Portia Moore - He Lived Next Door Read online

  Tonight they’re named Malory and Jason. Their names can change, but I connect with them—at least right now I do. They tell me their secrets, and I listen and beg for their pasts. They show it in glimpses and I write it all down. By the time they’re quiet, I’ve written fifteen pages in under two hours and I’m shocked. There was once a time when I could write ten pages in an hour, but I’m grateful for what I’ve done now. I grab my phone, a smile etched on my face, and call Bryce. My heart drops when I realize we’re not supposed to be talking.

  I hang up before the second ring. I fight the whimper crawling up my throat and the tear about to fall. I miss him so much. It hits me all at once that I’ve not only asked for space from my husband but also my best friend.

  My phone rings. It’s Davien again. I watch as it rings. Once it’s done, I press Bryce’s name on my phone. I listen to each ring, then it goes to voicemail. I set the phone back down, and it vibrates with a text of a sad face from Davien. I let out a light laugh.

  It rings again and I watch Davien’s name flash across the screen. I find myself smiling, and this time, I pick up.

  1 year ago

  She’s never looked more beautiful than she does now, with our son in her stomach. She glows. She sings to him every hour and reads to him every night. She’s in love with a face she’s never seen, and I once thought it’d make me jealous, but it makes me fall even more in love with her. I love knowing that she’s carrying a life we created, and that life has bridged a gap between our families.

  My mom, who I thought would never truly accept my wife, calls and talks to her twice a day, sometimes hurrying me off the phone to hear firsthand how her grandchild is doing. Her mom, who demanded to come along to the first ultrasound, looked at me for the first time without contempt after she heard our son’s heartbeat. She even hugged me and told me she loved me!

  Granted, it was probably due to her excitement about her grandchild, but I’ll take it. Now our mothers communicate, coordinating things like who can go to what appointment with Chassidy when I’m working, making plans for showers and birthday parties that don’t even exist yet. Chassidy is in disbelief, as I am, at how things have worked out. We knew having a baby would bring us closer, but we never thought it’d bring our families closer. Even Max and Duke have bought sports jerseys in the smallest sizes I’ve ever seen. They’re already arguing over who will teach him how to throw a football, as if I won’t be around to show him.

  I never really imagined myself with kids, but before Chassidy, I never imagined myself loving a person with everything in me and being able to put someone else’s happiness before my own. She’s changed my life and my thinking in ways I never thought possible.

  “I’m glad you and Annette can come down too. I’ll be so glad to see you.” She’s beaming as she talks to her dad, Richard.

  She doesn’t see him often since he lives in California, but I know she loves him to pieces. They talk and Skype all the time, and he was a helluva lot nicer to me than her mom was pre-baby.

  “Yes, call me afterward. I’ll be up. This little soccer player keeps me up all night.” She giggles, blowing a kiss at me.

  I kiss her neck. She hangs up the phone and returns her attention to me.

  “What about Brad?” she asks.

  We both rub her stomach as we watch A Baby Story. She’s obsessed with it. I kind of like it. Not that I’d ever tell her, but she knows. She knows me better than anyone.

  “I was thinking Bryce the Second,” I tell her in a serious voice.

  She laughs so hard, she throws her head back. “Or Matthew.”

  I know that’s because of her crush on Matt Damon. “At least let’s name him Jason. He’s cooler than Matt Damon.”

  She looks at me with an easy, innocent smile. “What about Jameson?”

  I arch my brow at her. “It sounds sort of pretentious.”

  “And Brycelin isn’t?” she teases.

  “Hey, I didn’t pick my name.” I pout at her, and she squeezes my palm.

  “I love your name, but it’d get confusing. What about Travis?”

  “I could live with Travis,” I admit, ignoring the fact that she wants to name our baby after the only guy she loves as much as me. Good thing he’s fictional.

  “I don’t want you to live with a name. I want you to love it,” she whines.

  “Logan. I like Logan,” I say, remembering my best friend in kindergarten’s name.

  “I like Logan too,” she says excitedly.

  “And who’s cooler than Wolverine?”

  She shrugs. “Well, maybe Iron Man.”

  I scoff. “There’s no way Iron Man is cooler than Wolverine.”

  “Whatever you say,” she sings.

  I pull her on top of me, her baby bump safely resting between us, and tickle her until she squeals and laughs, grabbing my hands. I look at the ring shining on her finger. It’s still surreal that not only am I a husband, but I’m a husband expecting a kid. She leans her head back on my chest and sighs.

  As the woman on the show goes into labor, I feel her body tense.

  “You’re going to do great.”

  “I can’t wait to meet our little guy.” She rubs our hands together underneath her belly button. “The labor part terrifies me though.”

  “If I could do it, you know I would.”

  She nudges me. “The thought of his life depending on me to get him here, it’s so scary.”

  “It’s not just you, Chas. You’ll have doctors, the best,” I reassure her. My parents made sure of that.

  “I know. I just…”

  “Everything is going to be fine.” I kiss her forehead.

  She nods, but there’s still a crinkle in her forehead. She’s worried, and I wish I could take it away.

  “I love Logan. I really do,” she says cheerfully. The nervousness in her voice is gone, and she’s back to herself.

  She shifts in order to get up off the couch, and I can’t help but chuckle. Looking at her from the back, you can’t tell she’s pregnant, but when she turns around, she’s huge. Before we had our ultrasound, I swore she had two babies growing in there.

  “What are you getting? I can get it.”

  She waves me off, heading to the kitchen. “Just some popcorn with jalapeno juice. Walking’s good for the baby. Remember what the doctor said?”

  My phone rings. It’s the doorman telling me Jax is downstairs, and I clear him to come up.

  “Who was that, babe?” she asks, and I hear the popcorn popping.

  “Jax.” I get up to open the door.

  “What’s his drama now? He’s banging his new assistant and things have gone haywire?”

  I can’t help but laugh. After Jax broke up with Kira our senior year—which was the smartest decision he’s ever made—he hasn’t been in a relationship with anyone, bouncing from one girl to the next, and has settled into being a playboy pretty well. I walk over to our island, after unlocking the front door, and wrap my arms around Chas, and kiss her neck. I try to remind her how much I want her because for a while, she was self-conscious as her flat stomach ballooned and her face became fuller.

  “Don’t start anything with Jax on his way in.” She giggles, pressing herself into me.

  At that moment, Jax bursts through the door, his eyes wide and looking flustered.

  “Are you okay?” we ask almost in unison.

  “I’m in love with Tiffany.” He sounds almost exhausted, confused, and scared.

  Chassidy giggles.

  “You’re just now figuring that out?” I ask.

  He looks at us as if we’ve lost our minds. “Wait, what?”

  “It’s not very difficult to see.” Chassidy gives me a kiss on the cheek, grabbing her popcorn off the island. “Congratulations, Jax. I was about to give up on you.” She gives him a quick hug before disappearing into our bedroom.

  He scratches his head, looking at me. “So why does it seem like I’m the last one to know this? How did you guy
s know and I didn’t?”

  I casually grab a beer from the fridge and take it to him. “Because, my friend, you look at Tiffany how I look at Chas. Welcome to the club of being a lovesick puppy,” I say jokingly, and he frowns. “Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it seems.” I glance in the bedroom.

  Chas is lying across the bed, her belly big, eating popcorn and spilling it all over the bedspread.

  I smile. “Not bad at all.”

  Chassidy

  “I don’t remember exactly when things changed for me. I guess it would be best to explain in a way someone like you could understand … There was a before, and to really grasp what I’m going to tell you, you have to understand that. I wasn’t always like this. I’ve been called a lot of things in my lifetime: a myth, a liar, a killer, someone who steals lives, who drains the life from you to keep her own. It’s quite a pun, when you think about it, since life is relative to someone like me. It’s so easy to take. But it wasn't always. So the best way to get you to understand is to start from the beginning, like all stories do, or at least from where things changed for me. So I will. Then, my name wasn’t Red. It was Carrie. Normal, drab, scared little Carrie… A girl who wouldn’t exist—much sooner than she thought.”

  I hold my breath, waiting for his response. It’s been such a long time since I’ve felt this nervous about someone’s response to my work. I haven’t felt this way since I released my first book and saw my first review on Amazon.

  “Is that it?” he asks, his voice high and excited.

  It makes me smile. He wants more, and nothing feels as good as that.

  “It’s really different from anything I’ve written.” I giggle, pulling my legs to my chest, a Cheshire cat smile on my face.

  “We’re going to have to up that word count a bit, love… but I like where this is going. A lot.”

  I feel myself blush at the innuendo in his words. It’s been a week since our texts turned into phone calls, him scolding me about my lack of writing and how wasted words are like leaving money in the bank. He already has my books with the senior editor of a big publishing company in Italy, and he said she’s been sending him emails telling him how much she loves my work. It’s scary to think how great this could be. It’s been so long since I’ve allowed myself to reflect on the possibility of something being good and not falling apart. I kick out the ghost of a mourning thought that wants to unravel my mood.

  “Thank you. It’s not typical for me but… I’ve been inspired to be different lately,” I say as I read over the last sentence and tweak it a bit.

  “I wonder who caused such inspiration.” His words drag though his sensual lips.

  I don’t respond, which has become sort of a response in itself. I can’t lie and say that I don’t enjoy our emails, texts, and conversations. They’re all centered around work of course, but a glimpse of something else always peeks behind it. He hasn’t been as overt as he was the night we met, but the invitation is always there, floating behind his words.

  “I really want to try to kick things into gear. Everything has been coming together, and I’m going to try to do eight thousand words every day next week.”

  “That’s my girl!” he says, excitement ringing through his voice. It’s contagious.

  “No promises though,” I say, hearing a knock at my door. No one called me from the front desk to let me know I had a visitor. “Hold on, Davien.”

  I put the phone down and head to the door, a little annoyed. The front desk has been really off lately with letting me know when guests are coming up. I open the door, and Carter’s standing there in a white T-shirt that’s hugging him like an adoring fan. He gives me a lazy smile, hand in his pocket.

  “Hi!” I say excitedly. I haven’t seen him in about two weeks, and I’ve sort of missed our random encounters.

  “Somebody put a package in front of my door for you,” he says, handing me a small Amazon box.

  “Oh, thank you! It’s probably the agenda books I ordered.”

  “Hey, you there?” Davien calls from the speakerphone.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” I tell him.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll let you go,” Carter says.

  “No, it’s just Davien,” I say with a laugh, and his face scrunches up.

  “The guy from the restaurant?”

  I swallow hard, suddenly feeling a load of guilt land on my back and wrap itself around my shoulder.

  “I’m just the guy from the restaurant?” Davien says, a smirk in his tone.

  “Agent guy, I remember,” Carter says loud enough for him to hear.

  “Oh, your neighbor. The waiter boy. How are you? Not working too hard serving those tables, are you?” Smugness shrouds his tone.

  My eyes widen, but Carter just grins. “Um, let me call you back, Davien.” I quickly hang up the phone. “I’m sorry about that. He’s, he can be…”

  “A jerk,” Carter says sternly.

  “I was going to say sharp, but your take is more honest, I guess. Do you want to come in? At least let me give you a beer or water for the ride.”

  He smiles and it's wide and genuine. “Sure, I’d like that.”

  I step back, allowing him to come in. He takes his seat at the island like he did the last time he was here. I head to the fridge, pull out a beer, and offer it to him.

  “Actually, that Pepsi looks pretty good,” he tells me with a brilliant crooked smile.

  “Coming up.” I replace the beer with a cold Pepsi and grab a bottle of water for myself. I sit down across from him and watch him absolutely chug it.

  “So how is it having an agent?” he asks.

  I don’t miss the way his voice tenses up when he says the word agent. I realize he and Davien got off to a pretty awful start. I take a sip of my water. “Pretty good, actually. I’ve been writing more than I have in such a long time. I think it sort of helps, having an accountability partner, someone to bounce ideas off of.”

  He nods. “Yeah, it helps to have that.”

  I can’t help but notice the tightness in his expression, and I think about our talk on the ride home the last time we were together. The back of my neck becomes hot, and I can’t shut out the voice that says my husband should be my accountability partner. It’s weird that the voice in my head sounds like Carter’s voice.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  He nods. “Shoot.”

  “Have you ever been in love?” The question comes out easily, much easier than it should.

  It’s the most personal thing I’ve asked in a long time, and it should be awkward and uncomfortable since I don’t know Carter that well. He’s nice and has been really helpful, but he’s still not someone I’d call a friend. Yet there’s something that’s easy about him. He has the something doctors, police officers, and teachers should be required to have.

  “Like with a person?” he asks, sounding so innocent that I can’t help but giggle.

  “Don’t tell me you’re one of those guys who has only ever loved his dog.”

  “I love.” He blushes with a mesmerizing smile, then it softens as his eyes dance and I realize how spectacular they really are—ice blue, almost grey.

  “I love with every fiber in me. I’ve experienced true and unconditional love, forgiving, love that doesn’t end, that’s infinite.”

  My legs feel light, and I force air out of my lungs. His answer has caught me off guard. If he wasn’t sitting directly in front of me with the most genuine expression I’ve ever seen I’d think he was running a line to get me into bed or was about to break into a fit of laughter. I don’t know what to say. I swallow hard and think of how to respond to that.

  “Can I use that in one of my books?” I half chuckle, and he grins. “Um… I don’t know how to follow up to that answer.” I sigh.

  He leans closer forward. “I’m sorry. What did you want to ask?” His skin flushes, and he glances furtively at me, then his charming smile is back.

  “It was silly.” I roll my eyes,
gripping the bottle of water in my hand.

  “There’s no such thing as a silly question. Trust me,” he says, giving me a reassuring smile.

  After hearing Carter’s version of love, I wonder if I’ve ever had that type of love with Bryce. Is that type of love even possible? Then I think about my babies and I quickly try to push those thoughts away. I clear my throat, head to the garbage can, and toss the bottle.

  “I was just going to ask if it’s possible to fall out of love. I’ve heard about it happening all the time, but I used to listen to them and think, ‘It doesn’t work that way.’ I thought that they weren’t really in love in the first place, because love as I always imagined it… I just never imagined anything coming between us, diminishing the love.” I smile nervously. “I’m sorry if this is too personal or heavy. I invited you in for a drink, something that should be fun and easy, and I get all philosophical.”

  He shakes his head, dismissing my apprehension. “Real love, I think, never goes away. I believe that most times, circumstances, events, people just surround it and we lose sight of it, but it doesn’t go away. It just gets harder to see.”

  My eyes glide over the wedding picture of Bryce and me. “And what about if something terrible happens? Do you think love can be tainted?”

  “No.” His answer is simple and stern.

  “Wow, your mind sounds pretty made up.”

  “True love, if you believe in what love really is, it can never be tainted. It’s always there. It’s not the diluter, it’s the absolver.”

  I feel my brows stiffen. “Okay, so you’re saying if a man cheats on his wife but loves her, his love for his wife or her love for him won’t be tainted?”

  His slouched figure straightens a bit. “No, because love is forgiveness. If it’s real, it can get past anything.”

  I shake my head.