Cherry Red Summer (Emely and Elyas Book 1) (23 page)

“Stop talking nonsense,” he said. “That was my first kiss, too. Stop twisting the facts around! My comment about your breasts was just my response to the way you took me for a ride.” He paused. “God, I was so pissed when I heard you were dating that loser.”

All expression drained from my face. “What?”

“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t clue in to what was going on?” he asked. “That weirdo was running all over school telling everyone what you did!”

“What are you even talking about?”

“That loser guy—I don’t even remember his name anymore. Simon?” Elyas said the name derisively.

“You mean
Sören?
” I asked with a furrowed brow.

“Yeah, that’s him. Sören,” he mumbled. Evidently he was not a fan.

It took me a couple of seconds to collect my thoughts. This was way too much information at once. After taking a deep breath, I started again, focusing on the facts.

“Sören went around the school saying he and I were dating?”

“Yeah. But it doesn’t matter how I found out,” he replied.

“And
yo
u . . .
you
believed
him?”

“Of course I believed him,” said Elyas, who was now starting to look confused. “You were always hanging out with him.”

“God, Elyas,” I moaned, pressing my face into the pillow. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe you should’ve come and talked to me about it? Or asked Alex?”

“What would that have changed?” he said with a snort.

“For starters, we would have told you that Sören was bullshitting you.”

I could see the wheels spinning in Elyas’s head. “You mea
n . . .
yo
u . . .
you weren’t dating him? At all?”

“No, you idiot! I was in love with you, head over heels, for two years—
two years,
goddammit. Years! You broke my heart, jerk!”

“You’re not being serious, or
. . .
” He stared at me.

This was too much stupidity even for me. I thrust my elbow into the same spot as before.

“Ooowww!” he yelled, grabbing his side again. “Stop doing that!”

“Don’t be such a wuss,” I mumbled.

“You think you’re the only one who suffered?” he asked.

I snorted. “Well, who else? Did you step on an ant when you ripped out my heart?”

“What about
me
, you stupid cow!” he answered. “Didn’t you ever think that maybe I was in love with you for two years myself?”

“Oh come on,” I said.

“Believe it or not, it’s true.”

Was he trying to convince me that he had been just as in love with me as I was with him? “If that’s true, Elya
s . . .
the
n . . .
then
. . .
”

“Then?”

“Then you’re even dumber than I thought.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Because the whole thing was totally your fault.”

“You’re saying that if it were you, you would have done something differently?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “That loser Simon—”

“Sören,” I said.

“Whatever!” he said more heatedly. “That loser
Sören
was nipping at your heels for years! Whenever I saw you, you had that little dachshund in tow. Do you have any idea how envious I was?” I didn’t answer, but that didn’t stop Elyas.

“And yet,” he said, calming down. “When you let me kiss yo
u . . .
I had hope. After that I thought we’d be together. Then the very next morning, that loser himself told me he was officially your boyfriend and that you two were going on a date that afternoon.” He shrugged. “Of course I believed him! And I blew a fuse.”

I was starting to see his side.

Sure, it was all years ago now, but I had gone through hell. It was strange to find out, seven years later, that it was all for nothing. Just a stupid misunderstanding.

“Are you not talking to me anymore?” Elyas asked cautiously after a moment.

“I need to give some serious thought—” I started but then sighed, surprising myself at how much my anger had dissipated. We couldn’t change any of it now. “Screw it, Elyas. It was all so long ago.”

He didn’t say anything, which I took as tacit agreement. The words had come easily enough, but I couldn’t move my mind forward. It swirled around, putting me in a strange mood.

Our beautiful kiss that day had been real. My impression that Elyas had enjoyed it as much as I did seemed to have been accurate. What would have happened if Sören hadn’t told people lies, or if Elyas hadn’t been foolish enough to believe him? Could we have been happy?

That thought turned into a queasy feeling in my stomach.

“Emely?”

“Hmm?”

“About that mean remark I made back in high school,” he started. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think your breasts were too small at all. Actually, they’r
e . . .
very nice.”

I tried to suppress a smile. “Your apology is a little late, but thank you. I’ll pass it on to them.”

“How big are they, actually? A cups?” he said jokingly.

“No, thank you very much. B.
B
as in
bastard,
buddy.”
Not
A
as in
ass
!

He laughed softly, and we both smiled. After a moment I started feeling ravenously hungry, a side effect from the pot. I desperately needed something sweet. There had to be something sweet in here somewhere.

I rolled over to open the top drawer of Elyas’s nightstand. Unfortunately it was too dark to see anything, so I groped around inside.

“Are you looking for condoms?” Elyas asked. “They’re one drawer down.”

As if!

I growled and jammed my elbow back toward him. This time he was too fast and moved his ribs out of the way just in time, with a laugh.

“The rubber that could protect me from you has yet to be invented,” I sighed. “And spare me the comment about how lucky we are that at least extra-large condoms already exist.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” he replied. “Only men who are compensating say stuff like that.”

God! He was so full of himself.

“Besides,” he continued, smirking, “women actually don’t like it if it’s
too
big.”

Ugh. “I see you believe everything you read in men’s magazines,” I said and returned to my search. I couldn’t find anything. “Do you have any chocolate around?”

“Who keeps chocolate in their nightstand?”

Um, me?
“No ide
a . . .
It was just a thought.”

“We have some in the fridge. Do you think the two lovebirds have moved to Alex’s room by now?”

“Depends on what signals Sebastian has been sending,” I said.

“Or how much Alex is talking,” he added.

When he was right, he was right.

“I’ll go and peek,” he said, getting out of bed. Through his open door I could see that the hallway was pitch-black. Elyas tiptoed out a bit to check on the situation in the living room.

“The coast looks clear,” he said, giving me a thumbs-up.

I followed him through the dark hallway into the living room, where he turned on the light. We squinted for a moment as our eyes adjusted. Elyas looked kind of cute squinting.

I thought so for only a moment before wondering what kind of pollution had clouded my brain. I frowned, followed Elyas to the fridge, and hopped up on the island. I peered over his shoulder while he opened the door and looked in.

“Hmm
. . . ,
” he said, opening various drawers that all turned up empty.

“Don’t tell me there’s no chocolate left!” I sounded desperate.

“No, unfortunately not. Looks like Alex gobbled up all that was left.”

I recalled all of Alex’s Sebastian drama and suspected her chocolate consumption had increased threefold of late. Great.

“Wait!” Elyas said, and opened the freezer.

I squealed as he held up two cartons of Häagen-Dazs.
Let one of them be Baileys, let one of them be Baileys
. . .

Elyas looked at the label on the first one. “Do you like Baileys?”

I was so excited I could have hugged him. Instead I squealed and waved my arms around like a little girl. He handed me the carton with a smile.

I pulled off the top as Elyas opened the drawer and took out a tiny dessert spoon.

I raised an eyebrow. “What am I, a bird or something? Give me a real spoon!”

Elyas laughed and shook his head, looking for a soup spoon instead. He handed me one, and I said, “Much better,” with a nod of approval. I loaded the spoon with ice cream and got busy licking it away. The ice cream melted on my tongue, and I closed my eyes to savor it. Lost in the deliciousness, I didn’t notice that Elyas was watching my gastronomic orgasm.

“Uh, do you think I could have some, too?” he asked.

He looked silly standing there holding a spoon in his hand.

“Hmm, let me thin
k . . .
Nope!” I grinned and shoveled another spoonful into my mouth. Elyas flashed me a grim look.

“Go get your own!” I said.

“Emely, that
is
my own!”

“Mine, yours
. . .
” I snorted. “Haven’t you ever heard of sharing?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” he said, laughing.

“You can have the other carton!” I had no intention of sharing even one spoonful with him.

“It’s plain vanilla, and I don’t like plain vanilla.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Then it looks like you’ve got a problem.” I grinned and kept eating. But that changed when Elyas’s lips formed that all-too-familiar smirk. I stood my ground as he took a step toward me with an outstretched hand. I yanked the carton away just in time to leave him grabbing air.

I smirked back at him and shoveled more ice cream into my mouth. Elyas wasn’t ready to give up yet, and he prepared for his next attempt.

“If you want ice cream,” I said, “you’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.” I was prepared for any battle necessary to protect my ice cream.

He smiled, which was merely a distraction, as he grabbed for the carton again. In vain.

I managed to get the next spoonful into my mouth just before Elyas took another step toward me. I quickly moved the carton behind my back.

“Hmm,” he said impishly as I looked at him with my spoon in my mouth.

Elyas leaned forward, rested his hands on either side of my legs on the counter, and lowered his face toward mine with a twinkle in his eyes. “How about,” he whispered into my ear, “we take the ice cream back to bed with us?”

I swallowed as goose bumps ran down my back. Dirty tricks! I pressed the carton with resignation into his chest. “Here. I just lost my appetite,” I mumbled.

Elyas smirked. He took the ice cream, stepped back, and leaned against the fridge. Without taking his eyes off me, he spooned ice cream into his mouth.

“Sure you don’t want any more?” he asked.

I folded my arms in front of me.

At regular intervals he made
mmm
sounds, which frustrated me even more. Staring daggers at someone while your mouth waters is quite difficult.

Yummy.

God, I needed more of that ice cream!

I made a show of looking at the knives jutting out of the knife block next to me. My little acting job amused Elyas no end.

“How can a person be so stubborn?” he asked.

I softly swore at myself. It had been only a matter of time before he drove me that far.

“Get down,” he said, heading for the couch. “Bring your spoon.”

We agreed to watch
Fight Club
to the end, sharing the ice cream. Elyas held the carton between us so we could sit next to each other in peace.

After a while I started feeling sleepy, but as long as there was ice cream left, the urge to eat it wouldn’t pass. We had reached the part in the movie where—
spoiler alert
—Edward Norton’s and Brad Pitt’s characters are revealed to be the same person. I looked at Elyas and wondered, with all the odd events of late, whether he had an alter ego, too. First, of course, there was the kid-Elyas I had grown up with and fallen for. Then there was the jerk-Elyas, who stopped at nothing to land me in bed. (Tonight he had actually succeeded, in a sense.) Then there was this grown-up Elyas I had come to know in the past few weeks. I wondered how much of the kid was still in this grown-up version.

A couple of weeks ago I would have answered that the kid-Elyas had become a total jerk. But since then, he had reminded me more than once of the person I had fallen in love with.

I couldn’t be so naïve, however, as to fall for his “hard shell, soft middle” routine. This was just a stereotypical female fantasy, and those never ended up matching reality.

Now that I knew Elyas hadn’t necessarily been a jerk back in high school, I wondered how he’d evolved into one. Was it simply the wrong environment? The wrong friends?

“Whatever happened to Kevin?” I asked. From what I could tell, their close friendship hadn’t withstood the test of the intervening years.

Elyas kept his spoon in his mouth for a moment and stared at the TV screen.

“Let’s just say we parted ways,” he replied.

“But you two were best friends for so long.”

“That’s one way to put it,” he sighed. “Until the day he decided to screw my girlfriend.”

U
h . . .
O
K . . .
Lame.

Apart from that, though, his sentence contained one more bit of information I found equally shocking.

“
You
had a
girlfriend
?” I asked.

He laughed softly. “Believe it or not.”

“Elyas Schwarz, I’m shocked!” I clutched at my heart, and he grinned.

“In my defense, I have to say that was my only serious relationship. Just so you don’t develop some kind of distorted picture of me.”

“Of course.” I nodded formally.

I digested the implications of Elyas’s past. His love triangle story was a familiar-enough scenario, familiar from pretty much any bad Hollywood flick—but it had really happened to him. It must have felt awful, being betrayed that way by the two people he trusted most. I imagined Alex doing the same to me—an absolutely horrific thought.