Love Next Door (Lakeside #1) by Helena Hunting

When I knock on her trailer door, I don’t get an answer, so my less-than-awesome groveling plan is thwarted. The truck she drives is missing, so I’m guessing she went out. I could drive around town and see if I can find her, but that’s a level of desperate I’m not sure she’ll appreciate. I also don’t think she’d be all that keen on a public apology.

Based on the stars, the rain they were calling for isn’t coming, which means her trailer will be dry tonight and she won’t have a reason to come knocking on my door. I’m probably her very last resort at this point, maybe just above making a deal with the devil and hugging a grizzly bear.

I spend the next two hours thinking of creative ways to make my brother pay for the shitstorm he’s turned my life into.

Eventually I get sick of being alone with my thoughts, so I step outside, wanting to clear my head. The sun has long set and it’s a clear night, but it’s cooler than it has been. I remember how quickly the weather would turn in August. One night it would be sweltering and the next I’d be in pants and questioning how soon it would be before I needed a fire in the evenings to take the chill off. I grab a flashlight and head down to the dock so I can look at the stars and figure out tomorrow’s get-Dillion-to-forgive-me plan. While drinking beer.

The path to the lake is winding, and little lights are set into the ground at four-foot intervals, like permanent fireflies guiding my way. I grab a chair and check for dock spiders before I sit. I remember as a kid freaking out the first time I saw one. Dock spiders are no regular spider—with a body the size of an Oreo cookie and a leg span that could fill the entire palm of a basketball player’s hand, there is no way I want to share a chair with any of those beasts.

Also, there’s a picture floating around on the internet of a guy’s ridiculously swollen junk after he got bitten by one. I can’t unsee that, and every time I catch a glimpse of one of those spiders, I get an uncomfortable twinge in my balls, like they’re trying to climb up inside my body and hide from the potential for damage.

When I determine the chair is spider-free, I turn off the flashlight and drop down into it. I’m there for all of five peaceful minutes when I hear the rustle of bushes close by. I freeze and hold my breath—not that it will help me at all if there’s a bear out here, looking for a snack.

My panic is short lived, though, because the noise is followed by grumbling and the sound of something hard hitting the dock next door. For a moment I think I’ve lucked out and that Dillion has done the same thing as me: come down to clear her head. At least until I realize the voice is way too deep to be hers.

“Fuckin’ watchers . . . bugs in the shower.” Dillion’s brother, Billy, clomps across the wooden slats, his lantern swinging from one of his crutches. He sets it on a chair, and his crutches clatter to the dock. The sound echoes across the lake, like we’re sitting in a fishbowl.

He pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it at his feet, then hops uncoordinatedly to the edge. I haven’t seen him since the last time I ran into him at Bernie’s. From what I’ve witnessed, he seems like a recluse. I imagine that getting a DUI and taking out your neighbor’s mailbox in the process might make someone decide to hermit for a while.

It’s cool just in my shorts and T-shirt, and he’s almost painfully lean, so it can’t be all that warm for him. Apart from the moon, there isn’t much light to provide visibility, and the water is as black as the sky, dotted with pricks of starlight.

Lily pads float close to Dillion’s family’s dock; the water around here is marshy. The only way to combat that is to bring in sand, but it looks like it’s been a few years since anyone has done that. It used to be my job as a teenager to bring wheelbarrows of it down every time I came for a swim so we could wade in and not get tangled up in the weeds at the bottom, or end up with a foot covered in leeches.

I don’t have a chance to make my presence known before he does a graceless belly flop off the end of the dock, but the second he hits the water, I’m already out of my chair. I’m thinking night swimming alone while wearing a cast is not a good idea.

“Ahhh! What the fuck? Stop touching me!”

My beer bottle clatters to the dock, the remaining liquid foaming and sloshing across the boards. I flick on my flashlight and rush to the narrow path worn between the two docks. I nearly trip over his discarded crutches.

“Billy? Man, you okay?”

“Who’s that? Who’s there?”

Billy flails around in the water, his head going under, and he does the windmill, his panic obvious when he comes back up, sputtering and coughing. He’s only a handful of feet from the edge of the dock, but with the weight of his cast, it would be a challenge to swim. I’m also unsure if it’s waterproof.

“It’s your neighbor, Van. I’m a friend of Dillion’s. Grab the end of this, and I’ll pull you back in!” I hold out his crutch as he continues to flail and struggle.

I don’t want to jump in after him. Not because I care if I get wet, but Billy’s too frantic for me to get in the water with him without some kind of floatation device. It’s about twelve feet deep at the end of the dock, which shouldn’t be an issue, but I don’t want to get dragged under by him and end up drowning ten feet from a dock.

I’m grateful when he finally manages to grab hold of the crutch.