Page 89 of Dreaming About the Boy Next Door

I glanced around the sparsely filled guest room and could see where he’d tried to channel me. The bedspread covering the twin mattress was a light pastel pink, and I wasn’t sure if he knew that was my favorite color or took a guess based off my hair, but it was pretty. The room wasn’t large enough for two end tables, but he’d squeezed one wicker one against the wall with the window. A small work desk was in the other corner, next to the slatted closet doors.

“I like it,” I told him, trailing in deeper into the room and running my fingertips over the duvet cover. “I think it’ll be perfect for when I stay here.”

“Which is next weekend, right?” Dad dropped his hands, guilty expression deepening. “I never meant for you to feel like an outsider here, Ava. I wanted you to see this when everything was finished.Furnished. It’s a terrible excuse for putting off our weekends, and if I’d known how you felt—”

“Dad. It’s really okay.” It wasn’t the first time he’d apologized for that. Last weekend, when he stopped by the house for homecoming pictures before I left for Maisie’s, he’d expressed that sentiment. That he was embarrassed for me to see the apartment when he only had a mattress and a few cardboard boxes for end tables. He didn’t want me to see the apartment—him—like that. And even today, when I walked into the two-bedroom flat, the first thing he’d done was give me a set of keys to put on my lanyard. “I wouldn’t have cared either way, but I’m glad I could come over now.”

When Dad returned the smile, his seemed watery. “I hope this can become like a second home to you.”

This was such a huge transition period of my life, and as we made our way back to the living room, I couldn’t help but reflect on all of it. My parents’ separation. Dad moving out into a new space. Mom selling my childhood home to move to the next town over. All that happening while transitioning into my senior year, the last year of high school. It was almost too much.

Which was why I should’ve listened to Reed sooner when he said I should talk to a therapist, and why I shouldn’t have gotten so upset with Mom for asking Mrs. Murphy to speak with me. We met two times a week, now, for a half-hour after school, and it really was nice to just talk. About anything. Everything.

My cell buzzed in my pocket, and when I fished it out, my chest began buzzing, too. “My ride’s waiting for me,” I told Dad. “Do you have those leftover moving boxes?”

That’d initially been what I’d stopped by for—more boxes for Mom. We’d underestimated how many we’d actually need to pack up the house, but then again, they’d been accumulating stuff for over twenty years. We probably weren’t going to have enough boxes, but with two months to gather everything, we had more than enough time. Especially since we had help.

“I’ll see you next weekend,” I said as we collected the boxes and headed toward the elevator. Thank goodness, too, since he lived on the fourth floor. “For sure.”

“For sure,” he repeated, waving at me when the elevator doors slid apart, revealing the lobby. “Get home safe, kiddo. Text me if you ever need anything, okay?”

It wasn’t quite how things had been between us, but it was better than before. The month we’d spent not seeing each other had left things different. Especially given the circumstances. But we’d get back to where we were eventually—we just needed time.

Though the sun was out, the October air was chilly, and I would’ve tugged my cardigan tighter around myself if I weren’t juggling the folded cardboard. I did an awkward shuffle-walk across the parking lot. They slipped in my grip, to the point where my knees kept hitting the ones about to fall.

“Here.” Two hands came to the rescue, closing on the cardboard right underneath mine. “Let me take them. I texted you asking if you needed help.”

I huffed out a breath. “I wanted to be strong and impressive.”

Reed took the folded boxes from me with much more ease than I’d had a moment ago, and he quickly tucked them under his arm, pressing them against his body. Then, with his concentration free, he turned to me with a glimmer in his eyes. “You already are strong and impressive.”

“Except when it comes to cardboard boxes.”

He winked. “We all have our Kryptonite.”

“Hey!” It wasn’t hard to find the location of the voice. Rachel, sitting in the backseat of their shared silver sedan, rolled her window down. “Put the flirty eyes away and comeon! Or this technically is going to count as your guys’ alone time.”

Despite the scowl on her face, I laughed. After the homecoming dance last week, Rachel declared her new rule, replacing the “no dating my brother” one. The time I spent with Reed had to be matched with the time I spent with Rachel. She wasn’t going to let her twin get everything this time, especially when she had me first. Her words.

It’d been a funny conversation, listening to them work out the semantics while I was taking off my makeup from the dance. Rachel had started it. “So, school gets out at three—”

“And she goes to sleep around ten,” Reed had interjected.

“Which leaves seven hours of free time,” Rachel had nodded.“So, I get three and a half hours, and you get three and a half hours.”

I’d tried asking them what about my own free time to work on Babble posts and other web designs, but my words hadn’t even broken the barrier of their strategizing.

Now Reed frowned as we got closer. “How can it count as alone time for us if you’re here, Rachel?”

“I’m helping you, you know,” she said as we moved toward the car. Reed went to the trunk to put in the boxes. “If you two would’ve run this errand on your own, it would’ve deducted from your time together. It would’ve been lame to spend it onerrands.At least since I’m here, it cancels each other out.”

“Very selfless of you,” I told her as I slid into the passenger’s seat. I angled the vents toward me, letting them puff warm air onto my fingertips.

“Except maybe I would’ve preferred to have run this errand with just Ava,” Reed said as he climbed into the driver’s seat, casting me a sidelong glance. “At least then I could’ve held her hand on the drive over without you nearly having an aneurism.”

Rachel huffed. “They say ‘hands at ten and two’ for a reason, Reed.”

“I thought you said you were cool with us being together,” Reed said, looking up at the rearview mirror. “I distinctly remember a whole ‘I want you two to be happy’ line in that speech you gave after the dance.”

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