Chapter Seventeen: You Probably Won’t Get Shot

As I walked through the threshold of the home, I was surprised that my nostrils weren’t immersed in an overpowering smell of sorts. When one entered my house, they couldn’t help but smell the fresh scent of sanitized apples that my mother had made it her life mission to spread throughout the entire structure, for she had a slight fixation with it. When I went into the Kent’s house, I immediately perceived this sugary-vanilla aroma that Kara had found years ago and was called “Cupcake Commotion.” If the color pink had a smell, Kara Kent’s house would be it. When I came into Luke Daniels’ house, however, there wasn’t this overwhelming smell that I could pair with Luke’s home. There was nothing Now, the place probably did smell like something, but that “something” was indistinct and indiscernible. So, basically, “nothing.”

      “I promise that you probably won’t get shot,” Luke told me as I took a wavering step inside. His assurance—that wasn’t really an assurance at all due to the improbable word of “probably”—hadn’t really even been a thought in my mind until he brought it up. I was 92.01% sure that he was kidding, but there was always that 7.99% that made me unsure. It was Luke Daniels’ house, so anything could happen, really.

      “Considering that I wasn’t really planning on going home with a gaping hole in my body, I guess that that’s a good thing,” I mumbled. He grinned at me, not saying anything else as he led me through the small and dimly lit home. It was already getting darker outside, so the lack of light inside made everything appear gloomier.

      Suddenly, the silhouette of new figure emerged before us, only marginally startling me. I wasn’t sure who the person was, but I knew that they were taller than both Luke and I, and were of the male gender. Luke left my side for a fleeting moment, abandoning me as I squinted at the guy opposite me. A brighter light then came on, courtesy of one Luke Daniels, allowing me to see who was in front of me.

      As suspected, it was a guy. But it wasn’t just any guy—no, this particular guy could’ve posed as a double for Luke, though he was taller and slight more attractive (okay, so maybe he was model attractive, but that was beside the point) with a thin layer of stubble and shorter hair. Like Luke, he had gray eyes, though they looked darker and bluer. He had on a white T-shirt, sweats, and seemed to be holding a drink of sorts—most likely beer. Unlike me, he wasn’t alarmed and retained this impassively calm expression that wasn’t fleeing his face any time soon.

      Taking one last look at me, he finally spoke. “You’re wearing Luke’s jacket. And Luke, how many times have I told you not to bring girls into the house?” the mystery boy questioned Luke with a sigh. I glanced down at my torso, and sure enough, Luke’s leather jacket still hung around my smallish frame, practically swallowing me up. Since I happened to be cold and liked the feeling of it, I made no move to change the state of Luke Daniels’ leather jacket. It stayed where it was—on me.

      “Like, twice,” Luke rolled his eyes at the other boy. “But that doesn’t matter now, because this is Olivia Ross and we’re here to get buzzed. Olivia, this is my older brother, Ben Daniels.”

      I glanced back at the gorgeous being standing by me, something inside me clicking into place with the new knowledge that he was Luke’s older brother. It made sense. I could more than see the genetic resemblance. It was as if Luke had a twin who was slightly more attractive, taller, and even more impassive than he, which wasn’t particularly challenging, for Luke was a pretty expressive individual when he wanted to be. Ben Daniels. It was a nice name, though I preferred the way that Luke Daniels sounded.

      “So you’re Olivia,” Ben said slowly, taking time to scrutinize every visible inch of my form. “Wow. Well, it’s a pleasure to you, Olivia. I’ve heard a lot about you. You’re not quite what I expected.”

      “And what did you expect?” I inquired, curious as to what Luke had said about me.

      “Tattoos, piercings, emotionally damaged—ya know, the whole badass look,” he said with a shrug.

      “Don’t worry, I have enough emotional damage to overcompensate for my lacking in the other two departments,” I told him with a smirk, glimpsing at Luke for a transitory moment, only to be elated with the sense of dread that he now possessed.

      “As do I,” he said with a grin, when I realized that I couldn’t see a single tattoo on him, and that there weren’t any piercings on him in sight. For all I knew, though, he could’ve been hiding the ink under his shirt like his brother, but as I took another look at him, there was something that made me think otherwise. Maybe he had one or two tattoos, but he didn’t seem like the type to have certain areas covered in tattoos—like Luke. Though they looked almost identical and shared the same blood, there was something about Ben that was different than Luke. Luke was…well, Luke—in the indescribable way that he was, and Ben seemed so much less. I didn’t know him, but the mere vibe I was getting told me that he wasn’t as much as a troublemaker as his little brother. He just seemed different. “So, what terrible things has my little bro told you about me?”

      I glanced over to Luke, wondering what exactly I was supposed to say. Because Luke Daniels was Luke Daniels, he didn’t say anything, or even make a single gesture to denote how I was to proceed. Thus, I went with the easiest option: the truth. “Not much, actually,” I finally said.

      “Oh, c’mon, Luke! Are you really that embarrassed of me?” Ben joked, placing his hands on his heart to simulate hurt.

      “Yes,” Luke said bluntly, though I didn’t think that he actually meant it.

      “Well, then I guess I’ll give you a brief overview of who I am,” Ben began with a smug smirk aimed at his sibling. “I’m the ‘good’ one in the family, and I’m currently on house arrest, so that either says something about our country’s legal system or my family.” He paused, laughing lightly at what he had said, though Luke remained unresponsive, not finding what he had said to be funny.

      “You’re on house arrest?” I questioned, wondering if he had been kidding or not. Out of the two, Luke seemed more likely to be on house arrest for doing whatever it was that Luke Daniels did. Ben Daniels didn’t appear like the type to be locked up in his home for an uncertain period time.

      “Yeah,” he nodded easily, “I even got this cool ankle bracelet thing that lights up whenever I leave the house, so that’s pretty chill, I guess.” He shook his leg, and sure enough, there was an ankle bracelet there. It wasn’t exactly “cool,” but it was definitely existent.

      “Seriously, dude?” Luke groaned out in annoyance, speaking to his brother. “All I wanted to do was chill with Liv and get drunk. Why did you need to go and bring your ankle bracelet into things?”

      “Why do you want to get drunk?” his brother fired back.

      “My best friend broke up with him,” I answered, knowing that Luke was most definitely now glaring at the side of my head.

      Ben let out a snort of laughter as Luke looked down, not daring to make eye contact with anyone in the room. “Nice, Luke,” Ben commended him.

      “Nice ankle bracelet, Ben,” Luke shot back in aggravation.

      “Thanks, I think so too,” Ben said smoothly.

      “Hey, Ben, want to tell Liv why you have that nice piece of swag?” Luke asked with an edge to his tone that disclosed how opposed to the idea Ben was.

      “Not really.”

      “I’m sure it’s a perfectly rational reason,” I said to Luke.

      “Not really,” Ben reiterated. “It’s pretty pointless, actually.”

      “Well, I don’t know about that…” Luke trailed off with a smirk. “Oh, and before you say anything, Benny, you should probably know that Olivia’s biased. Her mommy’s a lawyer.”

      “A lawyer, huh?” Ben said, one of his eyebrows raising a considerable height.

      “Yeah,” I nodded, aware that it probably wasn’t the most prestigious profession in this scenario. “She does mainly corporate law, but sometimes homicide—not normally, but every so often she’ll fill in for someone or take a case.”

      “Homicide, huh?” Ben mused, running a hand through his dark hair, which I noticed wasn’t as curly as his brother’s. It was shorter and straighter, but the color was the still the same as Luke’s. “As it just so happens, I’m actually being charged for premeditated murder.”

      And at that, I took a large step back, not expecting to meet a murderer ever in my life, let alone in Luke Daniels’ house. Ben just shook his head with a grin as Luke went on to explain. “He’s innocent, Liv,” Luke told me. “The cops liked him the best for the crime, and since he had no real alibi and was close to where some rich dude was killed, he was pegged the killer.”

      “But I’m not actually guilty of doing anything besides breathing and taking a walk,” Ben added.

      “Isn’t that what they all say?” I bit on my lip, my heart running faster than it had ever before. A murderer. Wow. Well, that was definitely unexpected.

      “I don’t know,” he shrugged, his large shoulders lifting with the action, “but that’s what I’m saying.”

      “What happened?” I gulped, not knowing if I really wanted to be informed.

      Ben opened his mouth to speak, but Luke beat him to it. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s go drink a bottle of Uncle Jack,” my “friend” said, his hand clasping around my wrist as he tugged me away from Ben.

      “Uncle Jack?” I questioned, furrowing my brows as I allowed him to pull me wherever we were going.

      “Jack Daniel’s,” Ben said, the connection clicking in my mind perfectly. Luke Daniels. Ben Daniels. Jack Daniel’s. Same letters, different punctuation—or lack of. It wasn’t all that clever, but it definitely made sense.

      Luke began to tow me down a small hallway with about four doors down it. All the entryways were closed; brown planks stood between me and me seeing whatever lay within. We stopped at the room at the very end of the passageway, and Luke quickly opened up the door, whisking us inside, and closing it shut just as fast. He didn’t bother locking it, but did make a point to slam it shut. And then I realized where exactly I was: Luke Daniels’ bedroom. Fun.

      As discreetly as I could, my eyes roamed over the contents of the room, my only point of comparison being the room that was owned by John and Kara Kent, inhabited by their son, Preston, for he, too, was a teenage boy. The more I thought about it, though, the more I found that Preston’s room wasn’t even close to being comparable to Luke’s. For starters, Luke’s bed wasn’t made as if a questionably legal immigrant from South America (I wanted to say that the Kent’s housekeeper was from Argentina, but she may have been from Brazil) had made it the morning prior. It was a mess of crumpled gray sheets and pillows, unlike Preston’s, which was always neat and tucked, in addition to being blue.

      Then, there were the walls. In Preston’s room, there was an entire mural of a football stadium (I wasn’t sure which, and didn’t really care enough about the sport to find out) painted on all four canvases of the walls. It was a piece of art in and of itself, and always reminded me of the color navy, for it was set at night, and there was just this overall theme of a deep blue that surfaced everywhere. With Luke’s walls, all I saw was off-white. There wasn’t anything distinct or indistinct about them. They were just a single shade of tinted eggshell, and that was it.

      Now, on the walls of Preston Kent’s bedroom were framed jerseys and plaques that displayed all of his achievements. They were simple, and not too big, so that the large-scale painting could be seen fully. In contrast, on Luke Daniels’ bedroom walls were scattered posters of girls and motorized vehicles, which was probably the “norm” for teenage boys, but my only point of association was Preston, so to me, it was an “abnormal” sight to see.

      The other basic furniture like desks, dressers, and nightstands wasn’t all that important, but what they stood on most definitely was. The carpeted floor of Preston’s room was always vacuumed and spotless, while Luke possessed a chaotic wooden floor with everything imaginable under the sun sprinkled about. Old chip bags, pants, candy bar wrappers, boxers, papers, shirts, pizza boxes, and so many other forms of crap took up the space, making it considerably challenging to view what lay beneath—that being the floor. In simple terms: Luke’s room was a mess. And it wasn’t even that Luke had a small room, which in contrast to Preston’s room he most definitely did, but rather that in that limited space he was able to make up for size by clutter.

      As cautiously as I could, I tiptoed over to a chair draped in clothes, not wanting to accidentally step on something. After navigating around the cramped chaos, I finally reached the sought after chair, flicking the few foul articles off of it so that I could sit. Beneath the squalid pieces of fabric was, indeed, a plastic means for resting with a hard back and the capability to swivel around in circles. It was located near a desk, leading me to the conclusion that its intended purpose was for work. Carefully, I allowed myself to sit, hoping that the chair wouldn’t spontaneously collapse and that Luke wouldn’t yell at me for the small action.

      Thankfully, Luke didn’t say anything, but just went over to his disheveled bed and sat on the edge, bending down to retrieve something beneath it. When he straightened back up, he had two brown bottles in his hand and a grin on his face. He tossed me one of the containers and opened the other himself. Somehow I was able to catch it, and then warily popped the cap off, holding it up to my nose to sniff it. Beer.

      “Do you have anything else?” I questioned, deeming it the time of day not appropriate to drink beer, though I had consumed the substance even earlier in the past.

      “Like what?” Luke questioned, guzzling down a prolonged gulp.

      “I don’t know. Wine or something,” I shrugged, knowing that he was probably mentally comparing me to a middle-aged woman with the odd request that I had made.

      “Check the closet,” he gestured over to a slender door by his bed, “there might be, like, vodka or something in there.”

      I nodded, lifting myself from the firm surface of the chair to a standing position as I then proceeded to carefully process the floor plan. When I had reached the suggested area, I extended my arm and then twisted the handle until it popped open, exposing yet another thing that caused me to take a large step back. In Luke Daniels’ closet were three skeletons, hanging on a hook by strings. There were actual skeletons in Luke Daniels’ closet. Not the metaphorical kind—though he probably had more than enough of those, too—but real, physical skeletons. Like, the type that went inside a human body.

      Now, “normal” girls probably would’ve screamed after making the connection that Luke’s brother had been charged for murder and that there happened to be skeletons in Luke’s closet, but I happened to be Olivia Ross, so I did no such thing. Instead, I very calmly closed the door with a light slam and pivoted on my foot, so that I was facing Luke. He was smiling, probably already knowing what I had seen.

      “Uh, Luke,” I began with a gulp, repeating the idea over and over in my mind that there was a rational explanation for the newfound figures.

      “Yeah?” he prompted, taking a leisurely sip of his beer.

      “Why are there skeletons in your closet?” I finally questioned, pacing back over the safety of my claimed seat.

      He thought for a moment, taking yet another mouthful of the liquor. After swallowing what he had placed in his mouth, he then answered, thankfully in a believable manner. “Oh, my mom keeps our Halloween decorations in that closet. They aren’t real skeletons. You did notice how small they were, right? You weren’t—dare I say it—scared, were you, Livy?”

      “Not even for a second,” I mumbled, fully aware that my rapid heartbeat indicated otherwise.

      “Really?” he pressed, not taking what I was claiming to be true.

      “Mhmmm…” I hummed, sitting back down and accepting that I would be drinking some form of processed barely or whatever it was that beer happened to be made out of for the afternoon. Picking up the temperate bottle, I brought it to my lips and drank, not really caring whether I was ingesting water or beer or green tea. They were all just different forms of liquid with varying effects to the body—some good, some bad.

      “Luke!” called a male voice that I presumed belonged to Ben. Footsteps sounded and in a matter of seconds Ben had opened the door and was in Luke’s room. At that, I was pretty sure that one more person would exceed the occupancy maximum of the room. Ben shot me an amiable smile, and then shook his head in an accusatory manner at Luke. “Bro,” Ben began, “if I remember correctly, didn’t Mom say that you weren’t allowed to be alone in your room with the door closed and a girl?”

      “If I remember correctly, isn’t Mom not here right now, and that rule was established as a third form of birth control. I’m not F-ing Olivia,” Luke told his older sibling, taking a calm sip of the beer. I looked from one brother to the other, thankful for a moment that I was an only child.

      Siblings always wished that that were an only child, and only children always wished that they weren’t. Surprisingly enough for me, I sided with the majority on the matter. I genuinely wanted a sibling. I had Piper and Preston, so they made up for the lack thereof, and though they spent more time in my house than I did, and we were probably closer than actual siblings, biologically, we weren’t actually related. Now, if I did have a sibling, I probably wouldn’t like them very much and would ignore half the time—but it would be worth it.

      Being an only child was tough. Some thought that every request and demand was met by doting parents, and in my case, that was normally true. The bad thing about being an only child, though, was the attention. There wasn’t another person to put the focus on. It was always me. That being stated, I did tend to mind to myself and ignore my parents who were rarely ever home anyways. When my parents were home, though, and felt like “parenting,” it got pretty “bad.” I was the one person they had in the house to interrogate about life, and goals, and ambitions, and the future. Though it was my job as the sole minor in the house to tolerate the attention, I often wished for another to shift the concentration onto. Piper and Preston were pretty great fill-ins, though, for they actually “liked” my parents.

      Anyways, at the moment, Luke didn’t look so thrilled about being a brother. He was glaring at Ben, silently trying to send him a message. “What’cha drinkin’?” Ben casually questioned, aimed at anyone willing to talk in the cramped room.

      “Beer,” I answered, my vocal cords more keen than Luke’s.

      “Toss me one,” Ben told his brother. Begrudgingly, Luke bent down and extracted yet another bottle of the golden fluid, and threw it to Ben, who thankfully avoided a spill and the shattering of glass by catching it.

      Ben then nonchalantly ambled over to where Luke was seated—on his bed—and sat down right next to him, opening the beer. He took a swig, and complacently smiled. “It’s good,” he articulated.

      “Did you know that there are skeletons in that closet?” I questioned, pointing to the mentioned area.

      “Yeah,” Ben nodded, taking another sip of the beer as his younger brother did the same. Just like the two boys, I too then drew my own bottle to my lips and swallowed.

      Luke was drinking over the anger involved in getting dumped, Ben was drinking to annoy Luke, as I strongly suspected, and I was drinking just because. I didn’t have a reason, and didn’t need one. It was better to drink without a reason, in my opinion, because then I could stop. When I was done drinking, there was nothing holding me down to continue. With Luke, even if he was done drinking, he would keep going, because of what fueled the drinking: anger. Anger wasn’t something easily rid. It was just easier and probably a whole lot better for one’s liver to drink without a cause—even if in the presence of Daniels Boys.