3 || 1 Day Until

"This is amazing, Zoe!" Adriana exclaimed.

     The two of us were in Adriana's hyper-girly bedroom. Everything in her room has pink-silk and gold trim. Adriana liked things in her life to be pretty and organized, much like herself. She carefully folded her clothes and placed them into a powder-pink suitcase. Adriana asked me to come over so she could help me properly pack what she called "party-fashion necessities". I was really bad with knowing how to dress for anything except the gym.

     "Look, I still don't know for sure if he likes me or not. I don't want to jump to conclusions yet." I said while holding a pair of blue boxer shorts.

     "Of course he likes you! Who wouldn't like you?" Then Adriana turned up her nose. "Are you really going to pack those?"

     I examined the shorts to see if maybe there was a stain on them—there wasn't.

     "What's wrong with them?" I asked.

      Adriana gave me a sympathetic look and reached out a hand to gently pat my arm. "Nothing, it's just I was kind of hoping you would use this cruise as an opportunity to reinvent yourself. Very few people have seen you without your school uniform and so far, you've only packed clothes that don't really show off your delicate side."

     I forced a bitter smile. "Yeah, see, you already know my older sister had enough time when my mother was alive to develop a 'delicate' side. I don't have one of those."

     Adriana seemed to ignore everything I was saying. She reached into her stack of folded clothing and picked out a few outfits to shove into my arms. "Yes, you do—at least for this weekend, you do."

     I lifted up one of the dresses she forced on me. It was a pretty pale lavender color with a low dipping V-neck chest and a long flowing bottom. It looked like it might have been too long for petite Adriana, but it seemed to be the perfect size for me.

     Reinventing myself wasn't such a bad idea. I wanted Daniel to see a different side of myself, a side that wore soft lavender dresses and heels.

     "How are you going to deal with Ashe tagging along with you and Daniel for two nights?" Adriana asked carefully.

     "My hope is that Hannah will dive after him like a hungry wolf and he'll be too busy running from her all weekend to be bothered by what Daniel and I do."

     Wow, saying his name and mine together gave me tingles all over my skin. I liked the thought of him and I being a thing.

     Adriana stuffed a few shiny pink make-up bags into her suitcase. "I'm sure more girls than just Hannah will do that for you. I do hope you realize you're the only single girl from our school who doesn't want to be with Ashe."

     "Not the only one, you don't either," I pointed out.

     Adriana shrugged her shoulders and gave me a helpless smile. "I only stayed back from him because I love you, but if we had never been friends, I'd be right there with Hannah getting his attention. You're the only one I know who is repelled by him."

     Not always, but Adriana didn't know that. I never told her that there was a point in time where I too had a crush on Ashe, but as far as I was concerned, that was ancient history. Daniel was my future.

Ashe stared out the window to watch the moon that hung high overhead. He wished that he could see the stars along with it, but New York City was much too bright for stars to be visible anymore.

     "Aren't you going to give your step-mother an answer?" Nathan Colton's voice sternly demanded.

     Ashe lazily returned his gaze to the dinner table where he sat four chairs away from his father and brand new step-mother. Her name was Amber and she was only twenty-four years old, making her barely seven years older than Ashe was. She draped herself with expensive, tacky designer clothes and accentuated her bosom as much as humanly possible.

     It was so obvious that Amber was only after Ashe's father for his money. He had no idea why his father was too blind to see that.

     "I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention to the conversation. Maybe if Amber would say something intelligent once in a while I might find it worth my time to give her an answer," Ashe said dryly.

     Amber opened her mouth in both horror and offense. She pointed at Ashe like a child who'd been teased by her little brother. "Did you hear that, Martin? Do you see how much he disrespects me when I am his family now?"

     She emphasized her connection to the family by showing off her large, gaudy wedding ring.

     Ashe scoffed. Amber was many things, but she would never be family to him, much less a mother.

     His father rubbed at the side of his forehead and gritted his teeth. "Give me the keys to your car and your phone. Until you learn to start showing Amber respect you will have to find another way to get to and from school."

     Ashe didn't even hesitate, he dug into his pockets and tossed the keys onto the dining table. He followed those with not only his phone but his wallet as well. The only things he kept were his driver's license and student ID card.

     With a gaze as cold as steel Ashe stared into Amber's big, vacant brown eyes and said, "The last woman who thought she could replace my mother ended up dead. Fair warning. . ."

     Both his father and stepmother looked completely shocked.

     Ashe silently walked out of the dining room and up to his bedroom. That's where his father probably would have told him to go if he hadn't been caught off guard.

     Parental punishments didn't work on Ashe anymore, there was nothing his father could do that get a rise out of him. If only his father knew that the real way to punish Ashe properly was not taking things away, it would be through forcing him to go places that he didn't want to go.

     A perfect example of a place he didn't want to go to was Hannah's party. He didn't care if it was the party of the century, he did not want to be stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean with psycho-Hannah and Venus-Flytrap Zoe.

     Worse of all, his best friend Daniel had confessed that he actually had a crush on that insufferable girl!

     Of all the girls that attended Peddleton, leave it to Daniel to fall for the one that Ashe least got along with.

     The only reason he was going to even get on that god-forsaken boat—despite how queasy the water made him—was because Daniel didn't know Hannah and so he didn't receive an invite. That meant that Daniel needed to be Ashe's plus-one for the event.

     "She's nothing like the other girls at our school. She's strong, driven, mature, and gorgeous." Daniel had said. "I have really tried to not like her because I know how much you dislike her, but I can't do that anymore. I hope that as my friend you will support my choice to pursue her. That party is the perfect chance for me to really win her over."

     One night and two whole days full of glaring arguments with Zoe, followed by clingy, desperate grabs from Hannah.

     Ashe groaned and rolled onto his bed. He lifted an arm up to cover his eyes and willed the weekend to be over already.

     He dug under his pillow with his free hand to retrieve his spare, secret phone. Since he was twelve his mother gave him a phone that she told Ashe to always keep a secret so they could be in contact anytime he was on punishment.

     It was an old phone, the only numbers listed in the phone's contacts were from people he knew since he was twelve.

     He flipped through the names and stopped at the final name listed, it simply said: Z.

     Ashe wondered if she still had the same number. If she did, he'd definitely be blocked by now. Still though, if they were going to be in close quarters for more than a few minutes it wasn't a bad idea to call a truce.

     He clicked on her name and before he could change his mind he sent her a text.

     [Ashe: Until we are back on dry land let's call a truce.]

    [Z: Who is this?]

    Ashe rolled his eyes. She really had removed him from her contacts, but she hadn't blocked his number. That part was strange.

     [Ashe: My friend likes you, so I'm calling a temporary truce for him. On Monday we can resume avoiding and disliking each other.]

    [Z: Oh. It's you.]

    [Ashe: Do you accept the truce?]

    [Z: Only if the terms of the truce include that we don't talk to each other the whole time.]

     Ashe's lips twitched a little smile. He couldn't resist irritating her, it had become just a natural habit by this point.

     [Ashe: Because you find my voice so irresistible that you might dump Daniel for me instead?]

     [Z: Because if I so much as hear you say one word on that moving ship I might vomit all over you.]

    [Ashe: Fine. We won't talk. So do we have a truce?]

     [Z: Yes, only until Monday.]

    [Ashe: Okay.]

    [Z: Okay.]

    The conversation was over, if he could have even called that a conversation. Ashe wondered what exactly a truce with Zoe Migliani would be like? He hadn't been able to even glance her way without some negative exchange since they were twelve years old.

    He sighed and rolled over to press the side of his face against the cool fabric of his pillow. He couldn't help forming a smile despite himself. He could imagine Zoe's face, all red and frustrated while she fought to keep her mouth shut.

    Maybe—just maybe—the cruise wouldn't be so bad after all.

Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: AzTruyen.Top