Bad Neighbor

by Molly O'Keefe

  I could not trust that hurt I saw in his eyes, and I couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t deny it and hurt me again.

  Silent, I walked past him and the air of the October evening was cold on my burning skin.

  Once I was past the ridiculous gates out onto the street, once I could feel that he wasn’t watching me anymore, I stopped and leaned against the crumbling stucco half wall. I grabbed my phone from my purse and pulled up my texts with Simon.

  I’m so sorry to do this, I texted. But I’m going to have to cancel. The truth is, I’ve been involved with someone else and I’m just…a little broken right now.

  He wrote back almost immediately.

  It’s okay, he texted. I understand. We can get that drink as friends if you’d like.

  Thank you, but not tonight. I’ve got to straighten some things out in my life.

  And then I pulled up Craigslist and started looking for new apartments.

  And within two hours I was putting together my new life. That looked just like my old life, without the square footage or the balcony with the cheerful geraniums. In my new life I could only afford a studio in a slightly better neighborhood, and if that bothered me in some way, if that felt constraining or not exactly what I wanted, I blamed it on my shoes.

  On the gray cloud over my head.

  I blamed it on my heart.

  When do you move in? my sister typed two days later. It was Friday, and I was deep into the bottle of wine I’d bought earlier. I was well aware I should have gotten two bottles. I wanted to be lights-out drunk, so I wouldn’t lie awake in that bed listening to the creak of Jesse’s bed through the wall.

  Two weeks, I wrote back. How is the job?

  Good, she wrote. I’m a little surprised how much I like it here.

  Surprised? How about shocked? How about I don’t even know you? You went right back to the scene of the worst family vacation in history.

  We’d been fifteen and our parents had booked us on a vacation in some dude ranch mountain town, and Abby and I had thrown up a serious protest. We’d dragged our feet and rolled our eyes, but then when we’d gotten there, Abby had broken rank and ended up loving the place.

  She’d volunteered to work in the barn in the mornings. My sister had actually shoveled shit.

  You have no idea how good the air tastes here, she wrote.

  Like horseshit?

  I didn’t think I’d stay here, she typed. I thought I’d stop, look around and move on. But that Help Wanted sign was up in café and it just…seemed right.

  I have a hard time picturing you in a small town.

  You and me both. But It’s a relief, she typed. He’ll never find me here and the cowboys that come into the café aren’t half-bad.

  That sounded like my sister.

  Are you scared? I typed.

  Shitless. I am scared shitless.

  I settled in for a big conversation about the baby, we needed to do it. I poured what was left of my wine bottle into my glass – but it was half a sip.

  Hey, I typed. I’m going to get more wine. I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes.

  You sure you should be walking around at night in your neighborhood?

  There’s a liquor store on the corner. I’ll be fine. It’s also only nine o’clock. It’s not like the sun went down in South San Francisco and the zombies came out.

  Just, she texted, you have to be careful. You don’t know the things Jack is capable of.

  Jack? I texted, my heart stopping mid-beat. She’d never told me the guy’s name.

  Yeah. Jack won’t give up on finding me, Char. I saw something I shouldn’t have seen and he’s going to be after me. And no one will find me here, but you’re still in the city and now…where you’re living? I’m worried.

  Don’t be, I texted, though now I was worried. Jack. It had to be a coincidence? Right? I mean, it was an incredibly popular name. How many Jacks were in this city? Probably a million. Literally, a million.

  Hey, she texted. I’m going to go to bed. I’ll talk with you tomorrow.

  I closed down the chat out of old habit and grabbed my keys and purse. I was drunk but not that drunk, and I got down to the liquor store in the indigo twilight and back with my bottle of pinot noir under my arm in what I was sure was record time.

  I thought of the man my sister was running from and thought of all the ways I hadn’t been careful. Abby had warned me, a thousand times over she’d warned me in those frantic days two months ago, to be careful. To cover my tracks. But walking back to the apartment complex all I could see was the tracks I’d left behind as I made my way into hiding. The tracks my sister had left. Credit card receipts for the hotel and the crappy pickup truck she bought. And we probably should have dyed our hair or something. Changed our appearances. My hair alone was kind of a calling card.

  And then…there was the matter of Jesse’s brother. A dangerous man named Jack.

  Maybe it was because I was drunk, or maybe it was because I’d grown some balls living in Shady Oaks, I couldn’t be sure, but instead of going to my apartment I went to Jesse’s.

  I knocked on the door, ready to get some answers about his brother.

  About my sister.

  Us, maybe.

  I knocked and I knocked but he didn’t answer. In the end I went back to my apartment and drank most of that second bottle of wine.

  But no matter how much I drank, my skin felt tight.

  And it was impossible to breathe.

  The next day I was hungover, walking home with some Chinese takeout, the drizzling rain making everything seem so much worse that it really was. My head was down and when I got to my door I pulled my keys out of my pocket, shifted my fried rice to my other hand and stepped forward to open my door.

  But it was already open.

  My breath caught. My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my eyes.

  I swallowed the sudden copper taste of fear in the back of my throat and leaned sideways, looking through the open crack of my door. I couldn’t see anyone and for a second I took a breath. But then from inside I heard something crash to the floor and break and I jumped sideways, a hand over my mouth. Terror making me dizzy. I took three stumbling steps over to Jesse’s door and I sent up a wild prayer.

  Please, please be home.

  Please, please hear this almost-silent knock on your door.

  I knocked again, heard another crash from my apartment and I got ready to run. Run anywhere.

  But Jesse’s door opened and at the sight of his familiar face and his strong body I nearly melted in relief.

  “Char—”

  I shook my head and shoved him inside. Closing the door behind us. I leaned back against it, shaking so hard the bag of Chinese food fell from my hands.

  “Jesus, baby,” he breathed, grabbing my shoulders in his hands. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  Oh God, that his touch had the power to make me feel better. His touch had the power to force my body back into working. All systems repaired.

  “There is someone in my apartment,” I breathed.

  “What?”

  “Someone… is in my apartme—” I didn’t even finish it a second time before Jesse was carefully moving me aside. He ran out the door and I heard him in my apartment, but it was quiet. No shouting. No fighting. No sound of anyone else in there.

  I bent forward at the waist, my hands at my knees, trying to suck in deep breaths. The smell of my Chinese food on the floor beneath me was now making me sick.

  “Charlotte.” Jesse’s voice when he came back inside was quiet. Calm. “Whoever was in there is gone. They broke…they broke your computer.”

  I crumbled onto the floor. Izzy… oh God, Izzy.

  Jesse picked me up in his arms and carried me to the couch. “It’s okay,” he whispered into my hair. “I think it’s just the monitor.”

  I stood up. “The picture.”

  “What picture?”

  “My sister. The picture of us on the m
onitor. And our Facebook messages. I have to go—”

  I darted past him, but he grabbed me. I smacked at his hands with all the hurt and rage I felt until he wrapped his arms around me, locking my hands against my sides. “Listen,” he said into my ear.

  “No. I’m not listening to anything you say. Ever.”

  “It’s my brother she’s running from.”

  The confirmation of all my worst fears felt like a penny dropping into a machine.

  “I know,” I spat. Holding myself rigid in his arms, refusing to feel any of his body against mine.

  “How do you know?” he asked. I didn’t, really, not until this minute.

  “My sister told me the man she’s running from was a man named Jack. A sociopath killer.”

  “And you just assumed it was my brother?”

  “Perhaps sociopathy runs in your family.”

  That was mean and I regretted it the second I said it.

  “Let me go,” I whispered.

  “You can’t run. Not until we have a plan.”

  “We don’t have anything,” I spat.

  “It’s your sister and my brother. Don’t you think we should figure something out?”

  “Fine. I won’t…run.”

  He let me go in pieces. First his hands let go of my hands and his arms let go of mine, and then his body, thick and warm and strong, stepped away from mine and I was cold. I was so damn cold without him.

  I turned, shaking my loose hair out of my eyes, and he looked somehow smaller all of a sudden. As if he’d been compressed and squeezed.

  “Did you know? About him and my sister? All this time?”

  “I knew my brother was looking for the sister of a woman he’d been involved with. I didn’t know for sure it was you until I saw that picture and the messages between you on your computer.”

  “But you suspected…”

  He nodded, looking guilty as fuck.

  I leaned back against the door, surprised he could hurt me. Surprised I could feel anything but fear. “Is that why you started seeing me?”

  “Yes.”

  I laughed or I tried to, but it came out as a sob. I had to get the hell out of here. Away from him.

  “But that’s not why I stayed,” he said. “You have to believe that.”

  “I don’t care,” I said, reaching for the door. But he was there, his hand on mine, his body a strong wall behind me. Every part of my body wanted to lean against him. Warm myself against him, for just a second…to just prepare myself for the long cold days ahead.

  “I was falling in love with you,” he said.

  “Stop.”

  “I was.”

  “Stop!” I shrieked and I pushed at him. I shoved at him. Again and again until we were back in his living room. “You don’t get to say that now. Not now.”

  “I saw that picture of you and your sister and I knew who she was. Who you were.”

  “So you hurt me on purpose?” I was crying, despite trying not to.

  “I hurt you on purpose. Because he’s my brother. And as long as you’re with me, you won’t be safe. No one is safe.”

  That made me stop. Still.

  “Are you safe?” I asked.

  He licked his lips, a nervous tick that somehow made me scared and hot at the same time. “He’s not the brother I knew,” he said. “And I don’t…don’t know what he’ll do anymore. That’s why you need to leave.”

  “What about you?”

  “It doesn’t matter where I go,” he said. “He’s my brother. We always find our way back to each other.”

  This was it. This was how we ended.

  “My sister fell in love with some guy she met at a restaurant downtown,” I said. “She didn’t tell me anything about him, I’m not sure how much she knew about him. Just that she was in love and he was the most amazing man she’d ever met and she’d never felt that way before. But Abby was prone to feeling that way, you know. She loves big and fast—like a building going up in flames. And then, about two months ago she shows up on my doorstep, freaking out because she’s got to leave town. Like that night she has to leave town. She had a bag with her and a thousand dollars in cash and she was saying goodbye. Just like that.”

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  “Got her to stay an extra week, sold my condo, gave her most of everything I had and moved here.”

  “Jesus,” he breathed. “No questions asked?”

  “She’s my sister. She didn’t ask for it, but she needed it and she was running. Scared for her life, from your brother. She told me I had to be careful. Lie low.”

  “Shady Oaks is pretty low,” he said, with a wry smile that made him look so young. “Just shit luck you moved in next to me.”

  “I don’t… it wasn’t shit luck. It—” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “You’re one of the most amazing things that’s ever happened to me.”

  His eyes when he looked at me were so bright I almost thought he was about to cry. “No one has ever said that to me.”

  I shrugged, because what else could I say. “You going to tell me what happened with your brother?”

  “We don’t have time,” he said. “We’ve got to get you out of here. Go back to your place and pack up only what you need. I’ll get your computer in my car and we’ll get you out of here.”

  He opened the door, swinging it open only to reveal the rainy day and a man standing in the hallway who looked so much like Jesse.

  Too much.

  “Going somewhere, brother?”

  Jack.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jesse

  Two things were true in that moment:

  One: I had no idea what my brother would do. He could kill me. He could absolutely kill Charlotte. The man in front of me was a stone-cold stranger wearing my brother’s face.

  Two: I would die to protect Charlotte.

  That I’d tried to push her away seemed impossible to me now. She was somehow a part of me. Right under my skin.

  “What do you want?” I asked Jack.

  I opened the door a little wider, blocking Jack’s view of Charlotte. I wanted her to have the sense to go hide in the bedroom. The bathroom. Anywhere. But she only stood there partially behind the door. Her eyes wide in her pale face.

  “You know what I want. I want your neighbor. The blonde with the tits.” He made to step in but I wouldn’t let him.

  He lifted his eyebrows, his lips pursed. “It’s like that, is it?”

  “It’s like that.”

  Jack pulled a gun from the pocket of his long overcoat and the fucking grief of it tore me in two. Right in two.

  “It’s still like that,” I said, letting him know he’d have to kill me before I let him hurt Charlotte.

  He turned the gun so it was facing the door, the barrel pointed right at Charlotte’s head, like he’d known where she would be hiding.

  “It doesn’t have to happen like this,” he said. “Just let me in.”

  “You hurt her and I will kill you.”

  He smiled and then nodded. “I am duly warned.”

  I stepped backwards and Jack stepped in, shutting the door behind him. Immediately he looked at Charlotte and the smile… I shook my head, wondering if adrenaline wasn’t making me see shit. Because that smile was the brother I remembered. The boy with the long hair he refused to cut. The smart kid helping me learn fractions. The shitty wrestler who kept going out on that mat because he liked being on a team with me.

  Jesus. What was going on?

  “Charlotte,” he said, with a hint of the old charm. “You are just as your sister described you.”

  Charlotte, my brave bold girl, looked at the gun in his hand and sneered. “And you’re just as she described you. A dangerous sociopath.”

  Smoothly, I got between them. I wanted to tell Charlotte not to poke the beast, but Jack seemed unprovoked. In fact he just seemed…weary. He put the gun in his pocket but the threat was already in the air.

>   Jack looked at me with a sad little grin on his face. “It looks like we’ve fallen in love with sisters. It’s so ironic, isn’t it? I mean the odds have to be…what, one in seven million?”

  “My sister doesn’t love you,” Charlotte said. “She ran away from you because she’s scared of you.”

  “I know,” Jack said. “I know. I wanted… I wanted to protect her from that part of my life.”

  “You did a shit job of that.”

  “Maybe,” I muttered over my shoulder, “don’t provoke the guy with the gun?”

  Jack pulled the gun out of his pocket and took the clip out of it and showed it to us.

  “Empty,” I said, surprised.

  “Yeah,” he breathed and threw the gun and the empty clip on the table. “I’ve been carrying that fucking thing around for two years, most of the time without any bullets. Praying I didn’t have to use it.”

  “That,” Charlotte breathed, “sounds awful.”

  “Not as awful as actually using it,” he said quietly, staring down at his hands before looking up at me. “I’m out,” he said. “Out of the life. I’m leaving tonight. Debts are paid. I’m…done.”

  “You’re leaving South San Francisco?” I asked, somehow stunned to hear it.

  “I’m going to find Abby,” Jack said.

  The air around my brother turned cold. Like ice. Did he know about the baby? I sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything, and no way would Charlotte say anything either. The baby was Abby’s secret.

  “You won’t,” Charlotte said.

  Jack turned toward her like a shark smelling blood on the water. I got further between them. “Touch her and I’ll kill you.”

  “You think I’m going to beat her sister’s whereabouts out of her?” Jack asked.

  “I think you’re capable of it.”

  Jack nodded, his jaw tight, like it was his due. Like he shouldn’t expect any better.

  “I have a pretty good idea where she is,” he said. “She told me about that vacation your family took when you were fifteen. The ranch and the small town.”

  “Well, if you do find her, she won’t have anything to do with you. At all.”

  Jack’s chest lifted with a soundless laugh. “That is much more likely. Why does she need the doctor?” he asked. “Is she all right?”