Bad Neighbor

by Molly O'Keefe

  “Not this,” I said.

  “Baby.” He stepped closer and I stepped back, feeling like I did when he was a stranger. Like I had no idea what he was going to do. “We were never real. We were never going to be in love. You…” He swallowed. “You aren’t for me. But,” he grinned again, and my hand ached to smack that grin off his face. “That don’t mean we can’t fuck—”

  “Get out.” I wasn’t crying, the heat of fury and embarrassment was cauterizing me on the inside.

  “Charlotte…”

  “Get the fuck out of my apartment.”

  Perhaps a tougher woman than me—for sure my sister—would have been able to say those words and look him in the eye and suffer through the crushing pain of a heart breaking—but I could not.

  I stared down at that chipped tile in my kitchen and I waited for him to leave.

  He stood there a second, his bare feet visible just at the edge of my vision.

  “Get out!” I yelled and then he was gone.

  Leaving just the scent of him in my apartment.

  Jesse

  I did everything I could in the next day to not be at my apartment. To not be near her. If I was in the apartment, listening to her hit the snooze button three times, smelling her coffee and the food she made for dinner, imagining her drawing those amazing drawings of hers, I would have crumbled. I would have knocked on her door and begged her to run away with me.

  I had two giant purses, enough money to see us settled somewhere fine. Finer than I’d ever been.

  But while most of that shit I’d said in her apartment had been a lie, the part about her not being for me… That was true.

  So I stayed away, so I wouldn’t reach for her and drag her down to where I lived.

  Casper’s gym was pretty fucking amazing. I met the team there. The trainers and managers. The other fighters. My old teammate told me it was a legit situation and I believed him.

  Casper handed me the management contract but didn’t let go of it when I tried to take it from his hand.

  “I have one major stipulation,” he said.

  Internally, I was all edges. All growling no’s. I was ready to tell him to fuck off before he even got the words out.

  “What is it?” I said, with narrowed eyes.

  “You have to stop the fights in the basement,” he said. “They’re dangerous.”

  It was relief that ran through me. A relief so powerful it was scary.

  It’s okay to want more. Charlotte said that. To think you deserve more.

  And the old me, the me before her would have said, nope. Or maybe he would have agreed, but still found that reckless dangerous shit to do. Or maybe the old me wouldn’t have even have had the balls to show up here today. I had no idea.

  But the me after Charlotte, said, “No problem.” Casper let go of the document. “I need to take this home with me and have some people look at it.”

  More of Charlotte’s influence.

  “Good idea,” he’d said. “We’re a family kind of team. I hope we’ll see your girlfriend around here.”

  I looked at him blankly. Girlfriend?

  “The beautiful blonde I met at your apartment.”

  Charlotte. “She’s not…mine. I’m alone.”

  Casper’s mouth pressed tight for a moment. “Well, not if you join our gym you’re not.”

  I left the gym, my head bent against the Bay Area wind, the contract shoved in the back pocket of my jeans. And the person I wanted to talk to about all of this was Charlotte. I mean, I read the thing and it seemed like a good deal, but what the fuck did I know about good deals? Shit. I knew shit about them.

  But I couldn’t call Charlotte. So when I got home, I called Amber and Matt. Matt was a lawyer and he said he’d be happy to read over the contract.

  Two hours later they were at my door with a bottle of vodka and some fucking horn-dog expressions on their faces.

  “This isn’t about that,” I said as they came in.

  “About what?” Amber asked, all wide-eyed as she shrugged out of her coat. She wore a thin shirt and a skirt and I knew without having to check that she’d be naked under those clothes. And wet, too.

  “Fucking. We’re not fucking,” I said.

  Amber and Matt exchanged “yeah, right” looks.

  “I’m serious. I need you to look at this.” I handed over the contract and Matt took it, going to sit on my couch so he could pay attention to it.

  “What’s with you?” Amber asked. “Matt thinks this whole change with you is about that Charlotte girl.”

  “She has nothing to do with anything.”

  Amber glanced over at Matt.

  “Told you,” he said without looking up. “Our boy is falling for the neighbor.”

  Through the paper-thin walls I could hear Charlotte moving around and then the sound of her door opening. Don’t, I prayed. Please, baby, don’t come over here.

  It would hurt her to see Amber and Matt here. And I would be forced to hurt her more.

  Go get groceries. I even closed my eyes like I was praying. Go get that greasy diner breakfast you love. A cup of coffee. Fuck. Baby. Go on that date you were supposed to go on. Go anywhere but here.

  But then there was a knock on my door and I hung my head and swore.

  Goddamn it, Charlotte.

  “Jesse?” Amber asked. “Are you okay?”

  “Answer the door, would you?” I whispered, trying to find in myself the strength to do what I needed to do.

  Amber opened the door.

  “Jes—oh, Amber,” Charlotte said, and I could hear everything she wasn’t saying. All the assumptions she was making and all the hurt they were causing her.

  “Hey Charlotte. You want to come in?” Amber asked.

  “No. No, it’s okay. I just…” Charlotte stepped into the apartment and looked for me. “Jesse.” Her face was all wrong. It was still and careful, showing me nothing, but I could still see everything underneath her skin. All her pain. All her doubt. All her anger. “I have your chair.” She lifted the blue bean bag chair with both hands.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Can I… can I talk to you?” she asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Outside?”

  “Whatever you need to say you can say in front of Amber and Matt.”

  “Fuck,” Amber said. “Jesse, don’t be a dick.”

  Being a dick was the point. Being a dick was what I needed to do, but it was getting so hard. So hard to look at Charlotte and still put my foot down on her throat. But she needed to get the hell out of here.

  “Sure,” I said and stepped through the door into the hallway. I made sure to put as much distance between us as I could, but it still wasn’t enough. I could smell her shampoo. I could feel the heat of her skin against the cold of mine.

  “I think,” she whispered, looking down at her hands for a moment. “I think maybe you saw something on my computer. A conversation I was having with my sister—”

  “About how you love me and she’s pregnant?”

  She flinched. Like I’d punched her in the stomach, she flinched. I put my hands in fists so I wouldn’t reach for her.

  “Right,” she said with a dry cracked voice. “I just…if that’s why you’re acting like this—”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I don’t mean anything to you.”

  You do. You mean everything. You mean so much more than I ever thought I’d get.

  “Of course you mean something to me, Charlotte. You want to come inside? We were about to go into the bedroom.”

  She sucked in a breath. Another one. Put a hand out against the doorjamb like she was light-headed. “Have…” she said. “Have the fucking balls to just break up with me. To just tell me that all that stuff you told me was a lie. Don’t fucking stand here and gaslight me into thinking I imagined everything you said. Everything you did. The way you talked to me and held me—”

  She put her face down, her hair falling ov
er her shoulders, and I looked up at the cracked ceiling and prayed for strength.

  “You know something?” she said with a hard, cold voice. “Fuck you. It doesn’t matter. You’re not the man I thought you were.”

  And then she was gone.

  Her apartment door slamming shut behind her.

  “You are such a dick,” Amber said, coming out to stand with me in the hallway when I didn’t go back in.

  “You heard?” I said.

  Matt came out a few seconds later. They had their vodka and coats on.

  “The contract is good,” he said. “It’s fair. But man… Amber and I aren’t tools you use to hurt another woman. You’re not the guy we thought you were either.”

  And then they too were gone.

  Funny, I thought, feeling hollow and empty. I’m exactly the guy I thought I was.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Charlotte

  My skin was the only thing holding me together, when I got back to my apartment, but immediately I called my agent and told her I would go on the book tour. Whatever they wanted. Whatever events and booksignings, I’d do interviews, I’d bungee jump off buildings if that’s what they wanted me to do.

  I was a new person, with a new life, and this book tour would be my coming-out party.

  When I hung up I felt like I was going to puke. Which, oddly, was better than I had been feeling.

  My Facebook message binged.

  What happened? my sister asked.

  After Jesse left yesterday, I’d spent hours Facebook messaging with Abby.

  It’s over, I typed back.

  Oh, Char. I’m really sorry.

  Me too. How are you doing?

  Fine. I took your advice and made a doctor’s appointment. I can’t keep pretending this isn’t happening to me.

  Good for you. Are you going to tell him?

  Him being the sociopath ex-boyfriend. We didn’t write about the baby, that seemed to be her rules. A thing she didn’t want to talk about. Other than the first comment at the top of our conversation, there was no more discussion of her being pregnant, except in the broadest terms. Classic Abby.

  No, she wrote back fast. He can never know. Not ever.

  Is he really that bad? I asked.

  He’s bad enough that I’m halfway across the country with all your money just to get away from him.

  Did he hurt you? I asked, settling into my worry about Abby’s life because it was such a relief to take a break over worrying about mine.

  No. He never hurt me. He’d never…do that. But Char, he hurts other people.

  I thought of Jesse and the violence he lived with, and how shocking I understood that to be.

  Sometimes things aren’t always what they seem, I wrote.

  I saw him kill someone.

  What?!

  He’s a killer. Stone-cold, Char. He put a bullet in the back of someone’s head.

  Holy shit.

  I know. It’s bad. It’s just… bad.

  Suddenly, I realized how I could make this whole situation work. I could turn this around for both of us, these dark days could be made happy.

  Abby, I typed. Tell me where you are. I’ll come to where you are. I can help. I can do this with you.

  I hit send but she didn’t type anything back. Not for a long time.

  Abby? I finally wrote.

  Char, she wrote. I want you to come here so bad. You have no idea. I’m crying just thinking about it. But… if you come here, we’ll go right back to all the things we usually do. I’ll let you take care of me instead of taking care of yourself. Instead of me taking care of myself. I have to take care of myself sometime, don’t I?

  She was right. She was completely right.

  And I had to take care of myself.

  I was just so fucking lonely. My only friend was half a country away. The girls by the side of the pool wouldn’t be out for a few more days with their juice glasses of wine. I needed a friend and I needed one now.

  Hey, my sister typed because even though she was hundreds of miles away she could still read my mind. You need to go out.

  Yeah, I typed back. With who?

  What about that Simon guy?

  I winced.

  No.

  Why not, she typed. Just get out of the apartment. Go have a conversation, do anything to stop thinking about Jesse.

  That…that sounded good. A friend. No thinking about Jesse.

  Okay, I typed.

  Atta girl, my sister wrote.

  So after putting him off for weeks—I returned Simon’s phone calls.

  “Hey!” he answered on the second ring. “Charlotte!”

  “Hi, Simon.” It was awful, I knew that, but the excitement in his voice was a certain kind of balm to the injuries Jesse had left on my soul. Perhaps this idea of Abby’s wasn’t half bad.

  “You’re out from under your deadline?” he asked. I’d cancelled on him citing deadline problems, because I’d been too awkward to say I was having crazy monkey sex with my next door neighbor.

  “I am. Well, it’s not done, but the pressure is off.”

  “Want to get that cup of coffee?”

  “Can we upgrade to a glass of booze?” Or twenty.

  He laughed and I closed my eyes, feeling awful, because his laughter didn’t fill me with any kind of warmth. It didn’t send little electric shocks through my system. It didn’t make me want to smile.

  But it was something, and I felt… I just felt like I had nothing right now.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “Tomorrow night?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  If nothing else I would get out of the house, I wouldn’t be stuck in these four walls, listening to Jesse in his four walls.

  The next day I dressed for…war, or something. I dressed to hurt a man who didn’t care. Who wouldn’t even see me. This was pathetic. But it was the only thing I knew to do. It was the only thing that made me feel like I hadn’t been stabbed in the stomach. Like I’d lost all my skin in a fire.

  Like I wasn’t disposable. Disposable to a man I cared so much for.

  How did that happen? I wondered, putting lipstick on, my brightest red. How did I fall so far so fast?

  My breath shuddered in my throat, but I looked myself in the eye, gave myself a shake that made all the glitter on my shirt dance. Indicating a merriment I was far from feeling. And I grabbed my purse and keys and headed out the door.

  Jesse was there.

  And I couldn’t say I hadn’t been listening for him. I couldn’t completely swear that I wasn’t aware he’d left his house for a run about an hour ago. Part of me cringed and part of me crowed and my subconscious, it seemed, was out for blood.

  It wasn’t totally an accident that I was leaving just as he was coming back.

  But he hadn’t been running, he was standing there with grocery bags. I saw apples and spinach. Chicken breasts. Food that would indicate he was taking care of himself.

  I could have choked on my pride for him.

  Our eyes met and the electric shock of it was real. It buzzed through my body, making my fingers numb and my nipples hard. Silent, I turned away to lock my door.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  I said nothing because I felt such a scream in me. Such a wild fury and pain. Best to keep it swallowed down. Best to keep it inside.

  “Charlotte?”

  He stepped closer, not crowding me but close enough I could feel him. My numb fingers fumbled with the key.

  “I have a date.”

  He swore under his breath and I got my door locked and stepped away, trying to find enough air between us to breathe.

  “With that nice designer?” he asked, his face flushed. His eyes hard.

  “It’s not your business.”

  “It’s my business if you fuck him. If you bring him back here.” He stepped closer and I stepped back so fast I hit the wall behind me. The stucco tugging at my loose hair. “You mad at me? Take it out on me.” />
  He was close now, so close I could smell him. I could taste him when I inhaled—a salt on my tongue.

  “You want to fucking tear into me?” he asked. “Let’s do it. Come inside and I’ll let you hurt me all you want.”

  “Why?” I asked, blinking at him.

  He was silent, his jaw tense like he didn’t know why he was offering that. Like he had to offer that. Like it was all he had. Come inside and fuck him and hurt him.

  “Because you want me enough that you don’t want me to fuck some other guy? It… doesn’t work that way, Jesse. I don’t work that way. You hurt me. You really hurt me. I’ll never let you touch me again.”

  He went still at my words and I did too, a little bit. Stunned that I’d said those things. Stunned that I was so honest. Stunned that in letting him know how badly he’d hurt me, I actually felt better.

  I felt stronger.

  I didn’t have to swallow down every pain every person visited upon me. I could hold my head up and let people know I was here. That my feelings mattered. That I mattered.

  I’d never done that before.

  “Let me go,” I said, because he was crowding me against the wall. I could see him fight it, I could see him want to lean in and touch me until I agreed to go inside with him.

  And for all my strong words, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t do it. If he touched me, the way he knew I liked because he had that knowledge of me—I couldn’t be sure I would be strong.

  There was a good chance I would melt down into his hands like candle wax.

  “Do you need money to move out?” he asked.

  “Why the fuck do you care?”

  “Because I won’t be here to protect you. Because this place isn’t for you. Because you’re better than this fucking place and it’s time for you to live like that.”

  He was yelling and when his eyes met mine and I saw, somehow… he was hurting too. It was there in his eyes, a regret so clear and sharp I stood up away from the wall and very nearly reached for him.

  Immediately, he stepped back, turned away.

  “You need to leave,” he said.

  Questions battered against my lips, but I’d already done so much talking. I’d already opened myself up to a thousand hurts. I couldn’t do it anymore.