I closed the door behind me and leaned against it, closing my eyes as I heard their steps going to his bedroom, and her giggles, already loud. I bumped my head against the slim wood that was my door, the only protection I would have against the noises that would sure make me ill.
And that was it. Only ten minutes later, and I was in a nightmare. Hearing this girl’s high-pitched moans was annoying. But it was mostly painful for my ears and for this tiny dark part of me who’s hurt by the fact that the man I slept with is making her scream so loud in exactly the same bed where he made me come so hard. I knew I shouldn’t be bothered because it was meaningless sex for both of us, but it was hard for me. And yet, the bitch inside me was at least delighted to not hear the slightest sound coming from Byron when he was quite vocal with me. Or maybe, I couldn’t hear him over the loud moans of the girl.
I hid my face in my hands and groaned. I was trying to listen to them having sex just to hear if he was making some kind of sound to compare this to how it was with me. It was so not normal, and it was extremely weirding me out. I shouldn’t listen to them; I shouldn’t think about how it felt to have him above me, moving inside me, making me so hot that I couldn’t see a thing except him.
I walked to my bedside table, grabbed my stereo remote and turned on loud music. It was a song by Hinder. I sat on my bed and sighed. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t live with a guy I had sex with and take this tension every day. He had me. He won. I would lose our bet and leave as soon as the two-month trial was over … in less than three weeks. It would be for the best because I didn’t want to start a new obsession and have my heart broken all over again when I wasn’t even sure if it was tapped back right.
But in the meantime, I needed to get back to him and get over him. I grabbed my phone and sent a text to Eliott, inviting him over. Poor guy, he left not long ago. Ten minutes later, Eliott and I were in my room, talking. He was on my bed, perusing through my iPod, relaxed. We were both ignoring the sounds coming from next door, and I was pretty sure that it was bothering me way more than Eliott. After all, he was a guy.
“Do you have all of Muse’s tracks?” he asked me, looking back at me after he put my iPod back on my little bedside table.
I nodded and sat next to him, my back against the headboard. “I love that band. I went twice to see them with Macon.”
He ran a hand in his dark hair and opened his mouth before he closed it without saying a word. He was debating something, and from the little I knew about him, it wasn’t like him to keep from saying something.
When I met his eyes, my nerves went up a notch. I knew that light; I knew it very well. “Eliott?” I whispered cautiously, playing with the hem of my black one-shoulder top.
“I want to kiss you. Would you let me?” he said with his drawl that sent tiny shivers along my spine. To say that it was a surprise would be a euphemism. I hung out with him a few times already. We had spent a few fun nights watching movies and talking about his experience in the army, but he never made a move that would have let me think that he saw me that way.
Did I want to be with Eliott that way? If I was being honest, I’d say no, but I needed this, I had to get over Byron and what happened, just like he’s doing. Nervously, I nodded and forced a small smile, ignoring what was going in the other bedroom, ignoring the raging emotions battling inside me.
Eliott leaned closer to me. His left hand brushed up my arm and caressed my cheek very softly. For such a big guy, he was very sweet and soft. When his lips came in contact with mine, I tried to get into it, I tried to enjoy the feel of his tongue brushing mine, I tried not to compare this with how I felt with Byron, but it was useless. I wasn’t into that kiss despite the obvious skill with which Eliott was kissing me.
I broke the kiss just before his hands wandered over my body parts. He was breathing louder than I was, but in his eyes, the spark I saw earlier had disappeared. “It’s Byron, isn’t it?” he asked me with a forced smile.
“What do you know?”
He shook his head and ran a hand over his face. “Nothing. He doesn’t want to talk about it.”
I swallowed and pushed back the lump in my throat. “I’m sorry, Eliott. I swear I thought I’d be able to … I don’t know.” I looked down at my thighs and closed my fists on my yellow bed sheet.
“Don’t worry. I’m fine.” He squeezed my right hand with his left one and his warmth and understanding made me regret that he wasn’t my roommate instead of the womanizer next door. “I think his girl just left.’’ He was probably right; the calm was back in the apartment.
“Did he tell you we slept together?” I blurted out suddenly, surprising me as much as Eliott.
He frowned. “And he’s going at it like that with others?”
I shrugged, but each of my shoulders weighed a gallon. Playing it cool was becoming harder. “He’s Byron.”
We kept silent for a few minutes, lost in our own thoughts. Eliott chuckled, and the bed shook when he sat sideways to face me. His knees bumped into my leg. “I’ve got an idea to get back at him if that’s what you want.”
I tilted my head to the side, curiosity getting the better of me. “Shoot.”
“Let’s fake it.” When I didn’t react he elaborated. “Let’s fake having sex. He’ll hate it.”
I blinked, and a mischievous smile broke free on my face. That was genius and devious! “But why would you do that?”
“Because I see that he’s hurting you. He should think a little more with his head and less with his dick.”
I chuckled and nodded. “So … um … how do we do this?”
He scratched his chin and stood up. “I’ll bounce the bed, and you’ll moan with me. Let’s do this for a few minutes.” He held up three fingers, then two and one.
“Eliott!” I moaned on a giggle, and his smile got insanely big. He moved on the bed a few times and moaned in turn. It was hard to keep my laughter in check, and if I believed his red cheeks, he felt the same. We did it for almost ten minutes, and then we became silent, muffling our laughter in my pillows. My stomach hurt from laughing soundlessly, and I felt as exhausted as if I just had sex. But I wasn’t sated, of course.
“I should get going, now. I hope it’ll help.”
I stood up with him and hugged his strong body. “Thank you. You’re the best,” I mumbled in his chest.
He pulled away and walked-ran out of the apartment. The only sound I heard after he left was the loud crash followed by what sounded like a punch in the wall coming from Byron’s room. Payback was a bitch.
Chapter Sixteen
DAY 37
“My cousin can get a keg for us,” Eliott said as Byron was writing way too many names of people to invite.
“How many will you invite? This place is not that big,” I stepped in.
He looked up and shrugged dismissively. That was his new thing when I talked to him. That and one word answers between some sort of grunts.
A knock at the door stopped me before I let lose my frustration. Eliott gave me a rueful smile, but kept his mouth close. I stood up and walked to the door. I already regretted giving them the green light for a keg party. I didn’t see why they needed to get it planned today–Thursday―when the party would be on Friday, next week. And really, for a keg party with college students who were seeking only two things for the most part―sex and getting shit-faced―we didn’t need much more than alcohol and maybe a few bowls full of condoms.
I opened the door, and Sydney smiled at me. “What are you doing here?”
Her smile lost a little of its shimmer. She adjusted her handbag on her slim shoulder. “I need to talk to you.”
I waved her in and walked straight to my room, waiting for her while she said a few words to the guys, still very into their keg party talk. She walked inside and closed the door behind her. She started to pace, playing with her long blonde hair. That was her tell. She was nervous, and it had me intrigued. I sighed and watched Sydney pacing in my bedroom for a
couple of minutes. Even if she looked as well put together as usual―her skinny blue jeans and green blouse that made her green eyes pop and her long blonde hair in a high ponytail―the flush invading her cheeks told another story.
Sydney took a deep breath, and I sighed again, now way less worried. If it was so awful, she’d have told me by now.
“London, don’t freak out, please,” she said breathless, biting her lower lip. She didn’t look me in the eyes, and it wasn’t like her.
“Do you know that when someone says that, it’s never a good sign?” I replied, frowning at seeing her fidget in front of me. For some reason, I was starting to think that I shouldn’t move from my seat on the bed.
“I know what you think about it, and I know you won’t like it, but I need to talk to you.” She rushed out her words, slurring them together and making it almost too difficult to understand.
I grabbed her hand and forced her to sit next to me. “Shoot, Sydney. You know I’m a short fuse.” And that was true. The last time Macon made me wait, I ended up tackling him to the floor of his bedroom, not that it helped anything.
“I’m in love with a guy,” she whispered, her eyes now focused on my face, taking in all and every micro-facial expressions that could appear. Though, I was frozen. The only things moving on my face were my eyelids. I blinked. And kept blinking.
My heart started beating faster, pumping my blood hard and making my head hurt. “In love. You’re in love? Who is this piece of shit?” I almost yelled, shaking my head from right to left to the point of making me dizzy.
She sighed and brought her hands to her face. A little more and it would look like she was anxious with me. And maybe she was, but that wasn’t the point. “And that’s why I was afraid to tell you this. As soon as you hear the word love, you lose it.”
I scowled at her and pushed her hands away from her face. I needed her to look at me, to see the truth that I was always trying to hide or forget. Love broke me. “Because I don’t want you to suffer too, Syd.”
“Do you realize that all the guys are not like Ryan?” Her soft eyes were pleading with me. It softened me enough to have a real talk with her without me going bat shit crazy over the fact that my little sister, my sister of not yet seventeen, was in love for the very first time.
“I know, but I don’t think this relationship will last either, Syd. You’re sixteen,” I pointed out with all the poise I could muster. I brushed away a stranded lock of hair from her face. How could I have missed this? I hadn’t seen much of her lately. We often talked over the phone, every couple of days or so, and yet she was able to hide this. She was a more secretive person than I thought.
“I know he won’t spend his life with me, and that’s not what I’m asking.” A little smile played on her thin lips, lightning all her features some more. “I’m in love for the first time, and it’s frightening … and I just wanted to talk about it with someone.”
I grimaced when the word love left her mouth. I was reacting to it like an old lady would at hearing the word fuck. “Why don’t you talk with your friends about this?”
She rolled her eyes and dismissed that idea with a wave of her slender hand. “Because they are too shallow to understand why I’m attracted to a guy who was not raised with loads of money like the rest of us,” she replied. I was more intrigued now, despite myself.
“So, he’s not from your high school,” I stated the obvious knowing what kind of students there were in her high school, the same one I graduated from.
“No, he’s not.” She shook her head and her gaze became more vacant, as if she was dreaming while still awake. I wrinkled my nose when a thought struck me. And what if she was fantasizing about the guy? Because that’s exactly what I did whenever my gaze was vacant like that. You could be sure that I was mentally stripping a guy naked to ogle him. All of him.
“Please, tell me he’s not in college already,” I pleaded, trying to bring her back to the present that was obviously less sexy.
She gaped at me for a second, looked me up and down like I was mentally ill and that was dangerous, before she recomposed herself. “Of course not! He’s a senior in his high school, and his grades are really good. He’s not playing any sports in his high school, but he is into mixed martial arts at a club in his suburbs.”
She was babbling nervously and was trying to sell him to me, or his existence at least. Talking about feelings and a guy with my sister was not the best thing ever. I preferred, by far, the talk we had when she was just a little kid and wanted to know how to make a baby. Let’s just say that I didn’t go with the birds and the bees talk. I went straight to the real subject, and my parents weren’t fond of it when Sydney went proudly to them and told them to go in their bedroom naked to have sex because she wanted a baby sister or brother.
“How did you meet him? And how long have you been with him?” I asked seriously even if the memory almost made my lips twitch up. Though, right now I needed to be there for Sydney and assess the situation.
“It’s been a month,” she said, looking around my bedroom like our mother or father was hiding somewhere and would jump on us at any moment.
“All right. A month.” I took another deep breath when my stomach rolled at the idea. “So why are you eluding to who this guy is? Is he a delinquent or something?”
She flushed some more, and I narrowed my eyes on her. She fidgeted more under the weight of my glare as the seconds ticked by.
“Uh … it’s Byron’s brother,” she mumbled softly, her voice shaking slightly.
And once again I was frozen and blinking like an idiot. I was having a hard time processing this news. “You’re dating Byron’s little brother?”
“Yes.” She put some more space between us as her eyebrows shot upward on her forehead.
“You’re in love with Byron’s little brother?”
“That’s what I told you.” She nodded and waited for me to gather my wit back. Not as easy when you’re experiencing all the symptoms of a stroke without actually having one.
“Did you tell him already?” My voice was not as assured as usual, nor was it booming or cheerful. Gloomy would be a better adjective.
“Yes, but he was the first one to say it,” she answered with a love-sick smile stretching her mouth. People in love were so … annoying.
And then, something clicked in my brain. Startled, I grabbed one of
Sydney’s hands and squeezed way too hard, as she made a face. Byron’s little brother was boyishly good-looking, and even if he wasn’t even eighteen yet, I was pretty sure that he was just like his big brother. A womanizer. Cold vanquished the heat in my body.
“Please, please, tell me you didn’t have sex with him.” I closed my eyes tightly, just like when I was a little girl and was afraid to hear something.
She sighed at my behavior and shrugged off my grip on her hand. “I’m still a virgin, London. We can’t see each other that much.”
I released a breath I wasn’t aware of holding. “Well, I remember I was able to find time to do it so—‘’
“Are you mad at me?” she asked me, cutting me off efficiently.
It wasn’t normal to have my little sister afraid that I was mad just because she fell in love. She’s sweeter than me, better looking, and she wasn’t jaded like I was. It was bound to happen for her, and I had to be there for her to prevent anything from happening like it did to me.
“I’m not, but do you realize that this guy wants to enlist once he graduates? Even his family can’t change his mind, and it’s driving Byron nuts.”
She nodded, sadness taking over, and the happiness I could see earlier dampened. “I know that, but, London, I really love him. It’s strong, beautiful, but not perfect. I know I’ll nurse a broken heart soon, but the difference with what happened to you is that I’ll have a wonderful guy who loves me and treats me as I deserve to be treated.”
He could be the perfect prince charming, and that would never change a thing to me. He’
ll leave, and she’ll have a broken heart. Granted, it wouldn’t be exactly like my past relationship because, if he was really genuine in his feelings, then the pain would be different. But she’ll still be in pain.
“I know he’s a great guy, but in the end you’ll hurt no matter what.” Anguish was audible in my voice, and I hated it. In times like this, I couldn’t hide all the pain I had felt, and bits still lingered sometimes. Sydney knew this. She had seen me cry because of Ryan and had held me in her thin arms while I had sobbed for days. Both Macon and Sydney saw how deep it cut me, while my parents only witnessed it to a certain extent. I didn’t want them to see my pathetic self. After all, for them I was just their crazy and always bubbly daughter that had no filter.
“Don’t you think some things deserve to be explored even if you know you can’t have a happily ever after?” she asked me softly, almost hesitantly. She knew we would never really see eye to eye on this subject.
“I’m really not sure, Syd.”
“I am, though, and that’s why I want your help.” And she did a one-eighty in a matter of seconds. She looked determined and giddy now.
“Something tells me that I won’t like it.” I crossed my arms over my chest and wrinkled up my little nose. Stay calm, London.
“I want to sleep with him.”
“I knew I wouldn’t like it.” I stood up in a jump and brushed away some of my flying hair. Did seeing me freak out at this news deter her? Nope!
“I know he has already slept with girls, but it would be the first time he’s in love while doing it. He wants it to be special,” she pressed on, her words slurring again. She was still sitting on my bed, now looking up at me while I was the one pacing in front of her this time around.
“At least, he’s smart enough,” I mumbled to myself.
“London, it’s difficult for me to talk about this,” she said, and I stopped pacing. She was good at making me feel guilty. I groaned.
“For me too, Syd,” I said in a breath.
“Will you help me or not?”
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