Just Down the Hall Read online

  Just Down The Hall

  Alessandra Thomas

  Copyright © 2019 by Alessandra Thomas

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Alessandra Thomas

  For every amazing journalist who paid their dues in one crazy way or another. Thank you for hanging in there. We need you now more than ever.

  Chapter 1

  Jordan

  I shoved the last of my luggage into the back of my SUV, then did one last check of the straps holding my mattress and a solitary book shelf to the top of the roof. If anyone could do a good job packing a life into a mid-sized car, it was someone headed off to start his PhD candidacy in the Aerospace Engineering department of the University of Pennsylvania. Me.

  I hugged my kid sister Kiera - even though, at twenty-two years old, she was hardly a kid anymore—and swung her around by the waist for a quick selfie. I tapped at the screen to send it off to our mom, who couldn’t be here to see me off since she had to work an early shift at the hospital. She’d seemed a little choked up about it last night, but I’d reminded her that Philly wasn’t really that far away from home, anyway.

  Pittsburgh—the home I was escaping from for another three or four years—was on the opposite side of the state from Philly. That was just barely far enough.

  I shouldered my way into the car, glad that Mom had been willing to switch mine with hers. That little Honda Civic might have been okay for when I was a scrawny seventeen-year-old trying to figure out how to live off student loans in California, but six years had brought six more inches and thirty pounds of muscle to my body.

  Yeah, I worked out. I wasn't cocky about it, but as soon as I realized, as a junior in the Aero Engineering program, that I actually did want to be an astronaut when I grew up, I'd started working out. I ran with the guys from my classes, trained with the free weight jockeys at the student health center, ate right and then worked out some more on my own. A lot of people in the program said they were going to fly up to the moon in a space ship, but I knew that with my brains, a lot of hard work, good timing, and some serious luck, I might actually have a shot at it.

  Besides that, only fourteen black astronauts had ever flown in space in the entire history of NASA, out of more than five hundred astronauts in total. I intended to fly to outer space in a rocket ship and help that number reach twenty. Our mother told us every day of our childhood that it wasn’t enough to hope for true racial equality and black representation – if we wanted it, it was our responsibility to work toward it. My sister had been the only black female statistics major in most of her college classes. I had been one of a handful of black men in the engineering department.

  Our mother told me how proud we made her every time we talked on the phone, in every greeting card she sent, in every social media post she made. But the stubborn little boy inside of me told me that I wouldn’t be successful until I made it up into space.

  Earning a degree in aerospace engineering wasn’t easy for a kid who had grown up poor and had to work extra hard for every scholarship and grant dime he got. After I graduated with honors from Stanford, I thought I'd be able to take my pick of programs. I was right, but only halfway. The goddamn economy meant that programs were being cut way back. I worked a job for a couple years at an airplane parts manufacturing plant before applying for grad school, hoping that the extra experience would help my chances. It did – I got offers of admission from a couple amazing schools. Problem was, I couldn't afford any of the schools that would agree to take me on for a PhD in Engineering and Applied Aerodynamics with an emphasis in Biochem - a fucking dream trifecta for NASA's candidate program - except for Carnegie Mellon. The only reason CMU was doable is that I would be able to move back home with my mom.

  It was far from ideal—really far from it. The best job I'd be able to get with a degree from CMU was a cushy position with Boeing, but I wanted to fly rocket ships, not make airplanes. I'd accepted, though—what else was I going to do?

  Well, fate had the surprise of my life in store for me.

  UPenn had rejected my application back in April, which was why the letter I received five days ago, during the first week of June, was such a surprise. I'd torn it open, with Kiera bouncing and squealing in the background. A spot had opened up and they wanted me to fill it. There was even a stipend. After a little internet research, I realized I could probably make the money stretch just far enough if I found a cheap place and a roommate.

  There was just one problem. They wanted me to start a week later — mid-June. I knew damn well that the housing market in Philly was booked up at least six months in advance, not to mention crazy expensive, and that was for studios I wouldn't have to depend on anyone else to split rent with.

  Dammit. I was just explaining all this to Kiera and working out whether I could defer UPenn for a semester or even a year when Kiera checked her phone and screamed again.

  "You have got to stop that, KiKi," I complained, rubbing the patch of skin behind my ear. I was going to go deaf staying here.

  "Shut up!" she said. "I literally just got a text from Lizzie. This is perfect."

  "Lizzie? Like, your high school best friend Lizzie?"

  "Yes, moron. The one who lives in Philadelphia. She just got dumped by her boyfriend who she was supposed to move in with next week. She thought he was going to propose and now he pulls this shit.”

  “So why are you so smiley?” I eyed Kiera suspiciously. That girl was always a step ahead of me when it came to planning my future life.

  “Because,” she said, rolling her eyes like it was obvious, “She’s devastated and freaking out about her future and her options especially because her new job pays like shit and now she doesn't have a roommate. You get me?" Kiera raised her eyebrows and stared me down while dialing Lizzie blind. "God, sometimes I swear rocket scientists are the dumbest people on earth," she muttered under her breath as she tapped at her phone, then held it at arm’s length, fixing her hair for a video call.

  "Lizzie? Lizzie. Okay okay okay, I know this is a shitty day for you, but I am going to make it a hundred times better! You ready?"

  A soft, deep laugh answered Kiera, and instinct tugged me to her side. Something about just that hint of her voice made me desperate to get a look at her.

  I popped my head over Kiera's shoulder, hoping she’d decided to FaceTime with Lizzie. I was a red-blooded American man, after all, and everyone from my mom to my Aero Engineering professor knew I had a thing for pretty girls. My curiosity over whether Lizzie
had had a run-in with the hotness fairy pulled my eyes to the screen.

  No such luck.

  Her voice, though, held an oddly familiar tone – a little raspy, her vowels drawn out just a little longer than anyone else’s. Six years had deepened it, but it was definitely the Lizzie I’d known as an annoying brace-faced kid. I listened as Kiera summarized my situation, and registered the cadence of Lizzie’s voice as she responded to basic questions about location and price. With every word she spoke, familiarity for Lizzie washed over me in waves.

  Yeah, I remembered her - as a kid, she’d always had her eyes glued to her phone, and spent the time when she didn't gossiping about this guy or that teacher from school. Everywhere she walked, she left a trial of detritus behind her - gum wrappers, scraps of notebook paper, hair ties. Her outfits were always some weird mishmash of the latest trends, like she'd relied on a handful of pages randomly torn from fashion magazines to dress her in the morning.

  I also remembered how she'd rolled her eyes at me every time she saw me, and how I'd distinctly heard her call me a dweeb as I walked by at least once. Maybe twice.

  But, hey. We were all grown up now. Obviously. I had certainly matured, and it only stood to reason that Lizzie had changed too.

  “Really, JJ?” Lizzie’s voice pulled me out of my nostalgic thoughts.

  “Um…what?” I stammered as her stark question pulled me away from my wandering thoughts.

  The last time talking to some girl had made me lose my train of thought, I was a freshman at Stanford about to lose my virginity. What the hell was going on?

  “You really wouldn’t mind moving in with me? It would be…” she let out a shuddering breath and turned her head to the side for a moment, blinking hard. “Sorry, it’s just a surprise. I had no idea this was going to happen. But I’m so glad you’re moving here. If you’re really up for it, then I’ll at least be living with someone I know I can trust.”

  “You sure you don’t have someone else you’d rather call?”

  She let out another sigh. “All my friends are either moving somewhere else or already have a place in the city. It’s damn near impossible to find a decent place here and…yeah.”

  I could tell her voice was on the edge of breaking. I suddenly felt an urge to make her smile, or laugh, or something to stop the tears from falling. It was certainly more deep and intense than the last time I listened to a girl cry - two months ago, when I’d dumped my last girlfriend. Also over the phone.

  I’d given myself a pass for that one. My last jerky move at the end of a pretty decent college dating career.

  I probably felt so connected to Lizzie because I’d known her as a kid. Just hearing her voice couldn’t make me attached to a girl. It was the familiarity I already had with her, and my sister’s enthusiasm, which had her practically bouncing off the walls at the idea of Lizzie and I living together. That had to be it.

  Regardless, it seemed that Lizzie Palmer, the annoying sideshow to a kid sister I tolerated, had turned into quite a woman. She'd made it through college at UPenn and found a job on the other end. Yeah, she was probably a disaster after her fuck-tard boyfriend dumped her and left her hanging with half an apartment lease to fill, but I was certainly not going to complain about that.

  As I pulled away from Pittsburgh and onto the turnpike toward Philly, I thought of Lizzie for about the thousandth time since I’d seen her face on the phone five days ago. She was just Lizzie Palmer, and I was just Jordan Jacobs. Two nice kids from Pittsburgh who’d grown up together. We’d fallen into this situation almost like fate had guided us there.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  Chapter 2

  Liz

  “What could possibly go wrong?” I asked the saner half of myself as I unpacked what had to be one of the last boxes in this never ending stack of brown cardboard ridiculousness the movers had dumped into my new apartment in University City. There was no way I had this much stuff. With every box I unpacked, I told myself there had to be a mistake, that they must have unloaded some other girl’s boxes in addition to my own, but every single box I opened held something that I only then remembered deciding I absolutely, positively needed in my post-grad life.

  Thank God Dad had paid the movers.

  This box, unfortunately, held two things I really didn’t want to see. First, the industrial sized box of condoms I’d picked up before the first time Josh and I had had sex over a year ago, and only managed to use half of. I’d done the deed with a couple of guys before Josh, but I figured doing it with a guy I loved would feel more like fun and less of a messy, awkward chore.

  I’d been wrong.

  I slung those to the corner of the room, hoping I could just throw a dirty sweatshirt over them where they wouldn’t see the light of day for a good long while.

  Then, there were the picture frames. Fortunately, I hadn’t packed these before Josh broke up with me and completely ruined the surprise I had for him - the fact that I’d found us a totally darling fully-furnished apartment close to UPenn Law, where he was about to start his third year. With tears dripping from my cheeks, I’d yanked out every framed photo of the two of us - dressed up for the Barrister’s Ball, face-painted for an Eagles football game, and, finally, me in a graduation cap and gown with his arm draped loosely around my waist - and pulled the prints from their frames.

  A couple days later, I’d texted Kiera and convinced her to send me some old pictures with both Jordan and I from high school. I’d grinned, sent them right to the drugstore, and filled those same damn frames with pictures of me and my new roomie as soon as I got home.

  At least I’d been able to find a roommate so quickly. I’d never be able to thank Kiera enough for that. I held one of the frames gently in my hands, running my thumb over the face of Kiera’s scrawny, goofy big brother, who had his arm slung around my shoulders like he was about to pull me down for a headlock.

  Come to think of it, he probably had right after Kiera snapped it.

  God, Jordan was a dweeb. I moved to the coffee table, a fairly solid if boring piece that had come with the furnished apartment, and set down a couple of the frames, brushing over more of the photos with my fingertips. I lingered on one of their family when he and Kiera were little, before their dad passed away. His blond hair was a shock against the other three heads of sprawling curls. I knew that I’d meet Kiera just a few years after this picture had been taken, on the playground at Kindergarten. Our lives had nearly always been entwined.

  I moved on to another frame. Teenaged Jordan was skinny as a toothpick, his hair was a huge puffy mess, and his thick black glasses were always falling down his nose. In this pic, he had on a NASA t-shirt under a navy and white track jacket, and his chin was tipped up, making the smug curve of his lips look slightly wider than it actually was. He was too smart for his own good, and I’d lost count of how many times Kiera and I had to help him get out of some locker he’d been stuffed in or buy him a second lunch after some asshole dumped his on the floor of the cafeteria.

  “But you were always a nice dweeb,” I mused in a soft voice, smiling at the memory of how he gave us a ride home from school any time we asked. He really didn’t have to talk to some giggly sixteen-year-old brace-faces who’d barely gotten their shit together to test for our learner’s permits, let alone figure out how to get a driver’s license. I’d been happy for him when he’d graduated a year early and scored a sweet all-inclusive full ride to Stanford. I’d been happy for myself, too, when Kiera and I had all that extra space to spread out when he moved away.

  “God, are you still calling me that?” A deep voice, rich and soft as velvet, curled in through the crack of the new apartment door. The first thing I saw follow it was a very distinctive head of black curls, no longer nearly as puffy as it used to be, but definitely belonging to Jordan Jacobs.

  “Jordan!” I cried, replacing the picture and hustling over to the door. He pushed it the rest of the way open and stood there, grinning, with a huge
duffle bag slung over each shoulder.

  I’d assumed 23-year-old Jordan would look exactly like 17-year-old Jordan.

  Hot damn. I’d assumed so freaking wrong.

  I stopped in my tracks.

  It was uncanny, really. He was wearing those same thick black frames he’d had in high school, only his jaw and cheekbones had somehow found themselves some serious contour and chisel at Stanford University, not to mention a truly manly scatter of stubble. His style had changed since high school, too. Jordan had always seemed lost in terms of clothing choices, going through phases where he only wore baggy jeans and shirts, or graphic tees and sweats, or track suits with bucket hats. Back then, he’d always looked like he was trying on someone else’s life by walking around in a costume. Now, though, he just looked casual, comfortable, and pulled together, wearing slightly worn dark wash jeans, vintage-colored Air Jordans, and a button-down shirt.

  But the most noticeable change took my breath away. Grownup Jordan filled my –our—doorframe with a body at least six inches taller than the last one I’d laid eyes on.

  Plus, you know, the voice. It was no longer squeaky and quiet, and it slid beautifully over his tongue and past his brace-free, straight, white teeth.

  I stood there gaping for some good, long seconds before Jordan waved his hand in front of my eyes. “Lizzie? You okay?”