by C. R. Jane
“Sure you don’t want a burger?” asked Jackson from two chairs down as he stared at my plate in confusion.
"I'm good," I told him, even as I cursed myself for my insecurities. I snuck a glance at Caiden, who laughed with some of his teammates. When he caught me studying him, he sent me a wink that didn’t seem anywhere near as charming as it had in the past.
Jackson was quiet for the rest of the evening, and so was I.
It was going to be a long summer.
Caiden was at a special tight end training camp at the local college today, so I had a day to myself. I left early on my bike and set out for Target. Caiden had asked me to wait to go anywhere until he was done, but I wasn't about to do that.
While I pedaled, I thought about the night before. Caiden had gotten mad because I hadn't wanted to go beyond kissing. I'd started crying, and he'd apologized, but everything he'd said about me not loving him as much as he loved me stuck in my head.
I did love Caiden. I'd loved him since I was a little girl out on that playground. But something seemed to be warping that love as we dated. Caiden had started to be irrational, texting me every second about what I was doing and who I was with whenever we weren't together. When we were together, he spent most of that time criticizing me or cutting me down. This didn't feel like any good relationship that I'd ever heard of.
I parked my bike in the bike rack of the Target parking lot and locked it, not wanting to lose my mode of transportation. I grabbed a cart and began to peruse the aisles. I couldn't afford to buy anything really, but it was still fun to walk the aisles and see everything.
I turned the corner to head down the frame aisle, and suddenly, there was Jackson, staring at the selection.
Frozen in place, I debated what I should do. Jackson and I hadn't spoken since that awkward moment at the lake.
And I missed him. In spite of everything, I missed him.
I was about to run away like the coward I was when he spotted me.
"Eves?" he asked, like he couldn't believe I was there.
"Hey," I responded casually as I tried to pretend that I hadn't been about to run away from him.
"Are you here by yourself?"
"Yep," I replied, popping the P at the end as I wheeled my cart closer. I smiled when I saw Jackson's cart. There were at least five bags of the white chocolate Reese's in it along with a pack of Dr. Pepper. The boy had an addiction.
There was an awkward silence as we both just kind of stared at each other. "Looking for a frame?" I asked, and for some reason, the question made him blush.
"Uhh, yeah. Which do you like?" he said, gesturing to the selection.
"What's the picture of?"
His blush deepened. "Just of some people," he said in a rough voice.
Why was he acting so weird?
"Well, I think that white one would look good with any picture," I answered, picking the frame up and handing it to him. Our fingers brushed as he grabbed the frame and even that light touch sent tingles trembling across my skin.
I wanted him to touch me again. And again, and again, and again. Because each time he did, I forget that I live east and he lives west, and we’ll never be together.
He quickly moved away from me like I'd burned him, and the withdrawal brought back the harsh, present state of our non-existent relationship. Our touches used to be an easy thing, as easy as breathing.
He put the frame in the cart, and then he hesitated like he was thinking hard. "Should we go look at the book aisle?" he asked, and my heart suddenly felt infinitely lighter. It was a thing we did. I had an obsession with books, and Jackson knew it. So every store we went to, I'd always dragged him to the book aisle to pick what I was going to read next. He'd bought me a Kindle for one of my birthdays, but there had always been something about holding an actual book in my hands that just did something for me.
"Let's go," I told him with a grin.
The Target book section wasn't large, but we must have spent an hour going down the three aisles. He would tease me about some of the covers of the romance books that I liked, and I would roll my eyes and pretend to be offended. He picked up a cover of a Harlequin that had a Fabio like model on the front page and began to read a sex scene out loud, sending a poor old lady at the end of the aisle scrambling to run away from us.
I laughed until I cried.
Hours passed and somehow, we found ourselves at a café down the street, eating and talking like the last few weeks hadn't happened. I was faintly aware of my phone buzzing repeatedly, but I couldn't find it in myself to care enough to see who it was.
It was almost five when I finally looked at my phone and saw that Caiden had called me twenty-seven times.
"Crap," I said, looking at my phone.
"What's wrong?" Jackson asked, leaning towards me. We'd started lunch across the table from each other and ended up sitting next to each other on the guise of sharing a sundae. My heart had raced at an embarrassing pace as I watched him eat, and it reminded me about how firm his lips were when they’d first touched mine, and how they softened to enjoy every morsel of my mouth during that kiss.
"It's your brother. I hope nothing's wrong. He's called me over twenty times."
Jackson's eyes widened, and he pulled out his phone to check I guess if Caiden had called him as well. "He called me a bunch, too," he said worriedly.
I quickly pressed his name on my phone. It rang once, and Caiden picked up. "Where the fuck are you?" he barked sharply.
"Are you okay?" I asked, ignoring his tone.
"I went by your house to pick you up, and your mother said you'd been gone all day. What have you been doing? Are you with him?"
"Am I with who?" I asked, my voice fading to a whisper as I cowered at his tone.
"My brother," he hissed.
I was quiet. "Yes, I am, Caiden. Why is that a problem?"
There was a long pause. Jackson tensed next to me as he listened to my conversation, there was no way not to hear since Caiden was yelling.
"Where are you? I'll come pick you up."
"I have my bike," I said crossly. "I think I'll just go home tonight."
Caiden's voice changed from anger to a cajoling tone. "LyLy, I'm sorry. Practice was just tough. I really want to see you. We can all hang out. Don't be mad."
I was still mad, but the chance to hang out with both of them and hopefully get things more back to they way they used to be was hard to pass up.
"Jackson and I are at East Bakery on Fifth Street," I told him.
"Be there in five," he said before abruptly hanging up.
"Let me guess. My brother wasn't pleased."
"No, he wasn't," I said, staring out the window. "He's been different lately. Have you noticed?"
"I've only noticed that he's barely speaking to me," Jackson said wryly. "Has he…been treating you all right?" he asked hesitantly.
I sighed and turned to look at him. "Maybe, I'm not sure I know how I'm supposed to be treated," I admitted.
Jackson opened his mouth to say something, but then Caiden was there, rushing through the door like we were in a burning building and he needed to save someone. A strange look passed over his face. That look that appeared whenever Jackson was in the vicinity. And then he wiped his face clean.
"There's my two people. Should we head back to the house and watch a movie? It's been a while, guys," he said jovially, as if we had just been busy and that was why we hadn't hung out.
"Sure, bro," Jackson responded, and there was a tightness in his tone and around his eyes.
Jackson threw my bike in the back of his truck, but of course, Caiden had me ride with him.
Caiden was deathly silent the entire way back. The tension was sky high and finally, I couldn't take it anymore.
"Why don't you go ahead and come out with it. I can feel how mad you are."
"And why would I be mad, Everly?" he asked, glancing at me blandly. "You don't have anything you need to tell me, do you?"
; For a second, I wanted to tell him that I couldn't do this. Play the whole, "it's not you, it's me" card. Or tell him that I felt like it was ruining the friendship that we'd spent years building.
"Because if you knew how much I fucking cared about you, you would never want to hurt me," he suddenly said. And the words died in my throat.
"Everything's good, Caiden," I told him with a false smile, my heart beginning to bleed inside of me. "I would never want to hurt you."
And that was the truth. Caiden and Jackson were as important to me as air.
We pulled into the twin's massive driveway, and Caiden made sure to hold my hand as we walked towards the back entrance and passed by Jackson's truck. We all ended up in the media room in their house, a place I'd been to a million times in the past.
But unlike all those times, the mood in the room was angry, suspicious...and heartbroken. And I wasn't sure which of us was feeling what emotion.
We ended up falling asleep during the first movie, one of the Jason Bourne movies. I woke up to a dark room, the screen showed the credits and cast a faint glow over the boys asleep in bean bags next to me.
This was a thing we'd always done. Sleepovers with the three of us. But right now, lying next to Jackson in the darkened room, sleep evaded me. I listened to his steady breaths, relishing in the familiar sound.
Yearning was a feeling I was familiar with, or should I say, being left yearning. My life had been filled with a deep desire to have more, to be more. But Jackson had woken up something inside of me that I never thought I would experience.
I lightly slid my fingers along his arm. The light from the television highlighted his beautiful, masculine face in his serene slumber, and I admired every perfect detail.
I’m so fucked, I thought to myself, before succumbing to a sleep filled with anxious dreams.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NOW
Jackson
“One of the strawberry cupcakes, please,” I said as I pointed to one of the pink, frosted confections on the third shelf. The employee grabbed the cupcake and boxed it up, trying to flutter her eyelashes seductively as she did so. Someone needed to get her a mirror pronto so she could see how ridiculous she looked. Besides, she was blonde. And I didn’t do blondes.
I took the cupcake and walked to my truck. And then I just sat there. I stared at the cupcake, and for one moment...I allowed myself to feel. And to remember.
I remembered Everly’s face the first time Caiden and I had shown up with a box of cupcakes. How she’d cried because she was so happy. Caiden and I had felt like idiots for not doing something bigger but she’d made it seem like we’d given her a priceless gift. Every year after that we’d brought her some. It had become a contest of sorts eventually, who would pick up the cupcakes first. Until finally we’d just started buying our own to give her. It was a little tragic looking back now at all the signs I should have caught about my brother and his feelings for Everly.
I let myself remember for one more moment about how Everly looked when we’d sang Happy Birthday to her, how the light from the solitary candle had reflected off her gold hair, making her look like an angel.
My little angel.
When my moment was up, I pushed the memories away, locking them up tight where I wouldn’t have to see them, and then I threw the cupcake out my truck window, not caring what it hit.
Happy Birthday, Everly.
Everly
"Do you really think this is a good idea?" Lane murmured as we approached the entrance to the events room. Of course, Rutherford wouldn't have their big Halloween dance in a smelly gymnasium. Instead, it was outfitted with a room that was basically a large ballroom, which they called an "events room" to sound less snotty.
It didn't work.
My mouth fell open as I looked around at the way the enormous room had been transformed to resemble a high-class club you could walk into in New York City or Vegas. "Is this real life?" I muttered, looking around at the lounge seating placed strategically around the room, the bars and food stations set up against the north and south walls, and the large dance floor with a stage set up in the middle of it where a DJ was currently spinning a remix of Taylor Swift's "Delicate" that immediately made me want to wade into the already busy crowd and start dancing.
"Just wait until the end of year dance," Lane responded, looking around the room unimpressed. "This will look like kid's play compared to that. Maybe we should just wait for that?"
Lane had wanted to come to the Halloween dance, and it just showed how good of a friend she was that she was begging to leave before something terrible happened. This was my first school event, but my first shower at this school had included snakes, so I didn’t have high expectations. Everything had been uneasily quiet over the last couple of weeks and I was hoping the trend would continue tonight. My birthday was especially quiet. Instead of the cupcake the twins used to bring me each year, I’d eaten a cookie from the cafeteria by myself.
"We'll be fine. There's a million staff members here watching everything," I responded.
Even if I shouldn't, I looked around for him, my heart beating wildly at the just the idea of seeing him all dressed up.
I'd worn a daring red dress that I'd found in a second-hand shop a few weeks earlier with a small black masquerade mask that somehow made me feel hidden, even though it only covered my eyes. All I could think when I saw the dress was how Jackson always loved me in red. I should have bought the black one that had been next to it, because Jackson would know that I'd worn this dress for him the second he saw me.
But trying to please him was one of those habits that I'd probably be trying to break for the rest of my life. They needed a twelve-step program for getting over Jackson Parker because no matter how much he tortured me...I always wanted him. The events of my ruined date with Landry had only made it worse. It was a strange thing that you could hate yourself, and love someone else so much.
I let out a big breath when I didn't see him anywhere, not examining too closely whether it was one of relief or disappointment as we waded through the crowd to get a drink.
The bartender was only half-heartedly carding, and he just winked at me when I showed him my fake ID, handing me a Red Bull and vodka along with his number written on the cocktail napkin he wrapped around the drink.
I threw out a thanks, my spirits a little bit lifted that I wouldn't have to endure the night completely sober, and pulled Lane over to the dance floor where we began to dance on the fringes of the crowd as the DJ played hit after hit.
Lane yelled over the noise that the DJ was actually one of those really famous ones that always worked clubs for celebrity events, and I nodded, only mildly impressed. There was a haunted house in the next building over that Lane said we would go to after we had a few drinks. Because evidently, it made everything seem scarier.
I was a few songs in when I saw him. He was sitting in the corner in one of the lounge areas, surrounded by a crowd of people all desperate to talk to him. There was a girl perched on his lap, a different one than from the night of my ruined date. A brunette this time.
Jackson was stunning in a fitted black suit, the lines hugging his tight, muscled frame. Blue eyes, white shirt, slim black tie, and I was speechless—caught off guard by the herd of elephants galloping in my chest. He was devastating, as each woman here could testify to, including me.
I couldn’t seem to look away as he interacted with everyone around him. But weirdly enough, it didn’t seem like they were people to him. They were vessels to use. And just as bad, they viewed him the same way. He wasn’t Jackson, the complicated, irreverent, talented man that I’d been in love with for half my life. He was a celebrity at Rutherford — someone they could brag about hanging with when they went out partying with their friends the next night. A status symbol, not unlike a Lamborghini or a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. I stopped dancing and stood like a statue and watched it all.
I suddenly felt woefully naïve and unprepared
to be in the same place as Jackson Parker. The same sort of naïve and stupid I’d been the last time with him and Caiden.
How many times did I have to put myself in situations like this before I learned?
“Let’s go do some shots and then head to the haunted house,” I yelled over the noise at Lane, suddenly not feeling like dancing anymore. She was looking over at Jackson too and gave me a thumbs up. I’d told her about what had happened on my ruined date with Landry, and she was firmly in the “keep Everly James away from all things Jackson Parker” camp.
After grabbing a few shots, we left the room. I snuck one more look over my shoulder, but he was still wrapped in the loyal followers around him. It didn’t seem like he had seen me.
Lane had to hold onto me as we walked because her heels were so high. I’d been bitter about not being able to wear cute heels to go with my dress, but the thought of walking through a haunted house in heels made me glad that I had on my flats.
The haunted house was set up in the indoor facility of the football team. Volunteers from the school and outside performers were brought in to run it. I'd never been a big fan of haunted houses...the whole scared of the dark thing, but Lane had promised me that it wasn't bad. It was more of a "fun" haunted house then a scary one...whatever that meant.
Some of the hockey team was ahead of us, Landry included. We'd exchanged a few texts since our terrible date when I'd snuck off and ended up fucking Jackson in the bathroom...and he'd been surprisingly sweet. We hadn't talked exactly about what had gone down, but there was no way that he didn't know. Every time I thought of it, thick shame overwhelmed my entire body.
This messed up thing between Jackson and I didn't just affect us, it trickled down to everyone around us, and I wondered when the casualties would be enough.
I made Lane stay back so that the hockey team didn't notice our approach. It was one thing to talk to Landry on the phone, but I wasn't quite ready to have to face him yet. I could be brave like that another time.