Page 16 of Reckless Roses
Leo follows my gaze through the door, and he nods as if he understands. “Don’t stay away too long. Iwillcall in an Amber Alert.”
That earns a rough laugh from me, and I slap my friend on the back before I step away, stalking around the side of my house and out the back gate. Once my feet hit the pavement of our street, I run. I run until I’m numb, until I can no longer feel her touch, her breath on my neck. I run until I’ve all but forgotten the words she said to me, the secrets she told.
Yet one echoes in my head, keeping pace with the rhythm of my feet hitting the ground.
You’re the only person I’ve ever told that to.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
The party had begunto die down when I returned home, only a few kids from school lingering around the kitchen. My brother and Elena were missing, and his bedroom door was shut. Leo and Everett were passed out on the living room couch, cuddling each other’s feet. After taking a photo I’ll definitely use for blackmail later, I not-so-politely kicked the loiterers out of my house before I cleaned up the kitchen and went to bed.
The issue with a daytime party is that it’s only nine o’clock now, everyone around me passed out or MIA, and I’m stuck staring at my ceiling, a bullet train of images flashing across my mind of the girl I’m madly in love with and my older brother who doesn’t deserve her.
I know I should put on some music. A movie. Anything to avoid a rogue sound coming from Zach’s room across the hall. But I don’t. It’s almost like I’m searching for it, the confirmation, hoping the silence remains so I can convince myself nothing is happening at all. It’s hard enough to know that on weekends, Zach sneaks through her bedroom window, or vice versa, and they sleep next to each other, but I allowed myself to live in blissful ignorance, pretending that’s as far as anything ever went. I chose to walk through each day convinced she’d realize I was so much better for her, and she’d choose me instead.
I rub a hand down my face, taking a deep breath. If my two best friends weren’t passed out on my couch, I’d have gone to their place tonight and crashed there. If I showed up on Monica and Carlos’s doorstep right now, they’d let me in, no doubt. But they also might ask where their kids are, and I would then have to explain that two of them got shit-faced, and the other may or may not be actively losing her virginity.
I decide I need a glass of water—or maybe some of Leo’s fucked-up punch. Maybe it’ll kill me. At the very least, it’ll help me pass out too. I need to escape my own mind for a little while. I throw myself out of bed, trudge to my bedroom door, and toss it open as I wipe at my heavy eyes.
I blink, adjusting my glasses as another door creaks open. My blurry vision focuses, and Elena stands in front of me. She gasps, stepping back suddenly before pausing.
“You scared me,” she murmurs. I take note of her smeared eye makeup, the halo of distressed curls around her shoulders, and her bare legs beneath one of my brother’s oversized T-shirts.
My heart, my stomach—all my internal organs, really—fall to the ground beneath me as I soak her in. Every confirmation I didn’t want to receive is written plainly in the space between us, and I’m not sure I’ll ever recover.
A prickling sensation spreads through my chest, the blade of a scorching knife tearing its way through my flesh.
“Are you still drunk?” I find myself asking.
She shakes her head. I study her eyes, finding them clearer than they were earlier. Despite the raging hatred for him flowing through my veins, I trust my brother enough to know that he wouldn’t go there unless Elena was completely sober and willing.
“Are you okay?” I ask this time.
There is a soft smile on her face as she nods. I’m sure she assumes it’s a reassuring expression for me, but she has no idea that she just ripped my heart from my body, taking my soul right along with it.
I can’t bear another second of standing here across the hall, staring at her like a soulless ghost with a hollow chest. “Goodnight, Elena,” I murmur as I step back inside my room.
Her face falls as I shut my door in front of her.
6
AUGUST
“ILLICIT AFFAIRS” - TAYLOR SWIFT
AGE FIFTEEN - JULY
“I told you—Ididn’t fucking send that text”
“I saw the screenshot! It was your name.”
“Okay? So she changed someone else’s name to mine.”
Elena rolls her eyes. “I’m so sure. Because Brooke Williams issoobsessed with you, she’d go so far as changing a name in her phone to convince me you’re sexting her.”
Leaning over the railing, I stare down at the whitecaps of the sea as they crash against the columns, wishing I was literally anywhere else. We’ve continued our stupid Saturday tradition of jumping off the pier, but Everett got caught with a girl in his room last week and had to mow lawns early this morning as punishment, and Leo is picking up his new friend, Darby, before meeting us down here.
Which means I’m stuck third-wheeling with Zach and Elena, and today seems to be anoffday for them. They’re constantly fighting—screaming and crying and slamming doors—whether that be lockers at school, the door to Zach’s car, or his bedroom when she’s at our house. They’re like a natural disasterhappening in front of your face that you’re too stunned to look away from, and we’re all collateral damage.
