Surprise everyone! An early update to get you through the drought, November 10th will come sooner than you think and something BIG is going to happen in the next chapter...

Enjoy!

Cerise xx :)

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“Brad, what is the point of all this!!” I cried out in exasperation as I abruptly threw my worn out pencil onto the table and shook out my sore wrist.

It was day 3 of being Brad’s experiment subject and this was the first formal paperwork he asked me to fill out. ‘Finally we’re doing something serious’ I’d thought, seeing as this was the kind of schedule the first two days followed:

Day 1: I turned up to the Haywood Residence prepared for serious psychological testing.
Result: Brad forgot to do the grocery shopping and dragged me along with him.
Notes/Comments: Interestingly, actually rather impressively, the eldest Haywood brother has a somewhat eidetic memory and not only had he memorised the extensive shopping list, but he knew where to find every product on every aisle, on the exact shelf without looking at the signs. He even commented on the re-shelving and where certain products used to be placed.
At least he paid for the strawberry lollipop I grabbed last minute at the counter. Even if he did raise an irritatingly amused eyebrow at my choice of flavour…

Day 2: I was ushered into Brad’s room in which every single piece of furniture as well as the carpet was covered with sheets of plastic.
Result: Brad dragged me to the paint store and we went through hundreds of colour swatches as he searched for the perfect colour to paint his walls.
Notes/Comments: Of all the bullshit, it turns out Brad is colour blind. A fact he so kindly revealed to me after we had a war over which shade of red was better, vermillion or crimson, as he picked up a third colour swatch and asked me what I thought about this particular shade of red; it was forest green.

As an apology he promised to paint his bedroom walls with my favourite colour, cerulean.  I don’t actually have 1 favourite colour per say, I have a penchant for black but for some reason I’ve been drawn to blue recently.

“Cerulean huh?” Brad said as some kind of secret realisation dawned on his smugly handsome face, “the colour of the ocean, the colour of the eyes of someone we both know…”

“For your information Bradley, I was being nice and picked a colour that you can actually see.” I snapped, deflecting the attention back to him, “would you like me to change my mind and pick unicorn-vomit pink instead?” I threatened sweetly.

“Geez you are scary when you do that,” Brad muttered as we both cringed looking back at the swatch of the most disgustingly bright shade of pink you can imagine.

“You should be scared.”  I looked at him with an intimidating deadpan face.

“You’re a lot less scary than a lot of other teenage girls I’ve encountered Babe,” He chuckled as he picked up a large can of cerulean paint.

But back to today.

Day 3, which I naively thought would be a normal, quiet day just filling in academic type paperwork, like questionnaires.

Sitting at the kitchen table I had begun to work through the stack of questions Brad had placed in front of me and didn’t suspect a thing.

Name, date of birth, gender…

All standard, pretty normal things,

Place of birth, siblings, pets, talents…

Not uncommon questions, keeping in mind Brad still hadn’t told me what his experiment was about, not even vaguely.

Hobbies, favourite book, favourite movie, favourite Disney character, favourite Sesame Street character…

And the questions kept getting weirder and weirder, from Blond or Brunette? Blue eyes or Green? Glasses or contacts?  to things like “if you were a kitchen utensil, what would you be and why?” and worse still “what are your thoughts on glitter; yea or nay?”

That’s about when I threw my pencil, seeing as I couldn’t quite flip the table.

And Brad just stood there laughing at me.

“22 minutes and 36 seconds, you lasted way longer than I thought you would!” He remarked, showing me the timer on his phone.

“What the heck Brad, are you just doing this to mess with me? We’ve done nothing but play around for the past 3 days and if this is what day 4 and 5 are gonna be like, I want out.” I told him, feeling very frustrated.

“Hey ok sorry please keep being my subject I promise no more funny business.” He pleaded seriously, “but actually, while it all seems like I’m messing around with your head I’ve actually been conducting real and pure research; you don’t even know but you were giving me a lot of information to work with.” He smirked.

“Look, can you just please tell me what this experiment is all about and I promise I’ll be less irritable.”

He took a deep breath and let out a long sigh, “without going into specifics, I aim to examine the thoughts, words and actions of a subject who is in the process of falling in love. It's extremely difficult and rare to catch someone when they're right on the brink of falling.”

“Oh. But I’m no-“I protested.

“Nu uh uh,” he cut me off, “only time will tell.”

“But –“

“No.”

“Fine! We’ll see I guess…” I trailed off, “But what I don’t understand is how grocery shopping or knowing my favourite sesame street character is going to help you with this study!” I countered.

“Oh that? That was just to help me learn more about you, it had nothing to do with the experiment whatsoever.” He grinned devilishly.

By this point I wasn’t even surprised anymore by the 4D kind of way Brad Haywood thought and I just sighed as I pulled my hair up into a ponytail.

“You know, if you want to get to know me, all you have to do is ask. Like a normal person.” I said plainly as I leant back in my chair.

“Less fun,” he shrugged nonchalantly, “but intriguing nonetheless. Is this a proposition miss Maxwell?” he asked leaning over the kitchen counter.

“I will answer your questions if you answer mine.” I challenged.

“Done.” He said, thumping the table with his hand enthusiastically.

_______________________________________________________________

Talking with Brad was not at all what I’d expected.

He was actually very serious and sensitive, and spoke to me openly. Just like his brother, he was very easy to talk to.  But what surprised me the most was that underneath all that sass and bravado, I felt that he was a lot like me. We had similar opinions on a lot of things that before I knew it, a few hours had gone by and we’d gotten into some pretty serious topics.

“I’m not buying all that charm and carefree attitude you put on. From what Ryan has told me about your reputation and responsibilities, there is no way that you don’t have any worries bottled up inside. When people ask you ‘how are you?’ how do you actually feel?” I probed.  I knew Brad was secretive for a person who seemed so open and agreeable.

“Sharp as a knife aren’t we Babe?” He smirked, but I couldn’t help but notice more than just a tinge of solemness in his eyes, “you know, you are one of the very few people who has ever bothered to ask me that question…” he stared off into space for a while, eyes clouded with some kind of bittersweet memory flooding back.

“I can’t imagine that with the amount of friends you have and people you have met, that no one has ever wanted to know what you were thinking.” I said gently, feeling like I was about to tread into uncharted waters.

“Darlin’ I don’t have many real friends. Acquaintances yes, by the hundreds, and I know every name, every birthday, every father, sister, uncle, and dog. But what for? Business. It’s a competitive world and you make allies. Very rarely do you meet people who have no interest whatsoever in your name and your worth.  Very rarely do you find people who actually care about you.”

“Ryan cares.” I said softly as I hugged a couch pillow to my chest.

Brad smiled, “I know he does, Ryan cares about everyone.”

“No but you don’t understand how concerned he is about you. How do you think I knew so much about you before we’d even met?”  I challenged as I sat up straight.

“Enlighten me.”

“He’s been worried about you since you were kids, you were his role-model and he idolised you. But then one day you changed. Ryan said you became sort of like a robot, he could never tell what you were thinking but he knew that you were under a lot of pressure to be the perfect son.” I explained carefully, “He…”

“He what?” Brad prodded, I wasn’t sure if I should continue but I felt it was important to.

“He has some issues with being the second son. Feeling invisible sometimes, but it’s not like jealously or anything. I know he still admires and has a lot of respect for you…”

We were silent for a minute as Brad crossed his arms and contemplated what I’d just said. He seemed surprised.

“And here I thought I was the only one who envied my brother…” He mused, “There are countless times where I have wished I wasn’t born first. Wished I could be invisible and just do whatever I wanted without being watched, being judged. “

He paused and his expression morphed into disbelief again, “geez my little brother, I always thought he was living the dream life. There are responsibilities I have that I never wanted, goals and dreams that I can’t call my own but they aren’t things I can just turn off, or run away from.”

“Ava, I’m not home because of medical leave, I got suspended from Harvard.” He said gravely, looking at me with so much self-disappointment, “the whole medical issues thing is just a cover up my parents used to hide the fact that their  beloved ‘perfect’ eldest son who is on scholarship, whose girlfriend is the president of her sorority, who is studying business to take over the family company, was caught smoking pot.”

“wow… they suspended you just for that? I can think of a million worse things they could have suspended you for…”

Bursting me out of my reverie, Brad burst into laughter.

“Babe if I wasn’t on a scholarship they could have kicked me out!” He exclaimed. But his expression dampened quickly, “my girlfriend broke up with me because well, you know she ‘couldn’t have a junkie’ on her track record.
That was the first time I’d ever done drugs and they wanted me to tell everyone I might have depression, I don’t by the way,” he clarified, “like having a mental illness was better than having a son who made a human mistake.” He said bitterly. “So I refused. They sent me to counselling which I thought was going to be a waste of time, but it turned everything around for me. I just…don’t care anymore. It’s like I broke the glass ceiling and now I’m free?”

“I still want to be that son, I want to be someone my parents, my brother, can be proud of but I just wish that they could be proud of me for who I actually am.”

My heart was wrenching for Brad, something I never thought would happen a day ago.

“Don’t you know you already have someone like that? Don’t you know how proud your brother is of you simply for being his older brother?” I told him firmly. I was actually so frustrated that these issues between them have been going on so long unresolved, “Haven’t you guys every talked about this?!”

Brad’s usually guarded face had softened and he looked tired, or rather, exhausted, “Being a good older brother is probably the one thing that I actually want to do with my life and I almost tried to tell Ryan about all of this shit I had bottling up inside before I left for college, but I didn’t want to do that to him. I didn’t want to have to burden him with things I thought I should have been in control of. Even if I couldn’t live the way I wanted to, I still wanted to make sure my brother could...” I could swear Brad’s eyes were welling up, he looked so forlorn I felt so guilty that I had ever judged him so harshly.

All choked up with not much to say, I just got up from where I sat and hugged him tightly.

He was more tense and rigid than Ryan was the first time I had hugged him, and it dawned on me that maybe Brad hadn’t ever experienced a real hug. A hug from a friend.

He relaxed a bit and his arms wrapped around me gently, gratefully, the way I imagine it would feel like to have an older sibling. I’d envied anyone who had siblings, even if they fought from time to time, they were never alone; they always had a partner in crime who cared about them.

“Thanks Ava,” He whispered sincerely.

And we stayed like that for a few minutes longer.

_________________________________________________________

The next few days were surprisingly the most fun I’d had in a while.

My newfound friendship with Brad came with a lot of perks; He knew everything there was to know about Ryan.

 By the end of the week I’d seen more baby photos of Ryan than I could count but it still wasn’t enough; I am not exaggerating when I say that Ryan was the most adorable baby ever, he was so cute I almost couldn’t take it.

Brad and I were sprawled out side by side on the lounge room couches as we flipped through old family photo albums and laughed at the silly faces that mini-Brad and Ryan had pulled at the camera.

“Oh! Take a look at this one Ava!” Brad suddenly exclaimed, flipping through a dozen pages to get to the picture he had in mind.

He stopped and pointed a finger to a picture of a little gentleman about 9 or 10 years of age, wearing a little suit with a bowtie, blond hair gelled neatly into a comb over, a single red rose in one hand and a heart-shaped box of chocolates in the other. And last but not least, bright blue eyes filled with hope and a small smile of nervous anticipation.

I immediately pulled out my phone and took several pictures of this priceless treasure.

“You have to tell me what the story behind this is!” I demanded.

“Valentine’s day of 200*, just before my little brother, who had finally worked up enough courage, went to our neighbour Caitlin Keller’s house to ask her to be his Valentine. He was very determined to make sure everything was perfect for his crush.”

“All that just for valentine’s day? Wow that little girl must’ve been over the moon!” I chuckled at the thought of what Ryan was like when he was a child.

“Yeah well , take a look at this picture…” Brad said pointing to another photo on the next page.

Little Ryan was sprawled out dismally, face down on his bed, still in his suit, but in the corner of his room you could see the rose and chocolates sticking out of a small waste basket.

“She broke his little heart and he was crushed for days.” Brad explained, “I felt really bad for him but I couldn’t help that she was in love with the wrong brother…”

“No way!” I exclaimed in disbelief. My heart wrenched for mini-Ryan and his first heartbreak.

“It’s true!” Brad said, bursting out into laughter as I leaned in closer to hear the rest of the story, “In the end he was too chicken to go to her house alone so I tagged along to be a supportive big brother, but when the door opened and Ryan began to stutter his well-rehearsed lines, Caitlin squealed and ran straight past him to hug me so tight I almost couldn’t breathe. She thought I’d come over to ask her to be my valentine!” he concluded, laughing even more at the memory.

“Did he hate you after that?” I asked, struggling not to laugh for the sake of heartbroken 9 year old Ryan.

“ I don’t think so, but he didn’t talk to me for the next few days until I promised  I’d eat his vegetables for him at dinner time.”

That did it, I cracked up at the thought of that scenario playing out. Both of us we laughing so hard against each other that neither me nor Brad heard the front door open.

But the sight of Ryan walking in, back from his run in his tight tank top and running shorts, hot and out of breath, was enough to shut me up.

“What are you guys laughing about?” he asked curiously.

“Oh Brad was just telling me about the time when you –“ I began to explain before being cut off.

“Nothing really,” Brad replied nonchalantly, the last traces of laughter fading away as he shut the photo albums and carefully nudged them out of sight.

“Doesn’t seem like nothing…” Ryan muttered a little annoyed as he grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and proceeded to gulp the cool liquid down thirstily.

‘He’s not the only one that’s thirsty…’ I thought, my eyes starting to grow hooded as I watched the muscles of his throat, slick with a fine sheen of perspiration, move fluidly as he swallowed.

Two fingers blocked my view and snapped loudly, bringing my focus back to Brad’s disapproving face.

“You have no self-control whatsoever!” He whisper-shouted to me.

“I do so! I was just momentarily … distracted.” I whisper-shouted back.

“You would be that kid, in the psych experiment with the marshmallows, that ate the marshmallow straight away even though you could ‘ve gotten 2 if you waited 10 more minutes!” He huffed under his breath.

“What do marshmallows have to do with this?!” I countered as I glared at him, confused.

“Ok, clearly I can see you guys are just fine on your own…I’m gonna go change my socks or whatever.” Ryan muttered, sounding a little vexed as he hastily left for his room.

Silence hung in the air for a few moments after the echoes of the sound of his door thudding shut faded away.

Considerably angry, I punched Brad in the arm.

“Ow! What was that for?!” He exclaimed in shock as he rubbed his arm to soothe the pain.

“You’re making your brother hate me!” I snapped at him.

“Babe evidently you are NOT paying attention. Did you hear him? That last comment sounded so –“

“Angry!” I interjected.

“I was thinking more like ‘jealous.’”

“Of you?” I questioned bluntly.

“Ouch Babe, that hurt. Of course of me! It’s like Caitlin Keller all over again except that this time the stakes are much higher.”

“What do you mean by higher?” I asked

“Well, it’s your heart on the line. Honestly Ava the guy you end up with would be lucky to have you. And trust me, if things were different I would have definitely made a move on you by now.” He said with a wink

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I laughed good-naturedly.

“Be careful not to break too many hearts at the charity fete this weekend,” Brad teased.

“I’m sure working the cotton candy booth will hardly get me much attention, I’m trying to blend in with the other debutantes remember?” I countered playfully, “Plus, wasn’t the whole thing about getting back at Melissa all about just being there, you know, quietly, to mess with her head?”

 “Something tells me you’re the type of girl that finds it difficult not to attract attention to yourself, Even if you tried!” He smirked at me.

Rolling my eyes I suddenly saw how late it was (daylight savings always stuffs up my judgement of time!) and I got up to get my things.

“I’ll see you on Sunday for an ‘uneventful’ day where I will be the epitome of the obedient and cultured young lady and no hearts will be broken” I drawled sarcastically.  

“We’ll just have to see how it all plays out…” Brad said, chuckling amusedly to himself as he walked me to the door.

Why do I always get the feeling Brad has more planned than he lets on?