AllFreeNovel
Share Us
None of it made any sense.
She was in her final year of high school. The crucial year. This was where she needed to keep a level head and to test well. Where had it come from?
After stepping out of her home, she walked down the small path and then turned toward Jaxon’s home.
They hadn’t spoken much. A few choice words and greetings here and there. Her mother had been rude, not even noticing him. Teal noticed him. She walked up to his front door. To her, she felt rude, just crossing over their yards, so she alwayswalked up her path, took the few short feet, and then down toward his home.
Mail had turned up for him a few times. Letters, which she shoved through his letter box. This was the first package. She couldn’t just shove it through his letterbox. This required her knocking. If she knocked and didn’t bother ringing the doorbell, then she could leave his package outside, and there wouldn’t be anything she’d done wrong.
She would have done her duty as a friendly neighbor.
Easy. Easy peasy. Ugh, she hated peas.
After drawing her wrist back, she knocked on the door and waited.
Was it polite to knock more than once?
No, the point of knocking was to make sure he wasn’t at the door, ready to answer. All she had to do was leave the package, and then ring his doorbell as one final warning.
She was just about to do that when the door opened.
Jaxson, naked, apart from his low-riding jeans, opened the door. “Teal,” he said. He’d learned her name on their first day moving in. Her mother had constantly been shouting it, telling her where to take the boxes to and fro.
“Mr. Rebel.” Her mouth felt so dry.
Was it her imagination or did he smell really good? “Er, the mailman delivered this to our home.”
Jaxson took the box from her, and Teal smiled at him.
“Strange, I haven’t ordered anything.”
“I don’t know what it can be, but it is addressed to you.”
“Thank you.”
She offered a smile and then held her hand up as if to say goodbye.
“How have you settled in?” he asked.
“Oh, er, fine, I think. Yeah, everything is fine. It is all fine.” She had said the same word at least three times. She had tostop. “How about you?”
Why was this conversation so hard?
****
Teal Larson was a very beautiful young woman.
Jaxson knew he should have let her leave the box and ignore her, just like he’d been trying to ignore her for several weeks now.
It was next to impossible. For some fucking reason, every time he arrived home, Teal was out in the yard, and he wasn’t a rude guy. Life would be so much easier if he did just ignore her.
He knew she watched him. He’d seen her standing at her bedroom window, looking down at him, watching him. Normally, any woman watching him so blatantly would bother him.
Teal was different. He saw it in her eyes. And of course, he heard it in her voice whenever he overheard a conversation with her mother. Her relationship with her parents was strained. Not that he could blame her, even between her parents, their relationship was strained.
Originally, when he moved in, he believed the story Bethany had told him. About moving here for Teal’s education and college applications, all that crap.
It wasn’t. Bethany had an affair. Her husband wasn’t around, and she was trying to make it work. That was what he heard all the time. Her on the phone, trying to make it work, while Teal just seemed to be ignored. They were both due to start the new high school next week.
