This is chapter 2 of Boy Next Door. If you haven’t already, you can read the previous chapter here:

Chapter 1

POV: John Callahan, 25. Neighbor to the Ashford’s.

Saturday morning routine at our house hadn’t really changed since I was a kid. My dad up before me, reading the newspaper, sipping coffee.

He looked up from the sports section. “You look like hell.”

“Thanks. I was up till two redoing the east wing.”

“The one you redid Wednesday?”

“That was the west wing.”

It had been just the two of us at this table for almost two decades. My mom left when I was six. He never really talked about her, and after a while, neither did I.

“You’re going over there today?” He nodded towards the neighbors’ house.

“I said I’d help set up.” I pushed a piece of egg around my plate. “I probably shouldn’t. I’ve got the whole floor plan basically rebuilt, but…”

“Son.” He set the paper down. “What is one afternoon? Go.”

It was never one afternoon with them. With them, it was more like a test. A test to proof to myself I could keep my distance. Keep my distance while being sucked in. Sucked in with every twitch, every antic, every blink of a specific muddy-grey eyed Ashford sibling.

“Richard and Anne know about this party?” Dad asked.

I shrugged.

The secret party would no doubt reach Mr. and Mrs. Ashford through images circulating online within the first two minutes.

“Right.” Dad smiled, looking over his glasses. “You’ll go anyway.”

The reason I’d go anyway wasn’t the one he thought it was. He assumed it was loyalty or habit or not wanting to let Luke down.

After breakfast I changed into chino’s and a light pastel button-up shirt. I was torn between open sandals and the soft purple loafers.

I did the dishes because it gave me an excuse to stand at the kitchen window, which faced the driveway next door. Right on schedule, Mr. Ashford’s Aston Martin DB12 rolled out of their garage. When their car disappeared around the bend at the end of the lane, I dried my hands, told my dad I’d probably be next door most of the day and slipped through the gap in the high hedge that separated my house from theirs.

I’d been making my way through that hedge since I was six, back when it was still short enough to hop over instead of duck through. The Ashfords never once treated me like a guest but simply like a fourth brother. Growing up as an only child, stepping into their household chaos, always made me feel one of them, minus the last name.

I slipped through the large open glass-window door to their kitchen.

“John!” Luke grinned from ear to ear, carrying a bunch of party stuff and grilling equipment. “You up for another of our famous pool bashes?”

Marc was half inside the overflowing fridge, rearranging the six-packs puzzle.

I scanned the open plan space toward the pool house.

Luke noticed my searching gaze and pointed one of the tongs upstairs. “He’s been up there all morning planning a whole DJ set. He’s nervous. Can you believe it?”

“Last year he played the same six songs on repeat and everyone had a great time. I don’t see why this year’s different.” Marc shut the fridge door with his hip.

“This year Chase Whitfield’s little sister is coming.” Luke rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

Upstairs bass thumped once, cut off, thumped again.

“Since when does our baby brother care about Jessica Whitfield?” Marc asked.

Luke picked up a giant bag of icecubes. “Since forever, apparently. He wouldn’t shut up about her last night.”

I busied myself untangling a giant ball of party lights when the bass upstairs cut off mid-beat.

Matthew came down slow, one hand trailing along the banister, one hand on his hip, wearing nothing but a ridiculously tiny speedo.

He let his gaze land on me, gauging the effect of his appearance.

“Here,” Luke stepped into the frame and pressed the ice bag to Matthew’s chest. “Make yourself useful.”

“Where does it go?”

“Outside bar.”

The lights were finally strung over the grill area. I checked the propane tank and laid out the grilling tools when fingertips tickled my side.

I turned around. Matthew looked straight at me, the little specks in his eyes lighting up like fireworks.

“Can you help me with music?”

“Sure.”

“Interesting choice of swim wear.” I nodded at his crotch.

“You like it?”

His mouth at arm’s length, my thumb followed the perfect curve of his ruby-soft lips, tracing each fold, every tiny groove. My nail drew a fine line along the contour before, with barely any pressure, I pressed my thumb in, a centimeter, an inch, and gently folded the corner of his warm lower lip downward.

As delicately as turning the edge of a thin sheet of paper.

A snap of fingers.

“Hey. Hello?” He waved his hand in front of my face. He was still waiting for me to say something meaningful, to feed into his constant need for validation. He stretched his leg and twisted his bare toe into the ground, like he wanted me to notice his long legs and the narrow hips above them.

I didn’t say anything. We got the side table from the garage and turned it into a DJ booth in front of the pool house. Well, I did. I dragged the table out of the garage, I untangled the cables, I set up the speakers.

Matty didn’t lift a finger. He hovered over me when I put the cables into the extension cords.

“You haven’t said if you like it yet?” He put his palms on his tight round ass.

In a weird way he was insecure. Especially around me.

He did a little twirl, giving me a close look at his dick crammed in that small scrap of fabric.

I picked up his scent.

Every time I did, my brain clicked into the same annoying nervous tic: trying to classify the smell. In an attempt to find a comparison that fell short time and again.

Today it was:

Fresh. Like the damp morning of the first warm day in spring, in a meadow with daisies opening slowly beside a gently babbling mountain stream.

For some weird reason these compulsive descriptions always came in a documentary-like voice which really got on my nerves.

“It’s gonna cause quite the stir,” I said and smiled at him, to get it over with.

He grinned. “Perfect.”

John Callahan, 25. Neighbor to the Ashfords.

It was Thursday, two days from the Fourth of July. The window was open, and outside, our gardener was making his weekly pass across the lawn. The drone of the mower rose and fell, carried on the green smell of fresh-cut grass.

My drawing table sat angled to catch the north light. I’d been hunched over the rolls of trace paper for hours, trying to make the rooms work. The project was due after the weekend and I hadn’t made nearly as much progress as I had hoped. I hooked my feet on the rung of the drawing chair and braced my elbows on either side of the blueprints, taking yet another look at the damn floor plan.

“Knock knock.”

I looked up, annoyed at the disturbance.

Matthew Ashford was leaning in the doorframe, barefoot, wearing my hoodie.

Grass clippings stuck to his ankles. He’d probably walked straight through the lawn our guy was still mowing.

He had been slipping in through the back since we were kids. So I didn’t bother asking how he’d gotten in.

He plucked grass clippings from the sole of his foot and from in between his toes, dropping them on the polished floor. “We’re throwing a party Saturday. You should come.”

“I have a project due Monday.” I pointed at the blueprints on the drawing table in front of me.

“Luke told me you’d say that.”

His brother Luke and I were seniors at college in the fifth year of our architecture programs. Somehow Luke managed to have a social life and throw parties and not let deadlines consume him the way I did. Matthew, being a sophomore wild-child, didn’t have a care in the world.

He wandered over.

“What are these?” His attention was now fully taken up by the maze of floor plans on the drawing table.

“Just—” I nudged his hand away from my meticulous work. “Last-minute revisions.”

He shuffled over to my side, put his hand on my chair and wheeled it back a bit.

Somewhere outside the mower had cut off. Without it, the room felt suddenly quieter — just the ceiling fan ticking overhead, pushing air from one side of the room to the other.

He parted my legs and stepped into the space between my knees, blocking my view of the drawings. He bent over the desk, his ass nearly pressing against my chest.

“You drew all this?”

“Obviously.”

As he arched further, the hoodie crept up the small of his back, exposing a patch of smooth, sun-heated skin.

I tried to angle sideways to make sure he wasn’t smudging the crisp pencil lines. My eyes locked onto the soft dip of skin right at the base of his spine where the linen pants hung on his slender hips. The heat of his body made the hairs on my arms stand up.

I shifted in my chair and hoped for a cool breeze to blow in through the open window. I kept my hands on my thighs, my fingers twisting the hem of my shorts while he studied the drawings.

With his body inches away, it would have been so easy to reach out. To place my palms against his lower back, let my fingertips trace slowly along his warm side, over the soft curve of his stomach, and up to his chest, a trail of goosebumps rising across his skin.

The way he would tense beneath my touch as I pulled him gently into my lap, his back settling into my chest, his head falling against my shoulder.

A sudden rustle of the papers under his fingers yanked me out of it.

I turned him around by his waist before he could ruin hours of my hard work.

Up close, his lashes were thick, his eyes muddy grey with light specks near the iris. Same color as Luke’s.

“What are you doing here, Matty?”

“I came to give this back.”

He pulled the hoodie over his head. For a second, the fabric caught around his shoulders, keeping his face hidden while his bare chest and stomach were inches from mine. I found myself staring at the pulse at the base of his throat. My nostrils flared to inhale his fresh, familiar smell with a hint of sweat and grass.

When his face popped out of the collar, his hair stuck up in every direction. He draped the fleece over my shoulders like a cape, its sleeves hanging loose over my chest. He caught them both and reeled me in. Our eyes met before he pecked me on the cheek.

“Thanks for the hoodie, neighbor.”

He walked out the door, his shoulders swaying with his easy stride. When the soft slap of his bare feet faded down the hallway, the room felt too quiet again. Outside, the light had shifted to long and gold across the lawn, the gardener finished for the day. The sun had dropped low enough for the worst of the heat to finally loosen its grip.

I crawled onto my bed and wrapped myself in the hoodie, inhaling deep, pressing my nose into the collar, where his scent and body heat were trapped. There was no point in getting back to drawing. My focus was completely off the rails. I spent the rest of the evening gathering my thoughts on how I would manage the Monday deadline with a wild Ashford party.