Conor’s POV

I was scared I’d creeped her out when I asked her if she understood my intentions for kissing her. I didn’t want her to think I was just walking into her life and kissing her for the fun. Truth is, it was damaging my reputation – going for a plain, unnoticeable girl over the ‘royalty’ of the cheerleading squad or something, but I honestly wasn’t into it. The idea of having to wait four hours before you went out for her to perfect her outfit made me cringe inside, and the constant attention seeking they seem to do in public would drive me insane. Beth was different, she was everything you’d want in a girl without the baggage of popularity – although that was growing with every day. I felt bad for her when the stupid children in school were calling her names and shouting at her, it really put her down, but with help from me, Zack, Peter and Sam we’ve managed to get it to cool down. Beth slowly pulled away from our intense kiss and I mentally cursed myself for spending more time thinking about school then focussing on this moment.

“I think I heard the door…” She said, sounding more than upset to be leaving the warmth and comfort of my arms to answer the door to Sam. “Let me check if it’s Sam.” The way she said his name made my blood boil and I don’t even know why. She didn’t say it excitedly, happily or nervously. She just said it but the fact she even said his name; the fact he even knows her is too much for me. Especially with what we went through when we were younger.

“Hi Sam!” I heard from downstairs and quickly jumped off the bed to straighten my clothes out in front of the mirror before sitting back down on the bed. I heard two sets of footsteps coming up the stairs and then stop outside the door.

“Ladies first!” Sam said sweetly and I rolled my eyes, quickly changing to a smile as Beth walked in, followed swiftly by Sam.

“Late as usual.” I scoffed and Sam shot me a glare.

“Early? Makes a change for you.” He said shirtily. I shifted awkwardly on the bed and shrugged.

“Look, guys, you can do all this crap later. Miss Potter has added to our coursework!” Beth said, sounding concerned. I’m sure she was beginning to doubt the ‘A’ she was attempting to get for this coursework and we were hardly making the situation any better. “She now wants us to realise the furnishings in our building are unusable after the flood.”

 “Well we’d have to call the insurance company… There’s no way we could have enough income to sort the flood and pay for all new furniture!” I said seriously, now imagining this had actually happened to me. “We may be able to get something for poor roof work, they may even pay out purely for it because it was unavoidable, we don’t control the weather!” Both Beth and Sam looked confusedly at me, but Beth’s expression quickly changed to one of happiness as she wrote all the points down on the document she had up.

“You’d need to get health and safety people in too! They’d need to check the actual building and structure was still good. Don’t want the building to collapse with anyone in it!” Sam added giving me a ‘My answer was better’ look.

“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Beth sounded surprised. She typed a little before turning back round to us. “Let’s really make the effort before she adds anything else to it! So, let’s do two scenarios; the bad and the good.” She typed again. “Say we call the health people out and they say the structure is safe and then we receive a phone call saying we can get a good pay-out for our place what do we do then?” I brought my hand to my mouth and concentrated hard.

“It depends.” Sam begun and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “If there isn’t a possibility it will happen again then we could just use that money for the guys that clear the water and damp, buying a new roof and all new furnishings.” Sam looked smug with himself, but I had something that would screw his plan up!

“No!” I said just as Beth was typing out what he’d said. “You see, it was a damaged roof so as long as you hired a decent roofer it’d be alright. Maybe the insurance company know of a good one?” I began, not looking at Sam because his reaction would be too funny for me to control. “Not to mention, if we did just spend all that money on re-doing everything, we’d be out of business for ages and not generate any income. If our punters had to wait that long they might find other places to go!” Beth nodded as she typed everything I had said. She quickly glanced over to me with a smile while she was typing.

“Well, there’s the split then. Do we wait for the building to be redone or use the money from the insurance company to rent out a building and generate some income?”

“Couldn’t we do both?” I asked quizzically. “I mean money would be tight, but we’d be generating income? Maybe do quiz nights or karaoke to bring in more people just explaining that our main building was ruined in the recent storm? You never know, someone might know someone rich who’d be happy to donate!”

“I’m sorry, but when were you a business man?” Sam scoffed. “You can barely look after yourself yet suddenly you know everything about business?” Sam’s unexpected change in character shocked both me and Beth, who stopped typing and turned around in her computer chair.

“Sam!” She said before I could think of anything quick to say. She held her arms out as if to say ‘What the hell?’ and he looked away from us both, his lips shrivelled angrily.

“Just leave him, he’s obviously sensitive today.” I said cheekily. However, it wasn’t received well by Sam who swiftly shoved me off the edge of the bed and I landed awkwardly with a thump.

“No, Conor, not sensitive. I’ve just had enough of your shit!” Sam raised his voice. “You said this was all going to be over. You said we couldn’t get stuck in the same situation as before but here you are! You’ve made no effort to change anything! You want it to happen, don’t you?” Of course I knew exactly what he was getting at, he was talking about me and Beth. We had that conversation in the hallway when we discussed how our loving brotherly relationship was torn apart by a girl and knowing we both liked Beth was only going to do the same. We were going to just drop it, but truth was I just couldn’t!

“I don’t want to change anything, that’s why! I want to be happy and I’m happy with how everything is right now!” I said, my voice also raised. Whether we both just forgot Beth was there or were so focussed on arguing with each other that we didn’t pay her any attention, but we carried on arguing for a good few minutes without even wondering how she might be feeling about this.

“Happy as you are? Well thanks! So you have no intention to get our relationship back on a decent level? You’re happy hating me and pretending we don’t know each other?”

“That’s not what I meant!” I shouted back. “You know damn well what I meant stop twisting everything to make it look like I’m the bad guy! This is exactly what you did with Fiona!” Sam opened his mouth to shout something back but a small, timid and slightly scared voice interrupted.

“W-Who’s Fiona?” I tipped my head back to touch the wall and closed my eyes. How were we going to get out of this one? “What are you guys talking about?”

“Nothing, Beth, don’t worry. Just arguing like normal.” Sam said and I shook my head. “What? What, Conor? Have I said something else wrong?” His tone was harsh with me.

“Guys! Please just stop!” Beth sounded desperate. “We were doing so well with the work, what has brought this on?”

“Maybe we should call it a day for now. This isn’t going to get anywhere.” I said, trying not to let the anger boiling in my blood affect the way I spoke to Beth.

“For once, I think you said something worthwhile.” Sam stood up. “No offense, Beth.”

“None taken. A-Are you guys alright?” Beth couldn’t help but question us and it was understandable. She didn’t know anything about our long and complicated past.

“Well Conor seems to think he is fine, obviously he just doesn’t care about the people around him.” Sam snapped. The more he spoke the angrier I got and the more confused Beth got.

“I never said that!” I said, trying to prove my innocence. I knew it was only a matter of time before he said something that we’d both wish he hadn’t said.

“You said to me before: ‘I miss how we were, how we used to be’ and ‘We can’t let it end like this again’ yet here you are Conor. I understand now that my life and my feelings mean nothing to you. Fiona was meant to be the one off thing that broke us apart and then we realised it should never happen again, but here you are doing it all over again!” Sam shouted at me, his face red and his fists clenched.

“That’s not fair! This isn’t the same!” I shouted back, hoping that would end it all but Sam was in one of those moods where he’d just shout until you’d heard everything he wanted you to.

“Yes it is. There’s a girl and there’s us. Again.” Sam’s voice began to crack. He was showing his true feelings right now and he was upsetting himself. “And if you want to choose another girl over your brother once more then that is it, I’m going to pretend you never existed.”

“Sam, come on! That’s not fair!” I urged. “This is different. You know how I feel about her!” I tried my best not to say Beth’s name, she looked terrified enough as it was.

“And you know my feelings too. This was all one big game to you in the beginning… If she knew the truth she wouldn’t even want to be in the same room as you!” Sam hissed, talking about my story to trick Zack in the beginning.

“What the hell are you guys talking about?!” Beth suddenly shouted and both Sam and I looked straight over to her. “What is all this about brothers and Fiona and plans? Will someone just tell me what’s going on?”

“Take a seat, Beth and prepare to hear something you would barely believe was true.” Sam said with a smirk as he looked over to me with that look – the one he’d used before, the one that said ‘I’m going to tell her everything and she’s going to hate you.’