Page 69 of The Boys Next Door

Shit.

*

Finally, she was able to fall asleep. She kept her head under her pillow and her covers balled around her body until cooking smells, floating up the stairs, woke her.

Diana groaned, stretched, and flopped over. She’d spent the whole day in bed, something she’d done exactly never, and the most surprising part was that her parents hadn’t tried to rouse her. As good as the meatballs frying downstairs smelled, she was tempted to stay exactly where she was.

Then she shoved the covers back. This wasn’t her anymore. She was no longer the girl who ran home at the end of the day, yanked her blankets over her head, and cried into her pillow because she’d pulled a B+ on a physics test or couldn’t get up the courage to walk past an epic crush in the hall. She wasn’t the girl who kept her feelings and body locked up tight so no one could come close to hurting her.

She was going to jump in the shower, put on her bicycle-printed skirt and a fresh t-shirt, and just deal with all those memories of riding bikes with the twins as kids and the very different ride they’d taken her on, these past two weeks.

She understood now. Brendan saw her as some kind of sexy little sister he’d been all into educating, and she was just some girl Ian had screwed. The two of them got off on seeing how much they could push her limits. She’d gotten off on it too. And she was on board with Brendan being her hot older brother. She could even deal with the education being over. Fine. She’d graduated. But Ian—

Of course her parents peppered her with questions over dinner. Was she sick? Was she missing high school now that the excitement of graduation was over?

Her mother put her fork down decisively. “Ian gave you alcohol last night, didn’t he. Did he give you a beer? I swear, that boy is headed for trouble if he hasn’t found it already, and the only saving grace is his brother—“

“No, Mom,” Diana interrupted. “Ian didn’t give me anything to drink last night.”

That much was the truth. At least, he hadn’t given her anything from a bottle. Right here in the kitchen with her parents, she could taste his heavy shaft sliding between her lips, feel Brendan’s smooth thrusts into her pussy from behind, hear the excited moans of the girls as their soft skin rubbed against hers.

As soon as she’d swallowed the last bite of spaghetti and meatballs, she told her parents she was going for a walk and slipped outside.

The June air was warm and sweet, without the stickiness of the night before. A soft breeze blew her skirt around her bare legs. Her feet took her to the big park around the corner.

This park had belonged to her and the twins, when they were kids. At least, she’d always thought of it that way. Now, she wondered if they’d been as possessive of a few grassy patches as she’d been.

Though it was still light out, the park was quiet. A couple lounged under a tree, a few guys were shooting hoops on the wide court, but the stretch of land by the creek lay empty.

Diana flopped onto the velvet lawn, pulling up random daisies and tossing them aside. Grass pricked her bare arms and legs and tickled her through her t-shirt. Taking off her glasses, she let them fall to the ground.

Lying flat on the grass was all she could handle right now. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d just lazed around, with no assignments hanging over her head, no tests to ace, no contests to win. Nothing to prove. No commitments.

Actually, she did remember. Brushing her wet hair off her face, she let her eyes close. Back when she was eleven. The twins were thirteen.

It was the summer before she’d started sixth grade, before her family had moved out of town. The last summer she’d really hung out with the twins. She hadn’t known about the move yet, though it happened just two weeks later. Her parents hadn’t told her.

She’d expected to go to school nearby, where the twins went, and she wasn’t at all sure what would happen once they were at the same school. Already, she was getting tongue-tied around them, noticing that Brendan and Ian were boys — very cute boys.

But that day near the end of summer, the three of them sprawled right here on the grass while the creek gurgled by, she hadn’t worried about how she looked or how she sounded or what to say. Nothing had been awkward.

Brendan had been calmly telling her exactly what to expect on the first day of school: what everyone was wearing, what they were listening to, where to sit in the cafeteria, and how to get on Mrs. Morton the secretary’s good side.

She’d had so many questions for him, and every time she turned toward him with another one, something — a bug? A leaf? — had tickled her arm, or her knee, or her neck, and she’d tried to brush it away, only to meet with air.

Finally, when Brendan couldn’t hide his grin and laughter split the air behind her, she rolled over fast enough to catch Ian teasing her with a long blade of grass. She so clearly remembered grabbing her own fistful of grass and furiously stuffing it down Ian’s jersey while he smirked at her and Brendan chuckled on her other side.

“I hope it gets in your underwear,” she snarled, and Ian’s smile just got bigger. Then she’d dissolved into laughter along with the twins. The three of them had started throwing grass at each other, and they’d gone home sweaty and stained with green and slurped down the Cherry Coke in the O’Brians’ fridge, and Diana’s mom had yelled at her when she came in for ruining her clothes. It had been a perfect day.

Two weeks later, her family had moved. Innocent grass fights felt like a world away. Back at home the next summer, she’d avoided the twins’ eyes when she passed them playing basketball in their driveway. She’d swerved when she’d spotted them on a trip to the mall, sure that couldn’t be her Brendan was waving at. And she’d refused to go to the O’Brians’ annual Fourth of July barbecue, where Brendan had let her win at ping-pong and Ian had stolen her dessert for more years than she could remember.Her parents had tried to convince her as she lay in bed with a stack of books, roasting in her second-story bedroom and refusing to move, until they threw up their hands and went next door.

Rolling onto her back, she stared up at the flaming wash of sunset across the sky. Who knows what might have been different, if she’d stayed in town? Would these past two weeks have happened?

Smoke curled through the trees. A group of people were passing around a joint, further down the creek — people she recognized, people from school. She knew that smell now. She knew so much more, so why did she feel like she knew nothing?

When night fell, Diana made the slow walk home. Behind her closed bedroom door, she opened her underwear drawer, found what she was looking for, and sank down on the floor. She hadn’t reached for her dildo this time. The butt plug and lube had stayed in their brown paper bag. She’d ignored the lacy bras and colorful thongs. Instead, she’d pulled out her journal.

Sitting cross-legged on the rug, she ripped out one page after another. Poems, scribbles she’d never shown anyone else, raw or tender or sexy, except when she’d held her breath and sent a handful as a portfolio in her application to Yale. She folded quickly, until she was surrounded by paper airplanes.

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