Filed to story: Kissing the Wrong Brother
“Yeah, that’s gonna happen,” she says. But then she lets me move her toward the wall of mirrors on the far side of the gym. “So can I see your tattoo?”
Hell no. I stand beside her, both of us facing the mirror, her face pink and animated, mine dark and glowering.
“Okay, do what I do,” I say, meeting her blue eyes in the mirror. “We’re going to lower ourselves to a sitting position, making sure our knees don’t extend beyond our toes.”
I do a squat to demonstrate. Generally I do squats with weight-lots of it-but since the most physical exercise Aria seems accustomed to is running her mouth, I figure I’d better start at the beginning. The very beginning.
“Okay?” I say, doing another, since she didn’t mimic my motion the second time.
She watches my movement in the mirror. “One more time,” she says.
I comply, and then mutter a string of curses because Aria Walsh has just reached out in the middle of a busy gym and patted my ass.
“Very nice,” she says, sounding surprised.
“Aria!”
She shrugs. “You just got so upset when I was ogling that other guy instead of you, so I wanted to make you feel good.”
For a second I want to laugh, and because of that I’m tempted to tell her that this arrangement is over. That she can go back to being her chocolate-munching lazy self, because I don’t laugh.
Not anymore.
Aria’s different, and I hate different.
She’s not like the women who eye me like a piece of meat, nor like the love-struck girls at the bar who act like I’ll settle down once I find the right girl.
And she’s definitely not like her sister Kylie, who knows exactly how gorgeous she is and knows that all she has to do is wait for the guys to come to her.
Aria is …
I don’t even know.
She gives a long sigh. “I’m sorry I fondled you.”
She does a quick half squat. “Okay?”
I hold her wide blue gaze in the mirror, startled to realize that without all that hair distracting from her features, she’s actually quite … well, I don’t know what.
Interesting?
Arresting?
I don’t know if pretty’s the word.
“No, not okay,” I snap, annoyed by the train of my thoughts. “You need to go down farther.”
“That’s what she said.” Aria tries again for another squat, and I keep my hand on her shoulder, gently forcing her to go just a little bit lower.
“But that’s hard,” she protests.
I give a grim laugh. “Yeah. That’s kind of the point.”
Aria turns her head to face me then, meeting my eyes for real instead of in the mirror.
Awareness flashes across her face, and I jerk my hand away, feeling a little unnerved, because I have the strangest feeling that Aria Walsh knows that when I say it’s hard, I’m not talking about the squats.
I’m talking about life.
My life.
Aria’s POV
I love college.
I spent my entire senior year of high school gnashing my teeth in annoyance that Kylie got to go to college first.
That sort of jealousy was actually a first for me. See, Kylie and I are so different that even being a mere year apart (usually a recipe for disaster with teenage daughters, I’m told), we never really fought, because, well … what were we going to fight over?
I didn’t want to borrow her lip gloss. She wasn’t exactly fighting for my spot on the debate team.
So high school was fine. I mean, it was … whatever.
But I was jealous when she went to college, because I knew college was going to be my thing.
Even though I knew we’d likely end up at the same school (I’d always had my eye on Davis, as had Kylie. As had every Walsh since the history of Walshs), but even knowing my big sister would be there, I’d had every intention of thriving.
And I have.
So far it’s been as great as I imagined, from the first day freshman year to last year’s kick-ass internship.
I prayed my little heart out that I’d get hooked up with an awesome roommate, and the big guy came through for me. Tessa is this tiny redheaded bundle of awesome. Next year will be the fourth (and last, sniff!) year that we’re roomies, but it won’t be the last that we’re best friends.
The rest came pretty easily, too.
I’ve got a rock-solid group of friends. I love both the econ and bio departments and all the faculty there.
I even met a couple cute boys who kinda sorta seemed to dig my quirkiness, dated them awhile, traded in my V-card on principle to one, and then ultimately dumped them both, because, well, I’ve been sort of hung up on you-know-who.
And it’s that you-know-who that brings me to the flip side of college life: the bittersweet phase known as summer break.
See, Cedar Grove has the not-so-great nickname as the Silver Spoon of Dallas.
The town is about twenty-five minutes away from the city: close enough for the residents to fool themselves into thinking they’re urban when it suits them, far enough away to be elite when it suits them.
And the latter suits them pretty much all of the time.
Anyway, the point is … us “kids” of Cedar Grove? Unless it’s a cushy internship, not many of us go the summer-job route during our college years.
Most of our parents do the token “It’ll be good for you to get a real job,” and in response we do the token application to the movie theaters and the lone ice cream shop, but they have only so much room for the June-September workforce, and most of the jobs are snatched up early by people who need them.
People like Miles St. Claire who don’t have rich parents to float them.
Anyway, summers here in Cedar Grove consist of hanging out at various people’s pool parties (in Kylie’s case), finding ways to avoid your mom’s insistence on dress shopping “just for fun” (my case), and a whole lot of Ben Carson coming over for dinners.
So it’s like I said.
Summers are bittersweet.
Bitter, because I have to watch my sister and Ben make up for a school year’s worth of missed make-out sessions.
Sweet, because summer’s the only time I get to remind Ben that I’m even alive.
Tonight, however, is especially bitter. It’s the first night since Kylie and I got home that Ben has made the time to come over, and Kylie is alternating between pouting because he’s been busy, and letting her hand slide way too far up his leg, considering my parents are, like, right there.
I manage to get a couple of questions in around mouthfuls of chicken while Kylie picks at the green beans on her plate, but my parents mostly dominate the conversation, asking Ben what was next now that he’d graduated, and does he like Kylie’s new haircut?
Normally I love it when my parents give him the third degree after not seeing him for a while, because it lets me get the updates without having to seem overly interested myself.
But tonight I can’t stop noticing that Ben seems … off.
I’ve known him since the fourth grade, and he’s practically been a part of the family since he and Kylie started dating when they were fifteen.
He’s always been one of those easy, got-it-all-figured-out kind of guys, but tonight he’s acting weird.
I look at my sister to see if she noticed, but she’s too busy wiping calories-and flavor-off her grilled chicken.
Typical.
After dinner, Kylie and I start to do the dishes, and Ben insists on helping, which is nice at first, but then I realize that it’s just a chance for them to grope each other while my parents finish their wine in the dining room.
I should be used to it.
I am used to it.
But tonight, I’m just not in the mood. My head is pounding, my legs feel like they’re broken after that stupid workout with Beefcake this morning, and my heart … it just hurts.
I make it through loading the plates and silverware into the dishwasher and then bail without guilt.
It’ll be a fun project for Kylie, having to figure out how to get the gunk off the potato dish without ruining her manicure.
