I frown. “The Hills?”
“Yeah, I’ll text you the address. But hustle up, I told her bright and early.”
I nod. “Cool, sounds good. Yeah text me, I’ll be there asap.”
“Hey, you actually manage to get out and have some fun last night?”
I almost lie to get him off my case, but I shrug. “Nah. Stayed home to work on—”
“Your computer game shit,” he groans.
“I mean, it’s e-commerce shopping platform, but, yeah, whatever,” I mutter.
“Mason, for fuck’s sake. A good lookin’ kid like you? With your zip code? I tell you what, if I was your age and had that chin, I’d be out there drowning in cooze.”
I chuckle deeply. “Maybe stop calling it cooze and you’ll have more luck with the ladies?”
My mid-fifties employer grunts. “Yeah, I’ll stick with my charming personality.”
I laugh. “Text me that address. I’m out the door in ten.”
From his absence, I’m guessing my dad is already at the country club golfing or pounding gin and tonics. My mother is already on her Peloton set up in the living room puffing away, and she barely pauses when she sees me. “Don’t be late, Mason!”
I roll my eyes and ignore her. I duck into the kitchen and grab coffee from the pot before I pull open the freezer for some ice. My bare chest prickles at the cool air, but it’s going to be hot as fuck in LA today, and one of the perks of having a “blue collar” job like cleaning pools is the ability to go shirtless without anyone giving a fuck.
I ice down the coffee and shake it up in a thermos. I scarf down a blueberry muffin in a about three bites and step out into the dry, baking LA heat. Fuck, yeah, it’s going to be scorching out today. I’m headed for my Jeep when my phone buzzes. I glance at the text from Mick, and I frown. That can’t be right.
“What?”
Mick answers on the first ring.
“That address can’t be right.”
“Hang on,” he grunts. “Naw, what I sent you is right.”
“It can’t be.”
He laughs. “Why’s that?”
“It just…” I swallow, and my pulse begins to quicken. My muscles clench, and my cock throbs just a little bit. “Check it again?”
He sighs. “Let me call up the work order… Yeah, no, that’s it. Nine-thousand-and-eight Canyon Grove Ave.”
No fucking way. Slowly, I walk to the foot of my driveway and look right. There, at the foot of the long, winding driveway next to ours, is the white mailbox with nine-thousand-and-eight stenciled on it. Nine-thousand-and-eight Canyon Grove Ave.
My next door neighbor.
…Layla.
“Everything cool?”
“Crystal,” I growl and hang up, and I look up the drive to her house. And slowly, I grin.
I grab my cleaning shit from the back of the Jeep and then head back down my driveway. I U-turn into hers and walk up to the front door. I’ve only been over here once, when Layla and Jeremy threw a “hey we’re new here” garden party like four years ago. I spent the whole night just fucking staring at her, my cock throbbing hard. I think I stole a few beers, and I definitely remember walking into the guest bathroom to find Jeremy with his hand under one of the catering staff’s skirt. The dipshit tried to palm me a hundred bucks and called me “little buddy.” Wanting her aside, I thought about just telling Layla, but then she basically moved to New York four days later.
And now here I am—four years later, and still wanting her just as bad as I did back then. Just like then, my cock throbs in my shorts, and my pulse quickens as I step up to her front porch. I ring the bell, and I wait with my blood roaring in my ears. A million fantasies I’ve had of her run wild through my head, until I take a breath and force myself to chill out before she answers the door to a raging hard on.
But Layla doesn’t come when I ring the bell a second time either. Or a third, or a fourth or fifth. I frown and jog down the porch steps and further up the driveway. I peer into her garage and spot her little white 1969 Porsche 911 convertible. Shit, she drove that thing when she lived here before, and I always thought it made her so fucking cool.