Divide (3 page)

Mick

I buzzed with energy, just thinking of finally meeting Holland. Remarkably, after Ro’s less than stellar first meeting, Holland had agreed to come to our friend’s club. I imagined she was probably pretty sick of being an outcast, so saying yes to Ro’s offer gave Holland an opportunity to be part of a crowd again, though it still shocked me that she’d agreed. From what I’d learned, she was a bit of a shut-in since the fire at her ex’s beach house.

I assumed her brother would come along and hoped he wouldn’t give me any grief. We had the same goals in this; he just didn’t know it yet.

I tried ignoring the need to search for Holland in the crowd forming outside the warehouse. I accepted cash from each person that went inside, and forced myself to focus on the task at hand, preventing anyone from sneaking past me without paying the cover. Focusing was tough to do, though, especially when I’d catch myself scanning the crowd instead of watching the door. My buddy wouldn’t want me to help him out with his parties in the future if I couldn’t handle the simple task of getting the cash from each guest. Plus, people wouldn’t show up if we couldn’t provide the booze and the bands, so this would all be a moot point. Better to find a way to focus on the task at hand.

I sensed Holland’s presence the second she arrived; my chest felt like it was somehow swelling and tightening at the same time. I’d never felt anything that came even close. My dad warned me that I’d have a connection to her, but this was intense, and almost, no
definitely
surreal.

An invisible string linked us to one another, and something had just pulled it taut. It took effort to remain seated on my bar stool at the door. Being
told
about your so-called destiny was one thing, but I couldn’t believe the force of the pull to her now that she was nearby.

I scanned the crowd again, spotting the tips of Ro’s purple fairy wings before I spotted Ro. She practically skipped toward me, Holland and her brother walking side-by-side behind her.

I sucked in a breath. Holland was smoking hot. I’d known this, but pictures of her just didn’t measure up to the real thing. She kept her gaze to the ground or snuck quick glances over at her brother, avoiding the crowd and not allowing anyone to make eye contact with her, though many of them tried. The girl following Ro was so unlike the one I’d studied in pictures, no longer the confident girl who held her head high in every photograph I’d seen from before the fire.

As if she could feel my gaze on her, Holland snapped her head up and our eyes met. In that split second before she looked down again, I could see it. The spark of life I’d seen in the photos of her had vanished. The brazen confidence of a girl who was once resting easily on the top rung of the social ladder was gone as well, lost to that cursed thing inside her.

But, for just a brief second, a flicker of a challenge sparked to life in her eyes. And, man, when she looked away from me, I fought the strongest urge to get up and grab her chin with my fingers, to force her to meet my gaze so I’d never have to miss the rebellion in her eyes.

Holland

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and my spine prickled. I looked up at Cam, but he was focused straight ahead, his gaze strangely locked on Rosemarie. I scanned the crowd, wondering what had set my skin to buzzing. Many of the girls in line were checking out my brother, giggling like idiots and pointing as we walked past, but no one paid me much attention.

Still, the feeling remained.

I looked ahead and discovered the reason. My chest tightened, as if someone had just wrapped slender fingers around my heart, then pulled. The guy at the door stared at me shamelessly.
Shamelessly.
His eyes bore into mine, and even from this distance, I felt a reaction deep within my belly. My pulse sped as he held my gaze, then I quickly averted my eyes.

I wasn’t on the market.

But, wow. He was…
no
. It didn’t matter.

The line to get in stretched about thirty people deep, and I realized that
he
was taking money at the door. Cover charge.
Shoot!
Why hadn’t I thought of that? I had my debit card but no cash. Then it occurred to me that this party was at an empty warehouse, so thinking they’d even take debit or credit cards was laughable. Way to go, Holland.

I peeked at Cam and whispered, “Did you bring any cash for the cover charge?”

“Ah shit, Holl—I didn’t even think about it. You don’t think they’ll take a debit card? Wait. Why are they even charging? Isn’t this supposed to be a party? What the he—?”

“No worries, guys!” Rosemarie called over her shoulder. “I’ve got this!”

She skipped in front of us, leading us past the long line of people. Her purple costume wings glittered in the bright industrial lights on top of the building. Cam turned to me, lifting one eyebrow and nodding toward Rosemarie’s wings, before straightening his shoulders and walking tall.
Walk in like you own the place.
I briefly wondered if our mom ever had to give
him
that speech, or if he’d been born with easy confidence.

Though really, before homecoming, I never needed to be reminded to hold my head high.

I inhaled a deep breath, and my chest tightened again as I watched Rosemarie stop in front of
him
. We were going to have to talk to the guy who’d watched me so unabashedly.

“What’s up with the way he looks at you? I don’t like it.”

Clearly, Cam had also noticed.

“Hey, Mick! These are the friends I was telling you about. Holland and Cam. Guys, this is Mick, my brother from another mother.”

The guy at the door—Mick—smiled fondly at Rosemarie, nodded at Cam, then brought his gaze to meet mine. My heart did a silly skip-jump-thump thing as we stared at each other once again. He was in his mid-twenties, I imagined, and pretty hot—if I was into his dark, shaved head, green eyes, slightly disgruntled appearance. Which I was.

Or would have been, had I been interested. Which I was not.

“Hey, Ro. Cameron—” he nodded toward Cam again, then brought his gaze to me, smiling to reveal almost-straight teeth, and nearly knocking the wind from my lungs, “—Holland. Come on in.”

Much to my delight, we surpassed the line and the cover charge. Rosemarie gave Mick a quick peck on the cheek and then pulled us inside. I saw him watching us from the corner of my eyes. Well, watching me. He definitely watched me. I tried to ignore how amazing that made me feel—people stared at me these days, but never like that anymore—and followed Rosemarie inside.

Walking up to the makeshift bar—what looked like two or three tables lined up, draped with black tablecloths and supporting a couple bright orange Gatorade coolers—I realized we’d probably surpass any drink costs as well. Dressed similarly to Rosemarie, wings and all, the girl behind the bar spotted us, and her face lit up like the Fourth of July.

“Rosie! Yay! You’re here!”

“Jenna!”

Dropping our arms, Rosemarie embraced the girl in front of us and then turned around to introduce her.

“Guys, this is Jenna, my best friend.”

“Your sister from another mister?” Cam asked.

I hung my head in shame, then Cam elbowed me.

Rosemarie’s face became serious. “Oh, no, that really was my brother from another mother. Mick and I have—
had
—the same dad. But this is just my best friend. I wish we were related!” The girls both squealed and looked at each other as if that wasn’t the first time being sisters had come up.

After about seventeen more introductions—too many to keep count of or remember—Rosemarie stuffed a cup full of purple liquid into my hands, then dragged me out onto the dance floor. I hesitated—after months of trying to avoid people, I suddenly found myself smack dab in the middle of a few dozen gyrating bodies—but only a couple short seconds passed before I could no longer ignore the pull of the music.

I allowed myself to feel each beat, my feet and arms moving to the rhythm of songs I didn’t even know, in a genre I didn’t even listen to. I closed my eyes and relaxed, letting the upbeat tempo soothe my tired mind.

A little while later, after accidentally sloshing my drink on a few innocent bystanders, I chugged what remained and tossed the cup toward a trash can in the corner. I missed, but it looked like mine was one of many—the trash can was way past full and far too small to accommodate so many discarded red cups.

I turned back toward Rosemarie, only to find her dancing with my brother. They seemed to dance well with each other, and had forgotten all about me, apparently, so I turned around to leave the dance floor and take a break.

Rosemarie’s brother leaned up against the wall by the door, arms crossed over his chest, staring straight at me through the crowd. When our eyes met, the ghost of a smile played on his lips. My chest tightened again, and heat rushed to my cheeks.

Had he watched me dancing the entire time?

I held his gaze longer than I should have. Everyone else seemed to disappear, and I fought an intense urge to go to him. Instead, I finally turned my head away and spotted two couches forming an L-shaped sitting area in the corner of the warehouse.

Trying to appear as if the brief moment of intoxicating attraction hadn’t fazed me, I sat on an old black leather couch, desperately wishing I had something to occupy myself with. I didn’t even have a drink in my hand to focus on anymore. Damn.

I wondered if Mick still watched me, but I was too chicken to find out. So I followed the flashing rainbow lights as they skipped across the dance floor.

My brother and Rosemarie still danced together, and Cam actually looked like he was enjoying himself. A slower song started—if even the slowest techno song could ever be called slow—and Rosemarie swayed closer to Cam. I expected him to back away from her, considering just a few hours ago he thought she was a total freak, but he slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close. Then…oh my God…my brother wrapped a hand around her neck, pulled her face toward his, and then…I turned my head and squeezed my eyes shut.

That was…

Unexpected.

But, good for him, I guessed. So he hooked up with our new friend. No biggie. Random party hook-ups weren’t abnormal, and Cam wasn’t known for turning girls down. He loved them, but he’d been single as long as me, after his ex-girlfriend broke up with him because of how much time he’d focused on me last October. Rod and Leslie didn’t only ruin my life with their selfishness. Although, it probably wasn’t just because of Cam’s shift in focus that Sana dumped him. She was next in line for head cheerleader, as well as my replacement as Leslie’s best friend, so inevitably, she’d want to stay away from the guy whose sister was the school pariah. No one else seemed to blame Cameron for his relation to me, but Sana couldn’t get past it. Whatever. She was a bitch anyway, and she’d never been good enough for my brother.

Now that I was no longer dancing, and was instead sitting on this couch in the corner, alone, I wished I were at home in bed. I could have been reading, or watching tv, or counting threads in the carpet…

Or being the big loser I’d been for the past four months straight.

Screw this.

I stood, ran my hands down my coral pencil skirt, adjusted my black tube-top, then left the couches. The air inside the warehouse was heavy from the fog machine and all the sweaty bodies, and I debated stepping outside, but February in Huntington Beach would be much too cold for even a quick breath of fresh air, and I had no idea where Rosemarie had taken our jackets. I headed to the bar instead. Jenna was still there talking to Rosemarie’s brother—who’d obviously stopped stalker-staring at me long enough to move from the last place I’d seen him—and her face lit up when she spotted me, almost as much as it had when she saw Rosemarie earlier.

Maybe these people didn’t think I was a freak after all. Maybe Rosemarie actually wanted to be my friend. I tucked that thought away for pondering later.

“Hey, Holland! Ready for another?” Jenna’s hands were already gripping a new cup.

“Sure. Why not, right?” Cam gave me the go ahead before we left our house, so since he was the designated driver, I let loose. Or let go. Whichever.

Jenna continued filling my cup from a giant Gatorade cooler. While I waited, I turned my head to my right and focused on Rosemarie’s brother.

“Mick, right?”

“Yep. Holland, right?”

“Mhmm.”

He grinned and stepped closer, closing the space between us. After Jenna handed me my drink, I leaned back against the “bar” and peered sideways at Mick, analyzing him as secretively as I could. His hair was really dark but very closely shaven. His eyebrows were dark, as well, naturally, and his eyes were a rich, bright shade of green. His jawline was square and well-defined, and I…

Ugh.
Stupid girl. Stop.

I turned toward him fully and realized he was analyzing me, too. And not so secretly.

I did the bravest thing I’d done in a really long time. I smiled—the real thing, big and confident, and what Rod used to call
heart-stopping
.

“Care to dance with me, Mick?”
What? Where did that come from?
I was just full of surprises today.

“I’m not much for dancing, but if you play pool, I’m down.”

“Sounds perfect.” Perfect as in
I want to spend time with you
, not
I love playing pool
. I hated pool. I wasn’t any good at it, regardless of how many times people had attempted to teach me how to play. My dad and Cam tried relentlessly over the years—a Valley table sat in our living room for God’s sake—but their efforts were to no avail. I just couldn’t make the stick connect with the ball without worrying I’d snag the felt.

Maybe Mick couldn’t play either. One could hope.

After passing through the crowd and heading off down a slightly less crowded, and a lot less noisy, hallway, I followed Mick to the pool table, checking him out as I did so. Tall, but not too tall—a bit shorter than Rod—with broad, strong shoulders. The thermal shirt Mick wore fit snugly enough that I saw his shoulder blades moving underneath it as he reached over the table to collect the scattered pool balls. His jeans were a faded blue and appeared comfortably worn-in, tightly hugging his butt, and as he finished racking the balls and turned around to face me, I noticed—

“Holland?”

Ah hell.
He’d turned around, and I was still perving on the way his butt looked in his jeans.

I looked up at his face, meeting his eyes as heat rushed to my cheeks. So much for brave and confident.

“Were you just checking out my ass?”

I felt my eyes widen, before I quickly tried to rectify the situation. But there was no way to rectify it. So I went with honesty. What the heck, right?

“Sure was. You were checking mine out earlier.”

“That I was. Glad you noticed. Ready to play a game?”

“Yup.”

Well, that went better than expected. But I needed to be more careful if I planned to check him out again in the future.

No, no. There would be no future. Just a quick game of one of the worst sports ever, and then we’d go our separate ways.

“Ladies first,” he said, extending the cue stick toward me.

“Oh, no—” I waved my hands in the air, “—really, you go ahead.”

He cocked his head, his green eyes scrutinizing me, but I leaned back against the wall, oozing nonchalance. Or so I hoped.

He bent over the table, perfectly poised to take the first shot, and his shirt pulled up a bit, giving me a perfect view of his waist. The skin underneath his shirt was tanned and smooth. I wondered what the rest of his body looked like.

Stop it, Holland.

With a loud
crack
, the balls scattered across the table. I lost count of how many went in the pockets.

Okay, so he was really good at pool. Go figure. Of course, if he came to these warehouse parties often and wasn’t into dancing, he had plenty of practice time. He’d wipe the floor with me, but I’d suspected that going into it. Oh well. Can’t win them all. And I could at least enjoy myself while I dove headfirst into losing.