I reached into my pocket and pulled out what I was using now. It was also pink. Metallic pink. They called it rose gold to make it seem less menacing. My last phone had been the latest model available at one of those electronics box stores. This one had been specially ordered online from a little known manufacturer who specialized in making military-grade equipment. It was their first offering to the consumer market, promising tech-bros and conspiracy theorists alike, the best security available outside of the “agency world”. It was spy grade level shit, with a casing built to endure eight tours in Afghanistan before it showed wear and tear.
That’s the kind of phone you carried when your enemies had the money and the know-how to hack your life and turn your cell phone into a spy device. Aaron Lee and his friends had spent nearly a week trying to figure out how to crack into it before they had finally given up and reverted back to ignoring me completely. Unlike Adam and his friends, they never hated me. They were just in it for the chance to say they hacked me, trolled me, and made my life miserable.
They had bright futures ahead of them. It’s true. In the world we live in now, a lot of people will play good money for those kinds of skills.
In the meantime, I had homework to do. I’d also given up my old laptop for something with a little more kick. Once again, I’d opted for the best security available outside of the Secret Service and added a few features that made me just as dangerous to Aaron and Company as they thought they were to me. My dad had sprung for a VPN, which meant I could get online and remain incognito most of the time. The only time I was traceable was when I turned assignments in through the school’s online portal, and even then, I made sure my IP address went nowhere. It was expensive and a pain in my ass, but it meant that, while I might not have been a free woman in Donnerville, I was still a free woman online.
They could torment me during school hours, but they couldn’t infringe on my rights to watch cat videos at home.
I changed my clothes and started my assignments while my parents fought in the living room. They were like that. One minute they were a united front, the next they were back to being bitter enemies. I felt a little guilty this time because I knew I was the subject and the cause of their argument. They were probably blaming each other for the downward spiral that had become my life.
The truth was that it wasn’t either of their faults. Despite the fact that they waited until I was in high school to finally get a divorce, I was actually relieved when they split up. They could finally stop pretending that everything was okay, and the tension in the house finally eased. And if either of them took the time to do the math, they would have realized that I was doing just fine during the first two years of their split.
My grades were great. I had a decent group of friends and outside interests. I even had a boyfriend. And all of that changed in one night. The truth was, that car accident wasn’t a “symptom” of some deeper issue. It was the source of my problems. But neither of them wanted to hear that. It was just easier to blame each other than to listen to what I had to say, and somewhere along the line, I stopped trying to explain myself to them or to anybody else. If there was a “problem” then that would be it.
But there was no problem.
My stomach growled. I should have grabbed a snack while I was in the kitchen. Luckily, I always kept a stash of snacks in my closet. I broke open a box of fudge brownies and got to work. This calculus homework wasn’t going to do itself, though I kind of wished it would.
Chapter 3
NOW
I was not looking forward to my first official visit with “the counselor”. Mom said she was a very well-known child psychologist who had a track record of helping girls like me. And by “girls like me” I assumed she meant girls on the verge of a nervous breakdown because their neurotic parents asked questions, refuse to believe the answers, and then shuffled them off to a counselor to be fixed.
I wish she would have asked me before she made the appointment. But then again, I doubt my input would have changed anything. Nothing I did ever seemed to make things better.
Today would’ve been a great day if things were normal, but nothing had been normal for a very long time. I knew it was a bad idea, but I couldn’t keep myself from walking over to my closet and pulling out a box that I’d buried in the back. It had sat there untouched for so long that it was actually covered in dust, which made this whole exercise just a little sadder.
I sat down and opened the box slowly, almost reverently. It was full of things I wanted to keep as mementos from high school. I had items from every year. Pictures, ribbons, programs from events, and even small trinkets from Homecoming and Spring Fling. They all seemed so special when I’d put them in the box. Back then, they seemed like things I would want to keep forever. I never expected that they would ever become so ridiculously painful to look at.
The source of the pain? The boy standing beside me in nearly every photo. His blonde hair and blue eyes were a stark contrast to my deep olive complexion and bone-straight black hair. I looked at the photo we’d taken exactly one year ago, and I couldn’t hold back the tears. His arm rested across my shoulders and I leaned comfortably into the bow of his body. Our smiles were easy and natural. Everything was like that with him. It was like we didn’t have to try, we just fit together.
That day he’d been so excited to pick me up. He’d bought an old Volvo months before and had finally managed to get it up and running. It wasn’t as flashy as the cars some of the other kids were driving, and a far-fetch below what his parents had offered him. But he wasn’t like that. His family had money. Old money. And lots of it. But whereas someone with that kind of pending fortune might have flaunted with what he hadn’t earned, Adam didn’t. He was the type who I could see donating his entire inheritance and starting over from scratch. Fighting his way into a sport’s scholarship or building a business from the ground up. So this car, unflashy as it was, it carried the kind of pride that was worth its weight in gold. Adam had done most of the repairs himself and he and his dad made it a father-son project. They even had it repainted from a responsible silvery grey to a deep metallic purple.
When he showed up to pick me up, he was beaming from ear to ear. If I hadn’t been in love with him before, I might have fallen head over heels because of that smile.
In his hand, he carried purple roses, gripping them with the kind of excitement that only doe-eyed kids are privy to. Over his shoulders, he wore a lilac jacket, to match the car, of course. I wore the turquoise jewelry that my dad had brought back for me from his trip out to Arizona over the summer. We looked like a pastel watercolor painting.
“A rose for my rose,” he bowed at the waist and handed me the bouquet.
I blushed a little and turned away so he couldn’t see how deeply my cheeks tinted. “You’re so cheesy. Who says that?”
“I do. I hate to tell you this, but your man is a cheesy guy.” He really was, but only ever with me. On the outside, Adam was your typical jock. On the ice, even more so.
“Adam!” I looked around out of reflex. My mom was still in the house and I knew she couldn’t hear him. Even though she knew we were dating, she preferred not to have to confront the reality of it. She was an out of sight, out of mind kind of woman. A trait I had not inherited. Unfortunately, I liked to know everything and preferred to confront my realities.
It was the source of most of our arguments.
“What? After all of this time, you still don’t want to admit that you’re mine?”
I put my hands in his face and wiggled my fingers.
“I don’t see a ring on any of these fingers.”
“Give it time,” he laughed and kissed me quickly. “The night is still young and so are we.”
“Oh man, you have to stop watching old movies.”
He shook his head. “Never.” And boy was that true. Not that I minded. As much as I teased him, I loved the fact that he wasn’t like all the other boys. He was different in all the ways that
counted and if ‘old movies’ were the reason for that, then he could watch all of them for all I cared.
Adam left my side and ventured toward the car. He didn’t move toward the driver’s side, however. Instead, he took pause at the passenger side of the vehicle and held my door open for me to climb into the car. I did as he wanted, without a single ounce of protest.
Another smile thinned my lips as I looked around me. He’d bought leopard print seat covers to mask the old and probably disgustingly dingy upholstery. I reached over and unlocked the door as he walked around the back of the car. He slid into the car with a dopey grin plastered on his face.
“What?”
“I knew you loved me.”
“I never said that.”
“You will,” he leaned in so close that our lips brushed as he spoke. “Tonight.”
I pushed him away.
“Where are we going, by the way?”
“It’s a surprise,” he declared as he fired up the engine. It wheezed a little before it began to purr. Adam looked over at me with an expectant smile. He was like a puppy waiting to be praised.
“Runs like a dream,” I said. His smile got so wide I thought the corners of his mouth might reach his earlobes.
We drove out of town and into the country, where the lack of street-lights and neon signs made the sky seem closer and the stars brighter. We flew down the nearly abandoned highway, two silly kids in love, not caring about a damn thing in the world. One turn after the other, I fell deeper and deeper in love with Adam. There was no reason for it, other than the fact that ours was the kind of love that grew uncontrollably. The kind of love that I didn’t ever think could die.
Adam ventured away from roads that I was accustomed to before taking a sudden turn into what looked like a grove.
I arched a brow and turned to look at him. “Okay, if you were planning on hiding a body, this would be the place to do it,” I joked.
“Not at all. Or rather…not tonight,” he joked right back, and I laughed a little.
The car slowed to tackle the bumpier roads. Adam was more than just smiling at that point. He was beaming. He reached over and squeezed my hand as a large movie screen came into view. He stopped for a moment to pay at a booth that had been constructed out of a converted mail truck.
“Enjoy the show,” said the blue-haired girl who handed us a small radio in exchange for the price of admission.
“We will,” he winked at her before driving off.
“How did you even find this place?” I could hardly contain my excitement. He got out of the car and opened the trunk only to return with two large bags of popcorn and sodas in old-fashioned glass bottles.
“Are you impressed yet?”
“Completely,” I gushed. It wasn’t a lie.
“Good.” He lifted my chin with the tip of his finger and closed the space between us. His lips danced across mine and his tongue ventured into my mouth as he kissed me slowly. Everything about it was gentle and insistent and completely disarming. Kissing Adam was like falling into quicksand and then deciding, just as you gasped your last breath, that it wasn’t such a bad deal anyway. It was one of the things that I loved most about being with him. The fact that nothing mattered. The fact that even the silliest, cheesiest, simplest things in life felt like the greatest, most astonishing, groundbreaking things, so long as he was a part of them.
By the time Adam pulled his lips away from mine, the movie had already started and I had no idea what it was called. It was one of the old productions from the fifties, complete with large scale musical numbers and car chases where the leading lady’s hair never moved. It was awful and amazing all at the same time. I snuggled up next to Adam and watched the whole horrible affair without saying a word.
There was nothing to say, after all. He made it perfect.
On the way home, we stopped to get ice cream and watched people in town. We sat in our favorite spot, near a fountain in front of City Hall, and watched as people passed by. We made up stories about where they were going and what they were going to do when they got to where they were going.
“What about you and me?”
I looked at him, confused.
“Come on Anna, it’s been a year already. You still don’t know how I feel about you?”
“Me?” I played dumb. I wasn’t any good at it.
“I love you, Anna. I don’t think I am ever going to love anybody the way I love you.” He wrapped his arms around me and pressed his forehead against mine.
“Don’t be so sure,” I told him. “You’re surrounded by gorgeous cheerleaders almost every day after school. Maybe one of them will fall into your heart.” It was meant to be funny, but the look on Adam’s face was anything but.
He pressed his lips together and shook his head at me. “You fucking love me,” he said.
I shrugged.
“Your heart does that faster and slower thing and when I kiss you like this…” Adam leaned in brushed his lips against mine, just so. My mouth parted and all the beats of my heart seemed to collide, proving Adam one hundred percent right. I tried to reach his lips, desperate for the closeness…desperate to taste him.
“Do I have to say it?” I panted.
He shook his head. “Not if you don’t want to. But it is our anniversary.”
I stepped back and wriggled out of his arms. I looked up into his open, expecting eyes. I knew he wanted to hear it. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him, I just wasn’t made for syrupy moments. They made me feel like Jello in the middle – a shaky blob of nerves and anxiety. We were such an odd pair. He was an open book. If he loved you, he said so. If he hated you, he showed his contempt openly. He was tall and dangerously sexy, and I was barely average height and looked like the disappointing daughter of a beauty queen. My dad always said I took after his side of the family and I’d grow into my looks. My mom said nothing at all, which I took to mean that she wasn’t ready to accept the fact that this was as pretty as I would ever become.
I didn’t want to become a teen movie cliché.
But, there we were, in front of a fountain in town, eating ice cream on our anniversary. There would be music playing in the background if this were a movie, but it wasn’t. And he was still waiting.
“I love you, Adam Randt,” I said softly, and boy did it feel so right to finally have the words out of my system.
“What was that? I couldn’t quite hear you?”
I chuckled and leaned in.
“I LOVE YOU,” I shouted.
He stuck his fingers in his ears. “I know, I know, no need to shout.”
“Jerk!”
I smashed the remaining ice cream onto his nose and took off running. He was both taller and more athletic than I was and caught up to me pretty quickly. I stuck my foot out as he tackled me and we both tumbled into the grass.
“Let me up, smelly,” I demanded.
“Not until I’ve done this.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a velvet box. He shifted his focus to his squirming girlfriend and a sudden calm and peace settled over us.
“What is this?”
“Open it,” he insisted.
I smiled at his silliness, but obeyed his wishes. When I opened the case, I was once again caught off guard. Inside were a pair of rings. It was an obvious matching set. Both rings were silver with a gold vine running through them.
Adam held his hand out for me to slide one of the rings on.
“Now it’s official for anybody to see. You belong to me.” He took the case from my hand and slipped the remaining ring around my finger.
“You know I can’t wear this home. My mom would flip.”
“As long as you wear it, I’m willing to let your mom pretend not to know that her little girl is grown up. As long as you know I’m your man and nothing is ever going to change that. See?” He held his hand next to mine, pressing the two rings together. Side by side the word “forever” revealed itself in the gold engraving.
“You a
re such a romantic,” I said and kissed his chin before resting my head on his chest. I stayed just like that for a long time, not growing bored at the sound of his heart beating just for me. If you had asked me at that moment, I would’ve admitted that I honestly believed that nothing could ever rip us apart. No matter what we would face, we would face it together. He was my rock and my refuge.
If I had known then how fickle teenaged boys’ hearts were, I would never have allowed myself to be so moved. I would have reminded myself a hundred times a day that most boys our age have the emotional intelligence of a blueberry muffin. If I was smart, I would’ve given the ring back the night of the accident.
But I wasn’t smart, and so I ended up putting that stupid ring in this fucking box for safekeeping. Another memory from high school that I was sure I would want to keep forever. Something else I couldn’t turn away from, no matter how much easier it would be to just pretend.
“Ana! Sweetie, are you about ready to go?” Dad’s voice rung loud, shaking me out of my memory.
I wiped the tears away from my face with the back of my hands and returned the box to its hiding spot.
“I’ll be down in a minute, dad,” I called down the stairs.
“Okay, I’ll wait in the car,” he said.
I washed my face and used eye drops to clear any redness. My dad wasn’t willfully ignorant like my mom, but he liked to leave well enough alone. As long as I didn’t look like I’d been crying, he wouldn’t ask too many questions which was a good thing because today was not shaping up to be a good day.
Chapter 4
NOW
Being a twin is funny. My sister and I came into the world together and have always been best friends. Closer than that, actually. We were so inseparable that it was almost like we shared a soul. Even though we had our own interests and friends, she was a part of me, like a phantom limb. But that didn’t mean that we were tied at the hip. I loved Eva, but I was my own man, not part of a matching set.
Filthy Pride: Dark Bully Romance Page 2