Free So. Long.: Bad Boy Next Door by Kelley Harvey

another, both of their faces puzzled.
The Mister shrugs and turns toward his house. Mrs. Alberto opens the door
further and ushers him inside. Once he’s in, she leans outside.
    “Kelsey,” she calls.
    I plaster on my best I don’t give a shit what you think about
me smile. “Yes, ma’am?”
    She points to Adam’s house and gives me a thumbs-up, winking
before she ducks back inside.
    Well, I’ll be damned.
    I grin, feeling slightly better than I did when I walked out
of his house thirty-five seconds ago.
    I step inside my front door, and Chloe careens down the hall
into the living room, her back end almost passing up her front legs as she tries
to stop. Her meows are insistent, as though whatever she’s saying is of utmost
importance and I’d best listen-up.
    I pick her up. “Did you miss me? Or are you hungry?”
    In the kitchen, I set her down by her dry cat food. A
dime-sized hole has been eaten out of the middle, where the stainless steel
bottom of the dish is visible. I jiggle the container enough so that the food
fills in the small space. Chloe’s wailing immediately ceases as she settles
down in front of her now full dish to eat breakfast.
    I shake my head at my silly kitten, glad she’s here to greet
me and bring me back to my everyday world. A world that existed before my hot
neighbor moved in, and will exist long after he leaves.
    It was only meant to be fun. Something to get my muse in
gear. That’s it. That’s all he offered, and that’s all I accepted.
    So what if he’s a man-whore? Maybe that’s what I needed.
    So what if he held me and entwined his body with mine as we
slept? So what if I woke several times in the night to find him stroking my arm,
my back, my side, my hip, even my hair, as though he couldn’t touch me enough?
    So what if Adam made me feel more cherished in one night of
out-of-this-freaking-world oral sex and cuddling than my husband did over the
last few years of our marriage?
    It’s not a big deal. It really doesn’t matter.
    I mean, he’s a hard-core bachelor and not going to want
anything long-term with a mom .
    He’s obviously been banging a shit ton of women.
    Do I want to waste my emotions on a man-whore?

    I shut my laptop and set it aside before I throw it across
the damned room.
    Nothing.
    I’ve been sitting in this seat since seven forty-three this
morning, with the exception of a couple of trips to the bathroom and a twenty-minute
break for lunch. Now, it’s almost four in the afternoon.
    I have so little to show for all that time.
    “Sir Rodrigo, unhand me!” I twist away, my wrist at my
forehead.
    “Nay, my lady love. You have escaped me for the last
time.” He grabs the bodice of my gown, ripping it asunder. “I shall have you.”
    My bared flesh burns for him. Though I know it is wrong,
my loins long for his touch.
    Alas, I must not allow myself to be consumed by this
wretched fire.
    He clasps my hands behind my back, his mouth falling
against the rosy tips of my budded globes. “I shall plunge my manly sword into
your velvet sheath.”
    My heart flutters beneath my breasts. “Your sword, sir?”
    “Aye. It is long and steely hard. It must be wetted and
sated by you this night.”
    One-hundred and twenty-two words. That’s all I’ve written.
    I needed to write four thousand words.
    I used to be able to write four thousand words in
that span of time. Until my life fell out from under me and one of my best
friends left me for my husband.
    Or was it that my husband left me for one of my best
friends?
    Either way, they both abandoned me.
    My stomach clenches, and that weird nausea that I get when I
think of her rolls through me.
    I’d have wiped Marcy’s ass if she’d needed me to—we were that close. I’d have given her a kidney or a lung. I’d have done just about anything
for her.
    I considered her my heart-sister, because I was closer with
her than I was my blood-relations. She and Leigh are the sisters I chose, the
people I invited into