The Girl Next Door by Elizabeth Noble Read Free Book Online

where she was all of those things. She should move to Ohio, or Kentucky, or… to anywhere else. New York wasn’t America. It was a republic to itself. Full of beautiful, perfect, unreal people like Madison Cavanagh. Everything would be okay if she was somewhere else.
    This was merely a variation on her other theory – the one she had held dear for years – that everything would be okay if she was someone else.
    She forgot, or simply refused to remember, that she’d grown up outside of this city, but that she had always felt this way.
    Ugly Betty was her favourite show. Except that America Ferrera wasn’t at all ugly. They made her look weird and geeky with those clothes, but you knew that by season three or four they were going to do a ‘My, Miss Jones’ makeover on her, and the swan would emerge, glamorous and attractive. When you saw the actress in People magazine or on The Insider , she really was quite lovely. Not a size zero or anything, but a pretty girl. There was no such swan lurking inside Charlotte Murphy – she was quite sure of that.
    When she wasn’t watching television (or listening to Madison, her neighbour), Charlotte read romance novels – everything from the literary heavyweights through Georgette Heyer to slim Silhouette Romances with Fabio on the cover. And then, when she lay in her single bed at night, she replayed the storylines, casting herself, a slimmer, prettier, easier Charlotte, in the heroine’s role. The hero was sometimes Che, the doorman, sometimes Brian, the guy from the second floor. Sometimes a fireman she’d seen once answering a call at the subway station at work. Mostly, it was Che. She’d known him for three years, ever since she’d moved to the city. But she’d never said more than four words to him, and they were always the same four – ‘Hello. How are you?’ She knew nothing about him. She didn’t know where he went when he wasn’t working at the building. She’d sort of followed him once, last summer, as far as the subway steps, so she knew he went north, but she hadn’t had the nerve to get on the train and see where he got off. He didn’t wear a wedding ring, and his taste in clothes, when he wasn’t in the building’s uniform, was dreadful, so she didn’t think there was a woman in his life. No wife or girlfriend would let him leave home dressed like that. And sometimes, when he didn’t see her approaching, and was staring into space, he looked sad and full of longing to her. She made up a backstory for him. A beautiful girl back in Cuba. A broken heart. And she spent many long nights imagining mending it for him. Things always faded to black, after their first kiss.
    Between them, even Madison and Georgette hadn’t managed to make her imagine what might happen then…
    Jackson
    He had milk, but he needed Cheerios. He had the serious munchies. The maid wasn’t due until tomorrow, and he couldn’t wait that long for Cheerios. Jackson looked at the clock, vaguely surprised to find himself wide awake and starving hungry at 7.30 a.m. That almost never happened. Damn.
    He rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweats and sneakers that were lying by the bed, covering his Bowie ‘Life on Mars’ T‐shirt with a grey sweat top. Passing the mirror he peered at himself, pulling down his bottom eyelids to inspect the redness of his eyeballs, and sticking out his tongue. He wasn’t sure about this facial hair. Too lazy to shave, but not sufficiently testosterone‐y to grow something amusingly yeti‐ish. That goatee might have to go. Although his mother’s aggravation at it during her last visit had been quite funny. Martha said men with facial hair had something to hide. Like weak top lips or crooked teeth. She viewed his as unnecessary. His straight teeth had cost $10,000.
    Money. Money. His wallet was empty except for credit cards. Wandering into the kitchen, he spotted a $10 bill next to the receipt for last night’s Thai take‐out, and grabbed it