KAI’S POV“There's much more to those siblings than we could tell…”Gina sounded like those annoying threads that would want viewers to read till the very end. I wished she would get to the point immediately, and set me free from the inexplicable suspense which was eating me whole.“What exactly did you see…? I don't have all day to sit and listen to you make your dramatic narration of events.” I picked up the ball again as I wasn't in the mood for any sort of gossip. “You are impatient and that could be what could stop you from getting what you want.” Gina was beginning to get on my nerves even more as she was beginning to sound like she was some sort of therapist and I was one of her helpless patients.I let out a sigh as all I could do was wait for her to say what her juicy secret was. “I'm listening, so take your time with it already.” “Good…” she said, smiling uncontrollably as she was in control of the whole thing. I couldn't help but wonder how Aiden could have been able to d
ELLIE“Hey… Ellie. How are you doing?” I turned around, bracing myself for another fake smile as I wasn't ready for any conversations at the moment, as my cover could get blown before I knew it. There was no way I could risk getting known as a teenage alcoholic.And I had to admit that I was a bit lightheaded at the moment. It was hard getting myself to talk intelligibly for long. “I'm alright, Jasmine.” The only reason I was stopping to converse was because it was Jasmine. Ignoring one of Aiden's friends would raise eyebrows and ruffle feathers.“You don't look alright, Ellie.” She scrutinized my face with a concerned look on her face. “You seem to be quite stressed out like you haven't slept in days. Are you getting any rest at all?”I began feeling quite uncomfortable as she was beginning to notice the absurdities in my composure. There were just too many things that could go wrong at that point, and that made me keep my distance as moderately as I could. Shifting away would be
ELLIE“What's going on between you and your brother?”“I don't understand…” I couldn't help but wonder where that question was coming from. Was it from the pain of what Aiden had done to him? Or had he simply assumed that Aiden and I were up to something because of he was overly protective?“Of course, you understand what exactly I'm talking about…” he said with a conviction that just couldn't be explained. “Quit playing dumb with me, Ellie.”He had me frightened as I was trying to figure out where he could have gotten that idea from as it was almost impossible for anyone to come that close to unraveling the mystery behind Aiden and I.“I don't understand you, Kai. You ghosted me for a while and now you are here with some ridiculously unbelievable assumptions and accusations.” I got aggressive with my defensiveness, to give no room for any doubts. “What the heck have you been imagining for the past couple of days?”He was quiet for a while as he nodded with an angry look on his face a
ELLIE“What?” I wasn't expecting such a cheesy pick-up line from the dude that looked like a Norse god.“Just kidding…” he chuckled. His whole body seemed to chuckle with him and that caught my eyes. “I'm Troy, and you?”“Uhm… I'm Ellie.” I tried my best to keep my curious eyes from going down to his chest and abdominals. Keeping my eyes on his had been quite a challenge as my eyes wanted to go to other places. “Again, I'm sorry for intruding. I'm not supposed to be here in the first place.”“Nah, it's no big deal.” He sounded kind, and I liked that. “I didn't know girls as pretty as you are would have any interest in football.”“Well…” I wanted to tell him that I had just come to see a friend, but I wanted the conversation to go on longer. My curiosity to know more about him wasn't going to let me leave just yet. I wanted to give him the impression that we had a lot in common. “I don't know why any girl shouldn't love football. That's where most of the hot guys are.”He suddenly burs
ELLIEI found myself waiting for practice to be over, as I couldn't wait to get along with Troy who had shined in the practice like he had promised to. It was quite hard for me to notice anything else in the environment besides him at that point, and that gave me some concern. “There are just too many of them that you get confused…” Jasmine and her friend Zaya had been conversing about all the hot boys on the school's football team that they fancied. It was an almost inexhaustible conversation as every single one of them seemed to be such a hotshot. I was wondering why I had never been frequenting that part of school ever since. At that moment, it almost felt like my eyes were slowly opening to the parts of my life I hadn't been enjoying because of my affair with Aiden. I was almost feeling like a bird set free. “Here you are…” Troy had me a bit scared as he suddenly poked me with his index on my shoulder, causing me to turn to see him all dressed and ready to go. “Shall we…?” He
ELLIE“What…?” I tried to play dumb for the first couple of moments, but it was clear that I wouldn't be making it out of that with those cheap tricks. “What are you talking about, Aiden?”“Of course, you know what I'm talking about…” Aiden wasn't going to back down easily as he had seen all of it. He had probably seen everything that night he hid under my bed from his mother. “I saw all those vodka bottles you had stuffed under your bed.”“What vodka bottles…?” I was pushing my luck farther than I was meant to at that point and I wasn't sure what Aiden was going to do in turn as he seemed like he was trying to make something out of the bottles he had seen under my bed. “Don't tell me you've been on something all this while.”I hated the fact that I was having that conversation after such a long day. His mother could be anywhere listening to that conversation. If she happened to find out about my secret habit that would go a long way in changing get perspective of me and she would be
KAI“Come on man, you've been lying in your bed like that forever…” Kyle, my younger brother, walked into the room to see me in the same way he'd found me when he'd walked in before. I had been lying on my right side, under the covers facing the night sky beyond the windows. Peering into the blackness while thinking about everything and how everything had gone with Ellie and Aiden seemed to be more than enough therapy than I could ever get from anyone. “Don't tell me you're still stressing over that girl?” Kyle said as he sat beside me on the bed. If he had known just how much Ellie meant to me then he would have probably thought twice about referring to her flippantly as ‘that girl’. I said nothing to him as he went on with his pep talk to get me out of the sorry state I was in. Nothing had shaken my confidence as much as Ellie had done. That moment was quite harder than anything I had ever been up against. “You're taking things too far. Do you know just how many girls out there
AIDEN“What do you want?” I asked, wondering just where Gina was going with all of that. It seemed like just another one of her histrionics to get my attention. “I don't have all night to listen…”“Alright Aiden…” she was stammering like she was having difficulty breathing. “I want… you…”I paused for a moment, took my phone off my ear and looked at the screen to make sure that it had actually been Gina and not someone else. The shrill voice was hers surely, but that didn't sound like something she would do. “Now you're about to lose it, Gina.” I was almost laughing at the fact that she took up her phone at night to tell me that. It was pretty laughable how some time ago, that voice was able to break into my stone-cold heart. She would make me leave home and sneak up into her window with those late-night calls.But that time, it did not affect me. It made me laugh and annoyed me at times. There were just too many things to make me hate her, especially the fact that she had come betw