I'm Drawn To You

Putting the curling iron on the bathroom counter, I sighed in appreciation of all the hard work I put into my appearance. The brunette strands of my hair curled softly around the edges of my heart-shaped face while the rest of it waved gently down my shoulders to rest just above my shoulder blades. A thin line of brown eyeliner ringed my eyes, a light coat of brown mascara coated my lashes, and a light smattering of nude lip gloss covered my lips. Destroyed denim jeans hugged my hips, and a black Pantera tee shirt I’d snagged from my friend Brian’s closet - and then altered to fit me in all the right places - covered my torso.

I was ready for my date with Adrian.

The loud crack of a gunshot coming from the backyard immediately jerked my attention from my mirror. Horrified, I looked to the clock on my nightstand in my bedroom: it was seven fifteen, meaning Adrian was now at my house, waiting for me. The only problem with that was that the only other people home to receive him were my brother Matt and his best friend Brian.

“Oh shit,” I gasped, running out of my room with flip flops in hand as I ran downstairs to save Adrian from the ‘talk’ I know either Matt, Brian, or the both of them would be giving him. Bursting through the backdoor of our kitchen, I found Brian standing in the backyard next to a shell-shocked Adrian. In Brian’s hand was his favorite pistol; he appeared to be instructing Adrian on how to load and cock it, but the look in Adrian’s eyes told me there was a little more than friendly firearms instructing going on.

I marched up to Brian and stopped beside him, glaring at him as he smiled down at me. “Oh hey, Sierra,” he greeted. “I was just telling Seth how important it is to take care of something as beautiful as a pistol, and how if you don’t, you can really get hurt. It’s a useful bit of information, isn’t it, bud?” Adrian nodded his head, his eyes as wide as saucers.

Not wanting to hear anymore, I grabbed Brian by the bicep and dragged him across the yard. He made a fuss about it, telling me that I needed to watch the merchandise, and I smacked him across the chest. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” I exclaimed, but not so loud that Adrian, who was now taking deep breaths while sitting on one of the lounge chairs next to the pool, could hear us.

Brian flicked the gun in Adrian’s direction and replied, “I’m just letting Seth know -”

“His name is Adrian,” I interrupted, gaining an eye roll from Brian.

“I’m just letting Adrian there know that he better watch his step while he’s with you,” he finished with a shrug of his shoulders. I asked him if the gun was really necessary and Brian grinned. “Hey, it made a great analogy, didn’t it?”

The thought that Brian, who was three years older than me at 18, thought I was beautiful flashed across my mind like lightning, but I didn’t have time to waste on that topic. One: Brian was out of my reach. He was my brother’s best friend. Two: every girl in school wanted to be with him. I was just Matt’s kid sister. What chance did I have? Three: he was scaring away one of the cutest guys in school.

“Sure, Brian,” I conceded, “but you’re scaring him! I haven’t had a date in three months, thanks to the stunt you and Jimmy pulled with Ryan! I’m surprised Adrian asked me out at all.”

Brian chuckled at the memory of Ryan, the last boy brave enough to ask me on a date and enter my house. Unfortunately for him, Jimmy had been over. When Ryan got to the house, they were nice enough: they told us to have a good time and to be home by ten. Nothing weird or strange or downright mean. When we got home at ten fifteen, Ryan walked me up to the door. He leaned in to kiss me, and just as he did, Jimmy jumped out of the bushes and screamed, “You were supposed to have her home at ten, jackass! You’re so done!” Jimmy’s maniacal laughter filled the air as he, and Brian, descended on us and proceeded to try out the latest karate moves on Ryan. He ran screaming from our yard, and I haven’t had a date since.

“It’s not funny, Brian!” I told him. “It’s not fair that every time I bring a guy over, he gets scared away by you or Matt, or one of the other guys.” Brian stopped laughing and looked at me as my voice wavered. “I’m pretty, nice, and fun, but I can’t get a date because all the guys in school know that I’m Matt Sanders’s little sister Sierra and either he or Brian Haner is gonna make it impossible to take me out.” A tear slipped out of the corner of my eye and I quickly brushed it away.

Brian must’ve seen it, however, as he pulled me into his arms. I wrapped my arms around his waist and turned my head to lay my cheek against his chest, squeezing my eyes closed against the stupid tears that wanted to escape. Brian placed a kiss on my head and squeezed me close against him. “I’m sorry, Sierra,” he murmured. “You’re a pretty girl, and I know how guys my age are. We usually only want one thing, and I just want to protect you from jackasses like me.”

Lifting my head up, I answered bravely, “You’re not a jackass, Brian. I think you’re really sweet, when you’re not being totally overprotective.”

Giving me a sad smile, he replied, “You don’t know the half of it, cute stuff.” Brian sighed and turned his gaze away from me. “Go have fun on your date, okay? Be home by ten thirty, and this time I promise Jimmy and I won’t be waiting in the bushes.” I laughed and gave Brian a final hug before walking away toward Adrian.

***

“Sierra, hurry the fuck up!” Matt called as I applied the finishing touches to my make-up. “It’s Brian’s birthday we’re celebrating, not yours, so you don’t need to go and get yourself all dolled up.”

I rolled my eyes at my brother’s stupidity and put my mascara away. My make-up was as perfect as I could get it to be, with mascara coating my eyelashes and a bit of brown eyeliner surrounding my eyes, and my waist-length brunette hair was full of voluminous curls. The tight black dress I wore fit perfectly at my bust and my hips, but loosened up a bit after my hips and ended in the middle of my thigh. Gloss black heels adorned my feet, and I just knew Matthew was going to hate my outfit. Even though I was 25, he still treated me like his little sister that needed protection from the world, and I knew me wearing this dress out to Brian’s birthday celebration in Vegas was going to make him a little less than happy with me.

Walking out of the bathroom, I grabbed my purse off the couch and walked to Matt in the entryway of my hotel room. “Take the stick outta your ass, Matt,” I told him. “You might live longer. As for Brian… he probably started celebrating at nine this morning, so I highly doubt us being five minutes late is going to put a dent in his plans.”

Ignoring my comment, Matt evaluated my appearance. By the time he finished inspecting me, his eyebrows were raised in exasperation. “When did you get that?” he asked, motioning to my dress.

“I bought it last week after Brian told me we were celebrating his birthday in Las Vegas. A party is always reason to buy a new dress; you think you’d know that by now, having been with Val for so long,” I teased.

Matt shook his head and murmured, “I just don’t think I like how short it is…”

I shrugged my shoulders and walked past Matt to the door, holding it open and waiting for him to follow so we could get on our way. “Well, let’s ask Brian what he thinks,” I suggested with a tiny smirk, watching Matt out of the corner of my eye. “I bet he’ll like it.”

Matt grumbled something unintelligent under his breath and I snickered. While he no longer interfered in my love life - not as much as he did when we were younger, anyway - Matt was still not very fond of the idea of me dating one of his friends. I thought his unease was unnecessary: despite having grown up with the guys, and having Brian as a best friend but never really losing my attraction to him, I’d never dated any of Matt’s friends. I’d always managed to find other men to date, although the relationships never lasted too long; the guy always insisted that my relationship with Brian was too intimate for his liking, and that Brian himself was too intimidating and imposing. It frustrated me to no end that I could not keep a relationship for longer than two months because of my friendship with Brian, when, despite a few kisses in private moments here and there over the years, nothing had ever happened between us. It wasn’t as though there were some sordid history between Brian and I that kept us coming back to each other, although the unbelievable amount of time we spent together and the way Brian always managed to find some way to fix whatever my current boyfriend had done wrong (therefore making him look like the better boyfriend than whoever I was dating) must’ve made it pretty frustrating for my boyfriends.

“So? Where is he?”

I shook my head and blinked my eyes, looking at Matt in confusion. “Huh?” I asked oh-so eloquently.

Matt rolled his eyes. “Your boyfriend. Josh, James, John - whatever his fucking name is. Where is he? I thought for sure you’d bring him here.”

“Josh broke up with me two days ago, Matty. According to him, it just wasn’t going to work because Brian, and I quote, ‘obviously doesn’t like other guys moving in on his territory’,” I answered, adding air quotations around the last half of my explanation.

Chuckling, Matt opened the door of the suite Brian was holding his party in and let me walk through before standing by my side again. “Well, he is a bit protective,” he admitted, a knowing glint gleaming in his eye. Before I could ask him what he was hiding from me, Matt continued, “Oh well, I didn’t like that Jason fuck anyway.” I told him that his name was Josh, and he said, “See? He can’t be that important, if I can’t remember his name.”

Laughing and rolling my eyes, I responded, “Whatever you say, Matt. I’m kind of glad we broke up, though: the sex was really bad.”

“I certainly hope you’re not talking about me,” Brian said, a brilliant white smile splitting across his face as he handed Matt and I each a beer. He and Matt did the customary man-hug greeting, while I was granted a normal, bone-crushing Brian Haner, Junior hug. “You and Austin broke up, huh?” he asked, pulling away but keeping an arm around my waist as Matt wandered off to find Valary.

I pushed lightly against Brian’s chest and answered, “His name was Josh, and yes, we broke up.” Before he could ask, I added, “And no, it wasn’t solely because the sex sucked - even though it did. He broke up with me because of you.”

“Because of me?” Brian’s voice peaked in shock and curiosity, but there was no hiding the pride and smugness that filled the smirk that tugged at the corners of his lips. “Whatever did I do?”

Letting Brian lead me out to the empty balcony attached to his suite that overlooked the lights of Las Vegas, I leaned into his arm that held comfortably to my waist. His fingers pressed ever so lightly into my hip as I curled myself against him and tucked my head under his chin to look out at the lights. I didn’t want to have to look at him while I answered him. “The same thing you always do, Bri,” I sighed. “The same thing you’ve been doing since I was 15: calling me your baby girl, treating me like your princess, cuddling with me, making me laugh, wiping away my tears when I cry, telling me I’m the prettiest, most beautiful, sexy woman you’ve ever seen - ”

“So pretty much, being your best friend?” he asked, a hint of anger seeping into his voice. I knew he wasn’t angry with me; he was angry that yet another guy had caught on to the fact that he and I were much closer than normal best friends.

“That’s not how the guys I’ve dated see it, Brian,” I explained.

Brian pulled me out from where I had hidden myself in his embrace and positioned me so my back was against the railing and I was facing him. “Well I’m fucking sorry if those guys are piss-poor boyfriends, Sierra, but I’m not going to stop treating you like -” Brian stopped himself in mid-sentence and I looked up at him expectantly.

“Like what, Brian?” I asked quietly, raising my hand to press my hand against his cheek softly. His dark brown eyes searched my own, and it was as though an internal decision was being made right before my eyes.

Without warning or preamble, Brian pressed his mouth against mine and I moaned softly at the contact. We’d kissed before, and I recognized the electric shock that always passed through us at those moments. It seemed, however, that unlike all the other times before, when one of us would pull away at the power of whatever was between us, that neither one of us was willing to let go this time. Brian moved his hands from my waist to my face, cupping it gently in the palms of his hands as his lips moved tenderly but passionately against my own.

“Like my girlfriend,” he whispered when he finally pulled away, his lips swollen and his eyes alight with exhilaration. Another kiss, a little more forceful in its insistency, was pressed to my mouth and my lips tingled when Brian disengaged himself again. “I guess maybe I should explain myself, huh?” he asked with a smile, his arms around my waist once again. I giggled and nodded my head; I had a feeling where this conversation was going, and it was making me giddy with excitement. Brian heaved a sigh - a sigh that was half a laugh, half a deep, cleansing breath - and said, “I’ve liked you for years, Sierra. You were just Matt’s kid sister when we were little, but once we all started growing up, I started to see just how beautiful a person you are. Matt must’ve sensed it, because he immediately made it clear that you were off limits, so since I couldn’t date you myself, I assumed the role of helping Matt keep away the losers.”

I pressed a soft kiss to Brian’s lips and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me how you felt, Bri? He would’ve been pissed, but Matt just wants to see me happy, and after a while he would have accepted our relationship.”

“I didn’t think you returned my feelings, so instead of risking making things extremely uncomfortable for all of us, I just settled for being your best friend,” he answered. “I admit that as we got older there are a few times when we crossed the line between friendship and romance, and they might’ve been my fault, but those were the moments that gave me hope. I cherished those moments and always hoped for another, because they made me believe that maybe one day I’d be brave enough to tell you how I feel, and you would feel the same.”

“Who would’ve thought that Synyster Gates, the world’s biggest ladies’ man, would be intimidated by M. Shadows’ kid sister?” I teased playfully. I then asked, “You could have any woman you want, Brian. Why me?”

Brian smiled and cupped my face in his hands again. “Because the majority of those women out there? They know and want Synyster Gates. You? You know, want, and care for Brian Haner, Junior… and that means the world to me, Sierra.”

I got up on my tip toes and wrapped my arms around Brian’s neck, having him nuzzle his face into my neck as he held me tightly against him. “In case you can’t tell,” I whispered, “I’ve liked you for ages, too.” Brian chuckled and pulled away so he could look down at me.

“I can see that now,” he said, “and there’s something I want to know: will you be my girlfriend, so I no longer have to sit around at night and wonder what you’re doing with some other guy who should be me?”

Smiling, I laughed and nodded my head. “Yes, Brian, I will,” I giggled, sighing happily when he started another kiss that would end up taking us, for the first of many times, much further than we’d ever gone before.