And win.
Easily.
I realized it was love and not just hormonal adolescent infatuation at the least romantic time, when Maya couldn’t stop whining about the movie.
“We should’ve chosen a rom-com.”
“This movie is, like, a thousand years old.”
“What the hell, Jim Carrey is not even funny in it!”
After a few groans from me and some shushing from Val and Camilla, my brother finally snapped at Adam.
“Yo, would you shut your girl up? I’m ready to hurl her ass back to Duncan Hill.”
Duncan Hill was a preppy neighborhood in the sleepy New England town we lived in. Everybody thought it was rad that Maya was an American princess whose daddy made a fortune as the owner of a department store, while the rest of us swam in the middle-class mediocracy of hand-me-down Camrys and soul-crushing summer jobs.
“She’s not my girl,” Adam pointed out, his gaze cutting to mine. I averted my eyes, feeling my cheeks flaring with heat.
“She’s here because of you, and—no offense, Maya—but her mouth is relentless,” Val growled.
“Tell me about it.” Adam grinned. In my periphery, I could still feel his eyes on the side of my face.
Camilla groaned. “Yuck.”
“Hey, I’m right here, you know,” Maya pouted.
Weirdly, this exchanged helped, and Maya stopped her blabbing. I was actually starting to breathe again, recalculating what it meant, exactly, to love Adam Mackay and experience such acute, raw possessiveness and jealousy toward him. Then the redheaded beauty began shifting her butt on our couch, giggling breathlessly into a can of LaCroix.
The giggling and fussing became soft moaning, and I slid my gaze down from Adam’s face, seeing that his hand was moving between them under the quilt, the imprint of his corded, muscular arm between her legs.
He was fingering her. Jesus.
He stared at me the entire time he was doing it, and when our eyes met, a slow, taunting smirk marred his gorgeous face.
Maya threw her head back, scoring no points in keeping their hookup on the down low, her scarlet locks fanning across our yellow flowery couch, her mouth O-shaped. Something very dark and very violent unfurled inside my stomach, clawing up my chest. I felt like I’d been punched in the nose and couldn’t hold back the tears. He was fingering her, and she was enjoying it, and I was there with a front-row seat.
I felt love in its purest, most heightened form—heartbreak.
The worst part was that I genuinely believed Adam liked me. At least, I thought he did a few minutes ago. It was the small things that made me feel like he was seeing me as more than just his best friend’s baby sister.
The way his eyes held mine for a second too long across the dinner table when he stayed over for supper, and everything around us blurred at the edges, spinning out of focus.
The way he tuned out the rest of the room and listened to what I had to say, no matter the place, no matter what we were discussing, no matter the people we were with. He was attuned to me, endlessly fascinated with my words, my thoughts, my small, weird quirks.
The way he stopped by my room every time he was on his way to visit Val across the hall, stealing moments, minutes, small memories that were uniquely ours. He recommended new movies to me, and I shared cinema trivia with him. We were both movie buffs. We could talk for hours, until our mouths went dry.
But I knew Val would have a heart attack if Adam ever asked me out. Adam had a less than pristine reputation with the fairer sex, as exhibited right freaking now. And by that, he was known in our zip code as a total male slut. Anyway, that would be breaking every bro code in the history of friendships, and Adam seemed like the loyal type when it came to friends. Not to mention, there was also me. I loved Val to death and would never want him to feel some sort of way. He always had my back, and pursuing his best friend when he obviously felt weird about it seemed like a crappy sister move.
For the most part, I understood why Adam and I couldn’t be together. I truly did. I smiled through the pain at school, when Adam passed by me, jerking his chin in my direction in hello, a different girl under his arm every week.
I ignored the stabs of jealousy in my chest when he made out with other girls underneath the bleachers.
And scolded myself at my inability to be happy for him when he played Romeo in a school play and kissed every single Juliet who auditioned.
But that thing with Maya? It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The very old, wary, thoroughly annoyed camel, who’d finally had enough.
“I think I’ll catch the rest of the movie in my room.”