The Boys Next Door (The Boys Next Door 1)

“Who am I,” I asked, “Michelle Kwan?”

“Not hardly,” Tammy said at the same time Rachel said, “I see your point.” But neither of them was looking at me. They watched the wakeboarding boat float right in front of us, full of boy.

Specifically, full of Adam. He stood in the bow, one arm cradling a bouquet of roses—a funny contrast, this muscular football player carrying pink flowers. He held his other hand out to me.

McGillicuddy leaned over the bow, too, and caught the seawall, holding the boat there so it didn’t scrape against the wall and didn’t drift away. The boys had planned ahead. For once.

Ninety-nine percent of me leaped up immediately and knocked Adam over, hugging him. One percent was still bitter about the bitch comment, and angry that I’d been tricked into coming out here to wait like some airhead flirt for Adam to happen by. This one percent was heavier than the rest combined and anchored me to the seawall. I elbowed Tammy. “Traitor.”

“I was helping you without question,” she said.

“And your mom!” I yelled to Adam. “Did you ask your mom to get me out here?”

“I told her to fire you if she had to,” he called. “Did she fire you?”

“Mama Vader has some feminine wiles!” I exclaimed.

Adam laughed. “She’s got maybe one more feminine wile than you, and you’ve got about three-fourths of a wile.” He tilted his head and wiggled the fingers of his outstretched hand. “Come with us. We want you to close the show. Right, Sean?”

“Right!” Sean said with fake enthusiasm. From the back of the boat, Cameron waved my wakeboard at me to show me, again, that they’d thought ahead.

“I’m not supposed to get my stitches wet,” I reasoned.

“Don’t fall,” Adam reasoned right back.

I wanted to go. I couldn’t quite detach the heavy one percent. “You called me a bitch. I’m not running back to you when you leave me a dozen roses.”

“Four more.” He waved his smaller bouquet at me. “Sixteen total. Birthday or what?”

Rachel shoved me forward—which, since I was sitting down, didn’t push me into the boat. It only folded me over like a movie theater seat.

“You can think about it,” Adam said. “The four of us can take our turns, and we’ll come back to see if you’ve changed your mind. But I want you to come with us now.” In a singsong voice he coaxed, “I’ll let you drive.”

McGillicuddy and Cameron stared at Adam, eyes wide with fear. Sean coughed, “Bullshit.”

“I’ll let you drive when I’m wakeboarding, anyway,” Adam said.

“It’s love,” McGillicuddy said, motioning with his head for me to get in the boat. “Let Tammy hold your roses so they don’t go bald in the wind.”

McGillicuddy’s blessing was the final push I needed. I held out my arms for the extra roses from Adam and inhaled one last long sniff before handing off the whole huge bouquet to Tammy. Then I took Adam’s hand and let him help me in. McGillicuddy shoved the bow away from the seawall and walked into the back of the boat, muttering, “Freaking femme fatale.”

As we puttered out of the idle zone, I gave Rachel and Tammy a pageant wave. They waved back and clapped for me. The boat reached the open water and sped up. The motor and Nickelback drowned out the clapping. Adam grabbed my waving hand, and we did the secret handshake.

As we sank to the bow seat, I touched his skull-and-crossbones pendant on a new leather string. “They still have these in the bubble gum machine?”

“Sean went under the dock and found it for me.”

I nodded. “He was the best choice to rescue it for you. He has no fear of bryozoa.” Squinting into the sun behind Adam, I looked up into his sky-blue eyes. “One day on the boat when we were kids, did you tell me you wanted me to be your girlfriend when we were old enough?”

He slid his hand down a lock of my hair and twisted it around his fingers. “I don’t remember saying that, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I wasn’t lying that day in the truck. I really have loved you forever. Why else would I wear a skull-and-crossbones necklace you bought me from a bubble gum machine? It turned my skin green.”

“It didn’t.” To make sure, I moved the pendant aside and peered at his chest, which looked the normal scrumptious tan to me. “It didn’t,” I repeated with more confidence.

“It did when you first gave it to me. Any metal coating that might have been clinging to it wore off on my chest years ago.”

Come to think of it, the pendant was a funny color not found in nature. I’d probably given him lead poisoning, which was why he acted like that. I ran my fingertips down the bones, and poked the skull in the eyes. “You know, you could have told me you loved me a long time ago, before things got so crazy.”

“No, I couldn’t. I like to take chances. I’d blow a chance on anything but you. You didn’t love me.”

Didn’t I? It was hard to believe I’d called him little dolphin just two weeks before. “I didn’t think about you that way. Clearly I was capable of it. Because I love you now.”

He grinned and took my hand. “We should add another step to the secret handshake.”

“Then we couldn’t do it in public.” I turned his hand over and ran my fingertip lightly over his palm until he shivered. “When Sean came up to your mom because a fish had mouthed his toe, and my mom said I should just wait until I was sixteen… That wasn’t Sean. That was you. Right?”

He put his head close to mine, watching my finger trace valentines in his open hand. “I didn’t want you to like me because you thought you were supposed to. I wanted you to like me for me.” His breathing sounded funny. He was about to cry—which was going to cause him a world of trouble with the boys. He could live the first time down owing to the shock of seeing me crash into a very large, very stationary object. But if he cried again, he was toast.

I knew one way to stop him. I hollered above the motor, “Oh my God, Adam, are you about to cry?”

“Oh my God!” Sean echoed in a high-pitched girl-voice. Cameron squealed, “Adam, don’t cry!” My brother called, “No crying on the boat.”

Adam laughed with tears in his eyes and kissed me softly on the forehead, the side away from the stitches. And suddenly, to my complete horror, I was the one crying, sobbing into his chest. I was happy, but that wasn’t why I was crying. I was relieved. Relieved of a weight I couldn’t even name.

He held me more tightly and kissed my forehead several more times, then made his way down my cheek, dangerously close to my ear. I giggled at the same time I cried. If he didn’t stop, he was going to give me hiccups—which would be so incredibly sexy, on top of messing up my timing for wakeboarding jumps.

He kissed my lips. “What do you want to do tonight?” he whispered.

What a question!

“Put our names back on the bridge,” I said. “Only, you hold the sailboat this time, and I’ll take care of the handwriting.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, enjoying the warmth of Adam’s arms around me against the wind. We sat back and watched the other boats and the crowded banks of the lake spin by. When the show started, we spotted for the other boys while they took their turns. Then it was Adam’s turn, and mine.