by Anders Grey
“Really, Cain, I’m not sure if we can accommodate one more,” she said. “I’ve already booked the caterer, and they need a specific number of attendees, and–”
“Then we can split the food,” I offered.
Her lips went tight. I wondered if she was starting to regret inviting me in the first place.
“Cain,” Johnny’s urgent growl came from behind me. “It’s fine if she doesn’t want me there.”
Relief flashed across Cherry’s face, then vanished when I spoke again.
“Then I’m not going,” I said simply.
“What?” Cherry asked, flustered.
“What?” Johnny barked.
I shrugged and crossed my arms. “I’m sorry, Cherry, but I’m going to pass on this party unless Johnny’s invited.”
Both of them gawked at me. I was surprised by my own words, but I couldn’t stop them. It felt like the whole neighborhood was ganging up on Johnny like vultures and I wasn’t going to sit back and watch them rip him apart anymore.
He’d stood up for me once. Now I was going to stand up for him.
“Um,” Cherry said quietly, obviously at a loss for words. She tried to force a smile. “Well. You can just hold on to that. I’ll see what I can do with the caterer. Have a good day, Cain.” She paused. “Johnny.”
Cherry hurried down the driveway and soon the click of her heels disappeared around the hedged corner.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Johnny demanded.
I rounded on him. “Me?”
“Yes, you! Why did you go and cause a scene?”
“There’s no scene. No one’s here but us and Cherry,” I said. “And what did you want me to do? Stand back and say nothing?”
Johnny ground his teeth. “Yes.”
“Sorry, but I can’t do that,” I argued, shaking my head.
He narrowed his eyes. “I can tell. You just love playing the white knight, don’t you?”
“What?” I uncrossed my arms, feeling irritation rise in my throat. “I’m not playing anything. She was rude and totally out of line. She treated you like you didn’t belong here.”
Johnny let out an exasperated sigh. “Maybe I don’t.”
I was stunned into silence for a moment. “No, that’s not true. Don’t listen to her.”
“It’s not her. It’s everyone, and everything. I don’t know why I bothered coming back.”
I didn’t like the dark tone in his voice. As he turned to storm back into his house, I grabbed his wrist.
“Johnny, don’t,” I urged. “Look, I’ll talk to Cherry. I’m sure she’ll change her mind.”
He spun to face me. “I don’t care about the stupid party, all right? It’s not about that!”
“Then what is it about?”
“This whole place!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms in the air. “And you!”
My grip on him loosened. “Me?”
His eyes blazed with emotion as he glared at me. “Yes. You. Why do you care so much if I go to this party or not? Why do you care if I get humiliated in front of everybody?”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t want to see that happen to you.”
“Why don’t you just leave me alone?”
“Because you’re the only real person here. Don’t you see how fake everyone else is?” I said with a weak laugh. In a softer voice, I added, “Johnny, you’re the only friend I have here in Rosecreek.”
Something about my words startled him, and he stared at me in disbelief. Then his expression suddenly turned cold. He took a step back and firmly yanked his wrist out of my grip.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Johnny said quietly. “We are not friends, Cain. You may have done some good things for me since I moved back, but I still hate you.”
I stopped like I’d been struck across the face. The venom dripping from his voice frightened me. There was no lie there. He really meant it.
It felt like the ground beneath my feet was unstable. Any replies shrivelled and died in my throat.
“Thanks for your help with the groceries,” he said in a clipped tone, no longer meeting my eyes. I backed off, giving him space.
It was clear when he turned his back on me that our conversation was over. Without another word, he returned to his home and shut the door. The cold weight of loneliness fell over me like someone had dumped ice water on my head. I numbly got back into my car and backed out of the driveway.
He didn’t just say he hated me, I thought. He said he still hated me.
What had I done to deserve it?
My confusion and disappointment slowly morphed into something uglier. I clutched the steering wheel hard, digging my nails into it. I hit the gas pedal too hard as I veered away from Johnny’s driveway and into my own.
After everything I’d done for him, this was how he reacted? By berating me and casting me off like trash?
I slammed the car door and stormed out of the garage, feeling lightheaded with anger. All I wanted to do was curl up in bed and rot my brain with any TV show that would get my mind off Johnny.
Maybe I did mean nothing to him. Maybe he’d forgotten about the friendship we had as teenagers, or maybe he just didn’t care. Either way, he’d made his feelings obvious. He didn’t give a shit about me. I needed to get that through my head. I was alone here in Rosecreek, and I always would be.
No childhood crush was going to change that.
7
Johnny
The mansion was stifling in a way my one-bedroom apartment had never been. All around me was a reminder of everything I wanted to escape. As my adrenaline pumped, I felt short of breath, like I couldn’t breathe properly in here.
My parents left the house as cold and empty as they were. The yawning chasm of a front foyer was the same one I dreaded walking through after school every day. The same staircase wound up towards the top floor, where I’d quickly scramble towards my room to avoid a conversation with my parents. The same lifeless art prints hung on the walls, even though my parents were wealthy enough to afford originals if they bothered to care.
But they didn’t care about original art. And they didn’t care about me.
Cain’s words kept echoing in my mind, and in the silence of the mansion they almost seemed loud enough to bounce off the walls.
Are you telling me your parents didn’t leave you anything besides the house?
Perhaps the fact that they hadn’t left me behind any money shouldn’t have surprised me. Judging by the neighbors’ reactions, I’d been forgotten by the entire community, including my parents. After I ran away, they put no effort into locating me or contacting me.
Or maybe they did try to locate me, just to be sure I was good and gone, I thought darkly.
Hot tears sprung to my eyes and I roughly cleared them away. I didn’t cry when I learned the news of their passing, and I didn’t cry when I stayed home during the funeral, so I refused to cry now.
I refused to care enough to cry.
Biting back the hot, tight feeling in my throat, I let my legs run on autopilot and carry me up the familiar path to my bedroom. I wanted to be somewhere smaller and safer, where the sound of my own choked breathing didn’t echo back inside the grand marble halls.
I trod the bittersweet route to my childhood bedroom, the middle room down the hallway. It was sandwiched in between my mom’s office and my parents’ master bedroom, like it was some kind of surveillance vice grip designed to take away even more of my privacy.
Something was odd. I stopped. All the doors in the hallway were ajar, left open for the cleaners and movers, as well as my own bedroom door since I’d slept there last night. But I hadn’t noticed until right now that the door to Mom’s office was closed.
I stared at the ornamental handle sitting perfectly horizontal. Something about the unknown pulled me in, and I tried it.
The door was locked. I frowned. This was my house now and knowing that there was an area off-limits to me was strangely
irritating.
There was a keyhole beneath the handle, meaning the door could be unlocked from the outside, but I didn’t have the key and I had no idea where to find it. I made a mental note to do a casual search of the rest of the house for it later, then continued on my way to my room.
With the momentary distraction gone, I was free to wallow in my thoughts again. I slumped into the bed, kicked off my shoes, and buried myself in three layers of blankets. A sour mood had clung to me since the disastrous breakfast at Cain’s this morning and being forced to spend time with him throughout the day didn’t help.
The thought of him just irritated me further. I smothered my face in a pillow, sighing angrily into it.
I just didn’t understand him. Why invite me for breakfast? Why offer to drive me to the store and then pay for two weeks’ worth of groceries? Worst of all, why refuse to attend some fancy Rosecreek party because the Hunters’ estranged son didn’t get an invitation? I rattled my brain trying to figure out what he gained from this, what made him tick, and came up with nothing that made sense.
Was he trying to make up for what he did ten years ago?
I scowled into the pillow. If he was, he wasn’t doing a very good job. All of this unusual behavior was just turning me off of him even more.
Even though there was a small, treacherous part of my brain that might’ve enjoyed his light touch on my arm, the cute pout on his lips.
“No,” I groaned out loud, smushing the pillow closer to my head. “God, no.”
I killed those thoughts like I was stomping out a fire. God, living here was warping my brain.
I needed to ground myself. More than anything I needed to get out of the toxic mind frame this mansion put me into. I needed something from the present, from my normal life.
Grabbing my phone, I found Mat’s contact info.
The surprised voice came quickly on the other end. “Johnny!”
“Hey, Mat,” I said, relaxing instantly at the sound of his voice.
Mathias was one of my oldest friends. After running away from home, his older brother Darius was the one to take me in until I could get a job. Mat and I were both artists, but Lady Luck had painted us with different strokes. While I was struggling to make ends meet, Mat made it big when his work was chosen to be in a major television series. Since then, the market was hungry for him. He had money pouring in, and his work was never undervalued or underpaid. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a tiny bit jealous, but mostly I was proud and happy. He deserved it.
“Dude, how’ve you been? I’m sure it’s been crazy over there,” he said with a touch of sympathy. “You know, I drove past your old apartment the other day and almost dropped by before I remembered you don’t live there anymore.”
I smiled a bit knowing he’d been thinking about me. “I’ve been better,” I admitted. “But I don’t want to talk about that right now. I just want to hear how shit is with you. I need a distraction.”
“Gotcha. Honestly, things have been a little less exciting since you left.” I heard the sharp hiss of a spray paint can in the background and wondered if Mat was working on a new illustration. “I miss having you around.”
My chest ached a little. Though Mat and I were both gay, we had no romantic interest in each other. Since I spent the better half of my teen years living with him, he felt more like a brother to me than a potential love interest.
“I miss you too,” I replied. With a weak laugh, I added, “I wish I could come back home.”
The spray stopped and Mat readjusted the phone, his voice a little quieter. “Well, why can’t you?”
My smile slipped. “I can’t afford it, Mat. I wasn’t making enough for rent. You know that. It was either move here or be homeless.” Getting the next words out felt like pulling teeth. “Plus my parents didn’t leave me any money. Just this ridiculous mansion.”
“Real shit?”
“Real shit.”
He clicked his tongue. “Johnny, I’m sorry, but that’s cold. Even for them. That’s like a sick joke.”
I let out a humorless chuckle which turned into a sigh. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”
“Well, why don’t you just sell the house?”
I paused. That idea had never struck me before, but Mat was right. I was sitting on at least a few million bucks. The place was sitting here collecting dust, especially since I was the only one living in it. Hell, I didn’t need all this space.
His suggestion planted a seed in my mind. I could sell the mansion and move back into the city, back near Mat and my friends. I could work without stressing about rent and do my personal projects on the side.
His idea was nothing short of perfect.
“Mat, you’re a fucking genius,” I cried with a laugh.
I could practically hear him grinning. “Yeah, I know. So there’s really nothing over there in Roselandia that’d make you want to stay?”
I snorted at the name he’d made up. “Not a chance. The whole community’s full of uptight, snooty people. Did you know I got accused of stealing today?”
“What?” Mat sounded appalled.
“Yeah. Apparently I don’t dress well enough for their standards.”
“That’s just wrong,” Mat muttered. “Did they actually call the cops?”
“No. They let me go after–” I stopped mid-sentence as I realized I didn’t want to tell Mat about Cain standing up for me when I was supposed to be pissed off at him.
No. I was pissed off him.
But as thoughts of Cain resurfaced, I realized I couldn’t keep him a secret any longer. And who better to vent my frustration with him towards than Mat?
“They let me go,” I finished. “But you’re not gonna believe who lives next to me.”
“Who?”
His name dripped from my tongue like poison. “Cain Schwartz.”
Mat went silent.
“No way.”
“Yes way,” I confirmed.
Mat sputtered for the right words. “You can’t be serious. In the same fucking house?”
“Yeah. Just my luck that the rich brat hasn’t moved on to his own place,” I muttered. “But I guess why should he when his mommy and daddy let him stay in their mansion?”
“Has he tried to talk to you?” Mat asked in disbelief.
For a moment I held my tongue. Cain had done more than just talk to me, but if I relayed everything he’d done to Mat, it would unfortunately include some good things, and I didn’t know if I wanted to taint the villainous image of Cain that Mat had in his mind.
“Yes,” I said simply.
“I can’t believe him!” Mat exclaimed. “After all he did, he still has the balls to act like nothing happened?”
“Either that or he forgot,” I said. “After all, why should he remember ruining someone else’s life? It had nothing to do with him.”
Some cruel part of me was glad that Mat sounded as upset as I felt. After spending time among the fake niceness of Rosecreek and its people, it felt good to hear Mat’s raw, genuine anger, especially since it was for my sake.
“Next time he tries to talk to you, tell him to fuck off. Don’t trust anything he says,” Mat went on. “Sell that house and come back home, Johnny.”
“I think that’s exactly what I’ll do,” I said. “Thanks, Mat. For helping clear my head.”
His voice softened with warmth. “No problem. I’m glad I could help. Call me up if you need anything, all right?”
“Will do. See you.”
“Later.”
I tossed the phone across the bed, feeling better after venting to a friend.
Wasn’t that what Cain had called me? His only friend in Rosecreek?
The idea of it made me bark a bitter laugh. He was no friend to me now. Maybe he thought we were once in the past, but his actions had proved his true feelings. There was no re-building the bridge he’d burned. Cain was the one who lit the trail of gasoline surrounding my life and torched all of it to the ground.
/> Mat was right. I shouldn’t trust Cain. He was an evil brat with a villain’s name.
And there was no making up for the way he’d ruined my life ten years ago.
8
Cain
It started in tenth grade.
Back then I’d been a small kid, a late bloomer with no muscles and a voice that still cracked once in a while.
I’d been sent by the teacher to run an errand at the other end of the building, chosen because I was probably the least likely to goof off. I almost snorted at the thought now. When everyone else in class was busy trying to talk over each other, I was sitting alone in my corner and writing a story in my notebook.
I clutched the folder firmly in my hand and walked towards the other teacher’s office. The halls were mostly empty and my footsteps echoed with every brisk step. As I rounded the corner, I was dismayed to see a few older students halfway between me and my destination. I held the folder closer to my chest and put my shoulders back, as if I was proud to be chosen for such a task, and that pride would serve as some kind of imaginary armor.
Passing the older students, all boys bigger and stronger than me, filled me with childish dread. There was some primal part of my brain that told me to avoid these guys who could snap me like a twig.
When they noticed me, they perked up like a pack of wolves scenting a baby deer. They rose up to their full heights and stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking off the hall. I had no choice but to stop.
“Excuse me,” I said quietly. My fingers wrapped tighter around the folder like it was a shield. “I have to get through.”
A boy I recognized as Lucas spoke up. “What for?”
I hated the way I had to look up at them. “I have to deliver this.”
“What is it?”
Without waiting for a reply, he reached over and plucked it out of my hands. I gasped.
“Hey, I need that!” I cried.
“What for?” another asked, snatching it from Lucas and flipping through it.
