Slowly We Trust (Fall and Rise #3)(7)
Author: Chelsea M. Cameron

If we wanted it enough, we could make it happen, and I wanted Will in my life.

3

It was Lottie who finally told me I needed to grow a set of balls and man up. Those weren’t her exact words, but the meaning was clear. Audrey and I had broken up. Or something. We hadn’t really been dating, so it wasn’t really a breakup. It was more that we had decided to take our relationship backwards. Like using one of those Time Turners from Harry Potter. I couldn’t help but know what that was because of both my sister and Aud. They were obsessed, so I became a fan by necessity.

If only magic really existed and I could apparate onto Audrey’s doorstep and beg her to reconsider. Now that would be worth having to wear those pointy hats.

Magic of that kind didn’t exist, or at least not in any world I was in, so I had to do this the muggle way. First I wallowed and watched Star Wars a million times and gamed with Simon and refused to leave the house and tried to ignore anyone when they asked me what was wrong.

I finally surfaced from my wallowing well the day before we went back to school.

“You look much better today,” Lottie said that morning when we woke up. She’d always been more of a morning person, and decided that if she was awake, everyone else should be too.

“Do I?” I couldn’t imagine I looked any different than yesterday, but I had slept better last night. I’d never, repeat never, obsessed this much over a girl. I’d started replaying all of our interactions, wondering what had been the moment that she’d decided she just wanted to be my friend and not my girlfriend. I knew it wasn’t good for me, but I’d just never felt this strong about someone. If she didn’t feel the same way, then it was probably good she’d let me down when she did. That was the thing I’d gone to sleep thinking and I’d woken up thinking it.

“Yes, you do, which means I can stop the suicide watch,” Lottie said, throwing a pillow at me with deadly aim. I tried to duck, but it hit me smack in the face. Lottie cackled and then dashed for the bathroom while I scrambled to chase her.

“I win, I win!” she sing-songed from the other side of the locked bathroom door before turning on the most disgusting pop music she owned and cranking it up on high so she couldn’t hear me pounding on the door.

“Don’t use all the hot water!” I yelled, slamming my fist on the door one last time.

“William!” Mom said, a spatula in her hand. “Is that really necessary?” It was when Lottie used up all the hot water and left her nasty hair clogging the drain.

Mom gave me one of those looks, so I backed away from the door and went to the living room. Simon had already gone back to school because he couldn’t stand being away from Brady anymore. The dorms weren’t open, but he was staying with Stryker.

“You could use a lesson in manners, young man,” Mom said, flipping some pancakes without even looking at them. Next thing, she’d be handing me a book. That was Mom’s solution to everything. A book. It might work for Lottie, but it didn’t for me.

Dad was gone again to go to his lab in the Caribbean to study ocean bugs. If I didn’t think his job was boring as shit, I would have been all over that. He’d been gone for a lot of our childhood, but I never felt like he abandoned us, or anything. He made it home for the important stuff.

I thought about making a smart remark to Mom, but decided against it. That would just lead to another lecture, and I’d had more than enough of them from my mother and my sister.

Lottie gloated when she came out of the bathroom.

“It’s all yours, little brother.”

“Forty-seven seconds! You’re only older than me by forty seven seconds,” I said as I shut the door of the bathroom. She just laughed maniacally.

Lottie and I no longer had to share a vehicle, so I had the entire ride back to school to myself. None of Lottie’s awful music or her incessant chatter, or her punching me in the shoulder.

I missed it.

She and I were so close all the time, I almost forgot what it was like to have to be by myself. It was quiet. Too quiet. My brain shouldn’t be allowed to be alone, because all I did was think about awful things. Not just about Audrey, but about all those embarrassing moments that you tried to suppress in your memory and pretend never happened, but when you least expected it, they popped out and reminded you. I turned my music up so loud it drowned out the sound of my truck’s engine, but that didn’t work to penetrate my brain. Not even the cool version of the Star War’s theme that Lottie had found for me worked.

It wasn’t until I walked into my room that I had something to distract me.

“What the hell is this?” There were tools and pieces of wood and screws all over the floor.

“I thought you weren’t going to be back for a few hours. My bad,” Simon said, his voice muffled because he had a screw in his mouth.

“That didn’t answer my question,” I said, stepping over the seeming chaos.

“I’m building us a new entertainment center, what does it look like?” That was a loaded question.

“And what was wrong with the other one?” Simon had also built the other stand that held our television and all our gaming consoles. It even had a little place for the remotes. Living with Simon was like living inside a Pottery Barn.

“This one is better.” He went back to using his drill, which drowned out anything I had to say. I thought I heard a knock at the door, but I had to wait until Simon stopped drilling to confirm. Probably the resident assistant coming to yell at us for using power tools in our dorm room.

I opened the door to find Zan and Lottie. They’d moved off campus, but I had the feeling we were going to be seeing a lot of them anyway.

“You still mad at me for taking all the hot water again?” Lottie said, nearly tripping on a pile of screws as she went to sit on my bed, Zan following behind.

“What are you making?” she said.

Simon turned and gave her an exasperated look.

“It’s an entertainment center! I swear, you all would be content to set our television on a box and call it good. Uncultured swine.”

Zan gave me a look. Yeah, I would have put the television on a box, too.

“Well, I think we’ll get out of your way,” I said, nodding at the other two. The best thing to do for Simon was to let him do his thing and then come back and admire the results. I’d tried to help him with some of his projects, back in high school when we’d first become friends and he’d bitten my head off.