Keep From Falling (Markson Grove Series Book 1) (8 page)

Bree

“Evan likes you,” Skylar mumbles to me when I reach my locker at the end of the day. She’s been avoiding me all day and skipped out on our usual lunch plans to take off to her aunt’s place instead. I’m surprised to see her waiting for me right now, to be honest, and secretly hope that Evan doesn’t decide to come over and talk to me again. I look down the hall in both directions but don’t see him. I let out a small sigh of relief.

“Why do you think that?” I ask calmly.

She lets out a noise that is a cross between a laugh and a scoff and shoots me a look that seems to mean ‘how naive can you be?’

“What?” I demand. I hate when she looks at me like I’m a two-year-old when it comes to things I have little experience with.

“Don’t act like you don’t notice it Bree, your whole body reacts to him.”

My eyes narrow. “I blush when a cute guy talks to me. So what? It doesn’t mean that I like him or that he likes me.”

“But you think he’s cute,” she returns accusingly. “Since when do you think
any
guy is cute?”

“I don’t know! Jeez, what’s with the third degree? So what, I think he’s cute, big deal. It doesn’t
mean
anything,” I say as I slam my locker shut.

She licks her lips deliberately, attempting to remain calm. She leans in really close to me. “Are you sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

She moves in even closer so that our lips are nearly touching now. “Prove it.”

Skylar’s always pushing the envelope with me when she’s feeling threatened like this. Not that she feels threatened often, but she worries about losing me. She’s always waiting for the inevitable fallout. It’s exhausting sometimes, honestly. But I know where she’s coming from with these insecurities, and so I try my best to assure her when she’s feeling like this.

I want to prove to her that my feelings for her haven’t changed, that a guy, no matter how attracted to him I may be, can’t change my love for her.

I push my lips onto hers and kiss her. She takes me by the hands and pulls my body in close. I continue to kiss her, almost forgetting we are in a crowded hallway where everyone can see. I need her to know that she has nothing to worry about. I love her.
Only
her.

Someone in the hall lets out a loud whistle and a whole bunch of whoops and hollers ensue. We pull away from one another and find a pretty large group of eyes all focused in on us. A couple of girls pass by and begin to whisper. I notice phones in some people’s hands pointing to us. I become extremely alarmed knowing that someone likely took a photo of our lip lock and it will undoubtedly end up on the internet.

I look to Skylar. My eyes are wide and I begin to feel a bit queasy. I’m not sure how to handle all of this attention.

That’s when I notice Parker leaning against a wall with a look on his face that I’m unable to read. He’s staring right at us, taking in everything we just did. I want to go over to him and slap him. But I don’t. I just watch him watching Skylar and me.

I take Skylar’s hand then, forgetting about all the pictures and gossip that have probably been uploaded to
Facebook
from everyone’s phones by now. I totally forget everything else going on, and just focus on Skylar.

“What?” Skylar yells loudly to the group of people still standing around. “You guys all act like you’ve never seen two people kiss before. Fuck off!”

This gets the groups moving. Some people laugh and some say nothing, but they all scurry away quickly. In less than a minute, no one is even paying any more attention to us, already talking about the next thing going on as the halls empty out for the day. All except for Parker, that is. Parker has yet to move from the wall he’s leaning up against.

I can tell Skylar notices him too. She’s still holding my hand and the grasp is getting tighter as he nonchalantly walks over to us. I can see the blood drain from her face.

“Go away. We have nothing to say to you,” I tell him, moving myself in front of Skylar protectively.

He scowls. “I have nothing to say to you either. Just to Skylar.”

Skylar’s hand begins to tremble.

“No way,” I hiss. “Now get away from us or I will scream.”

He lifts up his hands and backs away, a half smile emerging on his face. “Don’t get your panties all in a twist. I’ll have my chat with Sky another time.”

“Like hell you will! You keep away from her! You hear me? I’ll fucking kill you myself!”

“A death threat. Wow. And from such a little girl. I’m scared. Really.” He looks passed me to Skylar. He looks her right in the eye. “We are going to talk eventually,” he tells her.

She closes her eyes and shakes her head, but he’s already walked away and doesn’t see it.

Once he’s walked far enough away from us, we take off down the hall in the other direction and leave the school through the back doors. Outside, Skylar finally takes a breath, her body is trembling, but she manages to keep her composure all the same.

“Let’s go to my place,” I suggest. “We’ll tell Mom you’re feeling sick. She’ll take care of you while I’m at work tonight. Ok?”

Skylar nods and cuddles up close to me.

As we walk toward my house I think about that night. The night everything changed.

Even though Skylar and me have always been complete opposites, we’ve fit together like two pieces of a puzzle from the very first time we met. We just got each other in a way that no one else really could. That connection is what kept us together, in spite of all our differences.

So when Skylar became promiscuous throughout the ninth and tenth grades, I got it, I knew where it was all coming from. She wanted them to give her the attention she needed. Though I didn’t agree with it, I knew the way she was being wasn’t really who she was. It was how she coped with her shitty aunt and dead family. It was her escape.

One day, at the beginning of the eleventh grade, she came to me all excited about a guy named Parker Michelson asking her out on a ‘real’ date. This wasn’t the first time a hot guy asked her out, but with this one it was different; she cared about what he thought. She got changed over and over again, toned down her makeup, and even second-guessed how she should wear her hair. I could tell that she really liked him.

I’m not going to say I know exactly what happened, because I don’t. Skylar and I have never spoken of that night. But I really think that somehow her expectations of the night really didn’t match his and I think this threw her off guard. I think how sweet and endearing he was being hid the fact that he wasn’t a good person; that he was actually a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I think a guy finally gave her what she was looking for, and she clung to it hopefully. I think he ripped all of the hope out of her that night and left me to pick up the pieces.

I remember gasping at the sight of her when she appeared at my window. She was drenched in rain and covered in mud, wearing only half of the clothes she had left my house in. Her favorite sweater was torn and dangling by her side, and she looked frozen, hugging herself in the tiny tank top and mini skirt that still remained on her body. Her lips were blue from the cold and she held them together tightly, trying not to let her teeth chatter. Her face was pale and her right cheek was now a deep shade of purple and black. I could see smeared blood on her neck and shoulder, but I couldn’t tell if it was hers or someone else’s.

“Oh my God, Sky!” I gasped. I helped her in the window, and calmly draped my comforter over her frozen body. She curled up into a little ball on my bedroom floor and began to cry. She cried for over an hour and all I did was sit next to her running my hands through her mud-caked hair.

Eventually, when her tears subsided, I asked, “Can you make it to the shower?” I wanted to help her clean up a bit. I needed to metaphorically wash her pain away. I didn’t know what else to do.

She nodded and pushed herself up off of the floor slowly.

I took her arm tenderly and led her to the bathroom, turned the hot water on, and began to undress her.

“What did he do?” I finally managed, but she just shook her head.

“Sky, please. You have to tell me what he did.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It never happened,” she replied in a hoarse whisper. Her eyes burned into mine telling me that I was never to bring this up again.

I reluctantly nodded. “Ok,” I breathed, motioning for her to step into the shower.

She stepped in but seemed uneasy about being in there alone so I went in with her. I was fully clothed, though, and it felt strange with the water drenching into my PJs. She leaned into me and I held her. I held her as all the mud and rain washed away from her body and flowed down the drain. Then, as I was massaging the shampoo into her hair thinking about every possible scenario of what he did to her and of every possible thing I planned on doing to him back, she kissed me!

My eyes opened wide, but I let my lips on hers anyway. I might have been shocked, I may have even liked it, but when she moved in for more, I gently pushed her back. “I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” she replied, and cried some more.

Evan

As I’m stocking shelves in the back of Pete’s Convenience Store a few hours into my shift, I hear Kelsie and Derrick walk in the front door. I know it’s them because I would recognize their bickering anywhere. They are having a ‘discussion’ about the amount of time he spends playing video games. It makes me laugh. When their disagreement stops abruptly, I peek around the shelf and see them looking around the store, presumably for me. Bree comes out from the office behind the front desk, greeting them with a happy hello and a bright smile, but Kelsie spots me and hurries my way without giving Bree a second glance.

I frown. At least Derrick has manners. He gives Bree a polite nod before following Kelsie to the back of the store.

“What are you guys doing here?” I ask them when they are close enough for me to keep my voice low.

Derrick shrugs. “We were bored.”

“So you decided to come and bug me at work?” I ask, making sure to continue stocking the shelves as I’m talking.

Kelsie grins. “Pretty much.”

“Well, I hate to be a disappointment guys, but I don’t think I’ll be livening up your evening too much. There’s not much going on here.”

Kelsie looks over her shoulder to the front of the store where Bree’s already gone back into the office and out of our sight. “How are things going between the two of you?” she asks, turning back to face me.

“Please tell me you didn’t let her come here to check on me,” I plead to Derrick.

Derrick smiles and scratches the top of his head trying to think of an answer that won’t get him into trouble with either of us. This is often the case for him, stuck in the middle of pretty much anything having to do with the three of us.

When I met Kelsie and Derrick back in the ninth grade they weren’t an item yet. To be honest, I don’t think they were friends at the time either. It wasn’t until I invited the two of them to see a movie with me one night that they got to know each other and hit it off.

Kelsie’s feisty, hardheaded, and high-strung, but she’s incredibly fun. I’ve grown to really care for her over the last three and a half years that I’ve known her. She’s like a sister to me. And I think it’s safe to say that Derrick and I would do anything for her. But that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t drive me crazy ninety percent of the time I’m around her. Because when it all comes down to it, as much as she likes to pretend she’s not, she’s a girl. And girls… they can be a handful.

Derrick fell hard for Kelsie that night at the movies. He asked me the next day if I was interested in her because he’s just that kind of guy. He didn’t want to move in on her if I had already staked my claim, so to speak. I think
‘bros before hoes’
even escaped his lips though I would never in a million years tell Kelsie that.

But I wasn’t interested, not like that. She is just my friend, who annoys me ninety percent of the time.