“Remember Miss Price falling in the lake?”
He gave a grin. Miss Price couldn’t swim, not well at least. She’d floundered around, spitting fountains of water until someone pulled her out.
“She didn’t fall.”
Lucy’s leg brushed against his in the water, and she didn’t bother to move it.
“No?”
“No. Mack pushed her.”
She giggled. “Really? She was so … unglued afterward. She came flying into our cabin that night, her hair all sticking up funny, blathering about kids and discipline and never doing it again.”
“She gave us a speech too. Man, she was mad.”
Lucy looked past him at the others in the pool. “Did Francisco really have a crush on her?”
Jackson made his own search of the immediate area. “Paulie said he did.”
He lowered his hands to her waist, running his fingertips around the arch and settling on her hip. “I have a crush.”
The screech of someone behind them announced a water fight was on. A spray hit him in the face. Lucy ducked below the surface, emerging a few feet further away. He followed. There, he leaned on the side of the pool, placing her facing outward against his chest. Her hair fanned out around her neck.
“A crush?” she said.
He wrapped his arms around her waist, securing her there. “Yep. Fabulous girl.”
She revolved in his arms. “Maybe this fabulous girl thinks you’re equally fabulous.”
He gazed in her eyes, his insides floating away. How’d he get so lucky to move next door?
A head popped up to their immediate left. Owen dashed water from his eyes and shook his head like a dog, showering Lucy in the face.
“O,” she fussed.
Owen grinned. “Surprised you.”
Jackson surveyed Owen’s face. Now he makes his move?
“Bet I can beat you to the other end,” Owen said.
“Bet you can’t.”
“Oooh, a race!” Esther chimed.
And it was hopeless. She was gone.
Lucy centered herself on the deep end of the pool, and Owen set himself at her side. She pushed her heels against the concrete.
“Count of three. There and back,” Esther said. “One.”
Jackson slid himself to the left. He’d recapture her when she finished.
“Two.”
Lucy stretched an arm out in front of her.
“Three.”
Various shouts of “Go. Go. Go,” and either, “Lucy,” or “Owen,” echoed across the yard. Jackson made no shout one way or the other, instead taking in Owen’s lagging, his deliberate grazing of his arm against hers, and the turn of his face her direction.
At the shallow end of the pool, they looped over, and the pace resumed.
Race, my eye.
Yet Lucy seemed clueless. She poured herself into it, her face ducked below the water, breathing only every three strokes, her arms arcing steadily over her head. It was when she and Owen came to within four feet of the end, that Owen at last surged ahead and touched the side.
“And he wins,” he said, triumphant.
Lucy clasped her hand onto the side of the pool, gasping. “Darn it.”
Jackson inserted himself between them. Taking hold of her, he swished her to his right, away from Owen, and placed an arm around her waist. She leaned her head on his shoulder to catch her breath .
A tap came to his left. He turned his head and for a split second, saw the eyes of his old friend. Then Owen’s face altered.
“It’s my pool,” he said. “My party. My parents bought the food. And you were my friend.” With that, he pulled himself out and stomped away.
Lucy peeled her cheek from Jackson’s sticky skin. “What wrong with him?”
Jackson gazed down at her and smoothed a lock of hair from between her eyes. “Same thing that’s wrong with me.”
She wrinkled her brow and pinched the bridge of her nose. “And what is that?”
He sighed. “You.”
CHAPTER 12
“Three years!” Owen yelled. He swung his arms wildly as if that action would somehow eliminate his problem. “Three stinkin’ years ago she kisses you. You. Not me. Then you disappear, fall slap off the face of the earth, only to reappear right next door and she’s all over you again.”
Jackson gazed into the eyes of his friend, his stomach in a knot. Said like that, he was a complete jerk. Yet that wasn’t the whole truth.
“Yeah, three years,” he returned. “You had three years when I wasn’t here, and maybe wasn’t coming back to make your move. Why didn’t you?”
Owen glared at him, his face red and eyes sparking. “Maybe because I’m not Jackson The-Girls-All-Want-Him Phillips.”
“What are you talking about?” Jackson glanced through the glass doors toward the pool.
“Give me a break! Don’t tell me you didn’t know, Poster Boy.”
But he didn’t know. What was Owen talking about? Jackson shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”
Owen gave a snort and changed his voice to a warbling falsetto. “Jackson has the most amaaazing blue eyes. I think he looked at me. I’ll bet Jackson’s so hot with his shirt off. I only watch basketball because Jackson plays.”
His returned his voice to normal. “That’s what I’m talking about. While you had your head in the clouds, they were asking me about you. Me, because I’m just nice-guy Owen. Good old O, every girl’s best friend. Well, you know what? I don’t want to be her best friend. I want to be …” His voice died.
“Be what?” Lucy spoke from the doorway.
Jackson spun in place.
She glanced at him, but walked over to Owen. “What do you want to be, O?”
“How … how long have you been standing there?” Owen asked.
She clasped her hands behind her back, her hair dripping on the tile floor. “Long enough.”
“I’m sorry, Luce. I didn’t mean …”
She ran a hand down his shoulder. “I know what you meant, and you’re right.” She fixed her gaze on Jackson. “The girls had it for Jackson, myself included. That’s why he was picked for the dare.”
She turned her back on him and faced Owen. “The heart doesn’t control who it falls in love with. It simply goes with the flow of emotions that steer it, and I’m sorry, O, for not seeing you as the handsome, available guy you are. But I don’t think three years or five years would have made any difference. I look at him, and my heart turns to mush. I dream about him at night, and think about him all day. It’s nothing he did. He hasn’t set out to win me; there wasn’t any competition. He was simply himself, and I can’t go back now. I can’t reverse the last four days and take him out of my life.”
She took hold of Owen’s face. “This is for all the times you’ve wanted to say something and didn’t, and for all the moments I walked past you, not looking your way.” She drew his face downward and kissed him, full on the lips, soft and tender. And Owen backpedaled, eventually falling against a couch sitting against the wall.
She pulled away, leaving him standing cockeyed, and walked up to Jackson. She tilted her head to the side.
Words clogged in his throat. So many things he wanted to say, needed to say, but her declaration coursed through him, overpowering any ability he had to say them. He coughed and attempted to speak. “Lucy, I …”
She placed a finger on his lips. “What you have to say can be said later. Owen’s your friend. Don’t let me come between you.”
She crossed the room and slid open the door. “Cannonball!” she shrieked, and she sprinted across the pool deck.
Jackson stared at the place she’d been.
“Gosh she’s great,” Owen said.
Jackson walked over and hung and arm over his friend’s shoulder. “Tell me about it.”
***
“Come out.” Jackson extended his hand and tugged Lucy from the car. The radio played a mellow tune.
“What are we d
oing?” she asked.
The early evening sky had turned a thousand shades of pink, each coating every available space of earth and atmosphere, eventually melting into the placid waters of the lake. The distant lights of the city made round globes of light in the air, like stars hung out of place.
“Dancing,” he said. He took her hands and raised them in his on either side. Swaying to the beat, he swung her in a circle. Her hair flew out behind her, rumpled from the day’s swim.
“I didn’t know you could dance,” she said.
He smiled and turned her in a loop. “You can’t know everything about me in only four days.”
“But …”
“Texas,” he said. “It’s one of the few things I learned in Texas.”
He placed a hand in the small of her back and tucked her head beneath his neck.
“Where in Texas?” she asked, her breath blowing warm on his skin.
“San Antonio.”
“Is … is that where your mom stayed behind?”
He nodded, suddenly unable to speak for the feel of her against him.
“I … was thinking,” she said. “You know, about what I said of love, how you can’t control the heart. Your mom and dad must have fallen in love in the first place, when they met, I mean.”
He inhaled the scent of her hair: chlorine, and a faint scene of fruit-scented shampoo. “They did. She was twenty-three, and he was twenty-eight. She thought the world of him.”
Strange, but it hurt less talking to Lucy about them.
“And so they got married and had you and your sister. But what if … what if once you are in love you still have to foster it?”
“Foster it?” he asked.
She sighed, and the warmth of her breath blew up his neck.
“Yeah, like keep it alive. My dad used to take my mom out to dinner, buy her flowers. Stuff like that. But he also said silly things to her, and he kissed her when he thought we weren’t watching. If your parents didn’t do that, then maybe that’s why she did what she did. Maybe he didn’t feed her heart.”
Jackson stilled and moved her to arm’s length. Was that what happened? Did his dad not give his mother what she needed to love him?
They’d argued. More the last couple years. His dad would say they had nothing in common. Snapping at her. And he’d stay at work late, leaving her to take them places, to school functions and such.
It had been more her idea for him to go to camp than his, and they’d sent his sister to Grandma. Why? Time together. The thought shot down his spine. His mom wanted time for her and his dad to be together. Were there problems even then? Was the move to Texas supposed to be the ultimate fix?
“What are you thinking?” Lucy asked.
He brought her back toward his face and nudged her chin upward with his hand. “I’m thinking I’m the luckiest guy in the whole world to have you.”
The sunset washed fuschia, lavender, and violet. He lowered his head toward her mouth.
“You almost kissed me yesterday,” she said.
He smiled. “Yes.” And he would have if not for Travis.
The tip of her tongue slipped over her lips. “Are you almost kissing me again?”
Almost kissing. Will be kissing. Had to kiss.
“Do you want me to kiss you?” he asked. “I’m only the boy next door.”
Her lips beckoned him, plump and entreating. He moved still closer.
“I’ve kissed the boy next door before,” she said.
“True.” He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “But not like this.”
And capturing her mouth, he plunged heart first into a swirling sphere of flavor and sensation, fueling a longing too big to restrain.
CHAPTER 13
I handed Jackson his breakfast plate, and Travis just had to speak. He’d been staring at the both of us the entire morning, and justifiably so because I kept looking at Jackson thinking about how he kissed me.
And that’s exactly what Travis brought up. “He kissed you. Didn’t he?”
“Tray, honestly, that’s personal. Don’t you think?”
That only made him affirm it. “He did!” he said, and he looked at Jackson. “You did.”
Jackson shoved a bite of food in his mouth and chewed really slow.
“You kissed my sister.”
I placed a hand on my hip. “Well, what if he did? I’m not allowed to be kissed? We are dating.”
“Some strange boy moves in next door, and next thing you know you’re kissing him.”
“He’s not strange. He’s Jackson, and I’ve known him a long time. Besides, I kissed him the first day, and you were there.”
I spun around on my heel and stomped to the sink. I turned the water on to drown out his voice, but he spoke louder.
“That was different. That was you kissing him on one of your dares. Him kissing you had meaning.”
I revolved in place. “How would you know? You’ve never been serious about anyone.”
Travis frowned, giving me his I’m-your-older-brother look.
I whirled back around. I didn’t need lectures from some twenty-two year old redneck wannabe.
“So how serious are you?” Travis asked.
That he was looking at Jackson when he said it, I didn’t need to turn around to see.
“Serious enough.”
I stuck my hands deep in the soapy water. Travis would have to get it out of his system. He got like that sometime. He’d have something in his noggin and he couldn’t shake it loose until he’d examined it from all angles.
“You know if you hurt her I’ll kill you.”
I blew out a loud breath, letting him know I was still listening.
“Why would I hurt her if I love her?”
My chest compressed, and it was like no air could get in or out. I gulped once, twice, and gripped the sides of the sink.
“Sis? You all right?”
No, I wasn’t all right. I was hyperventilating because Jackson Phillips said he loved me right there with me in the room. I sank to my knees on the cold tile.
Jackson and Travis both rushed to my side, but Jackson won, lifting me up.
It was a number of minutes before feeling came back in my limbs and my breath returned to normal. By that time, I was seated in Jackson’s lap with my head on his neck.
I pulled myself upright and focused on his face. “Did you … did you say what I heard you say or was I imagining it?”
He was grinning. “What did you hear me say?”
“Well, it sounded like ‘I love her’ to me.”
He shifted me in his lap. “Yes, I believe I did say that.”
“Did you … did you mean it? I mean, you wanted to kiss me, and I wanted you to kiss me. And so you did. And I enjoyed it. But was it … was it … because …”
“Because I love you?”
“Uh huh.”
He ran his fingers up and down my arm, something that made me all tingly. “Let’s see. You said, ‘I look at him and my heart turns to mush.’ That sounds like love to me.”
“I think I’m turning to mush,” Travis said.
I stuck my tongue out at him. “You’re just jealous.”
“Of you? Hardly. I don’t want to kiss Jackson.”
This made Jackson laugh and before too long, I was laughing too. What a stupid thing for my brother to say. He excused himself from the table. “I think I’ll go catch up on some emails and bypass all this mushy stuff, then you two can get on with your kissing and declarations of love.”
Travis left the room, and I turned around in Jackson’s lap. I was facing him then with my back to the counter.
“So … is that what you said?”
He wasn’t getting out of this. I’d heard him say it to Tray. The least he could do was repeat it to me. He had this sparkle in his eye, which told me a bunch.
He cleared his throat. “Okay. I’ll say it, but then you have to say it too.”
Well, saying it for me was easy
because I’d been in love with him since summer camp three years ago, so I nodded. “I’ll go first,” I said.
I rubbed my throat as if I needed to get worked up for it, and opened and closed my mouth. He was smirking now.
“I, Lucy McKinsey, am in love with my neighbor, Jackson Phillips.”
He chuckled, wagging his head back and forth. “You crack me up,” he said.
“Well, you are my neighbor, and I am in love with you. Okay, so now your turn.”
He squirmed in his seat and pulled at his collar, funning with me about it being hard to say. Then he took a swig of water.
But when he went to speak, he leaned over and grasping the back of my head, tilted my neck way back. He then kissed me right on the throat.
Heavens. That was almost as good as being kissed on the mouth.
And he raised himself up even with my eyes. “I love you, Lucy McKinsey. Will you marry me?”
My eyes bugged out, and I gasped for air. Then I saw he was laughing again. I pounded him in the arm. “That’s not funny, and I believed you for a second. You shouldn’t tease a girl like that. We plan these things our entire lives. Why I pictured my wedding when I was five.”
“Five? Who were you going to marry at age five?” he asked.
“Billy Felton.” I stated this absolutely because I could remember it plain as day. Billy Felton and I were going to move into the garage together. Of course, in my five-year-old brain, my mother was still there; she was just in the place of his.
“And who was this lucky Billy Felton who you were going to marry at age five?”
I flicked my hair behind my neck. “You ought to know.”
This made him look at me funny, his mouth half smiling. “I’ve never heard of Billy Felton,” he said.
“No, probably not, but like you, he was the boy next door.”
And Jackson lost it.
***
“San Antonio,” I said. “She’s in San Antonio.”
Tray typed it into a search engine and scrolled through the results. “No. No. Not that one.” He was talking to himself like he did when he was thinking. “Here, maybe this.” He clicked on a link and the picture of a hospital flashed onto the screen. “You’ll have to call to see if it’s the one.”
I Kissed The Boy Next Door Page 6