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  “Neighborly Love”

  A Lesbian Romance

  Christine L’Amour

  © 2019

  Christine L’Amour

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is intended for Adults (ages 18+) only. The contents may be offensive to some readers. It may contain graphic language, explicit sexual content, and adult situations. May contain scenes of unprotected sex. Please do not read this book if you are offended by content as mentioned above or if you are under the age of 18. Please educate yourself on safe sex practices before making potentially life-changing decisions about sex in real life.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Products or brand names mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders or companies. The cover uses licensed images & are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are simply models.

  Edition v1.00 (2019.08.21)

  www.christinelamourauthor.com

  Special thanks to the following volunteer readers who helped with proofreading: RB, JayBee and those who assisted but wished to be anonymous. Thank you so much for your support.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Free Book “Sealed with a Kiss”

  Chapter One

  Amelia Parker strolled along the streets with her best friend on one arm and a spring in her step. Spring itself had just arrived and even though she knew it was just her brain playing tricks, it felt like the cold breeze was less cold, gentler, like there was something in there blooming already. Amy was a simple person of simple pleasures. This morning, her thoughts were completely occupied with what it was she was going to have for lunch.

  “Let’s go have sushi!” she exclaimed.

  Chelsea, her best friend, sent her a sour look. “Sushi, as I tell you each and every time you want to go, is too expensive for us.”

  “Not for me!” Brenda exclaimed with a laugh. “But truth is, I’ve forgotten my wallet,” she added sheepishly.

  Chelsea rolled her eyes. Amy shrugged.

  “I’ll pay for you both,” Amy told them. “I just got paid for this huge commission yesterday, so I’m full of cash! Look, one of my favorite sushi places is right around the corner here.”

  “What, you drew another book character for someone on the internet?” Brenda asked with a mocking tilt to her smile.

  “Hey! It was a fully colored, fully shaded illustration with five characters in it and a library background,” Amy said in a defensive tone. “Have you ever thought about how hard it is to draw a library, Brenda? With all the shelves, books, tables, chairs, lamps, windows, staircases—”

  “All right, all right!” Brenda said, raising her hands as if in defeat. They arrived at the sushi place and she skipped ahead to open the door for the other two. “I take it back. I know drawing is hard. I just—well, it’s not a profession, is it?”

  “Could be,” Chelsea said under her breath.

  Amy found them a table and sent her best friend a dirty look.

  “I don’t want to talk about professions or work or college right now,” she said, sitting down. Chelsea sat down beside her and Brenda across from them. Poor Brenda always ended up sitting alone, but she just wasn’t as close to them as they were to each other.

  “I don’t mean to start a discussion,” Chelsea said in the tone of someone who was going to start a discussion, “but I’ve seen your art, Amy. It’s amazing. You’re twenty-three, it’s been three years since you dropped out of college, and going back to become an illustrator is a way better plan than your current one!”

  “My current plan is perfect!” Amy exclaimed in her own defense. “I’m the one with enough money to pay for everyone’s lunch today, aren’t I?”

  “I’m the one with a hefty savings account, aren’t I?” Chelsea retorted.

  Amy glared at her. Fine, Amy didn’t have a third of the money in her own savings account that Chelsea had in hers. But she wasn’t poor, and her life was good; her parents didn’t mind her staying with them and drawing for money now and then. Not really.

  “Whatever,” Brenda said when the two others stayed in silence. “But, speaking of savings account and how I am going to empty mine, I actually wanted to meet with you guys today to ask a favor…”

  “What is it?” Chelsea asked, weary.

  “It’s just that I’m travelling to Europe a month from now—”

  “Yes, we know,” Chelsea said. “You mention it every time we see each other.”

  Amy elbowed her ribs, because that was a rude thing to say, if true. Chelsea rolled her eyes. Brenda kept going as if she hadn’t been interrupted.

  “And there is just one little thing I kind of forgot I had to deal with… my apartment.”

  “What about it?” Amy asked.

  “I don’t want it to sit empty for four months while I go,” Brenda told her. “You know how it is—things sitting still is how they break or warp. So, I was thinking, maybe I could get a friend to housesit for me!”

  “Brenda, we can’t just drop our lives to go housesit for you for four months with only a month of warning!” Chelsea exclaimed, shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  Brenda raised her eyebrows almost to her hairline and turned to look pointedly at Amy.

  Amy paused. “Well…”

  “Absolutely not,” Chelsea said. “If you leave your parents’ place to go to Brenda’s apartment for nearly half a year, then you’re basically admitting that you’re going to sit around and play video games and not search for a job or think about college—”

  Amy groaned. “Chelsea, will you shut up about that kind of stuff?”

  “My place has an indoor swimming pool you would be able to use,” Brenda said with wide, innocent eyes.

  “You need to get your life on track!” Chelsea tried again, a sort of wild look on her eyes. “Amy, listen to me. Brenda lives literally on the other side of town from you. You won’t even be able to pretend you’re looking for a job, because any job will be too far away for you to actually go to. Don’t
make me lose the last of the hope I have that you’re going to start acting like an adult.”

  Amy narrowed her eyes at her. She was an easy-going, lazy person, but that only went so far. She hadn’t signed up to sit here and listen to her best friend say those things about her. She was an adult. So, she had made some decisions that Chelsea didn’t agree with—that didn’t give her the right to call Amy a child.

  She turned to Brenda.

  “An indoor swimming pool, you say?” she asked just as innocently.

  Chelsea groaned. Brenda beamed at her, smug at having won.

  ***

  A month and a week later, Amy walked into Brenda’s apartment with a box under her arm and a suitcase trailing behind her. Chelsea followed with another suitcase and another box, and for the rest, Amy would go back home to fetch when she felt like it. She had brought everything important anyway; some clothes, her laptop, lots of books and DVDs and her favorite games.

  Brenda’s apartment was just like Amy remembered from the last and only time she had been there: it was spacious and white and full of full-length mirrors that made it look even more so. There were plants everywhere, a huge island in the kitchen, a bathtub that fit three people in each of the two bathrooms, three rooms, one of which was a home-cinema, and Amy’s favorite: a veranda that had a perfect view of the sunset.

  She and Chelsea stopped and gazed around, admiring everything.

  “I still can’t believe you’re actually doing this,” Chelsea said.

  Amy was tired of hearing it, but she knew her best friend and knew that it all just meant that she worried for Amy. That was why, despite her annoyance, when Amy spoke her voice came out gentle.

  “It’s a change of pace,” she said. “Maybe that’ll be good. You never liked me in my parents’ house anyway.”

  “Yeah, but I wanted you to move out, not go squat somewhere else, Amy.”

  “I’m not squatting! I’m housesitting, and even getting money for it.”

  “One day your money will run out,” Chelsea warned, though more in joke than not. She might have disliked Amy’s laziness, but as much as she resented, sometimes, how easy Amy’s life was, she would never wish that Amy got into trouble for it.

  “I’m lucky,” Amy said, shaking her head. “Something always comes up. I always manage to stay afloat.”

  “Well, someday your luck will run out too!”

  Amy beamed at her. “Then I’ll go squat with you!”

  Chelsea snorted and pushed forward, groaning as she let herself fall to the couch.

  “Christ, this is the most comfortable couch I’ve ever sat in. Brenda left some stuff in the fridge, didn’t she? Make lunch for us, Amy, I’m hungry.”

  “Now who’s the lazy one?” Amy asked with a roll of her eyes, but she set the box next to Chelsea on the couch and propped the suitcase against it to go to the kitchen. She had agreed to lunch, anyway—it was her friends’ payment for helping her bring her stuff.

  Amy walked to the kitchen, admiring the beautiful countertops and the island, and stopped in front of the huge, glistening, black fridge. She admired the little reminders and pictures glued to it with magnets—it was all perfectly arranged, as if Brenda decorated even this thinking about how it’d look on a picture she could post online, which she did.

  There were several small pictures of Brenda with Marcus, her boyfriend, around the many places around the world they had visited. There were postcards from her parents, a little calendar with chores, and a small to-do list, as well as a… schedule of some sort?

  Amy squinted at it. The paper was small and green, and as everything of Brenda’s, organized meticulously. It was a calendar that detailed the next three months from now, with two days a week every week of them marked with the words “COMMUNAL GARDEN.”

  “Huh,” Amy said. “Odd that she would have a calendar for months where she wouldn’t be in the country to garden anything.”

  It was then that Amy noticed a little post-it note glued to the top of the calendar. With Brenda’s handwriting, it read:

  Dear Amy,

  Sorry I forgot to tell you! There’s a communal garden on the ground floor of this complex and I signed up to help, so you’re going to have to do it for me… It’s very nice and in an indoor space so you don’t have to worry about the cold! I think you’ll have fun, anyway.

  Brenda.

  “Brenda is a snake,” Amy said loud enough for Chelsea to hear, though there was no malice in her words, only amusement. “She signed up to work on the communal garden downstairs right on the months she wouldn’t be here, so I’m going to have to work in her place!”

  Chelsea ambled into the kitchen with a torn expression on her face. Between annoyance at Brenda for pushing her responsibilities onto others and vindication that Amy was going to have to work on something after all, the vindication won, and she gave Amy a smug smile.

  “Guess you’ll have to work in her place, then,” she said.

  Amy stretched her lips into the widest, happiest smile she could. “At least it’s gardening, and you know how much I love gardening!”

  Chelsea punched her shoulder playfully. “God, how can you be so upbeat all the time? It’s cold and you’re going to have to put your hand on the dirt! Be morose.”

  “I have no time to be morose! I’m too busy thinking about what I’m going to do for us to eat.”

  “Fine,” Chelsea said, “but I’m telling you, you’re going to hate this gardening thing. I can feel it.”

  ***

  During her stay in Brenda’s house, Amy was going to sleep in the guest room, which had the queen-sized bed of her dreams and an attached closet big enough to store anything and everything she might ever possibly buy in her life. She had always known her friend had money, but it had never hit her as much as it hit her when she looked into that closet and lay on that bed.

  It was the most comfortable thing she had ever laid on. She immediately went to sleep, even though when she went to check it out, after Chelsea left, it was still about four in the afternoon.

  She woke up like a punch at eight o’clock at night—her eyes snapped open and she gave a garbled shout of surprise, adrenaline flooding her system. Someone in the apartment right across from hers had turned on the stereo to a high volume; someone two buildings over was probably hearing it too.

  Amy tried to get her heartbeat back under control and stared at the wall in the vague direction of where the horrendously loud pop song was coming from.

  No, it can’t be, she thought to herself, pushing a mess of straight brown hair away from her face. They’ll turn it off soon. It’s not a party. It’s an apartment complex, for God’s sake. They’ll turn it off in no time.

  And yet the pop song droned on and on about love or something like that and didn’t seem inclined to stop.

  Surely someone will complain, Amy thought to herself.

  Two hours later, Amy had gotten dinner, but no peace. Apparently, no one had complained.

  Amy couldn’t believe that an apartment complex with an indoor pool and a communal garden wouldn’t have people who would complain about the apparent rave going on next door on a chilly Friday night, but the time passed, and the music seemed to only somehow get louder. Amy tried to play on her phone, to watch TV, to put on her own music, to go back to sleep, to read, and nothing worked. It was like the music was working its way into her brain. She couldn’t focus on anything else.

  She sat on the couch and couldn’t hear her own thoughts. Her annoyance boiled over into anger. She threw the book in her hands at the wall, a surge of pleasure rising up at the fact that she could. No one would complain about the noise because it couldn’t be heard over the fucking music playing, and stood up at once.

  She marched to her front door, opened it, and walked up to the door right in front of hers. It was definitely where the music was coming from, and Amy caught the smell of cigarette smoke and tried not to breathe. Christ, she thought, aside from partying, they also fuc
king smoke in the hallways. Who is this person and why haven’t they been evicted?

  She raised a fist and pounded on the door.

  “Hey!” she shouted loudly enough for the word to rasp against her throat, hopefully enough to be heard from inside. “Hey, you bastards! It’s past the time where loud noises are allowed! Hey!”

  She heard faint laughter from behind the door and scowled. Were they laughing at her? The nerve!

  “Turn down the damn volume!” she screamed, then marched back to her apartment and slammed the door shut.

  She locked it with a vengeance and then stood there with her hands on her hips, the seconds ticking by, waiting for something to happen because surely something would happen! A second passed and then another and then… the song got louder.

  Amy groaned and rested her forehead against her door. This had been a dream job. She was getting some money from a friend to lay around her house and use her bathtubs and sleep in that giant queen-sized bed and play video games, but now she had this stupid neighbor who liked to pretend this was a nightclub and not an apartment complex!

  Her luck had run out. Chelsea had been so right. Chelsea could never know.

  “Damn it,” Amy muttered.

  Chapter Two

  Meghan Crichton slouched on her couch so badly that she was nearly horizontal. She was typing an email on the laptop resting on her lap with her eyes nearly closed, so much so that it was a wonder she hadn’t made any mistakes yet. It was a talent born out of necessity and habit, since this was how her mornings usually went after her Friday parties.

  “There’s nothing to eat,” Carlos whined. If Meghan had glanced in his direction, she would have seen all seven feet of her friend hanging onto the open door of her fridge like a monkey. “I’m so hungry. I told you to get us something yesterday, that we would be starving after the party, but look, there’s nothing but expired milk and old lettuce in here—”