Right Next Door

Chapter Seven

        You know how sometimes you wake up and you forget what you did the night before? This is usually a daily occurence for me. It's not the excessive use of alcohol or anything that causes this to happen. It's just my tiny brain and my habit for short term memory loss. But today...Today this seems quite impossible. 

        I wake up and immediately remember everything that happened the night before. I remember the face he made when he tapped on my window. I remember the way he smelled. I remember the way he felt. And I remember the way he tasted. Wow, do I remember the way he tasted. He tasted like memories and childhood happiness and lust and what a kiss is supposed to taste like. He tasted like everything that I wanted. Everything that I needed. I needed to kiss him again. I needed his mouth on mine again and again and again. 

        Anyway, the point is.... By climbing through my window that first night, piss drunk, Axel Tucker had once again shoved his way back into my life and there was no way I was letting him back out again without a fight. 

        Dad wouldn't be back until evening, just in time for him to shut himself in his office to do more work while he ate a plate of the dinner I'd made for us to share. Having Dad home wasn't much different from having him out of town. The only difference was that I didn't wake up to fresh coffee. Axel still on my mind, I drag myself up out of bed and down the steps to make myself some breakfast. The hous is quiet save for my own movements about it and I decide that I can't take the silence for another minute. I plug my phone into the speaker system that my dad had installed a year ago, turn the music all the way up, pull my hair up into a messy ponytail and get ready to dance. 

     Music comes blasting through the speakers, filling the house with my favorite kind of noise. My House by PVRIS swirls around me and I dance and sing, using a wooden spoon as my microphone. I'm pretty sure that the whole neighborhood can hear my music right now but I couldn't care less, really. The neighbors have surely gotten used to the constant thump of ridiculously loud music at this point. Grace and I have been having to-the-death dance competitions in my basement for years now. These required music played at full volume. Sometimes these competitions went for hours on end. 

        I'm dancing around the kitchen in my underwear and a tanktop while I wait for the waffles to come out of the toaster. My wooden microphone gripped in my right hand, my other hand thrust high in the air, I sing at the top of my lungs. The music, combined with my own vocal talents are so loud that I don't hear him come in. Nor do I hear him say my name the first few times. In fact, I don't hear him until he turns the music off and shouts, "SLOAN!" 

        My head snaps around and I see him standing there. Dressed in jeans and a plain black T-shirt, his hair messy from sleep, bags under his eyes. Axel. I drop my makeshift microphone onto the counter and feel my cheeks get red with embarrassment. I tuck some flyaway hairs behind my ear and turn away from him. 

        "I didn't hear you come in," I tell him bashfully and retrieve my waffles from the toaster, plopping them onto a ceramic plate and dousing them with syrup. 

        "No, you wouldn't have," he replies sourly. "I could hear your music loud and clear all the way in my room. Every lyric. Every drum beat." I turn to face him, gathering my courage. 

        "Sorry. Loud is the only way I listen to music." He nods. And before he says anything else, I catch his eyes slowly travelling up my body, from my green painted toe nails, up my legs and bare thighs, pass my torso and chest, coming to a halt at my eyes. Suddenly aware of my lack of clothing, I cross my arms across my chest and hide my lower half behind the kitchen island.