Broken Fairytales Series Box Set (Broken Fairytales, Buried Castles, Shattered Crowns)

by Monica Alexander

  “Really,” he said, and I could see him mulling that thought over in his mind. “What of?”

  “I’m not sure. We didn’t get that far. She said something about getting a quote on her rib cage, but she hadn’t figured out which one she wants.”

  I watched Chase swallow and fight the smile that wouldn’t stay off of his lips. “I think that’s kind of hot.”

  I kicked sand on his feet. “You would. Ugh, you’re not thinking about hooking up with Rachel, are you?”

  Chase shot me a look like I was nuts. “I don’t date sorority chicks.”

  “She’s more than a sorority chick, Chase. She’s a really great person. She’s beautiful, and she loves music, and she’s cool and funny. You’d be lucky to date her.”

  He raised his eyebrows at me. “Why are you trying to sell me on her if you don’t want me to date her?”

  “I’m not. I’m just saying. She’s pretty amazing.”

  “She has been looking really hot lately, too,” Chase said, setting his book down and stretching out on his towel. “When’s she coming to visit?”

  I knew he was just teasing, but I smacked him on the arm anyway.

  “Ow,” he said, laughing and rubbing his arm. “What was that for? I just agreed with you.”

  “Chase Cole, you’d better keep your hands off my best friend when she comes to visit in a few weeks. She is off-limits,” I said, sitting up and crossing my arms.

  He lifted his sunglasses from his eyes, appraising me, “So even though you’ve deemed me a decent guy, I’m not good enough for Rachel?”

  “Do you want to be good enough for Rachel?”

  “I didn’t say that, but you’re being pretty hypocritical, Emily.”

  In desperate need of an out, because I couldn’t really explain why I didn’t think Rachel and Chase dating was a good idea, I thankfully remembered something Molly had shared with me the first night we’d met.

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend?” I asked, hoping he would bite.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be interested in Rachel.”

  “Who said I was?” Chase questioned, clearly getting exasperated with me.

  I guess he never really did say outright that he was interested in her

  “What’s your girlfriend’s name?” I asked him.

  He looked over at me. “Amy.”

  “Amy,” I repeated. “Where did you meet her?”

  “New York.”

  “When?”

  “In the spring.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s a student,” he said, with a finality in his voice that told me the conversation wasn’t going any further.

  It seemed that although we’d become semi-friends, my brother wasn’t interested in discussing his personal life with me. He was still as secretive as ever, so I settled for being in the dark and went to join Keely and Jared in the ocean.

  ***

  That night as I got dressed to go out, I noticed the wind had started to pick up, rustling the sea grass below my window. Thankfully we weren’t going to the beach but to a house a few blocks away, because it really looked like it was going to pour any second. I threw my favorite navy blue hoodie on over a white tee and a khaki skirt, thinking that I’d want my hood if we got caught in the rain.

  Thankfully the rain held off as we made our way down the street in the opposite direction we usually walked. Molly had come over from her place with her cousin Leo who might have been the tallest guy I’d ever met. He was a few years older than us, and I’d talked to him a handful of times, but he was a quiet guy, so he didn’t say much as we walked. He didn’t smoke either, so while Chase and Molly shared a joint, I hung back with Leo, and he told me all about his girlfriend who was at home in Pennsylvania for the summer.

  It was only a ten minute walk to the party, which was at a small house on the beach. Even though it was somewhat early, I could tell a lot of people were already gathered together. As we walked up the stairs, we were greeted by people sitting on the chairs and railings on the front porch and spilling onto the steps. The inside of the house was just as crowded with people in various states of intoxication.

  With Molly leading the way, the four of us made our way to the keg in the kitchen, filling up our cups and going our separate ways. Finding myself alone, as usual, I wandered over to the living room where a group of people I knew were playing Drinking Jenga. I stood watching, sipping my beer as I tried to figure out how exactly it was different from the regular Jenga I’d played as a kid.

  “You want in, Em,” a guy on summer break from UNC named Byron asked me. He was a sophomore, and I hadn’t met him before that summer, but I knew some of his Sigma Chi frat brothers. We’d played the ‘do you know’ game when we realized we both went to UNC.

  I shrugged. “Sure, why not.”

  I’d noticed that there were messages written on the little pieces of wood that indicated what the player had to do after successfully removing the piece from the stack and placing it safely on top again. So far I’d seen people chug a beer, take off a piece of clothing, and tell a secret about themselves. I was a little afraid to ask what the person who knocked down the stack of blocks had to do.

  “Sit down,” a girl named Tania said, patting the empty seat next to hers, so I sat and waited for my turn.

  They’d just started, so only five pieces had been removed and placed back on top. When it was my turn, I selected a safe piece in the middle, pulled it out cleanly, read it and put it back on top.

  “What’s it say?” Byron asked, looking at me expectantly. Something told me he’d started drinking a few hours before and was overly excited about everyone else catching up with him.

  “Take five sips of beer,” I said, reading the small piece of wood and placing it gently on top of the stack. I then proceeded to take five sips of my beer in quick succession, the bubbles burning slightly as they went down so fast.

  Next to me, Tania pulled out a piece and groaned as she read it. “Get everyone at the table new beers,” she said, as she begrudgingly got up and went into the kitchen.

  While she was gone, we continued around the table, and I watched as the other players followed the directions on their wooden pieces. When it got to the girl next to me, she pulled out a piece and frowned.

  “What’s this?” she asked, looking directly at Byron.

  He leaned forward across the table to see what she was holding. “Yes!” he said, pumping his fist in the air. The girl frowned, causing Byron’s face to fall. “Come on, Michelle, it’s not that bad. Give me some credit.”

  I leaned forward, trying to read what it said and made out the words ‘kiss’ and ‘Byron’. I watched as Byron made his way around the table toward Michelle, who was crossing her arms and shaking her head.

  “I won’t do it,” she said, pushing her lips together in defiance.

  “Michelle,” Byron said, the smile vanishing from his face. “I said I was sorry, okay?”

  “What is he sorry for?” I leaned over and asked Tania, who had returned with drinks for everyone. “Writing ‘Kiss Byron’ on the game piece?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she whispered back. “Michelle and Byron went out for about six months last year. When she broke up with him, he took a pair of her underwear and hung them out his window at the frat house like a flag and told everyone they were hers. She didn’t speak to him for a few months, so this should be very interesting.”

  “Michelle, you have to do it,” Byron said. “Game rules. You agreed to them when you sat down.”

  “I didn’t know I was going to have to kiss you,” she spat at him.

  He shrugged sheepishly, and something made me wonder if he’d put the piece in there on purpose, knowing there was a chance she might pick it. Worst case, some other girl would pick it and he’d get to kiss her. It was very sneaky but somewhat brilliant.

  “Rules are rules, Mich,” he said, coming closer to her, as she was
leaning back toward me.

  “He’s right, Michelle,” Tania said, from my other side.

  Michelle shot a glare back at Tania before she turned around to face Byron. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll play by your stupid rules.”

  With that, she grabbed Byron’s cheeks and forced his face down to hers, pressing her lips hard against his. I watched Byron wince at how rough she was being.

  Then, he screamed, “Ow!” and pulled away. “What the hell, Michelle?” he asked, his hand flying to his lower lip where I noticed he was bleeding just a little bit. Michelle had actually bit him.

  To my left, she was smiling triumphantly, as if she had won. I knew my eyes were wide as I watched it all unfold. I couldn’t believe she’d actually bitten his lip enough to draw blood. Poor Byron, I thought, as he put a napkin to his lip and slunk back to his seat. He looked genuinely hurt as he looked across the table at Michelle.

  “Geez, it was just a pair of panties,” he mumbled from behind the napkin.

  “Okay, my turn,” I said, in an effort to break the tension, as everyone around the table seemed to have frozen as they watched the slightly vampiric scene unfold.

  I reached forward, pulled out a piece and read what it said. All I saw was the word ‘DARE’. I looked up at Byron, who had the side of his beer can pressed against his lips. His eyes lit up when he saw what it was.

  “Oh, you got the dare block. I put a few of them in there to mix things up a bit. The way it works is that the person to your right gets to pick a dare for you to do, and you have to do it,” he explained, mumbling slightly since the can was still covering his lip.

  I looked to my right and saw Michelle sitting there with a satisfied smile on her face. She looked over at me, then back at Byron and said, “Oh, this’ll be fun.”

  Crap, was all I could think. She’d better not make me kiss Byron’s bloody lip. Gross.

  “Okay,” Michelle said, bringing her hands together. “I want you to go over there, tell that guy that you think he’s hot – loud enough so we all can hear – and then kiss him.”

  I looked up to where she was gesturing. Thankfully it was in the opposite direction of where Byron was sitting. There were three guys sitting in the living room, so I wasn’t sure who she was referring to. Then I realized that one of them was Cute Coffeehouse Guy and he was staring at me. Great.

  “Um, which one were you referring to?” I asked, hoping it was the blond guy next to Coffeehouse Guy.

  “Sexy, dark hair, sitting next to the semi-cute blond guy,” Michelle said.

  My stomach jumped into my throat. Coffeehouse Guy. Great. Well, at least he didn’t remember who I was. For all he knew, I was just some random girl who was summering here – who thought he had kissable lips. Awesome.

  “Okay, fine,” I said bravely, not wanting to earn a lecture from Byron about not following the Drinking Jenga rules.

  I took a moment to chug the rest of my beer for extra liquid courage, got up from my seat and walked right over to Coffeehouse Guy who was appraising me with a questioning look on his face. Lightening flashed outside the window and thunder rumbled overhead, as if punctuating what I was about to do.

  “Hi,” I said. “I have to tell you’re hot, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said slowly, giving me a quizzical look.

  “You are so hot,” I said, loudly and a little dramatically, causing the people around me to turn their heads, mostly likely wondering if I was drunk and about to make a fool of myself. Then I leaned down and pecked Coffeehouse Guy on the cheek. I turned around and walked away before I could see the expression on his face and smiled at Michelle as I returned to the table.

  She shook her head. “No. That doesn’t count.”

  “What?” I asked, thinking she must be smoking crack. I opened my new beer and took a long pull. “Why?”

  “Because you had to kiss him on the lips,” she told me.

  “You didn’t specify,” I said, shooting her a satisfied look that told her I’d already thought of that. She opened her mouth to protest then shut it quickly when she realized I was right.

  “Ha, she got you there, Mich,” Byron said, earning a glare from Michelle.

  “Whatever,” Michelle said, angrily pushing away from the table and stalking out of the room.

  “Thank God,” Byron said when she was gone. “That girl is psycho!”

  I laughed, since I’d sort of been thinking the same thing after she’d drawn blood. As we started playing again, I shot a glance back at Cute Coffeehouse Guy and smiled at him. He returned my gesture before looking away again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What was that all about last night?” Molly asked, as we sifted through clothes at one of the many surf shops on the island.

  Outside the rain was coming down in sheets and every few minutes a giant clap of thunder would shake the foundation of the wooden building we were in. After the rain had started the night before, it hadn’t let up, and we’d had to call Molly’s brother-in-law Simon to pick us up from the party.

  “What was what?” I asked her, trying to think back to what she might be talking about, as I looked through a rack of bathing suits. The latter part of my night was sort of fuzzy at best.

  “You and Zack,” she said, holding up a short, hot pink skirt, making a face and putting it back.

  “Who?”

  “Dark hair, light eyes, usually has a guitar attached to his hands.”

  “Oh, him,” I said recognition dawning on me, as I finally learned Cute Coffeehouse Guy’s name. “I just got dared to kiss him while we were playing a drinking game. It was nothing. I didn’t even know who he was.”

  Total lie. I consciously decided not to tell her than I’d been fantasizing about Zack for the past week and that I thought he was pretty much the hottest guy I’d ever seen.

  “Hmm,” was all she said.

  “What?” I asked, perplexed by what her ‘hmm’ had meant. I couldn’t read her, and I was suddenly fearful that she was hooking up with Zack.

  “Nothing. Forget I said anything.”

  “Okay.”

  I didn’t want to push the issue. Molly was as private as Chase, so I figured prying would only serve to aggravate her. I let the questions burning in my brain drop, figuring I might get a chance to ask them some other time. Or maybe I wouldn’t.

  ***

  Later that night, after the storm had passed, we were gathered at a large house on the east end of the island that was being rented by twelve college students from UNC, including Byron, Tania and Michelle.

  I hadn’t really been in the mood to go out, thinking I’d like to stay in and watch a movie, but Keely had guilt-tripped me into going. She was complaining about wanting to go out, and wanting some bonding time with her big sister, so I caved and got dressed for the party.

  As soon as we got there, I could tell it was over-crowded. It seemed the UNC students had invited fifty of their closest friends down for the weekend, and there were close to a hundred people in the house. Chase disappeared with Molly as soon as we got there, so Keely and I fought our way to the keg on our own.

  We weren’t in the long line for more than five minutes when Keely ran up to the front to talk to the cute guy manning the beer. I watched her lean over, cup his ear with her hand and whisper something that made him grin. She stepped back, smiled, and I watched as he handed her two bottles of beer from the cooler he’d been sitting on. She walked back to me with a triumphant smile on her face.

  “Nice job,” I said, taking the beer she handed me and stepping out of line, ignoring the looks of annoyance from the people closest to us. “How’d you swing that?”

  “Well,” she said, taking a sip of her drink. “I told him he was the cutest guy at the party and that I wouldn’t mind keeping him company in there if he could hook me up with two beers. He gave us some from his stash.”

  “That was nice of him,” I said, realizing that my options were now to hang with Keely and Keg Boy or hang out
by myself. Great. So much for sisterly bonding. So glad I came.

  She grinned wickedly. “Well, I might have also promised him a few more things, but I might not have.”

  “Keely!” I exclaimed, realizing what she’d just admitted to me. “I thought you were seeing Matt and Jared. Do you really want to take on another guy?”

  “Always,” she said, grinning. Then she shrugged. “I don’t really feel like being pinned down. Matt’s from Ohio, and Jared lives in England. It’s not like we’ll have some long-distance connection after August. Besides, they’re not here to entertain me, so I had to find someone else to do it.”

  I sighed. Classic Keely. She had no trouble getting guys. She had trouble holding onto them. She always tried to juggle too many and they all ended up getting hurt and breaking up with her. But she never seemed to be phased by it. She always had someone else waiting in the wings. I guess it was sort of liberating if you thought about it.

  “Okay, gotta go,” she said, hurrying back to Keg Boy, taking a seat on his lap and throwing her arm around his neck.

  I watched her smile widely at him and lean down to whisper something else to him before I turned around and left the kitchen. In that moment, I envied my sister’s carefree nature with guys. I’d never been able to do that. Maybe my life would be easier if I just let go once and a while – when it actually counted.

  The party was so crowded that I felt overwhelmed all of a sudden. The music blasting overhead wasn’t my taste, so the heavy hip-hop beat bore into my skull, making it ache dully. Combined with the fact that I was suddenly very hot in my jeans and tank top, and every brush to my skin had me jerking away from the offending person in annoyance, I knew I needed to get some air.

  Seeing a door to what I hoped was the back porch, I made my way slowly to it. I had to keep squeezing between people to push through. I finally closed my hand around the knob and turned it hard, feeling relief when it opened. The cool damp air that was left after the rain washed over me.

  I closed the door tightly behind me and surveyed my new surroundings. In the far corner, there was a couple making out on the porch swing that creaked and swung every time they moved, and at the other end there was a group of guys sitting around a table, playing cards. We were two stories up, so I could see the beach below. It seemed deserted, but the sand was probably too wet to be comfortable to walk in.