Right Next Door

by A. J. Pryor

  She sighs, “Damn, I knew that boy had stamina.”

  “Boy is definitely not the description I’d give him.”

  “So why are you calling me instead of spending the day in his bed?”

  Good question. “Because I’m a little freaked out. This is my first . . . I don’t even know what to call it, since Matt. I’m not sure exactly what to expect or how to act.”

  I can sense her smile through the phone. “You act like you.”

  “That sounds too easy.”

  “Because it is. Damian already told you he’s not looking for casual, he’s known you for a few months and clearly he likes what he’s seen. Keep doing what you’re doing, the rest will fall into place.”

  That makes sense. I can do that. “Thanks, I have no idea why I’m suddenly so insecure about this.”

  “It’s new. Until you spend a few days like this you’re going to have some hesitancy.”

  “You should be a couples therapist, Paige.”

  “Uh, no thanks. Keep me posted.”

  “Of course.”

  A mug catches my eye that I haven’t used in a long time, and I decide it’s perfect. I grab it, throw on a pair of yoga pants and sweatshirt and leave for Damian’s place, my confidence back in tack.

  “Fill’er up, Offside.” I hold my mug out for him.

  He grabs it from my hand and cracks up. This was one of my dad’s favorites. It always embarrassed me to death, but it is so appropriate for this morning. “Help wanted, many positions available?” People in a multitude of sexual positions cover the white ceramic; some of them we’ve tackled, many we haven’t come close to.

  Placing the empty coffee mug down on the counter, he cups my face in his big strong hands and kisses me. A panty melting, fuck the coffee and take me back to bed kiss. Small moans escape the back of my throat, and I try to wrap my legs around him. Even after the hours of sexual activity and the insane number of orgasms, I could start all over again. He pulls back slightly and smiles. “I think this is my favorite mug. Can I keep it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we’re keeping it in the bedroom, making sure we try every one of these positions in the next few weeks, maybe days.” He kisses me again, and all I can think about is the future he keeps mentioning, and it makes me happy. I like talking futures with Damian, even if our talk only consists of our future sex life.

  “Can I have my coffee now?” I’m backed against his counter, and he’s officially placed himself between my legs. I can feel his length begin to grow, and I’m not opposed to another round of mind blowing, middle of the day sex. But I need my coffee first and probably something to eat.

  My stomach growls, and he smiles against my lips.

  Taking a step back, he pours the black liquid into my mug then hands it to me with a warm croissant. I hold the flaky pastry between my fingers and give him a curious look.

  “I grabbed a few from the nursing station at the hospital yesterday. It’s all I’ve got at the moment.”

  He reaches for his own mug, and I begin to laugh. “You are not going to drink that around me.”

  Ignoring me, he pours coffee into a mug that says ‘Dirty Bird’ with a picture of a Peacock prominent on the side. He takes a big sip, sighs out loud then locks his stare with mine. Stepping into my zone, he kisses me on the nose. “The mug stays.”

  He kisses my nose one more time and grabs my hand, leading me out to the balcony.

  I follow, my coffee and croissant balanced in one hand, as my other is secure in his big grasp. It’s still raining, and it’s cold. Like fifty degrees cold, which for a girl who was born and raised in Southern California might as well mean it’s snowing. But the overhang that covers both our balconies is protecting us from the rain, and it’s nice to be in the fresh air.

  Sitting back in his big blue lounge chair, he pulls me down between his legs, my favorite spot in the universe. Nestled right here, my back to his front, his arms wrapped around me. I love this position and even if it were zero degrees outside, this is exactly where I’d want to be.

  “Are you going to tell me why Matt called you at six this morning?” My body stills, the only movement the breath coming in and out of my lungs as I attempt to breathe.

  I feel guilty, like I’ve been caught cheating, even though I’ve done nothing wrong. But the truth is, I didn’t want Damian to know Matt was still calling me, and I’m uncomfortable having this conversation. Not sure where I stand in Damian’s heart, I’m hesitant to give too much away.

  “How do you know he called?”

  “I heard it ring right after you fell asleep. It’s hard to miss that ring tone. Is there a reason you don’t want me to know he still contacts you?”

  Is there a reason? There must be. I’m not ashamed of my life, it’s mine, the only one I have, and I think I’ve done okay given the circumstances I’ve been thrown into. But I don’t want Matt and Damian colliding. I want to keep them as separate entities, not comparing one to the other. I don’t want Damian worrying that Matt is going to suddenly appear in my life and whisk me away.

  “What would the point have been?”

  He’s silent, his mug resting on the arm of the chair, his chin grazing the top of my head. His chest expands a few times and I think he’s going to talk, but he doesn’t. I want to know what he’s thinking I want to have this conversation, but I don’t want to fight about Matt. He’s not Damian’s problem—he’s mine. I’m about to tell him this when he finally speaks.

  “I don’t want you dating other people, Addison. I want you for myself.”

  That is something I could get on board with, but I need more. “What about you?”

  He brings his face down to my cheek, his breath warming my skin as he talks. “I told you, I don’t do casual. I’m as monogamous as they come.”

  My heart rate increases. I feel like I’m back in high school, wanting to ask a million questions but not wanting to seem naïve or stupid.

  Screw it. This is Damian.

  “So, are we like . . . boyfriend, girlfriend? I mean, what’s your end game?” The minute it rolls off my tongue I want to take it back. How lame could I possibly sound? Damian wants to be monogamous; he wants a clean and steady fuck buddy, that doesn’t mean he wants forever.

  He nips at my earlobe, and my insides turn to jelly. His hand goes to the waist of my pants and skims along the top, the pad of his fingers grazing my skin. “For now, yeah, I’ll take that label. But eventually Addison,” his tongue trails along the outer edge of my ear and a slight moan escapes my mouth. “That title isn’t going to be good enough.” His hand slips inside my pants, and any thought of Matt, our label, and what our future may look like gets shattered to pieces. Along with any dignity I had, as I’m sure anyone in the surrounding buildings is watching as Damian’s hand sends my body into an all-consuming orgasm that has me gripping his arm for any connection to the earth.

  “Are you sure she’s not going to care that I’m with you?”

  Damian stops mid stride and backs me up against the white walls of the hospital. His hand runs through my hair as his lips gently land on mine. “She doesn’t get a lot of visitors, Addison. It will mean the world to her that you came with me today.” He kisses me again then pulls me off the wall and towards her room.

  “Damian?”

  He stops again, curiosity in his eyes, and a compassion I’ve only seen when he’s with her. I’m nervous, and it must be showing. I know I mean a lot to Damian, I know he wants me as his girlfriend and he wants to move us forward, but I also know how important his relationship with Emily is. If she doesn’t like me, this is going to be very difficult—for all of us.

  “It’s going to be okay. Emily trusts me, and so if I say you’re cool, she will too.”

  “Does she know I work for her attorney?”

  “She’s a kid. Doesn’t understand all of that. In her mind, Thomas is trying to find her a home. I’d never tell her he doesn’t think I’d make a fit dad,
it would only scare her.”

  I nod. He begins walking again and I stop, not wanting to go further until I have all the details. “Why doesn’t Thomas think you’re fit?”

  Damian takes a big breath and a sad smile lifts the corners of his mouth. “Remember when I told you everyone at some point or another wants a re-do on their life?”

  I nod, giving him my full attention.

  “After my accident, for about three years, I was a mess. Completely lost in life. Thomas is holding that against me.”

  “How bad was it?” I ask realizing I don’t really know all that much about Damian.

  His face falls slightly and he’s quiet, his mind spinning. “Just your typical bad boy behavior,” he finally says before grabbing my hand walking us further down the hall. I’m not sure it was the answer I was looking for, but I’m going to let it go for now.

  As we get closer, I realize I need to know one more thing. I should have asked him all of this in the car, but I hadn’t given it much thought. I’ve only seen Emily once, and that was on an errand for Thomas, walking into her room, hand in hand with Damian is going to feel much different.

  Stopping, he turns his face towards me, his lip curling up on the side, his dark eyes glistening with concern and understanding. Wrapping an arm around my back, he pulls me closer. “Ask me anything about her, Addison. Whatever will make you feel better about walking in her room together, ask away.”

  I see a few chairs in a waiting room and direct us to them. “What happened to her? Where is her family?”

  Our chairs are across from each other, our knees touching as he takes my hands in his. He’s rubbing his thumb along the back of my hand, and it’s calming every nerve that is jumping all over the place in my system. His eyes stay locked on mine, his forehead creased in thought and contemplation.

  Casually he tells me, “Her mom died in a car wreck a few years back. No known father. She bounced around here and there but eventually ended up with a nice couple down in Goleta. I hear they were good to her, treated her well, but within two months of moving in with them, she got sick. The husband was out of work and wife a teacher. They just couldn’t handle it.”

  I nod, my heart heavy with the knowledge that an eight-year-old could be on her own, fighting for a home. My mom didn’t want me, but I had my dad. He’d made sure I never needed anything, made sure I was always taken care of and I felt loved. Always. I wonder if this girl ever feels like someone is fighting for her.

  But the person who is doing everything in his power to make sure she’s going to be good, is sitting in front of me. “But how did you find her?”

  His eyes scrunch up in thought, his nostrils slightly flaring and I feel I’ve touched on a subject he’s not comfortable with. Releasing my hands he sits back and stares off to the blank white wall behind me.

  “Damian,” I say quietly.

  He focuses his attention back on my face and his features soften, his eyes lowering and his lips gently turning up. “Reed found her.”

  “What exactly does that mean?” I ask cautiously.

  He sighs out a big breath then looks directly into my eyes. “Reed knew I was lost, fighting for a life that no longer existed. He was trying to hammer home that there were people a lot worse off than me in this world. The minute I saw her, I knew I had to help her.”

  Damian has always been secretive and there is a part of me that doesn’t feel I’m getting the whole picture of the why and how Emily came into his life. But if she gives him purpose, if she brought him back to a peaceful place, I need to accept I may not get more information than this.

  I lean forward and kiss him, my hand cupping the back of his neck as the short hair tickles my palm.

  “You’re a good person, Damian Walker.” He smiles against my lips. “Let’s go see your favorite blue-eyed-girl.”

  “Here, let me help you up.” After an incredibly awesome hospital visit, I decided Addison and I needed to work out, or at least I needed to work out. Emily was great, and Addison was amazing with her, playing Would You Rather? until she’d run out of questions then watching re-runs of American Ninja Warrior. Addison knew every contestant, every move they made, where they went wrong and what they needed to work on for the next competition. It was a little frightening how caught up in these people’s worlds she was and I can only hope I’m going to give her a better life than one living through other people’s dreams. She needs to have her own.

  I had dreams at one point as well, and they all came crashing down. When your life suddenly changes courses without asking your opinion in the matter, you need to readjust what you want out of life. Sort out the good and forget the bad. Life has a lot to offer, and if you want to find all the amazing parts, you can. It may be lurking in a hidden corner, out in plain sight or have just moved right next door, but it’s there, and I plan to show Addison how great life can be.

  “What’s up peoples?” Fucking Reed walks onto the track, his arms outstretched, and a shit-eating grin on his face.

  His shirt is ridiculous.

  “Oh my God, Reed, that shirt’s worse than any of my mugs.” Addison is cracking up, and I want to deck the guy for thinking it was okay to wear a shirt around Addison that says, ‘When I get tired of snatches, I jerk it.’

  Sure, it’s a CrossFit shirt, and I own a few of them myself, but have some fucking class.

  “Don’t throw those dark mean eyes my way, Damian.” He throws his shit on the ground and turns on the music. Far East Movement’s “Like a G6” begins to play and I turn towards Addison, helping her with another pull up. I love the dude like he’s my brother and having four of them, that’s saying a lot. But at some point the guy’s got to grow up.

  She loses her grip, and I’m not paying as good of attention as I should. Her hands slip off the bar and she lands right into my arms, causing us both to fall to the ground. “You okay, Green Eyes?” I’m holding her, as we lay on the grass and it dawns on me we’ve gone all day without having sex. I begin to wonder why I brought her here instead of home and straight to bed. After spending over twenty-four hours in nothing but our birthday suits, real life came calling this morning. She was too nervous visiting Emily hand in hand to have a roll between the sheets with me today, and I was too antsy to get her into bed when we got home. All her questions this afternoon threw me. How can I ever tell Addison the real reason Thomas doesn’t want me around? I promised Megan I’d never tell anyone what she divulged to me that night, but she left out the fact that she had a daughter. I’ve often wondered if that makes the promise null and void, if her lack of information gives me the right to take action, even though it’s the last thing Megan would have wanted. I’ve never been able to answer that question.

  I’ve been sitting on the couch for two hours, staring at a blank wall. My mind has been racking up the thousands of questions about an orphaned girl who I should have been caring for instead of wasting my life away on this couch.

  Reed hasn’t left the apartment, every so often coming out and staring at me. Like right now.

  This time I stare back. “Where is she?”

  “A foster home in Goleta. She’s good. I’ve been keeping tabs on her, checking in with her social worker.”

  “What’s her name?”

  He hangs his head, his hands in the pockets of his jeans and takes a deep breath. “Emily. Emily Jones.”

  “That was Megan’s last name. Where’s her dad?”

  He shrugs. “No one knows. Her birth certificate lists no known father.”

  That stings.

  “I want to see her.”

  He nods. “Get your shit. I’ll drive you.”

  We pull up in front of a one-story home on the outskirts of town. There’s nothing special about it. It’s not a shit hole, but it’s certainly no mansion. A woman with short brown hair is twirling a blonde little girl in the front yard. The minute the girl’s feet hit the ground, she turns, her big blue eyes locking onto mine for a split second. My heart comple
tely cracks in two. She looks exactly like her mom.

  “Get me out of here.”

  Reed pulls away from the curb and I call my attorney.

  I don’t give him a chance to say hello before I ask, “Did you know?”

  “Yeah. I knew.”

  “I don’t care what it takes, get me some sort of visitation rights, some sort of involvement with that little girl.”

  “You need to pull it together before any court grants you custody, Damian.”

  “As of right now and from here on forward, I’m together. And I’m going to make it my life’s mission that Emily Jones will be properly taken care of the rest of her life.”

  “Let’s go work out at home.” Addison’s seductive voice shakes me from my memory.

  I smile and kiss her hard.

  “New rule!” Reed is shouting and it startles us both. “No PDA, no touching unless absolutely necessary, and no sneaking off early to grab a quick fuck.” I flinch at his description of our relationship but also at the accuracy at which he’d just pegged us. “I get it, guys, I really do. And I’m happy for you both, really, I am, but just because you’ve found some . . . some cosmic event that you can’t explain, neither one of you are getting out of our workouts. So get the hell up and give me fifty!”

  We both stand and Addison reaches on her tiptoes trying to whisper something in my ear. I bend down to hear her better. “Take off your shirt, and I’ll give you a blow job later.”

  She drops to the ground and starts her push up routine.

  I’m hard.

  Again.

  And can’t do much about it.

  But I want a blowjob, and even though I know she’d probably give me one anyway, I take off my shirt and expose my skin to the cold post-rain air.

  At least that took care of my hard on.

  We work out for over an hour, Reed shouting directions at us, and both of us following every word he says. By the time we’re ready to head home, I want to kick Reed’s ass but mostly, I want to fall into bed with Addison.

  I grab her around the waist and throw her over my shoulder. “See you later, Reed,” I yell behind me as I get us both out of there and home as quickly as possible. I need to be inside her, and I need it like I need air to breathe. I’ve been semi erect since I woke up this morning, and it’s beginning to get painful.