“I’m going to go over and talk to Lennox,” I say, too mad to wait it out. Now that I’ve gotten used to Lennox’s heart stopping good looks, I can actually talk to the guy without wanting to faint.
Sometimes.
I march up to their front door and bang on it. A minute later, a pretty Latina woman with black curly hair and the same warm, golden eyes as Lennox opens the door. “Can I help you?” she asks, glancing behind me.
“I’m looking for Lennox,” I say, my words coming out uncertain, almost a question. “Is he around?”
“Come in,” she says with a knowing smile. “You must be Rae, the pretty neighbor girl I keep hearing about.”
“I guess,” I say, glad the dim hallway hides how flustered I am when we step inside. “I mean, yes, I’m Rae. From next door.”
Despite being neighbors and spending a lot of working hours together, none of us have crossed the threshold of entering the others’ house. It feels like taking a next step, one I’m not sure I’m ready for. I’m awkward enough without the added pressure of knowing one of the boys called me pretty.
“My sons told me about you,” she says, turning to me after closing the door. “I’m Valeria Cardenes, their mother and your neighbor, I hear. Sorry I haven’t come by to say hello since you moved in. I work odd hours, and I seem to keep missing your parents.”
“It’s fine,” I assure her quickly. “They’re not really the meet-the-neighbors kind of people.”
“Oh, okay,” she says with a little laugh. “Now I don’t feel so bad.”
I shift awkwardly from one foot to the other. “I didn’t realize they still lived with their mom.”
I’ve seen a few girls coming and going, hanging around, or obviously trying to impress the brothers when they came over to help with the pool, but I’ve never seen this woman before. It strikes me how very little I know them. Despite Lennox’s constant flirting, he hasn’t divulged much about himself, and Maddox just glowers and hardly says anything to me. I learned more about them and their crew in the five minutes I just talked to Lexi than I have from them in the month I’ve lived next door to them.
“Of course they still live with me,” Valeria says, gesturing toward the hall. “They might be big boys, but they’re still kids. They’ll be in Faulkner High with you, unless you’re going to the fancy private school across town.”
I shake my head.
“Go on back,” she says. “I think they’re in their room.”
“Their room,” I say, a little flutter of nerves shooting through me. I nod, psyching myself up, and then start down when their mom looks at me like she’s wondering what I’m waiting for. I’m not sure myself. Maybe for her to tell me to leave the door cracked six inches or something. Though I’ve been in the rooms of a couple guy friends I had at Ridgedale, this feels worlds away from that. This isn’t hanging out watching horror movies on beanbags on the floor with a handful of fellow nerds, both male and female.
This is being alone with a hot guy in hisbedroom.Suddenly it seems like a foreign, fascinating concept, a place where mysterious boy things happen. Now that I know they’re in high school like me, something shifts, like I’m closer to equal footing with them. Suddenly, there’s potential. Lennox is not an adult who own this house. He’s a prospective boyfriend—at least in my wildest dreams, he could be.
By the time I reach his door, I’m not sure I want to go in. Music thumps inside the room, a Ghostface Killah song turned up loud enough that he probably can’t hear me if I knock. I’m about to turn the knob when I hear my name and freeze.
Are they talking about me?
I strain to hear over the music, but I can’t hear anything more, not even voices. Then the song ends, and in the gap before the next one starts, I hear a guttural grunt that makes me shrink inside. It’s a sound like I used to hear Lee make at night, when my room was next door to Mom’s at our old place. I jerk my hand back from the knob like I’ve been burned.
Suddenly, a door opens at the end of the hall, and Lennox comes out, zipping his fly.
My face bursts into flames of heat.
“Hey,” he says. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh, nothing,” I say, stepping back from the bedroom door like I’ve been caught spying, so flustered I forgot why I came for a second. The music goes off, and Lennox glances at the door and then back to me.
“Well, come on, we can hang out,” he says, passing me and grabbing the doorknob.
I almost protest, but he’s already swinging the door open. I don’t want to see what’s inside, but when he walks in, Maddox is standing next to a dark wooden dresser, his back to us. He grabs something off the surface and tosses it into the trash, casting a furious glare over his shoulder.
“You couldn’t wait two minutes?” he snaps. He turns back forwards without seeing me behind his brother, and I catch the distinctive movement of his shoulders and arms as he zips his jeans. Then he turns around, and his eyes fall on me.
My face gets even hotter, but instead of snapping at me, a smug little smile tugs at the corners of his lips.“¿Qué hace esta chica aquí?”
“She just came to hang out,” Lennox says, flopping down on a narrow, twin bed under a life-sized painting of a man walking down a road. His side of the room is spotlessly clean—the bed tightly made, shoes lined up in neat pairs under the edge, a rolltop desk with a mug of pens on top, along with a globe and a lava lamp, each of them equidistant from the others. The only messy part is an easel set up with jars of paint, paint-stained cups, and a half dozen brushes dumped on a ledge at the bottom.
Lennox smiles at me and pats the bed beside him.