Bad Neighbor

by Molly O'Keefe

  “Yeah. I made a lot of money. More than I’ve ever made before.”

  “You do this a lot then?”

  “This is all I’ve ever done,” he said. “This is what I know how to do. It’s what I’m good at.”

  The bluntness of his words. The bleakness of them…made me so sad for him. What he was good at was violence? Was some kind of fight thing in a basement? A job that left him like this—beaten and alone in his crappy apartment?

  “You can fuck yourself with that pity.”

  I started, shocked at the pointed anger in his tone.

  He was staring at me, his dark eyes under the ice pack, illuminated by the light from the hallway. “I’m not… it’s not.“

  “It is. And I don’t need that fucking pity. Not from you.”

  “What does that mean?” Not from me. Like my pity was more abhorrent than anyone else’s.

  He sighed. “Nothing. It means nothing. Go away. Seriously, I’m beat to shit and I’m not in the mood to be worried over.” Still lying on his back he began to toe off his shoes, but they were stuck and so I reached down and yanked them off.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m real sorry I’m not the kind of person who can just…leave you like this.” I thought of the woman who just left him with me, like she couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. I threw his shoes into a dark corner of the room. “You’re hurt. And I get it, you’re a super tough guy, but you shouldn’t be alone right now.”

  He was watching me underneath the ice pack.

  “You have bumblebee curtains.”

  “Yes I do,” I snapped. “And you have…” I looked at his window. “Oh come on. A sheet? Are you a college freshman?”

  He laughed. “No. They keep out the light, what else do I need?”

  “I don’t know, something you don’t hang with duct tape? I hope you’re going to take a bunch of that money you won and buy yourself some curtains…”

  His silence was the kind I had to fill.

  “So, I have very cute bumblebee curtains and you have a sheet over your windows and …what? That’s why you don’t like me?”

  “I never said I didn’t like you.”

  “Really,” I laughed. “Because that is not how it feels on my end.”

  “I like you just fine,” he said. “But those curtains tell me everything I need to know about you.”

  “Oh, this should be good.”

  “You’re soft, Charlotte. You’re part real, part dream. You’re half here and half…someplace else.”

  He’d blown a hole through me. Right through me. He was right. Completely right and it wasn’t like he was the first person to tell me I lived most of my life in my head. But it was that he had seen that. In the ten minutes we’d spent with each other he’d seen the truth of me so clearly.

  “All that from curtains?” I said, reaching for a joke.

  “And your hair. You don’t belong in Shady Oaks, babe. It’s way too hard for you.”

  “You don’t know me, Jesse.” I said it, not as protest, not as some flip line trying to prove something to him. It was just the truth. He didn’t know me. I didn’t know him.

  He sighed, and upstairs something thunked and there was a muffled voice. Two people in conversation. The world waking up. Pretty soon the sun would come through that sheet and the day would be starting.

  “Where’d you go tonight?” he asked and I blinked in surprise. “All dressed up. Date?”

  “No. No date. Though…I got asked on one.”

  “Yeah? Who?”

  “You think you might know him?”

  He scoffed in his throat. “I know I don’t know him. I’m just wondering what kind of guy you go on dates with?”

  “He’s a designer. A friend. He’s nice.”

  Jesse winced. “Nice? Nice sounds like a shitty date.”

  “You like to date assholes?” I thought of the woman who dumped Jesse on me.

  “I don’t date anyone, but ‘nice’ sounds like shitty sex.”

  “Shitty…what?” I cried. This conversation had gone around a sharp corner.

  “Sounds like missionary under the covers. Lights off.”

  That was how I liked my sex, but I wasn’t saying that. At all.

  “You looked good, tonight,” he said.

  “Don’t—” I said before I could stop myself.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Lie.”

  “I’m not lying. You know you looked good. You strutted away from me like you were fucking Beyonce.”

  The compliment was making a mess of me. And that it was from him was almost devastating.

  “Fine. Then don’t be nice. It’s confusing. It’s easier when you’re an asshole.”

  “Easier not to like me?”

  “Oh, no, not liking you is pretty easy.”

  “Easier not to want to fuck me, then.”

  I was stunned into silence. Nothing was going to make me not want to fuck him. He was the fruit stand guys times ten. A potent fantasy I could not have, because having it would ruin it.

  I would ruin it.

  “Your hair,” he said and reached up, the ice pack falling off his fist, to touch one of my curls where it hung off my shoulder. I was suddenly aware of how short my flannel shirt was, and I wasn’t wearing a bra. And we were on his bed. And the darkness was thick and hushed. Insulation between us and the world.

  This was happening. It could happen. I could kiss his busted-up face. But even as I thought that, even as I wanted it—I rejected it. Because that was what I was good at.

  Rejecting what I wanted.

  “You want a drink of water?” I asked, getting to my feet. Hot and prickly. Wanting to stay in his bedroom and wanting to get out at the same time. “I’ll get you a drink of water.”

  I stood up and went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. To get a breath.

  His cupboards had two glasses, two plates. Two bowls. In his cutlery drawer there were two forks and two spoons. His fridge had Gatorade and eggs. A package of roast beef sandwich meat.

  It was the loneliest thing I’d ever seen.

  “You should have come in the other night,” he said and I jumped, shutting his fridge door. He was standing in the doorway outside his bathroom. He’d taken off his shirt, and his chest and ribs were red and raw. Like he’d been rolled over gravel.

  “Looking at your fridge, you should have taken the ziti,” I shot back, and to my astonishment his lip curled in a smile like he liked me giving him shit.

  “You shouldn’t be up,” I said.

  “Motrin kicked in. I’m fine.” It was such a lie and still he walked closer, tossing the thawing ice packs into the sink. Stepping closer still until I was wedged up against the fridge.

  “Stop,” I finally said, putting my hand up, a breath away from touching his chest. So close I could feel the heat of him against my palm. So close I could imagine how he would feel.

  Good. He would feel so damn good.

  Solid and real when so much of my life was not.

  “You don’t want me to stop,” he said and pressed forward up against my hand. “And you don’t want fucking nice. Not you. Not now.”

  I bit my lip, swallowing the gasp in my throat. He was so hot. Burning against my skin. He was soft. Silky. The muscle a strong curve beneath my hand. I wanted to sink my nails into him, but his body had been brutalized enough.

  “You can’t… you’re hurt,” I said, fumbling and gasping. He stepped closer again, his stomach touching mine. His leg brushing my knee and I felt like a fever had spread from his body to mine.

  This felt like a dream. Or a movie. Nothing about this was real.

  “Not too hurt to fuck you,” he said. “It would feel so good. So damn soft. Your skin. Your hair. I bet your pussy is so fucking soft.” One of his hands slipped up under the edge of my flannel shirt and brushed my thigh and then, with his hand, with his whole hand he grabbed my ass. And squeezed. It hurt so goo
d my knees buckled. He held me up with his body and I could feel his cock against my hip. Hard and blunt. I was wet immediately. So turned on it hurt.

  “You feel it, don’t you?” he whispered into my hair. I made some half-gasping what sound in my throat. “Empty. So empty where I’m going fuck you.”

  Oh God. Oh my God. Yes. Yes, I was empty. I was so empty I was hollow. My head was so heavy, it fell back and hit the fridge. I could barely keep my eyes open.

  He squeezed my ass again, his leg bumping into mine, not an accident this time, a nudge and like I knew what he wanted, like we shared the same mind I stepped wider, letting his leg in between mine. His thigh, bare beneath the cloth of his shorts, pushed up against my pussy. My underwear a thin nothing between us.

  “Baby,” he groaned. “Baby, you’re wet. You’re wet for me already.”

  Baby. I’d never been anyone’s baby during sex. During anything. And I fucking liked it. I loved it. I loved it so much I got even wetter. And I wasn’t even embarrassed. There was no room in me for embarrassment. I was filled with a liquid heat and a painful desire that pushed every other thought away.

  “You want to know how I would fuck you?” he asked. “If you dressed up for me like that?”

  I nodded, just barely. Just enough.

  “I’d bend you over this counter. And I’d spank this fucking ass. Nice isn’t going to do that to you.”

  My ass. He was talking about my ass. Squeezing it in his hands like he couldn’t get enough of it. Like he needed more. And I’d never been spanked, couldn’t even imagine wanting that—but this moment, right now, I wanted it more than I’d wanted anything.

  Too much. This was all too much. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. My body was falling apart inside my skin. My heart and lungs weren’t working. My brain was screaming run, but my legs didn’t remember how to, so instead I pushed down against his thigh, so hard. And he was right. I was wet and I was empty and I wished I was the kind of woman who could say fill me. Just fucking fill me. Now.

  With your cock. And your fingers and your tongue.

  Just fill me until I don’t feel empty anymore.

  His other hand slipped under my shirt and I almost missed it but he winced. As the bottom of my shirt grazed over the broken skin of his knuckles, he winced. Just that tiny touch hurt him.

  “Your hand,” I gasped.

  “Forget it.” He pushed his thigh harder into me and I could have come. I could have ground myself down on him a few times and I would have come. And he hadn’t kissed me. Barely touched me.

  Barely knew me.

  And I barely liked him.

  “Stop,” I said. The words coming to my lips so much easier. So much faster than please fuck me. He didn’t stop, he settled his body harder against me and I could see the bruises forming under his skin and I didn’t understand why he was doing this. Or why he would want to. And I realized with a kind of breathless cold calm, that this wasn’t really about me.

  This was about him. And the fight. And not wanting me here. Not wanting me to care.

  “Stop, Jesse. Please.”

  And just like that he stepped back, his hand leaving my ass to settle momentarily against my waist as if making sure I wasn’t going to fall down. I twitched away from him, away from the fridge to the middle of the floor.

  His erection pushed out against his shorts, and he reached down and arranged himself and it was kind of the hottest thing I’d ever seen. I wanted, suddenly and with mouth-watering force, to watch him masturbate. I wanted to see those muscles in his stomach coil. And his hand grip his cock. I wanted to watch him bite his lip and come on his chest.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “Why are you stopping? Look at you, you want it so fucking bad.”

  “Look at you,” I said quietly, because he was right, I did want it so fucking bad, but his hands were a mess and his face was even worse and I could see what his body would look like tomorrow. “Jesse, this has to be hurting you.”

  “I’m not worried about it, why are you?”

  This felt so off, so strange. “Why…? Do you want me to hurt you?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve been hurt enough. I want to feel good. And you feel so fucking good.”

  Oh. God. I had to put a hand up against the fridge. Make a show of straightening my glasses because I couldn’t look at him like this. I didn’t know how to want something like this. The degree to which I wanted to make him feel good was quickly making a mess of me.

  “Go,” he said, his voice hard and mean. “Just get the fuck out of here.”

  I blinked. Stunned. He was scowling at me like I was such a disappointment. How did he go from stroking his cock to kicking me out in a nanosecond?

  “You’re not stopping because of me,” he said. “Not really. And I got no time for a girl who can’t take what she wants. See you, 1B.”

  And then he turned and limped out of the room, leaving me alone in his kitchen, feeling like a fool.

  Again.

  Chapter Seven

  Charlotte

  It was strange living next door to a man I wanted to avoid, but the walls between us were so thin I knew, nearly all the time, what he was doing.

  He argued with the ten o’clock news and then watched The Daily Show before bed. Trevor Noah made him laugh, and the sound of it was a dark rumble through the plaster and paint between us.

  He had a weird affinity for country music. And rap music. Those two and nothing in between. It was sad songs about dogs and lost loves, or it was wild songs about sex and rough neighborhoods.

  Every other morning he woke up at six a.m.—an ungodly hour—and went running. He ran for one hour, coming back by seven to play music and jump around his apartment. Working out in some capacity, I gathered. The other days he ran in the evenings. Same hour. No jumping around afterwards.

  My life, in a way, grew attuned to his. He woke me up in the morning and I couldn’t go to sleep at night until he turned off that TV and went to his own bedroom. The loud ding of his microwave reminded me it was time to eat, and the sound of his door opening and shutting as he went for his various workouts, forced me—out of sheer guilt—to stand up. Move my body. At least to the coffee pot and back.

  I hated the guy, but we were like symbiotic creatures in a way. I was the bird in his hippo mouth… or something.

  There was no ignoring him.

  The next few days passed in a blur of work. I stopped to sleep and that was about it. I ate at my computer. I canceled my date with Simon, because I couldn’t muster up the energy to make small talk about the lie I’d told about my mom and dad. After that I wasn’t sure what day it was, much less what time it was when the phone rang and I barely looked up from my layout to answer it. I pressed speaker so I didn’t have to stop working.

  “Hello?”

  “Charlotte?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Emily, at Bloom Books.”

  Jesus. Right. My editor. I stopped working and picked up the phone.

  “Hi, sorry, I’m just working on a layout.”

  “Well, I like to hear that,” Emily said. “I’m actually calling because of the last images you sent.”

  I winced in preparation. “The prison pages? Too much, huh?”

  “No! No, not at all,” she said, rushing to assure me, and I leaned back in my chair. “I’m calling because they are amazing. The entire office is buzzing about this book.”

  “Well, that’s super nice to hear.”

  “We would like to tour you.”

  “Tour me?”

  “Put you out on a book tour. August and September for the release.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, you’d be traveling for two months to major cities, where you’d do some signings and maybe some events—”

  “Events?”

  “Talk to people.”

  Oh, this was sounding worse and worse. And something in my silence must have broadcast my feelings.

/>   “It’s a very special book,” Emily said.

  “I think so too,” I said. “I just…I’m not really a people person. The events—”

  “We don’t have to do events. We’ll just do the signings. We can make this whatever you want to make it. But we think a tour will really help the book do well. That’s all we want.”

  I wanted that too. Who didn’t want that? But all I could think about was… all those people. And two months away from home. From work. Izzy.

  What if my sister called? Or reached out? I needed to be here for her. In case something went wrong and she had to run. Again.

  Even as I thought those excuses, I knew how lame they were. Facebook was on my fucking phone. And she would call me, not show up at this apartment building she didn’t know I was living in.

  But those lies were so much easier than the truth.

  Which was—I was scared. I was scared to leave. I was scared to meet new people. Talk about my work. Put myself out there like that.

  I was too fucking scared to try.

  “Just…think about it,” Emily said. “We can make it as easy for you as possible.”

  That seemed unlikely.

  “Okay,” I said. “I will think about it.”

  And mostly I would think: no way.

  And I would hate myself.

  Before I knew it, it was Saturday again and I hadn’t seen Jesse once in the last week. Heard him plenty, thought about him far too much. But had managed to do my laundry at night and avoid him entirely when I left to go grocery shopping.

  But Saturday morning rolled around and all I could think about was Jesse down in that basement, fighting again. I didn’t know that he would be there, couldn’t imagine his body would feel good enough to do it.

  But not much about Jesse made sense to me.

  My body was tuned to sounds on the other side of the wall, but it was quiet on his side. Like maybe he wasn’t even there.

  Throughout the whole of the day there was not even the bing of the microwave when he ate his Hot Pockets, or whatever it was he microwaved with such regularity. I imagined him like a barely grown teenage boy—not true, obviously, but I took comfort in the small, petty things.