Once he’d had enough of torturing me he expanded upon his statement. “What I mean,” he said slowly, as if I wouldn’t be able to comprehend his explanation without distinct enunciation, “is that Matthew doesn’t have to be the one to have all the popularity. You’re not exactly helping your own cause.”
I winced at the truthfulness in his words. Sure, he was over here all of the time, but was it really so obvious that he would notice and take pity on me? As we’d all grown older, Matthew and Chris had moved on to become football players, the stereotypical jocks that walked the halls of our high school like they owned the place. If they’d declared that much, people likely wouldn’t have set them straight. And there I was, stuck in a rut as the social outcast.
“And what do you suggest I do about that?” I asked the floor, staring at the toe of my sock. After all, we couldn’t wear shoes in the house and I wasn’t brave enough to look at him.
“Have you ever thought about becoming a cheerleader?”
I choked, another reaction that solicited a chuckle from my brother’s best friend. “No,” I answered honestly.
“Well, I think you’d be perfect at it,” he proclaimed.
I snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“What if I could help you?”
“How? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Again with the laughter. “No, not me personally. But what if I could get you to someone who could?”
“Why would you do that for me?” I asked skeptically.
“Because I like you, Blake.”
My head snapped up involuntarily to meet his eyes. Much to my surprise, he looked sincere. I waited for the punch line, for him to smirk and tell me that he was only kidding. But that never came.
What did happen was that somehow he arranged for the current head cheerleader of the varsity squad to become my mentor. The summer between freshman and sophomore year, she and I worked on fundamentals and routines and when tryouts were held in the fall, I’d signed up, feeling more than a little confident that I would make the JV squad. Turns out that whatever Chris had seen in me was true, or that I’d worked my tail off to impress him and therefore not make a fool out of myself. Whatever the case, the end result was the same.
And as for him liking me, well, that also worked out in my favor. I’d so not wanted to read too much into his comment that day, but a big part of me had been excited by what he’d said. Not only did my popularity increase significantly because of his little plan, I also found myself the recipient of my first kiss.
It had come unexpectedly the day the cheerleading roster had been posted in the hallway outside the athletic department. As was tradition, a crowd of hopefuls and just plain interested students with no real ties to football or cheerleading had gathered around, eagerly drinking in the names written on the paper. Me being me, I’d waited patiently behind everyone else, not wanting to push my way to the front. Of course, Chris had been anticipating this and had swooped in out of nowhere to assist.
He grabbed my hand in his and drug me to his side. To his credit, he was polite enough to excuse the both of us as he pushed our way through the onslaught. It really wasn’t much of a struggle; when one of the senior players on the football team asked for underclassmen to move, it was pretty much a given that he’d get his way. Just as we’d reached the head of the line, he’d let go of my hand and placed both of his over my face to cover my eyes.
“What are you doing?” I asked impatiently.
He laughed again, a sound that would haunt me years later and bring tears to my eyes at its mere memory.
“I want to make sure that you remember this moment for the rest of your life. Are you ready for it?”
I nodded, just wanting to get on with the show. Even though his crash course in cheerleading had helped with my shyness issues, I was still very aware that he was creating a scene. The sooner whatever this was was over, the sooner I could go back to not being the center of attention.
He counted down from three and then I felt him remove his fingers from my face. “Congratulations, Blake.”
I stared at the list in front of me. My name was nowhere to be found on the roster of junior varsity cheerleaders. My vision blurred with sadness and resentment. It had been nothing but a trick. I’d trusted him to do something nice for me, and I’d fallen right for his ploy to make me the laughingstock of the school.
“I didn’t make it,” I whispered, shaking my head in disbelief. Had his cheerleader friend been in on everything as well? Had she offered me false words of encouragement only to laugh about it behind my back later?
“Blake,” he said urgently, bringing me back to reality, “you’re looking at the wrong list. You didn’t make the JV squad because you made varsity.” To prove his point, he grabbed my long blond ponytail and playfully yanked my head in the direction of the correct list. Sure enough, that one contained my name.
My emotions did a complete one-eighty and I spun around and hugged him. Realizing that I’d overstepped my boundaries, I moved to pull away from him. But he didn’t let me go. Instead, his grip on me tightened and he bent down to whisper something into my ear.
“I knew you could do it,” was what he said.
My world stood frozen in time as I felt the heat of his breath on my neck. His lips brushed against my cheek as he lifted my chin with his thumb and grazed my mouth with his own. The kiss was brief since we were still in the school building, but the impact it had on me was huge.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Chapter Three
“He came over last night,” I announced upon entry of my brother’s home. As usual, I’d let myself in and roamed around the space until I’d found where he was located. Today, he hadn’t been too hard to track down, what with the smell of bacon wafting in from the kitchen and the sound of laughter in the other room. Clues digested, I made a beeline for Matthew, barely able to contain myself.
There was no need for me to explain who the “he” in question was; it was written all over my face. Besides, Matthew knew there was only one “he” in my book.
“Did you know?” I asked him, plunking my purse down on the concrete island.
If I hadn’t have been so distraught, I likely would have been embarrassed for interrupting the intimate moment that I had. Lauren was cooking them breakfast - pancakes and bacon from the looks of it. Matthew was pretending to help, which amounted to little more than him stirring the batter and watching. They’d not even been engaged for twenty-four hours and here I was crashing their morning routine. At least they had clothes on.
Matthew’s expression immediately sobered upon meeting my gaze. Lauren turned from her position at the range and silently grabbed a third plate from the cabinet. Community meals were not uncommon for the three of us; more often than not, we ate at least a few times a week together. Usually that was dinner, but I was starting early.
“No, I haven’t talked to him for a couple days,” Matthew told me, shaking his head for emphasis. “Must have been a spur of the moment thing.”
I knew Matthew wasn’t lying. He didn’t have to do much to convince me. The last few days had been a flourish of activity leading up to his Thanksgiving proposal to Lauren. I’d been involved in most of the planning, so I’d known the answer to the question before asking. I’d just wanted to hear it for myself. And just maybe I’d wanted to prove myself wrong. Perhaps I was looking for confirmation that Chris had poured his heart out to my brother during a late night gossip fest. But guys didn’t do that sort of thing, did they?
“So how did it go?” he asked when I didn’t offer any further details.
I responded with a sigh that quite possibly originated from somewhere deep in the ground beneath my feet. Dramatically, I lowered my head onto the countertop, covering it with my hands. My fingers grabbed fistfuls of platinum blond strands, just this side of pulling out my own hair.
“That good?” Matthew cracked with a snort.
“Shut up
, dork,” I muttered into my arms.
When I heard Lauren slide a plate of food across the counter in my general direction, I lifted my head. She, too, was staring at me, her hazel eyes sparkling with amusement. Or maybe they just hadn’t been sufficiently depleted of the look of love. It was obvious she was walking on cloud nine whereas I was somewhere much, much lower and closer to the center of the Earth.
“So he finally did a ninja intervention?” she asked innocently. If I wouldn’t have been paying as close of attention as I was, I would have missed the fact that she clearly bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.
Almost a year to the day she had sat on my couch and proclaimed that Chris and I sitting down and talking would be the best thing for us. At that time, I’d vehemently disagreed. Hell, I still disagreed now. Nine years was a long time to hide from one another, but somehow we had managed. Somehow I had kept a lid on most of the memories that we’d shared together, both good and bad. Then one brief encounter had caused everything to explode to the forefront yet again. This was therapeutic how?
Thankful for a prop to toy with, I grabbed my fork and began cutting my pancakes into bite-sized pieces. The two of them waited patiently for me as I worked in silence, delaying the inevitable. I felt their eyes on me the entire time. When there was no more breakfast to render into tiny portions, I spoke to the plate instead of them.
“He attempted, but I wouldn’t have any of it,” I admitted.
“Blake,” Lauren admonished, slamming down her own fork in frustration.
“What?”
I really didn’t get why Lauren was so invested in Chris and me patching things up. There was no love lost between the two of them. Considering my brother’s less than desirable past when it came to the dating scene - among other things - Chris had been more than a little leery of Matthew’s infatuation with my ex-roommate. Part of that reaction had been warranted due to the fact that Lauren had already been involved in a serious relationship when she moved in with me. Even after that had unraveled and paved the way for her to proceed with Matthew, Chris had taken a while to warm up to her. I wasn’t exactly sure that the ice had thawed; that was a mutual thing.
But Lauren believed in happy ever afters, past haunts and betrayals be damned. Just because things had worked out that way for her didn’t mean it happened for everybody. Considering my present company, I was hopelessly outnumbered in that respect. The poster children for happy endings stood before me.
“You didn’t give him a chance?” Lauren half whined. She coaxed an errant piece of dark brown hair behind her ear and chewed her bacon at me accusatorily.
“He ambushed me,” I said in my own defense, “I didn’t have time to think rationally.”
“And if you would have known he was coming, would things have ended differently?” she asked. The look she flashed me indicated that she already knew the answer.
I stalled by taking a thoughtful drink of coffee from the mug that had magically appeared by my side. Lauren was good with the whole caretaking thing, that much was true. We would just have to work on the badgering part.
“If I knew he was coming,” I said finally, “I probably wouldn’t have left here last night.”
“You do know that you can’t go on avoiding him forever, right?”
“Why not? I’ve done a pretty good job of doing that so far.”
“Because, silly, now there’s going to be a wedding. And like it or not, you’re both going to be in it.”
There was nothing like stating the obvious. Chris had mentioned as much in his abrupt monologue. How we needed to mend fences for Matthew and Lauren’s big day, how there was no time like the present to start working on at least being civil to one another again.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” I rolled my eyes and stopped myself just short of sticking my tongue out at her. “I promise that we can make it through a couple hours of one whole day without killing each other. But I don’t have to like it.”
“And you do know that you’ve excluded yourself from the maid of honor duties, right? Because there’s no doubt that Chris is going to be the best man. It was neck and neck between you and Gracie, I promise, but in the end I had to choose her. I just couldn’t see you and Chris walking down the aisle together.”
Matthew, who up until this point had been relatively silent on the matter, chose this moment to snort. In fact, he almost spit out the mouthful of pancake he’d just bitten into. I glared at him, not appreciating his commentary.
“Well, isn’t Gracie just lucky?” I said sarcastically.
Besides, I hadn’t honestly expected to be named Lauren’s maid of honor anyway. I’d assumed that Gracie would automatically be inserted into that role given the fact that they’d known each other longer. Gracie had been her rock during Lauren’s self-imposed absence from Matthew’s life. Even though Lauren was probably the closest thing I had to a true girlfriend, I was still just the love of her life’s younger sister. The ex-roommate. The de facto wedding planner. I didn’t mind.
“So,” I said in an effort to steer the subject away from my failures in the relationship department, “on your first night of being engaged, you sat up talking wedding strategy?”
Lauren giggled, heat rising to her face as she recalled the previous evening’s events. “That’s not exactly all we did.”
“Of course it wasn’t.”
I imagined that in theory our Thanksgiving night had ended up including at least one of the same activities. Whereas Lauren’s involved making love, mine involved a quickie in some random guy’s apartment. How odd that the same exact actions could mean two completely different things depending on their context. Hers symbolized a coming together of two souls, mine was more of a break from reality. A reminder that I would never again have the kind of love she knew.
I hated to say it, but I had quite possibly enjoyed her dysfunctional relationship with Eric more than I cared to admit. During her rants about how her own ex had mistreated her, I had basked in the glory of knowing that I wasn’t alone where angst was concerned. It had been an uneasy camaraderie between the two of us as we’d wallered in the depths of emotional despair. I’d been able to relate in part to her experiences and feel a little bit better about my own life. But I’d never shared my past with her, or anyone else for that matter. I had always been able to tell that my reluctance to communicate on a deeper level frustrated her. She’d been expecting true confessions from me and she’d never lucked out.
The less she knew, the better.
It was a shame that I wasn’t able to forget.
Chapter Four
(Past Tense)
We were high school royalty. Not that any of that mattered once we graduated, but in the petty eyes of teenagers, it certainly did. We were the big fish in the small pond, seemingly untouchable. Almost overnight, I had ascended to that position. Due to many factors all converging at once - making the cheerleading squad, being the sister of one of the football team’s most storied players and the new girlfriend of one of the other members - I’d become arguably the most popular girl in school.
In my previous life of being socially awkward, I’d glossed over the fact that Matthew had become a big deal. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I’d always been around him, but I’d sort of shrugged off how talented he was. As soon as he’d had the first few high school games under his belt, buzz had built up across the city of just how good he played. Scouts started to come to his games. He was getting calls from recruiters.
Here was something that finally made our dad happy. If I was the smart one, then Matthew could be the athletic one. Sure, he might not be able to follow in Alan Snyder’s footsteps and become a high profile lawyer, but he could be a sports star. Never mind the fact that the majority of high school athletes don’t end up playing professionally. My dad bolstered Matthew’s ego and my brother believed his own hype. To give him the benefit of the doubt, he heard people sing his praises often enough that it just became ing
rained in him. He was someone.
Chris and I rode on his coattails, not that we minded. The three of us had known each other for so long, there was no jealousy involved. Besides, being included in Matthew’s orbit helped our status immensely. I’d never doubted that he and Chris had somehow pulled some strings to get the head cheerleader to even talk to me, a fact which was seemingly proven later when she briefly dated Matthew.
Not that that was out of the ordinary. Matthew briefly dated most of the it girls in the high school. At one point, I had the distinct feeling that people wanted to be my friend just so my brother would notice them and ask them out on a date. I quickly caught on and due to my reluctance to be a one girl matchmaking service, I politely declined other girls’ requests to introduce them to him.
It really didn’t hinder his popularity with the ladies at all. With his combination of soulful blue eyes, messy blond hair, an endearing crooked smile and his charisma, he didn’t need my help. His dance card was always full, a revolving door of girls. He never promised anyone anything and they were willing to accept that just to be in his presence. Again, he was someone.
If it hadn’t have been for Chris taking an interest in me that summer, I most certainly would have been headed for the same destiny. Now that I was finally growing out of my little girl phase, I could see the resemblance between Matthew and me was quite pronounced. If people didn’t know any better, they’d swear that we were twins. I saw it in the way that I turned heads when I walked down the hallways; I could have that same phenomenon if only I’d wanted it. I could have an endless string of dates, a long line of suitors begging me for a chance.
But all I wanted was Chris.
After the kiss in the hallway outside the athletics department we’d wordlessly become an item. He’d never officially asked me out; we’d just continued on as if we’d always been boyfriend and girlfriend. Our getting together was a non-event, like both my brother and my parents had seen it coming for quite some time. In the early stages of things, I’d been afraid of Matthew’s reaction but he’d handled it well. I wasn’t sure if that was due to the fact that Chris had cleared things with him first or if he’d had some sort of premonition that it would eventually happen. And my parents hadn’t batted a combined eyelash when Chris had shown up at the house the first time expressly to see me. Perhaps I was the only one who had been shocked.
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