute, I think he might be out, which is kind of weird since it’s like ten o’clock at night. It’s too late for him to still be at work (although admittedly, not impossible) and where would he go outside without me? And it’s too early for bed. I mean, Leno hasn’t even been on yet.