My Life Next Door (27 page)

Tim gives a little nod, an upward jerk of his chin, then
turns his attention to the register as though the numbers and symbols on it are the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. His face has been so much more expressive lately than usual, but now he’s assumed that bland mask that I had come to think of as his real face. “I should go to the stockroom,” he mutters, and heads down the hallway.

Jase pours the last plastic bag full of nails into the plastic container. The clatter breaks the silence.

“That didn’t sound like you,” I offer quietly, still standing beside him.

Jase looks embarrassed. “Kinda just came out. It’s…it makes me feel…I get tired of…” His hand rubs the back of his neck, then slides all the way across his face to cover his eyes. “I like Tim. He’s a good guy…” He pulls his hand down to smile at me. “But I can’t say I wouldn’t appreciate a crack at all those choices—chances—Tim had. And when he acts like he’s under this curse or something…” He shakes his head, as though brushing the thought off, turns and looks at me, then nods at the clock. “I told Dad I’d stay late tonight and make out some reorder forms.” He reaches for a few strands of my hair, twining them around his finger. “You busy later?”

“I was supposed to go to a meet-and-greet in Fairport with Mom, but I told her I needed to study for SATs.”

“She believed this? It’s summer, Sam.”

“Nan’s got me signed up for this crazy prep simulation. And…I
might
have told Mom when she was a little distracted.”

“But not intentionally, of course.”

“Of course not,” I say.

“So if I were to come see you after eight, you’d be studying.”

“Absolutely. But I might want a…study buddy. Because I might be grappling with some really tough problems.”

“Grappling, huh?”

“Tussling with,” I say. “Wrestling. Handling.”

“Gotcha. Sounds like I should bring protective gear to study with you.” Jase grins at me.

“You’re pretty tough. You’ll be fine.”

Chapter Thirty-four

I’ve just gotten in the door when my cell phone starts up.

“So, because we have to get such an early start in the morning…The factory opens at five, can you imagine…really makes more sense…see you when you get back from school.” My cell gets perfect reception, but the tinny voice spilling out of it seems to come and go, as though I’m having problems tuning in to a certain radio frequency. Because this voice saying she’ll be gone all night because she has an early-morning meet-and-greet at a factory way up in the western corner of the state…this just can’t be Station Grace Reed. I must have tuned in to an alternative program. Or universe. But she concludes, “We’re halfway there already and it doesn’t make sense to drive all the way home. Clay’s found us a gorgeous hotel room. You’ll be fine, right?”

I’m so taken aback that I nod before remembering she can’t see me. “No problem, Mom. I’ll be fine. Enjoy the hotel.” I almost add that she could stay another night if she wanted before deciding that might sound suspiciously overeager.

She’ll be gone. All night. With Clay—and his confusing agenda—in a gorgeous hotel room. But I won’t think about that. What I do think about, what I immediately think about,
is the
all night
part. Which is why I’m hitting Jase’s number on my cell instantly.

“Sam.” I can hear the smile in his voice. I just left the store ten minutes ago. “You having a study crisis already?”

“My mom won’t be home tonight. At all.”

There’s a pause, during which I feel flustered.
Do I have to spell things out more? How do I even do that? “Want to have a sleepover?”
We’re not six.

“Your mom won’t be home at all?” he repeats.

“That’s right.”

“So maybe you’d like company, since you’re grappling with all those study problems.”

“That’s what I’d like.”

“Door or window?” he asks.

“I’m unlocking the window right now.”

I pull my hair out of its braid, brush it loose. I’ve really got to cut it one of these days. It’s down to the small of my back now, takes forever to dry after a swim. Why am I even thinking about this now? I guess I’m a little nervous. I didn’t want to overthink, but unless we just pounce on each other in the heat of the moment—hard to do, logistically speaking, there has to be a little planning. A little time for overthinking. I hear a tapping and go over to the window to fit my hand against Jase’s before I nudge the glass open.

He’s brought a sleeping bag, one of those big green bulky L.L. Bean ones. I look at it questioningly.

Following my gaze, he turns red. “I told my parents I was going to help you study, then we might watch a movie, and
if it got late enough, I’d crash on your living room floor.”

“And they said?”

“Mom said, ‘Have a nice time, dear.’ Dad just looked at me.”

“Embarrassing much?”

“Worth it.”

He walks slowly over, his eyes locked on mine, then puts his hands around my waist.

“Um. So…are we going to study?” My tone’s deliberately casual.

Jase slides his thumbs behind my ears, rubbing the hollow at their base. He’s only inches from my face, still looking into my eyes. “You bet. I’m studying you.” He scans over me, slowly, then returns to my eyes. “You have little flecks of gold in the middle of the blue.” He bends forward and touches his lips to one eyelid, then the other, then moves back. “And your eyelashes aren’t blond at all, they’re brown. And…” He steps back a little, smiling slowly at me. “You’re already blushing—here”—his lips touch the pulse at the hollow of my throat—“and probably here…” The thumb that brushes against my breast feels warm even through my T-shirt.

In the movies, clothes just melt away when the couple is ready to make love. They’re all golden and backlit with the soundtrack soaring. In real life, it just isn’t like that. Jase has to take off his shirt and fumbles with his belt buckle and I hop around the room pulling off my socks, wondering just how unsexy that is. People in movies don’t even
have
socks. When Jase pulls off his jeans, change he has in his pocket slips out and clatters and rolls across the floor.

“Sorry!” he says, and we both freeze, even though no one’s home to hear the sound.

In movies, no one ever gets self-conscious at this point, thinking they should have brushed their teeth. In movies, it’s all beautifully choreographed, set to an increasingly dramatic soundtrack.

In movies, when the boy pulls the girl to him when they are both finally undressed, they never bump their teeth together and get embarrassed and have to laugh and try again.

But here’s the truth: In movies, it’s never half so lovely as it is here and now with Jase.

I take a deep breath as his hand skims down, down, to the back of my thigh. The feeling of his skin, all his skin, against mine gives me goose bumps. Then he pulls me closer and we plunge into a kiss that is like deep, deep water. When we finally stop for air, I wrap both legs around his hips. The corners of his eyes crinkle. His hands tighten on my bottom as he walks over to the bed. I slide off and am lying on my side, looking up at him. Jase bends down, crouching beside the bed, and stretches out his hand to put it on my heart. I do the same, feel his heart pounding, fast, fast.

“Are you nervous?” I whisper. “You don’t seem it.”

“I’m worried it’ll hurt for you, at first. I’m thinking it’s not fair that it’s like that.”

“It’s okay. I’m not worried about that. Come closer.”

Jase straightens up, slowly, then goes over to his jeans to pull out one of the condoms we bought together. He holds his palm out, flat. “Not nervous at all.” He ducks his head to indicate his fingers, which are trembling, slightly.

“What’s that one called?” I ask.

“I don’t even know. I just grabbed a bunch before I came over.” We lean over the little square of foil. “Ramses.”

“What’s
with
these names?” I inquire as Jase gently begins to open the packet. “I mean, were the Egyptians known for their effective birth control or what? And why Trojans? Aren’t they mostly remembered as the guys who lost? You’d think they’d use Macedonians, weren’t they the winners? I mean, I know it doesn’t sound as manly, but—”

Jase puts two fingers on my lips. “Samantha? It’s okay. Shhh. We don’t have to…We can just…”

“But I want to,” I whisper. “I want to.” I take a deep breath and reach out for the condom. “Do you want me to help, um, put it on?”

Jase blushes. “Yeah, okay.”

When we’re both lying on the bed, entirely naked, for the first time, just looking at him in the moonlight makes my throat ache. “Wow,” I say.

“I think that’s my line,” Jase whispers back. He puts his hand against my cheek and looks at me intently. My hand moves to cover his and I nod. Then his body is moving over me, and mine is opening to welcome him.

Okay
. It does, after all, hurt a bit. I thought it might not, just because it’s Jase. There’s pain, but not wrenching or stabbing, more like a sting as something gives way, then aches a little as he fills me.

I bite down hard on my lower lip, opening my eyes to find Jase biting his, looking at me so anxiously that something in my heart yields even more completely.

“You okay? This okay?”

I nod, pulling his hips more tightly to my own.

“Now we’ll make it better,” Jase vows, and begins to kiss me again as he starts to move in a rhythm. My body follows, unwilling to let him go, already glad to have him come back.

Chapter Thirty-five

As you might imagine, I’m useless at Breakfast Ahoy the next day. Thank God I’m not lifeguarding. If I can’t remember how some people who come in every single day like their eggs, if I stare aimlessly at the coffeemaker, unable to stop smiling, at least no one’s life is threatened.

When Jase climbed out my window at four this morning, he got halfway down the trellis, then came back up. “Stop by the store after work,” he whispered after one last kiss.

So that’s where I head the minute I clock out, fast enough that I’m almost running. When I get to Main Street I try to slow down, but can’t. I fling the store door open, forgetting that the hinges are broken and it slams loudly against the wall.

Mr. Garrett glances up from his post behind the register, reading glasses perched on nose, pile of papers in lap. “Well. Hullo, Samantha.”

I didn’t even change out of my uniform, which no one could call empowering and confidence-building. I feel completely embarrassed and remember the lock on the door and think:
He knows, he knows, it shows, shows completely.

“He’s out back,” Mr. Garrett tells me mildly, “unpacking shipments.” Then he returns to the papers.

I feel compelled to explain myself. “I just thought I’d come by. Before babysitting. You, know, at your house. Just to say hi. So…I’m going to do that now. Jase’s in back, then? I’ll just say hi.”

I’m so suave
.

I can hear the ripping sound of the box cutter before I even open the rear door to find Jase with a huge stack of cardboard boxes. His back’s to me and suddenly I’m as shy with him as I was with his father.

This is silly
.

Brushing through my embarrassment, I walk up, put my hand on his shoulder.

He straightens up with a wide grin. “Am I glad to see you!”

“Oh, really?”

“Really. I thought you were Dad telling me I was messing up again. I’ve been a disaster all day. Kept knocking things over. Paint cans, our garden display. He finally sent me out here when I knocked over a ladder. I think I’m a little preoccupied.”

“Maybe you should have gotten more sleep,” I offer.

“No way,” he says. Then we just gaze at each other for a long moment.

For some reason, I expect him to look different, the way I expected I would myself in the mirror this morning…I thought I would come across richer, fuller, as happy outside as I was inside, but the only thing that showed was my lips puffy from kisses. Jase is the same as ever also.

“That was the best study session I ever had,” I tell him.

“Locked in my memory too,” he says, then glances away as though embarrassed, bending to tear open another box. “Even
though thinking about it made me hit my thumb with a hammer putting up a wall display.”

“This thumb?” I reach for one of his callused hands, kiss the thumb.

“It was the left one.” Jase’s face creases into a smile as I pick up his other hand.

“I broke my collarbone once,” he tells me, indicating which side. I kiss that. “Also some ribs during a scrimmage freshman year.”

I do not pull his shirt up to where his finger points now. I am not that bold. But I do lean in to kiss him through the soft material of his shirt.

“Feeling better?”

His eyes twinkle. “In eighth grade, I got into a fight with this kid who was picking on Duff and he gave me a black eye.”

My mouth moves to his right eye, then the left. He cups the back of my neck in his warm hands, settling me into the V of his legs, whispering into my ear, “I think there was a split lip involved too.”

Then we are just kissing and everything else drops away. Mr. Garrett could come out at any moment, a truck full of supplies could drive right on up, a fleet of alien spaceships could darken the sky, I’m not sure I’d notice.

We stand there, leaning back against the door, until a large truck really does pull in and Jase has to unload more things. It’s only 11:30 and I’m not due at the Garretts’ till three, so I don’t want to leave, which means I busy myself doing unnecessary things like rearranging the order of the sample chips in
the paint section, listening to the
click-click-click
of Mr. Garrett’s pen cap, and reliving everything in my happy heart.

Later, I struggle to concentrate and help Duff build a “humane zoo habitat for arctic animals out of recyclable materials” for his science camp exhibit. The task is complicated by the fact that George and Harry keep eating the sugar cubes we’re trying to use as building material. Also by the fact that Duff is unbelievably anal about what “recyclable” means.