Declan Reede: The Untold Story (Complete Series)

by Michelle Irwin

  “Have you had breakfast?” Alyssa’s mum, Ruth, asked when I reached the kitchen.

  “No, we ran out of milk.” I chuckled once the words were out.

  “What’s so funny?” Josh asked.

  Ruth had already poured a bowl of cornflakes and placed them in front of me.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Where’s Lys?”

  “Still getting ready,” Josh muttered. “Said something about needing to dress up for her new boyfriend.”

  Warmth spread through me at the thought. That was me. I was her boyfriend. Each new breath was a little harder to take than the last as an overwhelming sensation filled my chest. She wanted to look nice for me—because of me. Not that she didn’t usually look nice. It was just that she was a bit of a tomboy, especially when it came to clothes and hairdos. That much had been clear from the very first time I’d met her.

  WE’D BEEN just six when she’d moved from New South Wales to Queensland. Her boyish body was wrapped in a pair of short bike pants and an oversized t-shirt. When the teacher introduced her to us, her eyes watched the ground in front of her instead of meeting anyone else’s gaze. Despite that, she held her chin up high. In the time since, I’d learned the second part was because she was so incredibly stubborn. She would never let anyone think they’d gotten the better of her. The contradiction struck me immediately.

  It was the first day of school and the class was playing tunnel-ball as a way of getting to know each other. Because I’d won the game of continuous cricket we’d played the day before, I had been selected as one of the team captains. I took one look at her, with her plain clothes and her hair pulled into two unruly pigtails, and figured she had to be a tomboy and therefore good at sports, so I picked her first for my team. The look of immediate relief that crossed her face enamoured me of her completely. During that game, I discovered how uncoordinated she was, not to mention terrible at sports, but it didn’t matter. From that day forward, I always picked her first when I was team captain.

  In return, Alyssa had been there for me over the years. Like when we were ten and she’d come to my rescue on the playground. My sometimes friend, sometimes enemy, Blake Cooper, had spent the morning relentlessly teasing me for my not-quite-blue, not-quite-green eyes and fiery hair.

  Over and over, he’d called me ranga until I’d finally snapped and leapt at him. We became a flurry of fists as I demonstrated the reason redheads had a reputation for being short-tempered. Instead of running off to the teacher, Alyssa had joined in the fray and copped an elbow to her lip. Hurt, she’d turned on the waterworks and sat on the edge of the sandpit, while the jerk Blake tried to apologise and blame me. Alyssa wouldn’t accept his apologies though, demanding he say sorry to me instead.

  When he refused, Alyssa stood, grabbed my hand, and led us away declaring, “C’mon, Dec. Who cares what that jerk thinks, I love the colour red.”

  There was also the time, just before my twelfth birthday, when I’d had my first proper girl-inspired boner over Darcy Kinsley’s overnight breast enhancement—which I found out later was nothing but tissues and padding. Instead of laughing or telling the school about it, like I was certain Darcy would have, Alyssa distracted those around us so that I could make a quiet retreat.

  Of course, she’d teased me about it after, but only once the bitter sting of my embarrassment had burned away.

  We’d been there for each other through everything. The sort of friendship that seemed impossible to most people was second nature for us. Teasing one minute, sincere the next, but one thing was always constant—seeing Alyssa was always the highlight on my day.

  SITTING IN her kitchen with her family surrounding me, the ring I intended to give her was burning a hole in my pocket. Maybe it was a stupid idea after all. Maybe she’d read too much into it, or think it was silly, or she’d just flat-out hate it.

  I’d barely eaten the breakfast Ruth had laid out for me, even though I’d been starving when I’d arrived. There was no room for food around the knot that built in my stomach at a rapid rate. Despite the way we’d left everything the day before, the fact remained that it wouldn’t be Alyssa-my-friend walking down the hall. Instead, I would be seeing Alyssa-my-girlfriend for the first time.

  My breath caught as a lump grew in my throat to match the one in my stomach.

  “Are you okay?” Ruth asked me. “You look a little pale.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. My voice squeaked at the end, giving away my nerves.

  A moment later, Alyssa’s bedroom door opened and she came down the hall. I was relieved to see she looked relatively normal. Her hair was up in a ponytail like always and she wore the maroon-and-white uniform with a knee-length skirt like she always did. I had no complaints though. I liked her just as she was. I didn’t need her to be someone new or different.

  It was the little things that made her special to me. Like the fact that her legs were just a little on the skinny side, and her knees were just a little too big. Those things weren’t flaws; they added character to her body. Her boobs formed two perfect mounds that looked like they’d be just the right size to fit into my palms, and my hands practically itched at the thought of testing the theory, especially now that there might be a chance I could. There was nothing about her I would have changed, even if I’d been given the choice.

  In the end, all she’d done to dress up was run a slick of fairy-floss-pink lip gloss across her lips. I wondered whether it tasted like fairy floss too. I practically leaped from the stool at the breakfast bar and rushed to her side. Before I’d even thought about what I was doing, I pressed my lips to hers and stole a kiss.

  It was only as I pulled away, licking my lips to taste the sweet candy flavour of her gloss, that I realised perhaps she hadn’t told her mum about us yet. I clutched Alyssa’s hand and turned back toward Josh and Ruth.

  The grin on Ruth’s face told me that either she already knew or she’d just assumed, like my own mother, that our relationship was inevitable.

  “You coming, Josh?” I asked as Alyssa tugged me toward the door.

  “No, I’d rather hang around here for a moment and keep my breakfast down than follow you two lovebirds to school.”

  “Suit yourself,” Alyssa said with a laugh before pulling me outside.

  Once we were alone on our way to school, she glanced down at our joined hands and then back up at me. Her wide smile and bright eyes told me she was feeling the same warm feelings I was.

  “Hey, boyfriend,” she said as she gave my hand a squeeze.

  The shit-eating grin lifted my cheeks again. “Hi yourself, girlfriend.”

  “We probably shouldn’t play hooky today, should we?” Without releasing my hand, she sped up a little before turning to walk backwards so that she could meet my eyes.

  I thought about the day we could have if we did and ached to say yes. “We probably shouldn’t. It’s probably a better idea to prove we’re going to be responsible even if we’re a couple.”

  “Hmm, couple. I like the sound of it.” She turned around again, resting her head against my arm as we walked.

  I dropped her hand and wrapped my arm around her shoulders.

  “Maybe we can still be responsible if we’re a little late though?” she asked.

  “Maybe. Why? What do you have in mind?”

  She dragged me in the direction of the park where we’d played cards the day before—the park which had been “ours” for as long as I could remember and where everything had changed.

  “Well, our first date was cut a little short, don’t you think?”

  The ghost of her lips tracing over mine filled my mind, together with the memory of her tongue tangling with my own.

  “Definitely,” I said, unable to keep the lust and desire from my voice.

  We walked in silence until we arrived at our park. Without any verbal agreement, we made our way toward the table we’d claimed as our spot years earlier.

  Alyssa sat on the bench and I took my usual place p
erched behind her on the table. I placed my legs on either side of her body and leaned my chin on the top of her head. It was a position we’d sat in hundreds of times before as we chatted about anything and everything. Only, this time it was different. Neither of us spoke, which had never really happened before. The silence around us was almost maddening; the only sound, our matching breaths.

  “So—” we both said at the same time, before stopping at the same time.

  “You go—” Again our voices were almost perfectly in sync.

  I chuckled as she turned around and knelt on the bench to look at me. I helped her up onto the table beside me and just looked at her for a moment. Her lips called to me, and I wanted to kiss her, longed to with every part of me, but I didn’t know if I should. I didn’t want kissing to be the only thing we had. There was so much more that I liked about her and none of those things had changed. Yet it was still different. Everything was different.

  “Don’t hate me for asking, but is this weird as hell for you too?” she asked.

  My relief that I wasn’t the only one who was feeling the new, odd atmosphere surrounding us escaped in a quiet laugh. “So weird.”

  “It shouldn’t be though, should it?”

  “No. I mean, we’re still us, right?”

  She practically leapt in place. “Right!”

  “We’re still friends,” I added. “We always will be.”

  “Exactly. We’re just friends that kiss now.”

  As she said the words, my gaze was drawn to her bright pink lip gloss. I licked my lips. “Friends that kiss a lot?”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  I trailed my hands into her hair, drawing her face slowly closer to mine. “Am I?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. Her lips were so close to mine that I could feel her breath on my skin. “I’m starting to think that maybe I’m the lucky one.”

  I closed my eyes and covered the last of the distance between us in a heartbeat. Her lips were warm as they brushed against mine. Almost instantly, her tongue slipped into my mouth. My breath caught and my throat constricted. It would take some getting used to, being able to kiss her in that way.

  “I’m definitely the lucky one,” I said as we broke apart again. “And this”—I pressed my lips to hers again—“doesn’t change anything between us. Okay?”

  “Never,” she whispered. “You’re still my best friend, Dec. Nothing will change that.”

  “Good. Now, we’d better get going or we’ll be late for school.”

  “It’s the last week of the year. We could wag. No one would notice.”

  I shook my head. Although I really wanted to just go with her suggestion and forget about school for the day, I didn’t want to do anything to make our parents think our being together would cause trouble. I jumped off the table and grabbed my bag. “Josh would.”

  “He wouldn’t tell.” She lay back on the table. The movement caused her school blouse to lift away from her stomach. I averted my eyes, something I’d never done before. It was all different now. I didn’t know the rules when it came to ogling her now. I guessed I was allowed to because she was my girlfriend, but I didn’t want her to think that she was my girlfriend only because of her assets.

  “He might.” I picked up her bag as well. “Not today, Lys. I don’t want anyone giving us shit about us being together because we wagged the first day we were official.”

  As soon as I said the words, I was reminded of the little gift I’d bought for her to celebrate our first kiss. I dropped both bags to the ground and grabbed the ring out of my pocket.

  “I almost forgot. I got you this.” I held out the ring between two fingers.

  “What is it?” She sat up and reached for it. “A plastic ring?”

  Her gaze lifted, seeking mine. Her brows knitted together and her lips pursed.

  The way she said it made me feel stupid, especially when I’d wasted Mum’s money trying to get it.

  “Why did you get me a plastic ring?”

  “I thought you’d like it.” My voice was a little icier than I’d intended, but I hadn’t really anticipated that she would reject my gift.

  “I do.” The words were said almost as a question. She spun the ring around in her fingers. “I’m just not sure what it’s for.”

  She held up her hand; the ring was on her pinkie finger, and didn’t even fit all the way down to the first knuckle. A moment later, laughter escaped her.

  “Seriously, it doesn’t even fit my pinkie.”

  I stepped forward and snatched the ring back from her.

  “Don’t worry about it then,” I said as I tossed it into the long grass that circled the park. “I thought that maybe I should get you something to commemorate our first kiss, but I guess I was wrong.”

  She scrambled off the table and looked at the place where I’d tossed the ring. “God, Dec, stop being such a drama queen.”

  “Well, if I’m such a drama queen, maybe the ring isn’t the only thing I was wrong about.” I ducked and grabbed my bag, slinging it over my shoulder before stalking off toward the school without looking back.

  BY THE time I reached the school gate, guilt over the way I’d left Alyssa filled my stomach. I knew I was being overly dramatic, but I couldn’t help it. There were times it felt like a switch had been flipped inside my brain. When that happened, I was set to autopilot and self-destruct all at the same time.

  I turned around and headed back for the underpass, intending to walk back to the park and apologise. Instead, I met her halfway through the concrete tunnel.

  “I was coming back to find you,” I said.

  “What the hell was that?” she said, with unmistakable venom in her voice.

  “Do you know how much trouble I went through to get you a damn purple ring?”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “No, why don’t you tell me?”

  For the next few minutes, I ran through the story of the milk and the many attempts at getting that specific ring, the one in her favourite colour. By the end, we were both laughing.

  “I don’t understand you. You go to all that effort to get me a present and then you throw the damned thing away before I can even enjoy it.”

  “You didn’t want it.”

  “If I didn’t want it, would I have gone into that grass, even though I knew darn well it’s going to give me hives, just to retrieve a hunk of plastic?”

  “What?”

  She held out her hand, the purple ring rested on her palm. Up the length of her arm splotches of red already marred her pale skin.

  “Lys,” I admonished. “You should have just left it.”

  “I didn’t want to. Like you said, it’s something to remember our first day together.”

  My lip twitched. “And now our first fight as a couple too.”

  “And the first time we kissed and made up.” She touched her lips to mine.

  “Hmm, I like the sound of that. Maybe we should fight more, just so we can have the making up kiss again and again?”

  “Or we can just have the kissing without the fighting?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  She started to scratch at her arm.

  I frowned. “Come on, let’s get to sick bay and see if they’ve got anything to help with that rash.”

  CHAPTER THREE: THE END OF SCHOOL

  DESPITE THE ROCKY start to the morning, our first day at school as a couple went better than I’d expected. Of course, Alyssa and I had to spend more time apart than we did together—we had very few classes in common. Although, being that it was the last week of school each class pretty much consisted of a rotation of movie marathons and various games.

  Even my other best friend, Ben, was in more classes with Alyssa than he was with me. Instead, I had to put up with the blonde brigade—a group of two boys and two girls who tormented the school. Darcy Kinsley, Blake Cooper, Spencer Patterson, and Hayley Bliss: the kids who thought they were popular, who acted popular, but who we
re the butt of everyone else’s jokes behind their backs. I got along with them all well enough generally, especially individually, but it wasn’t as effortless as being with Ben or Alyssa. Especially not when all I wanted to do was find Alyssa and kiss her some more. It wasn’t long before I realised I should have just let her convince me to ditch school for the day. We could have spent the day together. It wasn’t like we were really needed at there anyway.

  “I’m going to ask Alyssa today,” Blake whispered to Spencer while they had their heads down on the desks behind me. It was in the middle of math class—and the latest round of heads down thumbs up.

  His statement earned him my undivided attention.

  “Dude, you’ve been saying that for two weeks now,” Spencer replied with a laugh. “You’ll pussy out today just like every other day.”

  “I haven’t pussied out. Just decided to delay it. You saw what she was like last time. She just wants to get all serious and shit. I’m just looking for a proper make-out session in the back of the movies. Maybe even a chance to take a punt at second base.”

  Even though my forehead was on the desk and my eyes were closed, I could easily imagine the looks on their faces while they discussed my Alyssa. I clenched my fists.

  Spencer chuckled. “Yeah, I could totally see her being a one man kind of girl. Not like Darcy. Man, I swear she’ll chase anything with a dick.”

  When a finger brushed along my thumb, I almost leapt in my seat. The game had completely slipped my mind as I listened to the two bozos behind me chat in hushed whispers. I tucked my thumbs in and waited for Mrs. Turner to call time on the current round. Any guess I made would be exactly that—a guess. I didn’t even try to concentrate on the touch, just on the conversation behind me. The only consolation was that once the bell rang for the end of this period, it would be lunch time and I’d see Alyssa again. And maybe we’d even announce our news to our small group of friends.