Metamorphosis (15 page)

“I know. I’m sorry. But the next
time I don’t want to tell you something, don’t force me to. I don’t want to lie
to you.” I replied. He just continued to sit there facing away from me so I
moved to get off the bed. “I just need to get laid soon,” I mumbled to myself
under my breath. Ash shot off the bed and around the room to where he was
standing directly in front of me.

“What did you just say?” He
growled in a low voice. He leaned in towards me so that his face was close to
mine. His
eyes
were
an angry dark
ocean blue
. Why in the world was he so mad?

Pissed off by his angry tone, I
repeated what I said in my best bitchy voice. “I
said
that I need
to get laid. Not that it’s any of your
business.” Ash closed his eyes and pressed his lips together as if he was
keeping himself from saying something we would regret.

“Scarlett,” he began. “You’re
right, this isn’t any of my business. But as your friend, I would like to give
you some advice. You can take it or leave it, either way we are still friends,
okay?” I nodded at him.

“Please don’t just sleep with any
guy that you meet. At least make it special, you know, at least have feelings
for him…” Ash put his finger under my chin and lifted my face to his. “Can you
do that for me, butterfly?” Even though his touch and his words made me feel
like putty inside, I knew that I could not fall under his spell again. I wasn’t
going to set myself up to feel hurt every Sunday morning.

“I’m not making any promises in
the event of any crazy drunken nights, but I’ll try real hard not to while
sober,” I said half-joking and in an attempt to lighten the mood. “And can we
please change the subject?”

“Actually, its 4:30 in the morning
and we need to get some sleep.” He grinned down at me obviously wanting to move
past the awkward moment as well. However, instead of sleeping in his bed and
risking another lecture by
Evie
, I told him that I
was going to sneak back into Jess’ bed and hope neither of them missed me being
gone. He appeared to be a bit disappointed at first, which of course made me
silently happy, but we both knew that it was best that we didn’t lie down
together.

He pulled me into a big hug and
held me close for quite some time. I tried so hard not to think about ripping
his clothes off and exploring each and every inch of his body. Being pressed
against his hard chest, engulfed in his heavenly man scent, and having his arms
wrapped around my waist was nearly my undoing. He kissed the top of my head
tenderly and whispered ever so softly, “Good night sweet Psyche, my beautiful
butterfly.”

“Good night, Ash.” I had never
felt so happy.

As soon as we got in
Evie’s
car the following morning, I knew something was off.
I could feel her anxiety, but I had no idea what had her so worked up. She had
seemed fine inside the house.

“So are you going to tell me
what’s wrong or are you just going to huff and puff in misery alone over
there?” I asked her. “Is it something with Anthony?”

“Anthony? Uh no… there’s nothing
with him one way or another. He was for the contest purposes only, so not my
type.”
Evie
scrunched her nose like something smelled
bad
.

“You’re so bad, you had that poor
boy following you around like a puppy last night.”

Evie
shrugged her shoulders, “Which is
exactly why he didn’t do it for me… Anyways, that’s not it.

“Look Sam, I’m only going to say
this one time because I wouldn’t be a good friend if I didn’t.” She turned and
looked at me. I guess my sneaking back in bed wasn’t as stealth as I had
thought. “I don’t think that Ash is the right guy for you, at least not right
now. I wish you would reconsider getting involved with him because I’m afraid
you’re going to get hurt. I know that you are going to do whatever you want to
do, whatever feels right for you… and that’s important too. You now get to make
these decisions for yourself, but just remember, you’ll have to deal with the
consequences too.”

“But earlier you said if it was
meant to be…” I whined.

“I know what I said,” she snapped
at me. I drew back from her, stunned at the angry tone directed at me. “But
damn it Scarlett, this is going to end bad, I just know it! You’ve got to stay
away from him, even if that means we stop going over there on Saturdays.”

I couldn’t believe she had yelled
at me, she had never raised her voice at me before. It felt awful. “We don’t
have to stop going over there,” I said quietly looking down at my hands. “Look…
nothing happened. We are just going to try being friends.”

“Friends
?!?
”
she barked. “Last Sunday, y’all were going to have no relationship whatsoever.
This Sunday, you are going to be friends. Next Sunday, what? You’ll be friends
that make out? How many Sundays until he’s fucking you, Scarlett?” she glared
at me, but obviously wasn’t finished with her rant. “That’s all he’s interested
in Scarlett, you know that right?”

“That’s not true,” I tried to
argue. “It’s different.” Tears welled up in my eyes threatening to spill over
in a waterfall.

“It’s different because he wants
you to think it’s different. He’s a self-absorbed asshole that sleeps with
anything that walks, and you are just more appealing to him because you’re an
innocent little virgin that he wants to corrupt. Once he gets what he wants, he
won’t have any use for you and he’ll move on to this next challenge.”

“Shut up!” I yelled back at her.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. It is different. Why can’t you just
be supportive of me? You of all people should know that’s what I need.”

Evie
didn’t respond. We pulled up to
the dorm and we both got out of the car silently. Once inside the dorm, we each
went in to our own rooms, doors closed behind us. After a shower, I felt better
physically but my mind kept replaying the argument between
Evie
and I like a broken record. We had never been mad at each other before and I
just couldn’t take another minute of it. I marched out of my room and across
the living area to hers. Without knocking, I barged in to find her hidden in
her pillows. She looked up at me, her cheeks stained with tears.

“Look… I’m sorry and I love you,”
I began my apology. “There isn’t a person or a thing on this earth that’s worth
you being mad at me.”

Suddenly
Evie
erupted from her pillow volcano like hot lava and lunged towards me. We held
each other in a tight embrace. “I love you too” was the only thing she said and
I sighed in relief.
We didn’t need to talk about it anymore
,
our mutual forgiveness was understood
.

She climbed back in her bed and
grabbed her book. “I’m not sure what the deal is but it’s like every other book
I’ve read since we’ve been here reminds me of you. First the whole Taking
Chances thing, and now I’m reading Ruining Me and I can’t help but notice the
similarities between your situation and this chick’s. Have you read it?” I
shook my head no, still just thankful that we had moved past our first
disagreement. I hated thinking that
Evie
was upset
with me; I could not even fathom what my life would be like without her.

“So this girl in the book, Jay, she’s
got these three guys she’s involved with… the good boy that she knows is best
for her, the mysterious guy that she feels a weird connection with, and then a
bad boy rocker that she uses as an escape,”
Evie
paused. “We both know which roles Dylan and Ash fill…”

“So all I’m missing is my bad boy
rocker?” I lifted my eyebrows at her and smirked.

“That’s how I’m seeing it.” Her
eyes glimmered with mischief and I could already see the wheels turning in her
head. “That girl, Mina, in my
PolySci
class,
mentioned her boyfriend was the drummer in some local rock band. I may need to
find out where and when they are playing next so we can make an appearance. We
may need to find you a
Rhye
.”

“A
Rhye
?”
I asked confused.

“Yeah,
Rhye
is the rocker boy in Ruining Me,”
Evie
explained.
“But it can be any of our rocker book boyfriends…
Kellan
,
Shane, Jake, Trey… whoever you fancy.”

“And I’m guessing you’ll be
looking forward to this BB challenge as well?” I knew damn well that tattooed
rocker boys were
Evie’s
weakness.

“Let’s just say, I won’t be holding
back for your sake,” she replied and winked at me.

When I returned to my room, I was
still feeling a bit of regret over the argument. The guilt from that soon
brought my thoughts to my parents, and before I could overanalyze what I was
planning to do, I picked up my cell and dialed my mom.

The conversation didn’t go quite
as well as I hoped. I was upset that they hadn’t even attempted to contact me
in ten
days,
they were upset that I hadn’t called to
apologize and grovel for their forgiveness. We argued, neither side listening
to the other, and in the end, not much had changed with where our relationship
stood, but I did agree to email at least once a week to let them know I was
safe. I immediately called my brother to unload on him about how crazy our
parents were, as if he didn’t already know. I also talked to Alyssa, which
absolutely made my day. I couldn’t believe how big she sounded and we made
plans for a princess tea party when I visited at Thanksgiving. It would be the
only reason that I looked forward to going home.

The next couple of months
continued on in similar fashion. School was, well it was school. I wasn’t
studying anything that I felt particularly passionate about, so it was hard to
get too excited about it.
Evie
helped to keep me
focused and motivated and we made it through the first round of exams with A’s
and B’s. She finally went to the doctor about her headaches that had increased
in occurrences and learned she needed glasses. She pulled off the hot
school girl
look amazingly. Dylan and I continued to text
and talk during the week. He began picking me up on Saturday afternoons so that
we could have a dinner date before going to the weekly get-together.
Physically, he was taking things very slow
,
painfully slow actually
. When we kissed it was passionate
and occasionally he would allow his hands to caress my body, but when I would
respond by pressing my body up against his and moaning in want, he would
separate us and tell me that I needed to stop before he couldn’t control
himself. I didn’t want him to control himself and when I told him as much, but
he would just chuckle and tell me I wasn’t ready. It was actually starting to
piss me off and combined with platonic, friend-only Saturday nights/ Sunday
mornings I spent with Ash my sexual frustration was building to an inevitable
explosion.

During the one night a week that
Ash and I spent together, we had the best time talking and just hanging out. We
discussed everything under the sun, played music for one another, and laughed
at each other’s ridiculous jokes. The only physical contact we had was when we
slept. Despite how we would fall asleep separated from one another, we would
always wake up a tangled mess of limbs. Most mornings his undeniable erection
would be pressed against my belly or back and it took all of my resolve to not
reach out and touch him, but I refrained, scared to screw up the comfortable
relationship that we had settled in to. Instead I would just sliver my body out
from under his and kiss his forehead goodbye. We would text occasionally during
the week, nothing consistent though, and I never texted him unless he initiated
the conversation. I was determined not to be the pathetic girl that pined for
the boy she couldn’t have.

Evie
and I never discussed my nights
spent with Ash again. I didn’t flaunt that I was doing something that she
didn’t approve of in front of her face, and she refrained from chastising me
for making a bad decision. I knew how she felt about the situation, she had
made her concerns quite clear, but I also knew how I felt when I was around
Ash. At the time, our friendly arrangement seemed to be working. I got used to
seeing him make out with a different blonde each week at Jacob and Nathan’s,
and I actually kind of liked that it was never the same girl. It would’ve
bothered me more to know that he was interested enough in a girl to bring her
around a second time. He seemed to accept the idea of me being with Dylan as
well, he never said otherwise if he didn’t. Neither of us asked each other
about our romantic/ sexual relationships, past or present. It was the one
subject we didn’t approach. Other than discussing Dylan, I wouldn’t have had
too much to talk about anyways, and I was scared that he could’ve talked
continuously for days and still missed some of the girls he had been with.
While at the party, we would often catch each other staring at one another, but
I always broke the gaze afraid Dylan would catch us. He was already suspicious
of Ash after the way he acted so possessive the first night I had met them
both, and even though Dylan and I weren’t exclusive, at least not that we had
discussed, I didn’t think he would appreciate the fact that each Saturday after
spending the evening with him, I went straight to Ash’s bed. Even though it
wasn’t like that, it probably still wouldn’t settle well.