The Boy Next Door

Everything was dark. There was a bright, blurred spot in my peripherals that swayed as my eyes tried to focus. Some kind of loud sound throbbed around me, but my ears felt so full, the noise was but a whisper. The grass beneath me was damp, tickling my skin. I felt like I should have tried to move, try to remind my body of how to work; but with the soft bed of grass beneath me and the crispness of the early morning rain, I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want the angelic light to sharpen and intensify. I didn’t want the noise to sting my ears. I wanted to stay there forever. I was at peace.

“......!”

A voice. It was repeating something.

“.....! ....a! M....a!”

It was becoming clearer. My body was being shaken. The light above me narrowed.

Something was above me...faces.

“Mi....da!” The sound was swelling.

“MIRANDA!”

I breathed heavily and blinked hard. Leslie, Greg and Jenny were hovering over me, looks of terror and shock on their faces. When they saw me blink, their faces quickly turned to relief. “Miranda! Oh thank God, the cops and the ambulance are on their way, you’re going to be okay!” Leslie was panicked, but placed her hand on my arm firmly.

“I...I feel fine.”

I slowly sat up, my head hammering with pain. Leslie and Jenny’s eyes bulged out of their skulls like I could shatter to pieces at any moment. “What are you doing?! Leslie, you were just unconscious for, like, two minutes! Lie down! The ambulance will be here any minute!”

Jenny tried to gently set me back down on the grass, but I lifted myself up again. “What happened?” I croaked.

“Erik and Grey got in a fight.”

“WHAT?!” I tried to stand, but the combination of my state, the shoes I was wearing, and Leslie and Jenny forcefully holding me to the ground quickly knocked me back down.

Leslie handed me water. “Miranda, stop! When Grey jumped on Erik, they both crashed into you, and you must’ve knocked your head on the table. We didn’t see it happen, but you were bleeding, and when we took you out here you just...conked out! You must have a concussion.”

I pushed her hand aside. “Where’s Erik? I have to see him.” I pulled at my shoes, yanking them off my feet and placing them in Jenny’s arms. I flinched as my head seared with pain.

Greg finally spoke. “Erik was caught off guard, but Grey didn’t stand a chance. Erik beats people up for a living. What the hell was he thinking?”

“People do crazy things when they’re in love,” Jenny sighed.

“And drunk,” Leslie added.

“I...I can’t believe this. Where is Erik?”

“After Grey jumped him Erik beat him to a pulp and just...took off.”

“Is Grey...okay?”

“No. He’s inside. Probably hopping right on that ambulance with you.”

“No,” I spat. “No, I’m not.”

“Yes, Miranda. You have to. You’re hurt.”

I shook my head, the pain was starting to roil my stomach. Grey had attacked Erik. Erik beat him up. The crowd had scattered. People were crowding around and staring. And it was all because of me. Before I could stop it, I keeled over and retched in the grass beside me, the three of them jumping back in disgust. I couldn’t get in that ambulance with Grey. I couldn’t face him. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t get in any ambulance at all. Not until I found Erik, who could have been anywhere by then. Regardless, I had to try. I couldn’t leave things the way they were.

“Okay. I’ll go to the hospital.”

Leslie and Jenny settled down, while Greg ran a hand through his short dark hair. I waited a few moments as they observed our surroundings. People must have caught wind of cops arriving, as everyone was scattering from the house like there was a fire. Just as I caught the faint sound of sirens, and when the three of them turned to look for the source, I bolted.

I heard them scream my name, but I didn’t turn back. My knees were buckling and everything around me swirled as I ran, my bare feet thwapping against the wet pavement. “ERIK!” I screamed. If he had only left a few minutes ago, and if I ran fast enough, I could catch him. The rain was coming down even harder. Each drop threatened to knock me down as I kept my pace. His name escaped me again, my lungs contracting, begging for me to stop. The ghostly figures coming from the party in the streets were too undersized to be Erik, so I kept running. The road was focusing and blurring beneath my feet. I slowed to a stop when I reached a dead end, continuing down the perpendicular road and reaching a hill.

My body was slick from the rain and my hair was sopping wet, like shreds of seaweed slapping against my shoulders. My entire body trembled, and instead of begging me to stop, it forced me to. My strides were shortening, my pace slowing. Black spots were appearing in my vision as I climbed the hill. I tried to numb the pain and force myself to go on, but my body was giving up on me. No matter how strong my mind was, my body wasn’t. There wasn’t anyone around anymore. It was just the rain and I. It wasn’t an option to give up after everything I’d done. If I stopped, who knows how long it would have been before someone found me. I wasn’t taking this big a risk for just anyone.

When I finally reached the top of the hill, I stopped. My knees buckled, and I collapsed to the ground, my knees scraping against the muddy street. I looked down at the ground, the puddles and pavement beneath me getting pummeled by the rain. I glanced at my phone in my hand, and I realized through the layer of raindrops that I had 911 typed in the whole time. Just as soon as the phone call started, it was over. They were on their way and would arrive any minute.

I looked up and off into the distance. I saw a narrow, dark figure skulking down the road. I forced myself up onto my feet, moving them every inch I could drive them to move. “Erik,” I squeaked one last time, my voice drowned out by the rain. Though I thought it was only a pin drop in the monsoon before me, the figure stopped and turned. Suddenly, it was charging towards me.

At that point, fear wasn’t even a possibility. The only thing I was experiencing was pain. A strange, dark figure barreling towards me in the early hours of the morning didn’t mean danger to me; it meant survival. My head was pulsing with pain like a second heartbeat, ten times as strong and ten times as powerful. It felt like it was trying to beat its way out of my skull, and it was so close to its goal. When the figure approached, and I saw who it was calling my name, I knew it wasn’t just survival. It was safety.

Erik stopped a few feet in front of me. He was even more drenched than I was. His t-shirt was glued to his skin, outlining his firm stomach muscles. Even in the darkness, I could see his left eye had a fresh ring around it. His eyebrow was split, the rain having wiped his wound clean.
“I’m sorry,” I whimpered, feeling hot droplets stream down my cheeks rather than the cool, icy ones that were tumbling from above me. He said nothing. After we hovered in silence in the middle of the road for a long moment, his lips pressed into his signature curl. “Look, Erik, I...I didn’t want things to be like this,” I said hoarsely, trying to ignore the increasing pain.

“What do you mean?”

I swallowed hard. “This. Us. I wanted it to be simple.”

He was still. I could see the heavy rise and fall of his chest, but the sound of his breath was covered by the rain. As he brought his hands to head in frustration, I waited for his response. Finally, he asked spitefully, “At what point did you think this could ever be simple?” It was my turn to be dumbstruck. He stepped closer, and my stomach heaved. “You’re my neighbour, Randa. Not just my neighbour. We were friends, for so long. And then we just...weren’t.”

“You moved. We grew up.” I stepped closer. “But we both found each other again.” I waited for him to step back, to brush me off, to react in any way, but he didn’t. I brought my hand to his jaw softly, grazing my fingers below his black eye. His jaw tensed, but he didn’t move away. “Let me make this all worth it for you,” I whispered. When I stepped even closer, moving my hand down to his chest, he stepped back and turned away.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he spat, shaking his head.

I frowned. My brain was lagging. “What’s the matter?”

“I can’t fucking stand that you’re doing this now. Now. After everything that just happened? I wait practically my entire life for something like this and it happens now? I can’t even...”

He pressed his hands to his face, and I blinked in confusion. Nothing was processing, and I knew it still wouldn’t have processed even without the concussion symptoms. “Can you please speak English, Gudbranson?”

He looked at the pavement and sighed. “Since the moment I met you, I thought you were perfect. I remember it perfectly, I was four...” For a moment, he looked upward and his lips curled into a half-smile. “You reminded me of all the princesses in the Disney movies we’d watch together. You were always just...so beautiful. The type of beauty that’s almost unfair.” My eyes went from glowering to glowing. Right back at you, Gudbranson. All of my pain was gone, my heart full and my body light as air.

“My mom loves to remind me that I told her on the day we met that I was going to marry you. It didn’t mean anything when we were kids, but when I hit middle school, you were starting high school. The whole locker room girl talk started happening, and all the boys chirped me saying that I needed to ask you out. I was such a scaredy cat, I knew I’d never do it. A girl like you would have never dated a guy like me. That’s when I realized that our age difference started to matter and that things wouldn’t ever be the same between us anymore. A couple years went by, and you ignored me more and more, but somehow, I still had hope that one day you’d feel the same way about me. Then I go to Kingston and come home in the summer, and you’d forgotten that I’d even fucking existed.”

“That is not true!” I sputtered. All the pain was coming back, sharper and faster.

“Come on, Miranda. We had sixteen years to figure this out, and turns out all I needed to do was take a punch? I don’t think so.” He stepped closer, and I stepped back. “So why now, Miranda? Seriously. Why? I want to hear it from you. Tell me.”

“Oh, shut up, Erik!” Despite my heartbeat finally outracing the pain in my head, I wouldn’t play his game. “Yes, I want you because you’re gorgeous. You obviously don’t need me to tell you that. You’re a jackass for making me say it and for trying to make me feel ashamed about it. I’m not ashamed and I never will be.”

“You’re not? You’re not ashamed that you’re no different than every other puck bunny out there?”

“No, I’m not ashamed, because I know that's not true.” I was shivering from the icy rain and about to hit the ground again at any moment, but I wasn’t backing down. “Maybe if we’d never been friends and I didn’t know you at all, then things would be different. But I do know you, Erik. I still see that same kid in you that I played road hockey with. I loved that kid, that’s why we were such good friends. I wanted to spend time with that guy then, and I do now. And now, it just so happens that I want him in my bed, too? So what? That’s all a relationship is, Erik! It’s a strong physical and emotional connection. We always had the emotional connection, so why the fuck does it matter when the physical one starts?”

“You’re just...too shifty,” he exhaled in exasperation. “The difference from high school to now, to the bar earlier, and then tonight...and don’t even get me started on Melo.”

My nose wrinkled. “...Greg? What does he have to do – hey! If I recall correctly despite a blow to the fucking head, you were the one who kissed me.”

He hesitated, but raised his voice. “Everyone does stupid shit when they’ve had a gallon of fucking beer, Miranda.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head violently. “That is the oldest excuse in the book and we both know that’s complete bullshit.” At this point, the pain was excruciating, but I closed the gap between me and Erik. “You’re saying that if I kissed you again, here, in the rain, that you would feel nothing.” I placed my hand on his wet abdomen, feeling the rise and fall of his stomach muscles under my pruning fingertips. He flinched, but let me keep my hand there. “Not a fake kiss. A real one.”

He nodded his head, silent. Whether he was saying yes to not feeling anything, or yes to the kiss, I didn’t know. He probably didn’t know either. I could tell he was just as delirious as I was. Without my shoes, I couldn’t bring myself up to him. The only way I could kiss him was if he brought his lips down to mine. I bit my lip and stared up at him, challenging him, the pain threatening to push my eyes right out of their sockets. I knew the second his lips brushed mine, the sensation would knock me out cold. Just recalling the feeling of his soft, warm lips against mine only a half hour ago threatened to push me over the edge. Still, I could have waited all night long, and he knew it. All he had to do was give in to the force neither of us could deny.

When I thought I heard him curse under his breath, I felt him shift beneath my hand. He was drawing nearer. Just as I was about to flutter my eyes to a close, bright frantic lights appeared in my peripherals. As I squinted, and as the lights intensified my headache, I released my hand from his stomach and stepped back. He turned to face the light, and the ambulance pulled to a stop in front of us. When the paramedics got sight of me, they quickly gathered me in a gurney and placed me in the back of the ambulance. My eyes began to flutter to a close, but the female paramedic urged me to feign sleep and keep my eyes open. I was so focused on staying awake, staring at the ceiling of the ambulance, that I didn’t realize Erik’s hand was in mine the entire ride.