Her Big Neighbor

Focusing on Edward again, I move my fingers faster, and the burst of sensation just makes me wetter. I imagine the way he would kiss me, crushing me to the bed and touching me with sure, steady hands. And then…more.

I want him to kiss and lick my skin, undress me piece by piece and worship every bit of me that he reveals. And I want to do the same to him. I imagine him naked in a way I’ve never seen him. I’ve only ever seen him without a shirt and that was years ago.

I let my mind go, picturing us together and giving in to the feeling of my fingers, driving me higher, using the tricks I’ve learned in a hundred lonely nights to make myself come quickly. I’m so close, and the image of Edward’s perfect blue eyes makes me shake with need.

“Julia, I found some of your old school papers, do you want them?” My mother’s voice sounds outside the door and literally a second later she comes in, holding a stack of papers. I’ve never been so grateful to goddamn heaven that I’m under the blankets, and even though my hand is still in between my legs, I just look like I’m curled up against the window.

My mind is blank and my heart is racing, and slowly, I turn over. “What?”

“Old school papers,” she says. “Do you want them?”

I close my eyes and take a breath, trying to calm my heart and banish visions in my head of Edward fucking me into oblivion. “Do you know what time it is?”

Mom rolls her eyes. She always does this, having woken up at five a.m. for years, she doesn’t quite comprehend that normal people don’t get up that early and that I need sleep. “Come on, we’ve got work to do and I want you go through your old school stuff.”

I sit up, carefully planning my movements so I give nothing away. “I thought we were going to continue working on the dining room today.”

“It’ll get done,” she says, waving a hand. “But the office needs a lot of work.”

I hold back a sigh. “I’m going to take a shower. I’ll be down in a little while.”

“Don’t take too long,” she says, leaving with the way-too-tall stack of papers. Why does she even still have my papers from high school? I can’t imagine a reason on this earth that I would need to keep them.

I fall back onto my pillows, frustrated. I’m not going to be able recapture the magic of that fantasy. Not when my mom is waiting for me to come downstairs. I’ll file it away for later when I go to bed, and maybe can let my mind be free again.

All of that cleaning is one of the reasons that I decided to move home.

Mom has always been a little different. Passionate about things in her own way, and she’s been successful. But the last year or so, she’s really seemed a little lost. She quit her job as a lawyer and has decided to start a charity for under-privileged kids, specifically ones in public schools. She wants to give teachers resources to be able to help them. Which is a great idea, but also kind of out of the blue. Sure, as a lawyer she always donated money to charities, but this just seems out of left field.

She’s never been one for volunteering, so her sudden fervor for this project took me by surprise.

To be fair, though my mother has always been an odd duck, she accomplishes whatever she puts her mind to. So I don’t have any doubt that she’ll be successful. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t weird. We’re having this opening gala here at the house in two weeks, and she has enough high-powered contacts from the corporate world that even a mediocre fundraiser will be a huge success.

That is, unless the house is covered in junk that she’s suddenly decided to sort through from our entire lives in this house.

And then there’s me. When Mom asked if I’d move home to help with the charity, I jumped at the chance. Not because it’s what I want to do, but because I was floundering. When I left for college, I thought that business was what I wanted. Get a business degree and an MBA and then start my own business and just crush it. But it isn’t what I thought. It’s dry and boring and a total boys club, and after two years of that, I’m about done. I don’t regret it, even if I decided that it wasn’t for me. I’ve got a lot of knowledge and skills that I didn’t have before.

I’ve got the associates for completing two years in the program, and I have no idea what I want to do. And I didn’t have a clue how to tell my mom that I didn’t want to finish my degree. Or at least that degree. So this came at the right time. But now that I’m here, I feel just as lost as my mom seems. I miss working toward something, even if it’s something that I didn’t enjoy. For now, I’ll have to be happy working toward the charity gala. There’s plenty to do until then.