Page 86 of Lovestrung

“What?”

He raised his beer, resting it on the ridges of his lips, and nodded. “You heard me.” He took a long pull of beer, and I looked back to the dance floor – well, the dining room that had been turned into a dance floor – and my eyes landed on Pippa who was dancing with some of her friends. She always looked beautiful, but even more so tonight in that long, backless white dress she was wearing. Maybe it was because it was her graduation party and she was, as she put it, finally free to do as she pleased, but…no, I realized, a pang to my heart. That wasn’t it.

It was her confidence and her feisty spirit that drew me like a moth to a flame.

A tight fist clenched around my heart, but I pretended to be clueless as I glanced at him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Max snorted. “Yeah, right. You weren’t the one who had to wipe away her tears last year when you turned her down. I’m her big brother, remember? I know her, sometimes better than she knows herself. She isn’t over you yet, and she won’t get there as long as you keep sending her those long, smoldering looks.”

Smoldering looks?! Where the hell did he come up with that?

Sensing this wasn’t to go down well, I turned fully to face him. “Look, I…”

“No, you need to take a look, Ethan.” Beer bottle in hand, he pointed to the dance floor, frown in place. If it weren’t for the hard, honest way he looked at me, I’d have been able to play off his accusations for drunken stupidity. But Max wasn’t drunk. Sighing, I raised my eyes and did as he asked.

“Take a good, fucking look at her and tell me what you see.”

Fuck me, she looked good enough to eat, but I couldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t tell anyone, least of all her.

I rested a hip against the table behind us. “I see my best friend,” I huffed.

He pulled his beanie down “That’s a lie, and you fucking know it.”

“Max.” I narrowed my eyes in warning, but he wouldn’t let it go.

“Oh, yeah, she was your best friend,” he said as he pushed a finger into my chest, “but from where I stand? These days, it looks like you wanna do a fuckuva lot more than just be her friend.”

Exasperated, I raised my glass, shaking my head. “You’re wrong,” I lied.

“Listen, man, I don’t really give a fuck about how you feel, but I do care about my little sister, and what I won’t do is stand by and see her get hurt.” He clapped me hard on the back. “If you’re not going to do anything about it, then quit getting her hopes up. That’s all I’m saying.”

“How am I getting her hopes up?” I spluttered. “Have I ever given her any indication that I want her to be more than my friend?”

He shook his head slowly. “You don’t get it, do you?”

He was really starting to piss me off, but this was Max, my brother – maybe not by blood, but by choice – and I took a deep breath, trying to calm down.

“Get what?”

Mouth grim, he took a step closer and muttered, “Whenever you’re in the same room, you gravitate toward each other as if you’re two magnets being pulled together by some otherworldly force, Ethan. You have this…this strange connection,” he huffed, “that we all see, and that’s pretty fucking special. I get that, I do.” He shrugged. “I want to find that someday. But to a young girl like her? She could read way more into it than you do, so I’m warning you now: stop staring at her. Stop watching her every move and give it a rest. Let her be free, Ethan, instead of toying with her emotions. It’s not fair to her, and you know it.”

I jerked my chin at him. “You done yet?”

He nodded once, and, without another word, he left me alone.

Alone with my thoughts and emotions all over the place. I glanced down at the soda in my hand, for once wishing that I didn’t have an aversion to alcohol, but I wasn’t about to let go of my principles. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that I’d turn into my old man – fucking bastard that he was – but I didn’t want to lose control, especially not tonight. Max had given me so much to think about, and I needed to get some air and digest his words in solitude.

But before I left the room, I allowed myself a few more moments of temptation and looked back at Pippa. Silently, I counted to ten, drawing out the seconds, as I memorized her beaming smile and the stars in her eyes. The pangs in my heart grew stronger until I found myself gasping for air, the pain became that intense. Finally, when I couldn’t bear it any longer, I wrenched my eyes away and snuck to the back of the Montgomery house. When I slipped out the back door, memories of playing with their old dogs, Molly and Sam, assaulted me, and I became lost in them the closer I got to the old treehouse.

But the closer I got, the stronger my memories became.

Thoughts of my life with the Montgomerys – my past with Pippa – filled my mind as I gazed up at the wood, almost torn to pieces by the elements now that no one took proper care of it anymore. I’d lost count of the many times I’d sat there with her, just wiling away time, reading or talking. We could be quiet together, and that mattered to me.

Before coming here, my life had been filled with so much turmoil, I’d found it a struggle to breathe. Somehow, she knew that right from the beginning, and she gave me what I craved: companionship in silence, patiently waiting until I was ready to fill the air with noise again.

I’d never met a girl like her, and I knew I never would.