The Neighbor Read online

  She'd mentioned a trip to Europe, I remembered then. A photo-shoot in Paris. “It would solve everyone's problems if she never comes back,” I mumbled, as I watched her climb into the Porsche. The last thing I needed was a daily reminder of my past transgressions, or worse, a daily temptation. I hated that someone had that kind of power over me.

  Once Casey was gone I climbed back into bed and attempted to get some more sleep, this time succeeding. Maybe the knowledge of her absence calmed my nerves. I didn't rise again until midday, and that was only because I heard thumping at my bedroom door.

  “Mom, are you still in bed? You got a visitor.” Adrian flung the door open, skateboard tucked under his arm.

  I sat up, the room spinning slightly. At first, in my disoriented state, I panicked, fearing it was Casey. But then I remembered she was probably twenty thousand feet in the air.

  I stretched and yawned. “Who is it?”

  “Rachel. She's waiting for you in the living-room. I'm out. Be back later.”

  A couple of minutes later, having made myself more presentable, I went downstairs to meet Rachel.

  “Did I really wake you?” she asked, smirking. “Jesus, I know it's Sunday, but 1PM? Really, Sabrina?”

  I bit back my scorn and forced a smile. “Late night. Well, late for me. I'm not as young as I once was.”

  We went to the kitchen for coffee. I noticed that she was looking at me oddly, and I put it down to the mismatched outfit I'd thrown on in haste. It would have been typical Rachel – the self-appointed fashion aficionado, a role she'd adopted in high school and apparently never dropped.

  “So, I saw you last night...”

  The cup almost fell from my hand. I froze, staring at her in horror. How much did she see? Everything?

  “I, I, it's not–”

  “You must have been desperate to accept a ride home from Casey, the town slut.”

  I practically breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn't seen everything; my dirty secret was still a secret.

  “How did you know I did that?”

  “I saw you leaving her car.” She sipped her coffee while shooting me a disapproving look, which irked me more than it should have. She was effectively condemning me for not waiting half an hour in the cold for a taxi home.

  I shook my head, laughing to myself at how ridiculous that idea was. “She happened to be driving past while I waited for a taxi. It was lucky that she arrived when she did.”

  “Lucky?” she asked incredulously. “Nothing involving Casey is lucky. It also wouldn't surprise me to learn she planned the whole thing. Turning up at the right time in order to score points with the new girl in town.”

  “Why would anyone do that? Sounds pretty farfetched, don't you think?” I tried to keep my level of cynicism to a minimum, but it was difficult, knowing how silly her theory sounded. I mean, could she even hear herself?

  “Nothing that friend-hungry little harlot does is too farfetched to believe. She knows everyone on this street hates her guts. She sees you as her fresh start.”

  “Or maybe she was just doing me a favor.” I shrugged. “Honestly, she doesn't seem even half as calculating as you and Denny made out.” As soon as I said it I regretted it. I didn't know what had come over me, but I found myself wanting to defend Casey. She wasn't there to defend herself, and it seemed like the right thing to do. Sitting around slating someone just wasn't my style. But Rachel's open-mouthed outrage made me feel as though I'd done something sacrilegious.

  “You can't be serious,” she said. She shot me a betrayed look. “Don't be so naive, Sabrina. I expected better of you. You really don't know what she's up to?”

  “I'm just saying what I see. Maybe that's naive, I don't know. But I don't see the monster that you guys see, that's all.”

  “Then she got to you.” She shook her head slowly, looking at me with pity. “Just like she got to Denny's husband, and all the other husbands. I can understand them – you know men think with their dicks. But you?”

  “I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, Rachel. I'm trying to be a good human being.” If men did think with their dicks when it came to Casey, what the hell had I been thinking with when I'd yielded to her the night before, giving her permission to finger me so openly in her car?

  “You're going to lose, I hope you know that,” she said, face serious. “She always comes out the victor in all of this. She'll take everything from you, bleed you dry, spit you out and move on to the next gullible person who gives her the time of day. Staying away from her from now on is your best option.”

  I'd already decided to stay away from Casey Adams, but not for the reasons she'd stated. However, it was no use trying to convince Rachel that my beautiful neighbor wasn't a blood-sucking leech; she'd already made up her mind about Casey.

  “I just want to live here in peace and get along with everyone. Is that too much to ask?” I said, deflated.

  “Naive,” she said again, giving me that same pitying look. “That's not how the world works.”

  I cut her a look that she didn't see, and realized then why I'd defended Casey. I would have taken a friend-hungry whore any day over the sanctimonious, condescending bitch sitting before me. Compared to Rachel, Casey was a breath of fresh air.

  For those few days of Casey's absence, I felt unburdened. When I had a minute to stress about her return, I would dread it so much that I'd bite my nails down to the cuticles. How could one woman have caused me to be this unsettled?

  Thursday arrived. I'd just finished making a sandwich, rewarding myself with lunch for working so damn hard the whole morning. Just as I headed to the living-room, someone knocked at the front door. I froze in the hallway, sandwich suspended in my mouth. I could see the shadow behind the paneled, multicolor glass door. Even before she spoke I sensed it was her.

  Knock, knock, knock. “Sabrina, it's me, Casey.”

  I made a hasty dash into the living room, feeling too exposed in the hallway.

  A third round of knocking. “I know you're home. I saw your shadow in the hallway.”

  Crap! What a stupid move on my part. Of course she could see my shadow – the glass may not have been transparent, but you could still see movement behind it.

  I refused to answer the door, hoping that my silence would deceive her. But she wasn't stupid; she was a lot of things, but stupid wasn't one of them.

  I heard her sigh agitatedly. “I guess I'll come back another time.”

  I waited several moments, holding my breath, until I heard the distant slam of her door.

  So ended my unburdened feeling.

  “The Cartwright Steam Iron does the job your old iron can't, and in half the time... Goddamn it! I don't buy this crap, so why would anyone else?” I punched a finger on the delete button, holding it until my ineffective words disappeared from the screen. I'd done it a dozen times already that afternoon. Completely off my game since Casey's return a couple of hours earlier.

  I stared at the blank screen, hoping that the right words would magically appear. I was in no state to write anything comprehensible, not with Casey Adams on my mind, invading my thoughts. Knowing that the woman who had defiled me so deliciously was next door made concentrating on my work impossible.

  I growled in frustration, ready to call it a day. Two hours before time. As I shut down the laptop, I heard lively chatter and giggling coming from outside. It was faint so I followed the sound to the hallway, where I could hear better, and listened by the door. I recognized Adrian's voice among the others.

  “I'd bone that chick every day of the week if she lived next door to me.”

  “Yeah, I'm planning to, don't worry,” Adrian responded. “She's totally hot for me, I can see it in her eyes. See how she's washing the car? That's all for me.”

  “Is she a porn star?”

  “My mom said she's a part time model. She probably does topless.” I could just hear the sleaze in his voice; his eyebrow probably rose an inch in speculation.


  I couldn't believe he was talking like this, so vile. He'd been raised better than this; taught never to objectify women. Yet there he was, doing exactly that the minute my back was turned and he thought no one was listening. The mother in me wanted to march outside, seize him by the ear and drag him inside. But at the same time, a morbid curiosity to see what all the fuss was about overtook me.

  I pulled the front door open, and the three boys, Adrian among them, turned to look at me, guilt and shame turning their faces bright red. I'd never met Adrian's new school friends, and this first impression wasn't going so well.

  “What the hell is going on out here?” I demanded, looking from the boys to my son.

  “Uh... Mom, we were just... just–”

  An explanation was no longer necessary. I cast an eye in the direction they had all been looking, and suddenly it all made sense. It looked like a scene from a music video: Casey Adams, long hair loose, sun pouring down on her as she lathered up her sports car, wearing the tightest, shortest denim shorts and a white tank top, wet with water or sweat. Her headphones pushed into her ears, every stroke she took looked suspiciously sexual, as though she was doing it all for show.

  I stood watching her, mouth agape, eyes unwilling to blink in case they missed anything. She bent over her car, teasing us with an enviable view of her taut ass. I wasn't alone in my gawking; the three teenage boys beside me were now doing the same.

  “All right, that's enough!” I said, shaking myself out of the daze Casey's ass had put me in. It really was a great one, and the shorts clung to the cheeks jealously. It was the first time I'd ever come close to envying an item of clothing!

  At once, she spun around, noticing for the first time that she had an audience of ravenous, undersexed teenagers, and an equally undersexed single mother. She ripped the headphones from her ears. When she saw me, she smiled and waved cautiously.

  “This is not okay, Adrian.” I turned away from her without returning her smile or wave, and grabbed my son by the arm. “Inside,” I ordered. Although I didn't say it to the other boys, my furious tone was implication enough that the command applied to them too, whether they liked it or not.

  Adrian protested loudly, but he and his friends slumped into the house, shooting one final, longing look at Casey. As I followed them inside, I too shot her a look; not one of longing, but of contempt. I watched her smile vanish, her face fall.

  She tried to reach me again, on two separate days – knocking and, when she received no answer, ringing the bell. My plan was to ignore her existence for the rest of my time in the neighborhood, or hers, whichever came first. Only an idiot could have been oblivious to what I was doing; only someone truly determined would have ignored the blatant signs of someone trying to avoid them. When she didn't try again on the third day I assumed she'd gotten the message.

  I was deep in sleep when my bedroom door creaked open and the sound seeped into my subconscious. When my eyes sprang open and I saw – through the haze of the new day – the person standing at the foot of my bed, I thought I was still dreaming.

  “Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you, your son–”

  “Jesus, what the hell are you doing up here... in my room?” I screamed at Casey, who hung back warily at the start of my explosion. As if trying to cover my nudity, I gathered the duvet up to my chin, even though I was fully clothed in my nightwear.

  “Your son said it was all right if I came up.”

  “Well, it's not. It's far from all right.” I continued clasping tightly to the duvet, my Berlin Wall separating me from five feet seven of pure temptation that made me come undone just by being in the same room.

  She sighed heavily and threw up her hands. “What else was I supposed to do, Sabrina? This was the only way I could get you to talk to me. You've been avoiding me like the plague ever since we... ever since I...”

  I hopped out of bed and sprang for the bedroom door, slamming it shut hastily. “Could you keep your voice down?” I scolded. In my haste I'd forgotten that I was still in my nightwear, and only when she looked me up and down, the whisper of a smile teasing her lips, did my embarrassment surface. I felt the blush creep to my cheeks. I tried to hug myself in an effort to hide my attire – a hideous pink and white, two-piece flannel number that had become somewhat sentimental to me.

  “Loving the outfit,” she said, her smile now plain as day. “Your son isn't here by the way. He told me to tell you he was playing basketball with some of the boys. It's just you and me.”

  The distance between us suddenly didn't seem great enough, now that we were alone in the house. Recalling what had transpired the last time we were alone made me stumble back several steps, until my heels hit the bedroom door. I could barely look her in the eye, but I knew that her eyes were on me, burning into me, waiting for my next move.

  “What do you want?”

  “To talk, I guess.”

  I gripped the handle, my back pressed against the door. I was preparing to flee if she tried anything. This time I wouldn't let her get as far as she did in the car. “There's nothing to talk about.”

  “Look, I don't want this to get weird. We're neighbors; we're gonna be seeing a lot of each other.”

  “Maybe you should have thought about that before you gave me a ride home!”

  I didn't think my indignation was funny, but I couldn't have said the same for Casey, who tried to suppress a giggle by clearing her throat.

  “What can I say, I'm charitable like that.”

  “Oh, is that what you call it? Charity?” I almost spat the word, despising the way her smirk remained fixed on her face. “I think you should leave now. It's clear you didn't come here to apologize, but to gloat, to make me feel worse than I already do.”

  Her smile faded. “You're right, I didn't come to apologize. As a rule I never do anything I need to apologize for later. But you're wrong about me coming here to gloat. What the hell do you think of me?”

  “You really want me to answer that?”

  She parked herself on the edge of my bed, startling me into wide-eyed alarm. Where did this girl get her nerve? It was as if everything and everyone was hers to do with as she pleased, and to hell with permission. With her looks she was probably used to getting whatever she wanted. She'd claimed me, and now, now she was claiming my bed.

  “Yeah, I do.” Before she turned away from my gaze, I saw her eyes moisten. “And don't hold back, no one else ever does when they're telling me what a piece of shit I am.”

  Her frankness surprised me; but what surprised me more was how affected her voice was. It could have been a ploy to neutralize me so I would sympathize with her, and perhaps I was foolish for falling for it, but suddenly I felt my anger fizzling out.

  “I don't think that of you. You're not a piece of shit.” I loosened my grip on the handle, sagged a bit as I let out a sigh. “You're just... I don't know.”

  “Neither do I.” She smiled sadly. “This is all a facade, you know. The over-confidence, the don't-give-a-shit attitude.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “I needed it for the job, and somehow it started seeping into everyday life. And now I've been this way for so long I don't know how to switch it off.”

  This was certainly not how I'd pictured the conversation going when I'd woken to see her standing in my room. It had progressed rapidly from an argument to a therapy session! I watched her, so pitiful sitting on the foot of my bed: beautiful and damaged.

  “I have to be made of Teflon to survive in the model industry... and on this street. They're both as brutal as each other.”

  “Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked, as politely as I could.

  “Because I want you to know the real me, not the person everyone on this street paints me to be.”

  “Why does it matter what I think of you? I just got here.”

  “Because I like you. I really like you.” Her voice was tiny when she made her confession, and she'd already turned away before her eyes c
ould emphasize the sentiment. “I want us to be friends. I let my desire for friendship manifest itself in an unacceptable way, I guess. Hence the other night in the car.” She bit her lip, gave me a helpless look.

  A little laugh escaped my lips before I could stop it. Hesitantly I made my way to the bed and sat beside her, leaving at least a foot of space between us. “Is that how you get all your friends?” I joked.

  She cupped her face in her hands, her blush shining behind them. “No.”

  “Good, because how would you know they were with you for your great personality?”

  She laughed, eventually removing her hands from her face. “I'm sorry.”

  “I thought you said you don't do apologies.”

  “I think I owe you one this time.”

  I would have told her that it was unnecessary, that it took two to tango, that she hadn't forced me into something I didn't want to do, but to say all of that would have meant admitting it to myself. And I wasn't ready for that yet.

  “Let's start again, shall we? Everything that happened prior to today is stricken from our records. What do you say?” I held out a hand and she shook it without hesitation.

  “Deal,” she said.

  And even though her hand lingered in mine longer than the shake required, and her eyes locked on mine as our flesh touched, I knew that this was the start of a promising new friendship, minus the damaging misconceptions planted by the jealous residents of Azalea Avenue.

  *****

  “You know why they call this street Azalea Avenue?”

  Sunshine poured down on Casey as she knelt down in the rich dirt in my backyard, her denim jumpsuit caked with mud, in places mud should never have been. In one hand she held a trowel, and the other a glass of white wine. Since I'd brought the wine out, she'd been working on the same patch for fifteen minutes, getting nowhere fast. Wine and gardening clearly didn't mix.