All I could focus on was the gorgeous smile aimed right at me, as the most perfect boy I’d ever laid eyes on stopped in front of me and ran his hand through his moppy blond hair. I felt myself get giddy as I looked up at him and took a sip of my beer in an effort to have something to do with my hands.
“Hey Em,” he said.
He’d taken to calling me Em during our phone conversations, and I loved the way my nickname rolled off his tongue.
“Hi,” I said quietly, my shyness taking over.
“You having fun?” he asked, taking a sip of his beer and eyeing me coyly.
I nodded.
He laughed, obviously appreciating watching me squirm, but then, as if to ease the tension, he took my hand and asked if I wanted to take a walk. Again, all I could do was nod.
We walked around the house to a more secluded area, where we wouldn’t have the eyes of all of our classmates on us while we stumbled through our first party together. I found that with Ben’s hand around mine, I was able to relax a little, even though I didn’t actually have to form words, which was a good thing. On the phone it had been so much easier. I was pretty sure I’d been witty and charming, but in person I had trouble putting coherent sentences together.
Ben stopped once we were out of sight, turned to face me and made a joke. I don’t remember what it was. I just remember laughing as I let my guard down, and we spent the rest of the night leaning against the side of the house talking. It wasn’t until fifteen minutes before I had to be home that Rachel found me and told me we had to go. I couldn’t believe how fast three hours had gone by. I definitely didn’t want to leave, but the last thing I wanted was to be under house arrest again, so I begrudgingly told Ben I had to go.
Seeing our night rapidly come to a close, he’d offered to drive me home. He obviously didn’t want to part ways just yet either. When we pulled up in front of my house, he walked me to the front porch where we sat down on the steps. He said he didn’t have to be home for another hour and asked if my parents would mind if I stayed outside for a while to talk.
I shook my head, although I really had no idea how my parents would feel about me sitting on the front porch with a boy. Technically I wasn’t violating curfew, but they might see things differently. Luckily, they were asleep.
Ben took my hand and held it in his lap, as we settled onto the cold cement. For a few minutes, he didn’t say anything. He just played with my fingers for a few moments before lacing them together with his. I watched our hands as he did that, still amazed at who was sitting next to me. Then, he looked at me for a few seconds, leaned over and kissed me lightly, sending my stomach into a tailspin.
From that night on, we were inseparable. He was my first love, my first everything, and until recently, I’d thought our relationship was perfect. But then it was like one day everything changed, and for the past few months it had started to feel like almost everything Ben did grated on my nerves. I tried to focus on the good things about him, the things I’d always loved, but it was hard. More often than not, it felt like the bad outweighed the good, which usually resulted in me getting irritated with him, and us getting into a fight. And when weren’t fighting, my feelings for him felt forced.
But I wasn’t ready to give up. We had history – five years of it – and there had been a point when I’d loved him completely. He’d been my whole world. I couldn’t just let that go.
I glanced over at the picture of Ben and me on my nightstand. It had been taken our senior year of high school after one of the football games. Ben was hugging me from behind, his head tucked next to mine. We were both smiling widely. Our team had just won, so we were excited. You could see the flush in both of our cheeks from the excitement and the cold weather. More than that, we looked so in love with each other.
I wondered when exactly I’d stopped being that happy with him, but more than anything, I wanted to know how to get that feeling back.
Chapter Four
“You should break up with him. He’s a douche. You could do so much better.”
I looked up to see my brother standing in my doorway, lazily leaning against the doorframe.
“What do you want?” I asked him, ignoring his comment that had caught me off-guard. It had sort of felt like he’d been reading my mind.
I’d never tell him that, though. Chase had always hated Ben, so his chastising comments were expected. I was used to them, but I’d also always staunchly defended Ben in the past. I didn’t want to give my brother the satisfaction that I’d been thinking along the same lines as him. I knew it would give him way too much pleasure to know that he was even partially right.
I wasn’t sure why he was putting in his two cents where my relationship was concerned anyway. As a rule of thumb, Chase and I didn’t involve ourselves in each other’s lives. In truth, we made more of an effort to avoid each other than anything else.
I considered it a good thing we went to school so far away from each other. Chase was going to be a senior at NYU in the fall. Fortunately, because of that, I didn’t have to see him more than a few times a year, and even then I could avoid spending any actual time around him. I hadn’t even called him while I’d been in New York visiting Rachel over Spring Break. We didn’t keep in touch during the school year and had barely acknowledged each other since we’d been home for the summer. I knew he was only talking to me because he needed something, just like he only wanted to drive to the beach with Keely and me because it was convenient for him.
I wish we got along or could at least be civil to each other, but in truth we hadn’t had much in common since we were kids. Chase was more of a loner, in the ‘I don’t conform to normal societal expectations and therefore prefer to alienate myself from anyone who does’. In high school he lived for breaking the rules, getting away with whatever he could, and conning my parents into believing he was the perfect son, which frustrated me to no end, since they always believed him. From my experience he hadn’t changed much since then, so I didn’t make much of an effort to bridge the gap between us. My mother was always bugging me about not trying harder to be friends with him. She didn’t get that we couldn’t have been more different and therefore tolerated each other at best.
Irritatingly enough, with his almost black hair, bright green eyes that he got from some obscure relative, and dark, thick lashes, Chase turned a lot of heads – mostly from girls who liked bad boys or who were just as pierced and tattooed as he was – but still, girls loved my brother. I’d never actually known him to have a girlfriend, but growing up my friends all thought he was gorgeous. I just didn’t see the allure.
The year before he’d pierced his left eyebrow with a silver barbell, adding to the piercings he had in his tongue and his left nipple. He also had a sleeve of tattoos up his right arm and some strategically placed tattoos on other areas of his body.
But for as dissimilar as our outward appearances were, since I was neither pierced nor tattooed, where we really differed was our personalities. I had always been more outgoing and friendly, and Chase had always been quiet and serious, but he also had an intensely sarcastic side that would come out from time to time. His sense of humor was so dry that most of the time our family didn’t get it when he made a joke. He was usually the only one lazily laughing at what he’d said, mostly because he was high when he’d made the joke.
Chase had been smoking weed regularly since we’d started high school, and I’d always wondered if it was what made him anti-social or if that was just who he was. Ironically, smoking didn’t hinder him from excelling in school, so I wasn’t entirely sure. He had a 4.0 GPA and barely had to crack a book.
“What do you want?” I repeated, slower this time in case he hadn’t heard me. Maybe the weed was finally affecting his brain.
Chase smirked and ran a hand through his hair. “I need your window,” he said dryly, as he surveyed the piles of clothes on my bed.
“You could ask,” I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest, “inste
ad of just demanding.”
I could see Chase fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “Oh, Great Princess Emily, would you do me the immense honor of allowing me to borrow your window, so I can humbly smoke a joint?”
“What’s wrong with yours?” I asked, annoyed that he was encroaching on my territory, knowing that he was doing so, so he could smoke weed. But it enraged me further that he found it humorous to mock me in the process.
“Mom and Dad are on the back porch. They’ll smell it from my window,” he said, dropping the affected voice he’d used when attempting to insult me.
I wanted to laugh. Chase had been sneaking his bad habits all summer because my parents still didn’t know he smoked – weed or cigarettes. Unfortunately for him, his room had a view of the backyard and looked out over the porch where my parents liked to relax. My room had a view of the front yard and the street. It was far enough away from the backyard that they wouldn’t smell the vile stench of his pot.
“So don’t smoke,” I said in my nastiest tone, figuring it was probably the third time that day he’d gotten high.
“Bite me,” was his charming and oh-so-mature response.
I glared at him. “Fine, whatever,” I said through gritted teeth. “Just take the screen out and blow out, not in. I don’t want to smell that stuff.”
Chase was one of the few people who had always been able to bring out the worst in me. He had a way of getting under my skin that drove me insane, but it had been worse since I’d been home for the summer. I was already on edge most of the time anyway, so his attitude toward me made my moods worse, which in turn made me crabbier, and resulted in a viscous circle of bitchiness that I couldn’t seem to escape.
“Thanks, sis,” Chase said, his voice full of sarcasm. “I’m so glad we can have these little bonding moments. They just mean so much to me.”
As he passed by me, he gave me a look that told me he thought I was being stuck-up, judgmental and close-minded. It was a look he often tossed my way. I returned his look with a sarcastic smirk of my own, which only made him chuckle lightly as he settled onto the windowsill and worked to pop the screen out. He completely ignored Keely as he walked by her.
I glared at his back as I got off the bed and turned to her. “I’m getting a drink. Do you want to come with me?”
“Sure,” she said as she put the CDs she was browsing back on my desk and got up from the chair.
I watched her steal a glance a Chase who was rolling a joint on my windowsill. I couldn’t help thinking that if I was really a bitch, I would have told him no. It was funny that I’d never even considered that as an option. Maybe there was hope for me yet.
“Why do you let him get to you?” Keely asked, eyeing me cautiously as we closed my bedroom door behind us and headed downstairs.
“What?” I asked, turning to face her.
Her question was thoroughly confusing, given our history. We’d often complained about Chase to each other, as he irritated us both equally. It was the first time she’d ever questioned my reaction to him being a jerk. She usually agreed with my opinions of him.
“Why do you get so worked up over what he says and does?”
“I’m not worked up,” I said, automatically defending myself. I hated that my little sister seemed to have more clarity than me all of a sudden.
“You are too.”
“He’s a jerk,” I said simply. “He’s a stoner loser who walks around here like he owns the place. It’s irritating.”
Keely took a deep breath as we made our way through the house. Through the sliding glass door, I could see our parents sitting on the porch enjoying some afternoon cocktails. My mother was laughing at something my dad had said. I started to wonder what had kept her infatuation with him all of these years, since they seemed to be just as in love with each other as they’d always been. It made me think of Ben and our history and what it really meant to me. Maybe breaking up wasn’t such a good idea.
“He’s not that bad,” Keely said, breaking my concentration.
I stopped completely and turned to face her from the doorway to the kitchen. Her comment had thrown me for a complete loop. She was looking at me speculatively, like she was trying to gauge what I was thinking. I raised my eyebrows and just looked at her. I wasn’t sure how to respond. Chase was that bad. There were no two ways about it.
“Keely, seriously?” I finally asked after a few seconds of deadlocked eye contact with her. “He just marched into my room, assumed he could take it over and didn’t say two words to you. How can you defend him?”
She shrugged, but she looked like she wanted to say something, so I probed when she didn’t speak up.
“What are you not telling me?” I asked, stepping closer to her.
“Nothing,” she said, her eyes drifting away from where I held her gaze, my eyes locked on hers.
I crossed my arms in front of me and stared at her so she was forced to turn her head and face me. “Keels, what’s going on? You hate Chase.”
“Nothing’s going on, and I never said I hated him. You said that.” I could see the defiance cross her face. “You’ve always assumed that it was you and me against Chase, but I’m sort of sick of it. I want to be friends with both of you. I think it’s bullshit that we can’t get along.”
I was sort of taken aback by her statement. “Well, maybe if he wasn’t such a loser jerk, I’d want to hang out with him more,” I snapped.
“Well,” Keely said, and I could tell she was trying not to start an argument with me, “he might not be such a jerk if you were a little nicer to him.” I watched her cringe slightly as she said the words, most likely anticipating how they might set me off.
Seeing this, I tried to maintain my composure. “Keely, he’s stoned most of the time, he’s rude, he makes fun of everything I do, and oh, right, we have nothing in common. How am I supposed to be friends with someone like that? He’s an asshole. Everyone knows that.”
She shrugged. “Not everyone. Rachel was talking to him the other night at that concert I went to. She didn’t seem to be repulsed by him. She was even laughing with him. Maybe if you were nice to him, like she is, he’d be nice to you.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, completely ignoring the last part of her statement. “Rachel? My Rachel?” She nodded. “My best friend Rachel was talking and laughing with Chase?”
I was having a hard time imagining that. Worse, why hadn’t she told me? The concert was three nights ago. It was some electronic band Rachel had to cover for the magazine. I wasn’t a big fan, so I’d opted to hang out with Ben instead. I didn’t even know Chase had gone to the show.
“She watched the whole show with him and Davis,” Keely explained. “I talked to them for a few minutes. They seemed to be having fun.”
I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t see Rachel, who disliked Chase as much as I did, because he was equally mean to her, actually hanging out and laughing with him and his best friend, who was an even bigger loser than Chase was. It didn’t make any sense.
“So Chase has been nice to you?” I asked, just for clarification. “Is that why you want me to give him a break?”
“Just try not to be so judgmental of him, Em. I mean, he does smoke a lot, but he’s really smart, and it doesn’t make him all stupid like it does some people. He says it relaxes him and helps him concentrate.”
I put my hand up in protest. “Okay, how do you know all of this? And, better yet, why are you defending his habits?”
She shrugged. “I sort of hung out with him last night, and he was telling me about it. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Lots of people I know smoke.” She shrugged again.
“Okay, Keels, for the record, it’s illegal, so it is a big deal.”
“So is underage drinking, but you did that for years.”
Yeah, she had me there. I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I diverted the conversation.
“When did you hang out with him?” I asked her.
“Last night w
hen he got home. I heard a noise in the hall and thought it was you and Ben, so I came out. Chase asked me if I wanted to come outside with him, so I did. Emily, he never invites me to hang out. I figured I needed to capitalize on the opportunity.”
“And,” I prompted, knowing there was more to the story.
“I don’t know,” she said, looking down. “We went out on the back porch, and he didn’t really say much. I asked him what he did that night, and he told me about how he’d been over at Davis’s house with some friends. He said they hung out, smoked and played video games. It wasn’t that exciting. Then I told him about how Barrett, Paige and I had gone to Lauren’s party for a little while before we had to be home for curfew.”
I didn’t say anything in response, because honestly I was a little dumbstruck. I just let her continue.
“He asked me about stuff,” she said, “like he was really interested in my life.”
“Like what?”
I couldn’t fathom what Chase would want to ask Keely. They had less in common than he and I did.
“I don’t know, like who I was dating. When I told him I was sort of seeing three guys, he acted all big brotherly, telling me that I should let him know if any of them don’t treat me right. It’s was honestly kind of cool.”
I felt my jaw fall open. Chase had never done that for me – ever. I don’t think he even knew Ben’s name for the first six months we were dating. Chase tended not to care about anyone but himself. Why he was suddenly being protective of Keely was beyond me.
“That’s so not Chase,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief.
“I don’t know, maybe it is him. You don’t even know him anymore. He’s grown up a lot. I think you need to give him a chance to show you who he really is. He was nice to me, because I don’t judge him and I’m nice to him.”
Broken Fairytales Series Box Set (Broken Fairytales, Buried Castles, Shattered Crowns) Page 4
