I rolled my eyes, chuckling. It eased the pain I felt in my core. “Come in,” I called out.
Dylan walked in first followed by Austin and Jacob.
“I told you she was faking,” Jacob stated, sitting beside me, tugging me over to his side. “You cheater!”
Dylan plopped down at the foot of my bed and Austin leaned against the headboard. Lucas was nowhere to be found.
“Why’d you lie?” Jacob asked, kissing the top of my head.
“I didn’t feel well.”
“You look pretty. Girls don’t look pretty when they aren’t feelin’ well,” Dylan chimed in, looking smug and grinning.
“Girl problems,” I stated, knowing it would make them uncomfortable.
“Ugh!” Jacob backed away and leaned on my window. “Enough said.”
“Where’s Lucas?” I blurted, adjusting the tone of my voice, picking at the seams of my bedspread to avoid their eyes.
“Who the fuck knows,” Austin informed. “He was behind me.”
“It’s hot as shit outside, let’s stay here and watch movies all day. Your mom said we could order stuff on Pay Per View,” Jacob said, none of them paying me any mind.
“Half-Pint,” Dylan peered up at me through his lashes. “Want to go make us some popcorn and get us some drinks,” he requested in the softest voice.
I smiled. “Sure.”
I heard them arguing about which movie to watch as I left my room. We were watching a man movie with or without my consent. I eagerly made my way through the house, hoping that I wouldn’t run into Lucas alone. I quickly put the popcorn in the microwave, setting out two more on the counter. The boys could eat.
Everything.
“Need any help?” I startled when I heard his voice from behind me, spilling the soda on the counter.
“Shit! Sorry.” He swiftly grabbed paper towels and wiped up my spill.
I kept my gaze on the counter, serving the rest of the drinks, silently praying he couldn’t hear my heart that was pounding out of my chest. It was weird to be that nervous around him.
I didn’t like it.
“No worries,” I said, trying to keep my voice from breaking. “Where were you? You just snuck up on me.”
“I brought you some donuts.” He ignored my question and handed me the bag.
“Glazed?”
“Of course.”
I shyly smiled, still not meeting his intent gaze that was settled on my cold and distant demeanor.
Why was he looking at me like that? Maybe he always looked at me like that.
“Umm, you can help with the drinks.” I twisted the cap back on the liter and spun to check the time on the microwave.
“Alex.” He gripped my wrist, locking me in place, using my name that sounded so foreign coming out of his mouth.
I slowly met his stare. “Yeah,” I casually reacted, pretending that it hadn’t affected me as much as he saw it did.
His mouth parted wanting to say something, but nothing came out. He looked tired, and it only fueled the truth to what I knew he did last night.
With her.
I instinctively pulled my wrist from his hold. “What?”
It didn’t shock him. My reaction, and it only confused me more on what was going on between us. I couldn’t begin to recognize the look on his face. He looked sad and I didn’t understand that either, but he quickly smiled, trying to hide the fact that I noticed it.
“I love you, Alex,” he whispered like he needed me to hear it. “You know that right?”
I lowered my eyebrows, feeling somewhat uncomfortable, my stomach tossing and turning. He smiled sweetly, and I thought for a second I saw something behind his eyes, but just as fast as it appeared, it was gone.
“I know,” I simply stated.
He jerked back, hurt, that I hadn’t said it back. In that moment, I didn’t want to ease his questioning stare. I wanted him to hurt. Two wrongs don’t make a right but go tell that to someone who felt the way I did. They’d laugh in your face.
He bit his bottom lip contemplating what to say. “She’s just a girl, Half-Pint, just a fucking girl,” he breathed out, and I never wanted to punch him in the face as much as I did in that second.
I didn’t even know what to say or how to respond to that. I could see his mind reeling, debating on whether or not he should say what he thought, what he felt. I could tell that a lot weighed on his mind. I wanted to ask him, but I knew I wouldn’t get the answers I sought. It only reaffirmed what I said earlier, what I knew to be true, and over the next few years it would become like the melody of my favorite song, playing on a broken record. The boys never thought about the consequences of their actions. They acted on pure impulse. Never contemplating that it could hurt someone in its wake. And that wasn’t just Lucas.
It was all of them.
“Half-Pint,” he softly spoke.
“Stacey’s just a girl. I get it. But what does that make me, Bo? Just another girl?”
He sternly shook his head. “You know that’s not true.”
“Do I?”
He looked deep into my eyes and spoke with conviction. “You’re my brown eyed girl, you always will be. I would never hurt you intentionally. That’s the last thing I want to do, and I’m sorry if I have.”
I bowed my head not able to look into the depths of his truths any longer. It was too confusing, and I was emotionally exhausted. I didn’t want to play these games anymore, I didn’t know the rules, and I had no idea how to win. And a huge part of me hated him for that. I would have played this game until the end.
Even if it meant…
I would lose.
“I know, Bo, I love you, too,” she recited as if it caused her pain to say it.
There was no going back. All that was left was to move forward, praying that we could get back everything we never had out of our abandoned house. This added to the unanswered questions and unsaid emotions that were placed in between us, stirring the pot for one day to boil over and scar us with wounds we may never be able to heal from.
***
The school year passed in the blink of an eye, once again summer vacation. Alex’s last summer before she entered high school with the rest of us, going into her freshman year, Austin into his sophomore year and Jacob, Dylan, and I into our junior year. Alex and I slowly but surely found our way into a new normal. We had become quite the chameleons. We still spent every second we could in our abandoned house, and over the course of a few months the same adoring look that was just for me found its way back into my presence.
I stayed away from Stacey as best as I could. Though she always found me. A fucking spider I couldn’t get away from, her webs were around me even when I wasn’t looking. Jacob was single, again, Austin still being Austin, and Dylan surprisingly still with Aubrey.
This was the summer that changed it all.
Alex was fourteen, shy of turning fifteen in a few months. Sometimes I would watch her from across the room and the mere vision of her left me breathless. She had turned into a beautiful girl, there was nothing that resembled a little girl anymore. Wearing a little bit more makeup here and there, her eyelashes appeared fake they were so damn long. Her pouty lips more enticing with the glossy shine she applied on them.
She started wearing shorts, crop tops, off the shoulder tank tops, showing more skin, belly, and legs than I wanted her too. Her hair hung long and loose down her back or those messy buns on top of her head. When we stood close together I could smell the cherry, flavor she put on her lips, and it took everything in me not to kiss her, not to claim her lips with mine.
One evening we were hanging out in her bedroom, the boys left and it was just her and I. She went to the bathroom and I don’t know what came over me, but I went into her closet and grabbed all of her new clothes, throwing them in the garbage can by her desk. She yelled at me and told me to mind my own business. She was growing up with or without my approval and that I wasn’t her daddy to tell her what she could or couldn’t wear. She’d never spoken to me like that before, and that shocked me more than anything. She kicked me out of her bedroom. The next day she wore an outfit so revealing it made me want to throw her over my shoulder, carry her home and lock her in her bedroom.
A part of me knew she did it on purpose. She wanted to provoke some kind of emotion out of me, wanting to make sure I noticed her changing.
When I called her out on it she said she wanted to find her own way, her identity, outside of us boys. Or some shit like that, I stopped paying attention after she pissed me off saying she was going bikini shopping with her mom that weekend.
All of our families were pretty well off. Not to sound conceited, but none of us had to work, that's just how it was. Alex chose to work, she asked her parents for a waitressing job at their restaurant and they excitingly jumped on it.
Again, we didn’t discuss it. Not even when we were at our abandoned house. When I asked her why she hadn’t mentioned it to me, she said it slipped her mind. The truth was she knew I wouldn’t like it and she didn’t want to fight with me. We had been bickering enough. I didn’t understand why she wanted to spend most of her summer working when we could have been hanging out, exactly how we always had. That was the point of summer, to get to spend more time together and do whatever we wanted.
She decided to work full time, as in forty hours a week, basically working every day, and long ass eight-hour shifts. We spent most of our time surfing or hanging out at the restaurant while she worked. At times, it felt like nothing had changed. Other than the fact that she took our orders and served us food, always serving me first, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t love the fact that she fed me. Sometimes without me even putting in an order.