And neither is Sarah that short.
I am that short, as short as the girl Arrow is looking at.
So short that his tall body has to bend in a little. Like it would if he were to look at me from that close a distance.
This girl is not Sarah.
This girl is someone else and when that someone else reaches up her bare arm and flutters her delicate-looking fingers over his square jaw, a jaw that is shadowed due to the low light in that nook of his and under the rim of his baseball cap, I freeze.
Then she goes ahead and moves her fingers back and forth on his jaw.
And… and I don’t know what to do with myself.
All I know is that even though it’s dark and all I can really see is the outline of their bodies, I know that she’s scratching the invisible-to-me stubble on his face.
Which makes him smirk.
The smirk that I’ve been watching from afar for eight years now. The smirk that makes me go all breathless even when it’s not directed at me.
Because his smirks and smiles are for Sarah.
So why’s he giving it to someone else?
Someone who’s clearly not my sister.
The love of his life.
The girl tries to touch it, that smirk. She tries to touch his smirking lips with her thumb, but Arrow grabs her wrist at the last second.
He stops her, leaving her thumb hovering at the edge.
But she isn’t deterred.
She goes on her tiptoes, presses her body against his and murmurs something close to his lips.
As shocking as that is, it’s even more shocking when Arrow says something back, and whatever he says makes the girl stretch her body further.
A second later, she’s touching him with her lips.
And he’s letting her.
A second later, my sister’s boyfriend, the guy I’ve been in love with, is kissing her.
A random girl in a bar.
A girl who’s not my sister.
I can’t…
I can’t believe that this is happening.
I can’t believe that he’s kissing someone else.
That I’m standing here, in this strange bar, with sad songs blasting overhead, watching him kiss someone who’s not my sister.
I refuse to believe it.
I shake my head even.
If I keep shaking my head in denial, all of this will go away. I’ll wake up from whatever nightmare this is.
But it doesn’t go away. None of this goes away. In fact, he’s kissing her harder now, like things are heating up.
They’re heating up so much that even I can feel it.
Me.
The girl who’s never been kissed.
Somehow through all the confusion and tingling on my own lips, I manage to take a step forward.
Then another and another. Until I’m walking toward them.
Until I reach them. I reach him.
Until I’m in that little corner as well.
It smells of booze. It smells of him, spice and vintage leather.
My favorite scent.
I’m so close to them and my presence is such an intrusion in their dark, private corner that the girl jerks apart from him, snapping her head in my direction.
As much as I want to see her and find out who she is, I’m watching Arrow.
I’m watching him detach himself from the girl, bit by bit.
Slowly, he lifts his face up and away from hers.
Then, he takes a moment to sigh, as if irritated, followed by turning his head to look in the direction where the interruption came from.
Even then, his detachment isn’t complete.
He still has one of his hands wrapped around the back of her neck.
I glare at that hand. It looks big and bad and seductive.
Finally, he shifts his face, cocks his head in a way that the shadows from his baseball cap vanish and I can see him.
I can see his bright blue eyes.
Eyes that remind me of lazy summers and bike rides in the sunshine.
Only now they’re dark.
They’re almost navy and he glances at me with them.
“You.”
Before I can respond to that though, he detaches himself completely from her, takes that big, bad, seductive hand off her neck and asks, with slight annoyance and surprise, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Even though more important things are at stake here, far more important things, I still breathe out a sigh of relief when he moves away from the girl he was kissing.
But I can’t be relieved, can I?
He was kissing a girl.
A girl who isn’t my sister.
“What the fuck am I doing here?” I ask, frowning, stumbling over my words. “What the fuck are you doing here? Who is she? Where’s my si –”
“Can you give us a minute?”
Arrow swallows up my words when he speaks and for a micro-second, I think he’s speaking to me. But he’s turned his head and his eyes are directed at the girl.
I finally glance at her as well.
She’s drunk.
That’s the first thing.
The second thing is that even though Arrow’s moved away from her, she’s still leaning into him.
It bothers me.
That she’s still attached to my sister’s boyfriend.
But I guess it’s more for balance than anything else.
“Can we please go back to the kissing?” She giggles slightly, completely ignoring my presence and staring up at Arrow with dreamy, drunk eyes.
The word kissing makes me tighten everything on my body.
But before I can protest, Arrow speaks. “I think we’ve had enough of the kissing for tonight. You should go.”
“But I thought we were having such a good time and you know…”
She trails off to run her hand down his chest, her fingers hooking around the locket he wears.
So he wears a locket, a silver thing he never parts with.
His dad gave it to him when he was six or something. And like his sun-struck hair and tanned skin, his locket shines in the sunlight. It shines with his sweat when he’s had a workout, or he’s played a really grueling game.
It was shining the day I saw him for the first time in that yellow/orange kitchen.
And I dig my nails in my palms when I see this girl toying with it.
“You’re drunk,” he tells her, disengaging himself from her.
“I’m not.”
She hiccups then, proving herself a liar.
“I beg to differ.”
“I’m –”
“That’s why you thought we were having a good time.” He leans a little closer to her, as if to impart a secret. “We weren’t. So as I said, you should go.”
She frowns, looking peeved. “But I –”
“Look,” he sighs, the annoyed lines around his eyes getting deeper. “I’m flattered. Okay? It’s always flattering when a girl throws herself at you. Even as drunk as you clearly are. But as I said to you before you attacked me with your mouth, I don’t fuck drunk girls so you should go before I say something you might not like.”
Hold on a second.
Just please… hold.
Did he say fuck?
Did he actually say fuck?
Before I can process that, the girl, who is so drunk that she can’t stand upright, somehow gets her spine up. Her foggy eyes suddenly become really alert and sort of vicious. “And what exactly will you say if I don’t leave?”
“If you don’t leave, I’m going to have to tell you the truth.”
“And what is the truth?”
Arrow’s answer is to sigh again.
Like he doesn’t wanna do it but he will. And he does.
“The truth is that you’re drunk as fuck and maybe that’s why your kissing is all tongue and no mouth. And it feels like I’m drowning in
a pool of saliva. But I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think your kissing is all tongue and no mouth because you’re drunk. I think you kiss that way even when you’re sober and can actually see who you’re kissing. And I think that’s because you’re kind of an over-doer, aren’t you? Too much perfume. Too many moans. You like to go the extra mile and generally, I appreciate it, going the extra mile, doing the extra work. But I don’t appreciate that when I’m choking on tongue.”
He shrugs then, all casual like. “And that’s why you should leave. Because if I tell you all that I think it might hurt your ego a little bit.”
Silence follows his truth-telling speech.
Well, as much silence as you can get in a crowded bar.
The girl is the first to gather her senses. “I… What…” She looks at both of us in a wild, aggressive way. “You two deserve each other. Assholes.”
Then she spins around and stomps away, leaving the two of us alone in that corner. Leaving me to bizarrely wonder why she thought we were together, him and I.
Is it because I came here to stop them? Is it because I look like a jealous girlfriend?
I’m not. The girlfriend, I mean. Or jealous even.
I am not. So totally not jealous.
What I am, though is flabbergasted and shocked and kind of speechless.
Because holy. Shit.
He said those things, didn’t he?
Again, I can’t believe it.
I can’t believe that he said all that. I can’t believe anyone would say all that. Let alone a guy I’ve known for eight years, who’s nothing if not polite.
And patient. And calm and collected and holy fuck.
I can’t…
“You can’t follow a rule to save your life, can you?” he murmurs and finally, I whip my gaze over to him.
Until now, I was watching the girl disappear into the crowd because I didn’t know what else to do.
Because this guy, this rude asshole, can’t be Arrow.
The Arrow I know.
The Arrow I know wouldn’t be leaning against the brick wall as if nothing happened. As if he didn’t say all those horrible things to her.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says in a rough, growly voice when I continue to remain silent.
“Why?” I burst out, my words bitter. “Because I witnessed you completely humiliating a girl just now?”
“I wasn’t humiliating her,” he replies, casually.
I think he even goes ahead and folds his arms across his chest. I can’t be sure though because I’m staring at him, at his smooth, unbothered features, with an open mouth.
I have to actually press my hands on my heated face to try to calm down before I can say anything.
“Are you kidding me?” I screech. “You’re kidding me, right? You were such an asshole to her.”
“Huh. And here I thought I was being nice,” he murmurs as if he’s genuinely surprised.
“You’ve gone crazy, haven’t you? That’s the only explanation. Or maybe I’m going crazy. I don’t know what just happened. You completely shattered her confidence. I don’t think she’ll be kissing anyone for the rest of her life.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
“Excuse me?”
He tips his chin at something over my shoulder. “I don’t think you need to worry about her confidence.”
I turn to look at what he’s talking about. Through the swaying bodies of people, I see the girl again.
And he’s right. I don’t need to worry about her confidence at all.
Because she’s kissing again.
Only…
“Is she…” I squint my eyes to make sure. “Is she kissing a girl?”
From where I am it certainly looks like it. The drunk blonde girl is kissing another blonde girl and she’s doing it in the exact same way as she was doing it to Arrow, all leaned into her body and neck tilted up.
I hear him shift behind my back. “And here I thought I was special.” Then, “Although, it makes me wonder…”
I spin on my heels to face him again. “Wonder what?”
He cocks his head to the side. “If she’s really that drunk or if I just drove her to lesbianism.”
“You can’t drive anyone to lesbianism. You can…”
“I can what?”
Bring them back.
That’s what I was going to say, that he can convert a lesbian because he’s so gorgeous in his leather jacket, his face bent down, his blue eyes shining. As if sexual orientation is a choice.
As if I’m not having a very surreal moment right now as I stare at him.
And my next words don’t help the matter. “Sexual orientation isn’t a choice. In case you didn’t know. You can’t drive people or convert them or change it on a whim. As if they don’t have enough problems to deal with and you come in with your ignorance and careless remarks and...”
I trail off because what the fuck am I doing, and I swear I see the lines around his eyes crinkle but I can’t be sure.
“Thanks for that. Very educating and enlightening,” he drawls.
I glare at him.
I can’t believe that I’m glaring at him but that’s not the point.
The point is that there are more important things at stake here. Far more important things.
Far more.
So I bring my hands down to my sides. I even take in a deep breath and try to rein in my agitation.
“Why,” I begin with what I think is a calm tone, “did I just catch you kissing a girl at a bar who’s not my sister?”
At this, his eyes go darker, even darker than before.
I think they’ve surpassed the shade of navy blue now and landed somewhere in the spectrum of black, making them look like bottomless pools.
An abyss.
“Because you are where you’re not supposed to be,” he replies with a ticking jaw.
“What does that mean?” I ask, trying to not look at it.
The jaw.
Trying not to count how many times he moves it back and forth or how sleek it looks, how much more beautiful and sharper than before, now that he’s using it to display his annoyance.
“It means that this establishment that you find yourself in, either by accident or on purpose, is called a bar.”
“And?”
“And in case you didn’t know, no one under twenty-one is allowed in here. It’s the law, unfortunately. So if I were you, I’d get out.”
My spine goes up. “I’m not afraid of the law. I’m not going anywhere. Not until –”
“It also means,” he cuts me off, “that you shouldn’t even be out of your bed, let alone off campus.”
And then he freezes me with that dark gaze of his, pins me down like a bird, letting my wings flutter and flap furiously now that I’ve been captured.
“Lights out at nine-thirty. Those are the rules, remember? So either you’re breaking them, in your first week no less, or you’re sleepwalking. For your sake, I hope it’s the latter. Makes you look more sympathetic if you happen to get caught.”
It takes me a moment to understand his meaning.
I don’t know why because he couldn’t be clearer. There are no more ways in which to explain the meaning of his words.
But still.
It takes me a few seconds to fully grasp it.
Maybe because I myself had forgotten that I go to St. Mary’s now.
I myself had forgotten that I don’t live in his house anymore, and that I’m not free to go wherever I want.
Does he know why I was sent to St. Mary’s though?
I mean, not the real reason. No one knows the real reason, and no one will. But the other reasons, the stealing and the running away.
“Like I said, I’m not afraid of the law or the rules,” I say, averting my eyes from him.
“Obviously.”
I look back at him.
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br /> The way he says it confirms it all. The way he stares at me, with a knowing glint in his eyes, confirms it all too.
He knows. He knows what I did.
However I don’t know why it comes as a surprise. There are a lot of ways he could’ve found out. His mother might have told him, or my sister.
Besides, this isn’t the first time that I’ve been punished in front of him.
My bad behavior and my bad grades were the norm in the Carlisle family. There have been numerous occasions when Leah would lecture me about my lack of ambition, lack of good grades and extra-curricular activities, my lack of following the curfew, at the dinner table in front of the whole family.
Everyone knows that I’m not perfect.
That I’m the opposite of my sister and Arrow and Leah.
And even my mom, who was a college professor, when she was alive.
So it shouldn’t really embarrass me. Besides, this isn’t about me anyway.
This is about my sister, Sarah.
“Where’s my sister?” I ask, swallowing down all my selfish emotions. “Where’s Sarah?”
The mention of her name changes everything.
It changes the air, the light, the noises of the bar.
Sarah.
Like her name has so much power. Over him. Over me. Over the things around us.
“I’m guessing she’s back in LA,” he says in a soft voice.
But that’s the only thing soft about him.
The rest of him is hard.
His shoulders, the sleek, sculpted things, are rigid. His eyes are harsh.
So are his cheekbones.
And it’s so strange that I have my next question completely mapped out and planned.
It’s on the tip of my tongue, but then he chooses that moment to adjust the rim of his baseball cap and I notice something about his knuckles.
They’re swollen and cut up, the skin flayed and rolled into tiny curls, and the words on the cusp of escaping completely change. “What happened to your hand?”
My question sort of surprises him, I think. But only for a second. After that, his expression shutters.
That bruised fist of his becomes tight as he brings it down to his side.
“I punched a door,” he says in a low voice.
My Darling Arrow Page 4