Blurred Lies (The Blurred Series Book 1)
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Authors: Elle Ellerton
Blurred
Lies
______
By Elle Ellerton
Blurred Lies
The Blurred Series: Book 1
Published by Elle Ellerton
Copyright © 2015 Elle Ellerton
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
For permission requests, contact the publisher at
[email protected]
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual places, actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 9781944242008
For anyone who has ever
felt held back by their own mind.
Three months after the accident...
“You lied to me. How could you do that?”
“No, I didn’t. I swear I’ve never lied to you, baby. Please, you have to believe me! Everything I’ve ever said to you is the truth.”
“You led me to believe something that isn’t true...for five years! A lie by omission is still a lie.”
“I didn’t mean for that to happen. Honestly, I didn’t, I-”
“You made a fool out of me!”
“Please, Little Dove. Don’t do this. You’re the best part of my life...of
me
.”
“Don’t call me that! I don’t believe you. I don’t even know you.”
“You’re going to go to him now, aren’t you? I’ve lost you.”
“Yes.”
One week after the accident...
This is such a bad idea.
As I follow my brother up the fourth and last flight of stairs to his apartment, dragging my heavy, over-sized suitcase behind me (whilst nearly dropping my laptop down the stairwell), the knot in my stomach tightens. I wish I could say the erratic thumping of my heart is from the physical exertion alone, but I can’t.
Even the soothing sounds of OneRepublic’s
What You Want
, playing quietly in my right ear, isn’t helping.
I love my big brother, Nate, and I have no reservations about moving in with him at all. It’s his roommate and best friend, Ryan, who’s the issue; because I love him, too...or at least I did when I was fifteen. And he hates me…or at least he did when he was eighteen. Well, I think he did. I can’t think of another explanation for the way he treated me.
This is such a bad idea!
Okay, so maybe ‘love’ and ‘hate’ are strong words to use, but I definitely had an unrelenting schoolgirl crush, and he was noticeably irritated by my presence whenever we were around each other, which was...
a lot
. His life at home with neglectful and abusive parents was rough, from what little I’ve been told, and as a result, he spent much of his time at our home where our loving parents treated him like one of their own.
It must have been difficult for him.
“Here we are, Little N,” Nate states with a false cheer to his tone.
He calls me ‘Little N’ quite often, and has done so ever since we were kids. It’s short for Natalie. Natalie and Nathaniel Connor. Even though we aren’t twins, it often feels like we could be, despite the three year age gap. We look a lot alike with our sandy blond hair and matching blue eyes. We’re not the typical siblings who fight all the time and annoy one another at any given opportunity, and we never have been. It’s a good thing we get along so well and love each other so dearly, since we’re all that’s left to call family now...and Ryan, of course. He’s still like a brother to Nate (to me, not so much).
“Yep, here we are,” I sigh as we come to a stop outside the apartment door and I set my suitcase down on the concrete landing.
“Aw, come on Natty, it’s gonna be fine. Ryan’s hardly ever around the apartment, and when he is, he’s usually in his room. And he’s different now...less of a jerk...or at least he’s trying to be…sometimes,” he says unconvincingly.
It’s been six years since I last saw Ryan. Back when he and Nate left for college. I was an awkward, somewhat geeky teenager, and equal parts in love and hatred with my brother’s best friend. He was so mean to me when we were kids, and I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame, anticipating the inevitable burn and moving towards it, regardless.
Idiot.
The ‘treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen’ philosophy seems to have worked in Ryan’s favor, for reasons I can’t fathom.
We grew up together from as far back as I can remember. Ryan has been like a brother to Nate from the beginning, but I was always a little too young and a lot too annoying for Ryan’s liking - at least that’s how he made me feel. The name calling and picking on me ceased as time went on and we all grew a little more mature, but that was almost worse; the silence and angry glares were harder to deal with. They hurt more, somehow; like I wasn’t even worth picking on anymore. Mom always told me he picked on me because he secretly liked me. She was trying to save my feelings from being hurt, but in the end, it just made me feel worse.
It hurts – to want to spend time with someone who so clearly wants the complete opposite from you. Unrequited feelings are a constant weight on your soul. You can try and push the thoughts and feelings to the back of your mind and move on, but your heart still carries the burden every day.
It was apparent he found me intolerably irritating for reasons I’ll never know, but I guess I can understand, on some level. I’ve analyzed it over and over in my mind, for years; he had to deal with me because I was his best friend’s little sister. I tried to talk to him, constantly, whenever he came over to our house, which earned me the nickname ‘Chatty Natty’ when I was eight. I asked to play sports with him and Nate in our backyard when I was ten, and a little tubby thanks to Mom’s ‘Betty Crocker’ phase, which earned me the nickname ‘Fatty Natty’ (cue my diet and exercise phase). I tried to join in with their computer games when I was twelve, which just earned me an intense glare of disgust…at least I think it was disgust. All I know for certain is, it didn’t make me feel good.
To bring everything to a humiliating crescendo, I went and hand-made a leaving card for Ryan when he and Nate were heading off to start their new life at college. Yeah, that’s right, I did that, and it earned me nothing but an amused smirk from the boy I was sure I’d never get out of my head. I’ll bet he threw it straight in the trash.
God, I was pathetic.
Now I actually hope he threw it in the trash, as I’m sure the words written in that card would embarrass me to no end. I can’t even remember exactly what I wrote. I guess I blocked out that fine moment from my memory – one of the many coping mechanisms of the human brain, and I’m thankful for it. Who makes a card at age fifteen for their big brother’s best friend?
Ugh, I hope he doesn’t remember!
Maybe his brain did me a favor and blocked it out, too.
A girl can hope.
Over the years I’ve tried to become the least annoying version of myself. Now, at age twenty-one, I’m neither ‘Chatty Natty’ nor ‘Fatty Natty’.
Maybe he’ll like me now.
No!
This line of thinking is not healthy. I should be hoping that I’ll no longer feel anything for him, at all, when we finally meet again. I just can’t bring myself to think that thought.
“Yeah…sure…whatever,” I mumble with a shrug, looking my brother straight in his light blue eyes that mirror mine, trying to sound like I don’t care what Ryan is like now, and failing…miserably. Nate knows how I felt about Ryan back then and he was always sympathetic, with only a mild amount of teasing regarding my infatuation. He really is the best big brother, ever.
Now he gives me a familiar, sympathetic look before glancing at the heavy boxes in his arms, then to his front door.
“Grab my keys from my pocket, would ya?” he asks, shuffling the boxes slightly as way of explanation.
“Yeah, sure.” I go to reach in Nate’s front pocket and find the key chain immediately. I start to pull the keys from his jeans when the door suddenly flies open in front of us.
“Well, this is inappropriate.”
Ohmyfreakingawd!
There he is; Ryan, with that amused smirk on his face. A face that’s more mature than the last time I saw it six years ago. More sculpted. More rugged. More
everything
.
Crap!
And that low voice that gives me chills, in the best way.
Get a grip, Natalie!
He just had to walk out right when my hand was in my brother’s jeans pocket. He knew it was simply a necessity given the boxes teetering in Nate’s hands. He was just trying to make me feel uncomfortable…again. I guess some things will never change.
Yay for me.
And another thing I now realize will never change: my attraction to him. If anything, it’s even more apparent now.
I snatch the keys from Nate’s pocket and straighten my posture, trying not to make eye contact with Ryan. I fail, of course. I see something flash in his piercing green eyes for a moment, and then it’s gone.
I try to find something to say, maybe a quick comeback, or something that makes me sound totally unaffected by him.
Yeahhh, I’ve got nothing.
“Hey man, you think you could stop being a dick for a minute and help Nat get her stuff into the apartment?”
NO!
Why is my brother doing this to me?
“N-no, it’s totally fine. I-I’ve got it. I’m good. It’s all good.”
Really
? I literally just did the opposite of sounding unaffected. It’s official: I’m a loser.
“Riiight,” Ryan drawls, giving me a ‘
you’re kind of weird’
look, and then there’s that darn smirk again. I’d like to slap it right off his perfect face…or kiss it off.
NO!
Slap. Definitely slap.
I shake my head minutely, in disbelief of my inability to speak like a regular human being, and my inability to form appropriate thoughts.
“Sorry bro, no can do. Gotta run,” he says with a friendly tap to Nate’s arm, then he’s passed me and down the first flight of stairs before I can blink.
I take a deep breath, feeling like I haven’t drawn one in the last five minutes.
Nate yells, “Thanks,
bro
!” with sarcasm lacing his tone, as he steps through the doorway with my boxes. Then, just when I’m about to grab the handle of my suitcase and drag it behind me across the threshold, I get a feeling that makes me freeze. My hand is on the suitcase. I’m ready to move, but I can’t.
Just walk, Natalie!
Then, like the idiot I am, I turn and glance down the stairwell. I don’t know what I expect to see – Ryan descending the last flight, perhaps? What I do see is Ryan stood at the bottom of the first set of stairs, hand on the rail ready to begin the next, but he doesn’t. He’s looking right at me. Our gazes lock, and there’s that fleeting look in his eyes again – an emotion I can’t quite grasp.
What is that?
“I’m sorry about everything, Natalie. It’s good to see you.” And with that, he descends the rest of the stairs and I hear the distinctive click of the heavy front door to the apartment building as he exits.
He’s sorry for everything.
Sorry for what? For being a total douche to me when we were kids? For being a total douche when he opened the door just now? For my current situation, now that my brother is the only family I have left? And since when has it ever been
‘good to see me’
?
Ugh.
I shake off the heavy cloak of confusion and anxiety that’s built up around me in the last ten minutes, then step into my brother’s apartment for the first time, ever.
When he and Ryan graduated, they chose to stay in the north of the country and a sixteen hour drive from north Florida, where we grew up. I haven’t been for a visit in years, seeing as Nate opted to visit us for all the major holidays, and even most of my birthdays. He never brought Ryan with him, which I thought was strange, but I never questioned it.
“Wow, Nate. This place is awesome.” I look around as I set my suitcase and laptop down in the entryway, which is segregated from the large square living room by a modern glass shelving unit partition, which holds various ornaments and picture frames. I step around the partition and into the main living space. A large floor-to-ceiling window covers the far wall, which is exposed brick, looking out over the quiet, tree-lined street below and framed by heavy, light-gray eyelet curtains. In front of the window is a large, charcoal-gray, microfiber sectional with loose cushions in various shades of blue and silver. In front of the couch is an angular, glass coffee table on a black stand and, in front of that, a white wall with a large flat-screen TV hanging above an elegantly modern fireplace, surrounded by shelving units full of DVDs, video games and game consoles.
Typical Nate.
The beautiful, worn hardwood floors are accented with a large silver and black area rug, giving the place a stylish, yet, cozy feel.
As soon as I finish gawking at the living room, my eyes are caught by something to my left. Originally hidden from my view in the entryway is a sleek, modern kitchen complete with black granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and a large four-seat island breakfast bar. There’s no formal dining area to speak of, but why would two young bachelors need that? I’m sure they don’t throw sophisticated dinner parties on the weekends. More like raging parties with kegs and barely clothed women.
Great!
“Thanks, Little N. I try,” Nate says appreciatively. He’s entirely too modest. He runs his own interior design company now, at the age of twenty-five, focusing on the interior space of homes and commercial establishments. He does a lot of the manual work himself, too, like tiling and carpentry, but sub-contracts other guys in to help when needed. His knack for interior design is impressive and, as our father was a building contractor, he taught Nate a multitude of invaluable skills throughout the years.
“It’s beautiful. This must have cost a fortune,” I say in awe as I brush my hand along the back of the plush couch, staring out of the wide window to the sunny July day outside.
“It wasn’t exactly cheap, but not as much as you might think. The place was a dump when we bought it. Ryan and I did most of the work ourselves; heavy emphasis on the ‘I’!” he chuckles at his dig toward Ryan. He loves Ryan, but I’m sure he thinks I’ll appreciate the joke at his expense, given our history, which Nate witnessed in its humiliating entirety. I do find it funny and give a little chuckle of my own.
In that moment, we could almost pretend like our world wasn’t just ripped from under our feet,
almost.
I think that’s the first time we’ve both laughed at all since the accident.