Broken Fairytales (6 page)

I’d gotten up the courage to ask Ben about
Ashleigh a few nights earlier.
He said she was a
fun
girl, but he wasn’t interested in
anything more than friendship.
He admitted that, yes, they did kiss a few t
imes, but they weren’t dating.
He act
ually liked someone else – me!
Apparently he’d asked Ashleigh about me when they’d hung out at the first party, and she’d told him t
hat I was dating Andy Callum. So, being a
teenage
guy, Ben had
shrugged and taken Ashleig
h up on what she was offering.
Then
after talking to Andy later on and learning that I was not in fact dating him,
Ben
decided to ask
for my number.

I’d be lying if I said this information d
idn’t send me floating on air.
By that point, I really liked Ben, and
I
would have died if I had to compete with Ashleigh Ballast with her experience
and willingness to experiment.
I
was
a
virgin
at the time
, so she would have beaten me hands down if it had come
down to a battle of sexuality.
Fortunately for me
, it didn’t.
I can’t say I was thrilled with the fact that Ashleigh had gotten to Ben first, but in the end, he’d pic
ked me, so I guess I won
.

That Friday night, I had laid low while Ashleigh monopolized Ben for the first hour
of the party
, talking and flirting, batting her eyelashes and ma
king any excuse to touch him. I
hung out on the back porch with Rachel
and watched
A
shleigh ma
ke
a joke of herself.
We watched as Ben talked politely to her, but
he
never once responded to her ad
vances or made any of his own.
Then
we watched him excuse himself, look around, spot me and walk directly o
ver to where we were standing.
In that moment, I was too busy watching Ben to notice anything else, but Rachel told me later, that if looks could kill, I would have been dead.  Ashleigh apparently turned red, glared, stomped her foot and marched off, more pissed than she’d ever been. 

All I could
focus on was the gorgeous smile
aimed right at me, as the most perfect boy I’d ever laid eyes on stopped in front of me and ran his hand
through his moppy blond hair.
I felt myself get giddy as I looked up at h
im and took a sip of my
beer
in an effort to have something to do with my hands. 

“Hey Em,” he said.
He’d taken to calling me Em during our phone conversations
, and I loved the way my nickname rolled off his tongue
. 

“Hi,”
I said quietly,
shyness taking over.

“You having fun?” he asked, taking a sip of his beer and eyeing me.

I nodded.

He laughed, obviously appreciating watching me squirm, but then, as if to ease the tension, he took my hand and ask
ed if I wanted to take a walk.
Again, all I could do was nod. 

W
e walked around the house to a more secluded area, where we wouldn’t have the eyes of all of our classmates on us while we stumbled thr
ough our first party together.
I found that with Ben’s hand around mine, I was abl
e to relax a little
, even though I
didn’t
actu
ally have
to form words, which was
a good thing.
On the pho
ne it had been so much easier.
I was pretty sur
e I’d been witty and charming, but in person I had trouble putting
coherent sentences together.

Ben stopped once we were out of sight, tur
ned to face me and made a joke. I don’t remember what it was. I just remember laughing as I
let my guard down, and we spent the rest of the night leaning against
the side of the house talking.
It wasn’t until fifteen minutes before I had to be home that Rachel foun
d me and told me we had to go.
I couldn’t believe how fast three hours had gone by
.
I definitely didn’t want to leave, but the last thing I wanted was to be under house arrest again, so I begrudgingly told Ben I had to go. 

Seeing our night rapidly come to a close,
he’d offered to drive me home.
He obviously didn’
t want to part just yet either.
When we pulled up in front of my house, he walked me to the front porch w
here we sat down on the steps.
He said he didn’t have to be home just yet, and would my parents mind if I stayed outside for a while to talk. 

I shook my head, although I really had no idea how my parents would feel about me sitting
on the front porch with a boy.
Technically I wasn’t violating curfew, but the
y might see things differently.
Luckily, they were asleep.

Ben took my hand and held it in his lap, as w
e sat down on the cold cement.
For a few mi
nutes, he didn’t say anything.
He just played with my fingers before lacing our hands together.
I watched our hands as he did this, still amazed
at who was sitting next to me.
Then, he looked at me for a few seconds, leaned over and kissed me lightly, sending my stomach into a tailspin. 

From that night on, we were inseparable.  He
was my first love, and until recent
ly, I’d thought everything with him was perfect, but now it was like he was grating o
n my nerves on a regular basis.
I tried to focus on the good things about him, the things I loved, but it seemed like the bad had been outweighing the good more
and more
frequently
,
and my feelings for him had started to feel forced
.

I glanced over at the picture of Ben
and me on my ni
ghtstand.
It had been taken our senior year of high school
af
ter one of the football games.
Ben was hugging me from behi
nd, his head tucked next to mine
. We were both smiling widely.
Our team had
just won, so we were excited.
You could see the flush in both of our cheeks from the ex
citement and the cold weather.
More than that, we look
ed so in love with each other.
I wondered when exactly I’d stopped feeling that happy
with him
and how I could get that feeling back
.

Chapter
Four

“You should break up with him.
He’s a douche.
You could do so much better.”

I looked up
to see my brother
standing in my doorway, lazily leaning against the door
jam
.

“What do you want?” I asked
him,
completely ignoring his comment
.

Chase hated Ben,
so
his
chastising
comments were common
place.
I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction that I was thin
king along the same lines
.
I wouldn’t give Chase that
pleasure
.
I in no way wanted him to think he was even partially right
.

It was a good thing we went to school so far away from each other
.
Chase was going to be a senior at NYU
in the fall
. Fortunately, because of this,
I didn’t have to see him more than a few times a year
, and even then I could avoid spending
any actual
time around him
.
I hadn’t even called him while I’d been in New York
visiting Rachel
over
s
pring break
. We didn’t keep in touch during the school year
and had barely acknowledged each other since we’d been home
for the summer
.
I knew he was only talking to me because he needed something
, just like he only wanted to drive to the beach with Keely and me because it was convenient for him
.

I wish
we got along or could at least be civil to each other,
but in truth we hadn’t ha
d much in common
since we were kids
.
Chase
was
more of a loner,
in the ‘I don’t conform to normal
societal
expectations and therefore prefer to alienate myse
lf from anyone who does’.
In high school he’d
lived
for breaking the rules, g
etting away with whatever he could,
and connin
g my parents into believing he was
the perfect son
,
w
hich frustrated
me to no end, since
they always believe
d
him
.
From my experience
he hadn’t changed much since then
, so I didn’t make much of an effort to bridge the gap between us
.
My mother wa
s always giving me crap for not making more of an effort to be friends wit
h
him.
She did
n’t get that we couldn’t
have
be
en
more different
and
therefore tolerated each other
at best
.

Irritatingly enough, w
ith his
almost black
hair, bright
green
eyes that he got from some obscure relative
, and d
ark, th
ic
k lashes
, he turned a lot of heads – mostly from girls who liked bad boys or who were just as pierced and tattooed as he was
– but still, girls loved my brother
.
I’d never actually known him to have a girlfriend, but growing up my friends all thought he was gorgeous. I just didn’t see the allure.
The year before he’d
pierced his
left
eyebrow
with
a
silver ba
rbell,
adding to the piercing he had in his tongue and his left nipple
.
He a
lso had
a sleeve of tattoos up his right arm and some strategically placed tattoos on other areas of his body
.

But a
s dissimilar as our outward appearances
were
,
since I was neither pierced nor tattooed,
where we really differed was our personalities. I had always been
more outgoing and friendly,
and
Chase
had always been
quiet and serious, but
he
also
had
an int
ensely sarcastic side that
would come
out from time to time. His sense of humor was
so dry that m
ost of the time our family didn’t get it when he made a joke. He wa
s usually the only one lazily laughing at what he
’d
said
, most
likel
y because he was high
when he’d made the joke
.
Chase smoked more weed than anyone I knew
, but h
e also had a 4.0 GPA
and barely
had to crack
a book. It was a strange combin
ation, but for some reason,
smoking had never hindered his academic abilities, and he’d been doing it since high school.

“What do you want?” I repeated, slower this time in case he hadn’t heard me. Maybe the weed was finally affecting his brain.

Chase
smirked and
ran a hand through his hair, as he
leaned against the door jam.
“I need your window
,” he said d
ryly, as h
e
surveyed
the
piles of clothes on my bed.