He's My Brother's Best Friend and My Enemy, This Can't Be Good!

Parker and I never talked about how we were going to address our relationship when we were at school. On Monday morning we acted as if nothing had changed. We all sat together at lunch but Parker and I sat apart. We walked to our classes separately despite going to the same locations most of the time. We even drove separately to school.

By Tuesday Max and Miranda were already annoyed with us. Max was irritated at the fact that Parker and I still weren’t acting like a couple in public despite our desire to want to be a couple in public. Miranda, well she was irritated because she couldn’t talk about us with anyone but Max and Ava who already knew more than her, which just made her more angry. I couldn’t read Jayden’s attitude at all. He was still trying to take in all information. I could tell that he was watching the two of us with hawk eyes though, making me extremely nervous.

On Wednesday Parker had gone over to Max’s house. Max gave Parker a lecture about how he and I should stop hiding from the school now that our families knew. That we only had a limited time to be together and that pretending was a waste of time. For once Parker listened to Max’s words and on Thursday he and I were in my room discussing the worse case scenarios of what would happen when the school found out.

“You have it easy,” I told Parker, “no one is going to give you shit for dating me.”

Parker let out a laugh. “Please, I’m going to have to hear shit from the whole team for the next month. Not to mention your brother isn’t going to be too pleased if we show up at school holding hands.”

“Yeah but at least they’re just teasing you. Charlie and her minions are going to spread such shit rumors about me, which is not going to be fantastic. Plus, that whole football captain bullshit lie is going to come back into play,” I sighed.

The two of us both wanted to be able to walk down the halls of Mass High hand in hand, but at the same time we didn’t want anyone to know. Sure if everyone would know we could actually go out on dates in our own damn town but people were always going to be staring and spreading rumors. I didn’t get why people got so obsessed with other people’s personal lives. It was annoying.

“So what do we do then?”

“I don’t know Parker.”

Parker had been sitting on the opposite side of my room. Sensing the hesitancy in my voice he abandoned the chair and walked over to where I sat on my bed. I was sitting angled toward him originally. When he approached me he wrapped his arms protectively around my shoulders. He held me close for a second before whispering into my ear.

“Who cares what they think, right?”

His sudden proximity to me registered causing my body to shutter under his arms as his words tickled my ear. Closing my eyes I allowed my self to envision what it would be like for Parker and I to be able to hold hands at school. Instantly I felt my mouth form into a stupid grin. It was then I knew that I didn’t care what people were going to say all that mattered was that I had Parker.

“Promise to not let what people say about us bother you?” I asked.

“Mm, I can’t make that promise but I can promise that if any someone says something negative about you I’ll tell them why they’re wrong.”

Just thinking about Parker even having to defend me made me nauseous. I knew Parker wouldn’t do anything drastic but I also knew that he wasn’t going to let Charlie spread vapid rumors about me, again.

“Fine,” I finally said before turning my head to place a kiss on his arm that was still wrapped tentatively around my shoulders.

The moment of truth came on Friday morning. Neither of us had mentioned to anything to anyone because we didn’t feel we need too. We had no intentions of making this a grand spectacle. We weren’t going to walk in the main doors of Mass High holding hands like what would have happened if we were in a Hollywood movie. We just wanted to have the option of talking in between classes and holding hands and all that other high school couple behavior I usually gawked at.

Parker and I didn’t even show up to school together. Parker had left earlier than the others to pick up Max since his car was getting its oil changed. I was late waking up as usual finding that Jayden and Miranda had already left for school. Not that I minded, I loved driving my car to school after all it was my baby.

Since I was late for school there was no time to socialize before my first class. I quickly raced to my locker, grabbing my books before heading off to math. The day felt like any other day. Neither Parker nor I had made any attempts to draw attention to ourselves. We had a few casual conversations between classes and we walked together to the cafeteria but continued to sit across from each other rather than next to each other.

During lunch the topic of conversation was what we were all doing tonight since it was Friday. It was weird being included in the Friday date night plans. Usually Parker and I spent the night locked in our rooms or at Max’s house. Apparently we were all going to see some new movie tonight. While I wasn’t really up for going out I didn’t say anything. I’d rather be invited and not want to go than not be invited and want to go.

By the end of the day Max had figured out that Parker and I weren’t being as secretive as usual. He was proud of himself, taking all the credit for getting the two of us to realize that hiding in school was stupid. No one else caught on to anything suspicious, not even Charlie. Which was shocking because typically she was watching Parker’s every move.

The final bell had rang and Parker was waiting for me by locker. As I approached he stepped away so that I could put my things away before following me out of the school and toward the parking lot. I had managed to find parking next to Parker’s truck so we both headed in that direction. Parker was in no rush to leave since he had to wait for Max who was currently at the opposite end of the school talking to Coach about something.

I opened the driver’s side door to my Mustang, tossing my backpack in the passenger seat before shutting the door and leaning on it. Parker mimicked my posture leaning up against the passenger side door of his truck.

“Are we going with them tonight?” Parker questioned. I shrugged my shoulders, feeling like that was enough of an answer. “We don’t have too. I’ll go with them and you can say you have to babysit Lex or something,” Parker added.

I couldn’t help but smile to myself. He was willing to tag alone with the two couples just so I didn’t have to be anxious all night. There was no way I was going to let him do that though.

“No, that’s okay. We can go.”

Parker walked toward me to place a kiss on my forehead before I climbed into the driver’s side of my car. He shut the door behind me and walked to get into his truck. I drove off toward the house while he waited for Max to arrive to his car.

Once home I went to find Lexis so I could play with her for a while. Today’s antics included her pretending to be my mom while I played sick so she could take care of me. After she was done playing Cassadee got her lunch ready and I went up to my room to wait until we were all leaving tonight.

The movie we ended up seeing was all right. Nothing too spectacular but it beat sitting at home watching reruns on the television. The night also wasn’t terribly awkward. No one was being too clingy so Parker and I didn’t feel awkward that we weren’t either. He held my hand when we were walking to the theater but that was about it. I could tell he was just as uncomfortable with the idea of people staring at us as I was.

We ended up at the diner after the movie because the boys were hungry. Instead of sitting in our usual booth where Parker and I were split up, we opted for the semi-circle on in the corner that was usually occupied by the cheer girls. The boys ordered full on meals while I settled on a sundae and Miranda and Ava were just going to eat off the boys plate, if there was anything left.

I hadn’t taken much notice to what was going on. I had found myself in my own little world thinking about how weird it was that I was on a triple date with some of my best friends. Never in a million years did I think I’d ever get to experience this. It was still early on in the evening when everyone finished eating. None of us really wanted to go home so we decided to stay hanging out at the diner. Usually more people from Mass High showed up as the night got later, the diner was the only restaurant open late that didn’t enforce the city curfew law.

As I watched people from the local high schools trickle in, I could feel Parker’s arm wrapped loosely around my shoulders. I had to stop myself from shrugging it off, at that point it was a force of habit. It was going to take some getting use to let Parker be affectionate with me in public.

A little while later some of the football boys started showing up. The boys didn’t even have to get out of the booth to greet the boys as the minute the team spotted them, they walked toward us. Luckily for them there was a table in front of the booth that they could all steal chairs from. The boys were their usual rambunctious selves allowing silly small talk to take over the silence in the room.

“Do my eyes deceive me or does Parker really have his hands around little miss Josylne?” Jared asked in disbelief.

I could feel the attention of the boys shift toward Parker and I. I silently cursed Jared to myself. Why did he have to bring attention to everything? I felt Parker’s arm leave my shoulders as he placed his hands back on to the table top.

“Did you just call me little miss Josylne?” I asked, attempting to change the subject at hand. Jared just chuckled to himself indicating that maybe he had called me that. “You’re damn lucky I’m not you captain next year Jar,” I playfully joked.

“In all serious though, how the hell does Parker get away with having his arm around you but if any of us dares to look at you Jayden is already planning our deaths?” Jared questioned.

“You shouldn’t be looking at anyone but Ash,” Jayden stated.

“Not what I meant,” Jared said before turning his attention back to the two of us.

I looked up at Parker who had been awfully quite since this conversation started. I was really hoping he was going to answer Jared’s question because I had no intentions of answering it.

“None of you were dating her,” Parker answered swiftly.

The minute the words left this mouth the boys’ jaws dropped, both figuratively and literally, and my face began to heat up. Even everyone’s eyes at the table were on us and they already knew this information.

“Are you serious?” Jason asked in disbelief. Not that I blamed it, it was a crazy idea. Especially given the fact that Jason wanted to date me when I was a freshman and Jayden told him no, and Jason was a good guy unlike Parker’s reputation.

I just nodded my head in response. It was really amusing seeing a group of tough football players shocked at the news that I was dating their quarterback or that their new captain was dating their old captain. It’s a crazy little world we lived in.

There were a few outburst of “I knew they’d end up together” and “I told you she liked one of us” but overall their reaction was good. They did tease Parker though, which was expected. They couldn’t believe that Jayden had allowed this to happen. Speaking of Jayden he didn’t seem to mind the conversation too much. He was finally beginning to understand that Parker really did like me.

With the football boys now knowing that Parker and I were a couple, it was only a matter of time before the news spread to the cheerleaders and ultimately to Charlie. For the first time, I didn’t care. Nothing Charlie could say to me was going to matter because I had the one thing she always wanted. I had won this war she had created in her mind.

That night I lied in my bed thinking about the night I had just had. Parker and I were so afraid of everyone’s reactions that we deprived ourselves of having fun with our friends. Now that everyone knew I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. I didn’t have to live two lives, my worlds were intertwined and it was the greatest thing ever. Everything I loved; my friends, family, the football boys, Parker, knew and everyone was okay with it. I was finally, truly happy.

Before I went to sleep for the night I logged online to check out what was going on. As soon as I had logged on to twitter, I saw the tweet. It was from Charlie’s account and read: What a bitch.

Let the game begin.