The Boys Next Door (The Boys Next Door 1)

He came back dragging a beanbag float and nearly knocked the legs out from under a few folks. He dragged it right over the quarters game, scattering the boys, and would have spilled the beer if someone hadn’t been faster. Then he dropped the float into the lake and kicked off the part of it that sagged over the dock. He gestured toward it and grinned at me. “Your limo awaits.”

I had my doubts about this. The lake was black, and the sky was black with faraway stars. But anyone who drove their boat to the party this late would know to dock at the marina where there was more room. We were safe. I shrugged off Adam’s sweatshirt and—without looking to see if Sean was watching me, very important—slipped into the hot water. I hadn’t realized my butt was frozen solid from the cold dock. The lake was such a relief. Ahhhhh.

Until Adam did a cannonball, socking me in the eyes with water and splashing everyone on the dock, including Sean and Rachel.

“Aaaadaaaaaaaam!” they all cried. He chuckled softly to himself as we held onto the raft and kicked it out into the lake, beyond the glow of light from the house.

He stopped kicking and crawled higher on the raft, straddling it. “Come up here with me.”

The beanbag raft was filled with floaty bits rather than air and always seemed in danger of sinking. This could be annoying when you wanted to stay on top of the water, getting a tan. On a night like tonight, it was perfect. It would keep us from drowning while giving us more hot water than cool air.

“Now. Where were we?” He put both his strong arms around me, pulled me close, and kissed me hard.

I hadn’t thought this was possible, but it was even better than before, because no one was watching. Which was actually my new problem with it. I put my hand on his chest to stop him.

He groaned in frustration. I made a mental note to make him groan in frustration more often. It seemed like something a treacherous girl would do. Also he was really cute when he groaned.

“I just wanted to know,” I breathed, “why we’re doing this where no one can see us.”

“We think no one can. We thought no one was watching us at the bridge. We need to act the part all the time, and never step out of character.” He put his hand on my arm. “If that’s okay.”

I nodded. I was still nodding as he pushed me gently backward until I was lying down on the raft, and he was lying on top of me. His whole weight was on me, but he didn’t squash me because I was hovering on the raft, just under the surface of the warm water. I felt him along me. Almost every inch of his skin touched almost every inch of mine.

I watched the skull and crossbones glinting in the starlight, and tried to impress it on my retinas so I’d still see it when I closed my eyes to kiss him again. This was Adam, not Sean. I was after Sean, not Adam. Adam was after Rachel, not me. And if kissing Adam was better than anything I’d ever dreamed of doing with Sean… well, I could see how that was going to mess up my plans.

I kissed him anyway. The skull and crossbones lay on my throat.

“And when you kiss me,” I said against his lips, “you’re thinking about Rachel. Right?”

Almost before I got the last word out, he was kissing me again, harder than before, so intense I got lost in it and thought I might drown in the blackness even though my head was still above water.

I pinched his ass.

He yelped, and the yelp echoed across the lake and back. Silhouettes moved far away on the dock, peering in our direction without seeing.

“Did you hear me?” I asked.

He propped himself far enough above me to be able to see me. With one finger he smoothed a strand of wet hair away from my face. He traced the line of my cheek down to my chin. “Do you want to stop? Tell me and I’ll stop.”

“I don’t want to stop,” I said. The absolute truth, for the first time in a week. “But how far are we going with this?” Adam was used to jumping off the roof. I wasn’t. These were dangerous waters.

He moved to my ear again, and my body braced for the shockwaves. Just before his lips touched my skin, he whispered, “I guess we’ll know when we get there.”

15

“S-bend or what?” Adam asked me, grinning.

I’d just climbed out of the water after landing the S-bend! And even though he’d dried in the hot sun and hugging me must have been a cold, wet shock, he wrapped his strong arms around my life vest and hugged me hard. Best of all, Adam acting this way wasn’t an unexpected hostess gift wrapped in Valentine’s paper anymore. It was part of being his girlfriend. I was getting used to it, and I loved expecting it.

Saturday we’d gone mud riding. Then we’d parked in the movie theater lot, watched the trucks go by, and just talked. We’d shared a milkshake. I was totally immune to his germs by now. Monday after dinner, when I thought I’d have to spend the evening with Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote a good space story but was not the greatest kisser, Adam asked me to go for a walk around the neighborhood with him. We held hands, which no longer seemed the least bit weird. Here it was Wednesday, and I hadn’t had more than a fleeting thought of Sean since Friday night with Adam in the lake.

I could have sworn Adam hadn’t thought of Rachel, either. When he kissed me (often! really kissed me!), it felt like he was thinking of me, not her. Yeah, he could have been faking. But as he’d said that first night at the tennis court, he wasn’t exactly drama club material.

And it would come crashing down around us any minute. Adam never looked over his shoulder to make sure Rachel was watching us when he kissed. He did check Sean’s reaction. I knew Mr. Vader was wrong about which of his boys was stabbing the other in the back, but I also knew Adam wouldn’t walk away after being stabbed, any more than Sean would. So I enjoyed my time alone with Adam as much as I could. Whenever Sean came around, I held my breath, waiting for the fall.

It wasn’t so long a wait. The boys looked harmless enough this afternoon. Adam, Cameron, and my brother had had fantastic wakeboarding runs, too. They’d finally gotten their wakeboarding legs back, as good as last year. Cameron and McGillicuddy lounged across the seats in the boat, basking in the late afternoon sunshine like big golden retrievers, watching me drip on the platform and wagging their tails vaguely. They felt what I’d been feeling since the first day we went out: sated with happy exertion. High.

Sean lay flattened across the bow seat, but not for the same reason. He hadn’t taken his turn yet. He said he didn’t want to miss a call from Rachel. She’d planned to come wakeboarding with us today (amid protests from the boys, because guests had never been allowed) and borrow my wakeboard since her bindings hadn’t arrived yet (whatever). Her mom was going to bring her down, but they never showed. Sean had called Rachel four times from the boat (to make Adam mad, Adam and I thought) and hadn’t reached her. I found this strange. Where was she? Wasn’t she waiting around for Sean’s call with her hand poised on the answer button of her phone?

Beyond the windshield that separated us from him, we heard his cell phone ring Nickelback’s “Fight for All the Wrong Reasons.” We knew it was Rachel calling him back. And when his curse word burst over the windshield, we knew what she’d said hadn’t been very nice.

Adam shrugged and turned back to me. Unlike Sean, he didn’t flirt with me by assisting me with things I was perfectly capable of doing myself. He didn’t help me off with my equipment. He did sit on the back of the boat and watch me appreciatively. When I took off my life vest, he surveyed my bikini-clad hotness (ha) and gave me a naughty smile. I untied my bindings and lifted one foot out. He licked his lips like he had a foot fetish. I burst into laughter.

Sean charged past the windshield into the back of the boat, eyes full of tears. “She broke up with me!” he wailed. “She broke up with me because she’s still in love with Adam!”

We all went quiet. Only the clack-clack, clack-clack of cars on the bridge and the lapping of waves against the boat disturbed the silence. The boys weren’t ribbing Sean. They must have been as shocked as I was that Sean would admit what Rachel had said.

Sean was in love.

He sniffled. “I’m going to her house. Take me back to shore.” When Cameron didn’t immediately slip into the driver’s seat, Sean took a step toward the steering wheel himself.

“Sean,” Cameron said, standing in his way. “You haven’t landed a good trick the whole week and a half we’ve been coming out. We only have today, tomorrow, and Friday to practice for the Crappy Festival. Take your turn first and then go to her house.”

Sean cursed, and cursed, and cursed, and dove into the lake. We all rushed to the side of the boat and watched him glide to the surface twenty feet away, already swimming. We weren’t so far from the Foshees’ yard that we needed to fish him out for his own safety. He swam until he could touch bottom, sloshed the rest of the way to land, and hit the grass running through the Foshees’ yard, through my yard, toward his house.

Adam said quietly, “I’m the biggest.”

“Adam,” I scolded him.

Cameron and my brother looked from me to Adam and back to me, wondering what was going on between us. Frankly, I wondered the same thing. I wasn’t sure what I’d wanted or expected Adam to say when we finally got our wish for Sean and Rachel to break up. But I’m the biggest wasn’t it.

We drove back to the wharf still in silence—except, of course, for the deafening motor. Adam and I sat across the aisle from each other without glancing at each other. Something was about to happen.

And everyone sensed it. Cameron and McGillicuddy took more than their share of equipment into the warehouse, leaving Adam and me alone in the boat. As they came back out, Cameron looked down at us from the wharf and said, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do”—which made me wish I hadn’t confessed to Adam that Cameron and I had kissed. After five years of hiding this from everyone, he had to hint about it now? Whatever was coming for Adam and me, it was going to be hard enough already.

McGillicuddy asked me, “Do you want me to tell Dad you’ll be late for dinner?”

“No,” I said. “I won’t be long.”

We watched McGillicuddy and Cameron walk toward the houses. They stopped to talk. Cameron took a swipe at McGillicuddy. McGillicuddy shoved Cameron. They went their separate ways. Friends to the end, the simplest relationship possible.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Adam snapped into the silence. “You won’t be long?”

“It’s dusk in the summer. Mosquitos,” I said, slapping at a bug. While my mouth spouted this drivel, my mind worked on what I really wanted to say to Adam. But I had no more idea than I’d had out on the lake.

You know what didn’t help? When he reached behind his neck and worked at the knot in the leather string. I knew what was coming. It took him a few seconds to get through that knot. Even though the whole time I was thinking about what to say when he asked me to turn around, I was speechless when the moment came. I turned around on my seat. He tied the skull and crossbones around my neck. The metal was hot against my breastbone. I pressed the skull between the eyes with my fingertips. Turning back to him, I murmured, “You’re giving me a piece of you.”

He looked over at me. We were together for real, and he was so hot. I should have been giggling with delight and dorkiness. The angry look in his blue eyes broke my heart.

“Rachel told Sean she likes you better,” I said, “but you don’t want her back. You’ve never wanted her back. All you’ve wanted was to get revenge on Sean. You’re giving me this to show him you don’t even want what he can’t have.”

Adam’s eyes narrowed at me. I made an effort not to shrink back against the side of the boat. He said evenly, “I’m giving it to you because I want to give it to you.”

“Your timing is odd. Usually a boy wouldn’t laugh at his brother hitting rock bottom, then show his love for his girlfriend practically in the same breath.” Now he was shrinking against his side of the boat, which made me brave enough to throw in still more sarcasm. “I don’t have a lot of experience with this, but that’s my theory.”

He closed his eyes and said in a rush, “I’m in love with you.”

I took a breath to tell him if he really meant it, he wouldn’t have to say it with his eyes closed. But he didn’t just have his eyes closed. Those worry lines had appeared between his brows. He was in pain, concentrating hard to make it go away, like the second time he broke his collarbone wakeboarding, and lay still as death in the floorboard of the boat and wouldn’t let anyone touch him but me.

He opened his eyes but remained plastered against the boat. He looked small, if this was possible. “That’s my plot. You were right, I had a plot, and that’s my whole plot. I’m in love with you. The last nine months with McGillicuddy away at college have been freaking torture for me, because I didn’t have an excuse to come to your house. If I came over without McGillicuddy there, you’d know. I hardly saw you the whole school year. I thought I might finally have a chance with you since I was about to get my license, and you were about to get your license. We could go places together, alone. I could get you away from Sean. But the more I hinted we should go out, the more you talked about hooking up with Sean. When I heard Rachel liked me, I asked her out, and I kept asking her out. To make you jealous. And at the tennis court that night when you said we should make Rachel and Sean jealous, I nearly had a heart attack. I thought you saw right through me.”

He looked so hurt, and his eyelashes were so long. I had fallen in love with him. I wished he were in love with me too. But in telling me this elaborate lie, he’d betrayed the truth.