The Wildest Kind of Pretty Page 6

  Chapter 6

  I toss the last bag of Trash in the back of someone’s truck; dusting off my hands I let out a sigh. Evan walks up next to me carrying dirty mop water; it sloshes at his feet, but he doesn’t let it bother him, he’s smiling at me like he’s the happiest person on Earth, “I would have carried that for you, you know.”

  I smile and look at my feet. His smile sends my stomach into cartwheels making me scared to speak, “I know,” somehow I manage and all I say is the obvious which is completely lame. My mind swirls with so many things; I want to know if he thinks I’m lame; then I wonder if I need to elaborate. I think I should elaborate a little more, “You had your hands full.” Yeah, again with the stating of the obvious. Yup, I’m not going to torture myself any longer; that was definitely lame.

  He laughs; I cringe, “call me Cinderfella,” he empties the bucket. The water bubbles up in the grass before the ground soaks it up in one gulp. It must be a fascinating sight because we’re both watching the Earth gobble up the sludge. He clears his throat and I catch his eye, “that was cool of you not to go shopping.” He smiles and knocks me off my feet; my body erupts into nausea all over again. I seriously hope I didn’t feel like this every time he smiles; he smiles a lot and it’s kind of hard to be around someone if they always make you nauseous. Okay, that just sounds terrible.

  I just stare at him for a minute or two and try to think of something cool, but I come up short. I shrug it off, “well you know I played a hand in this mess,” I smile and have no idea what I’m trying to say but just keep smiling for the hell of it, “anyways Melissa does so much for me and it’d be wrong for me to not do my part.”

  Evan nods and nods towards the house, “let’s see what else needs to be done.” I follow in his footsteps and walk into a construction zone. There are guys zigzagging in every direction dealing with some sort of task. I can’t help but feel a little lighter in the chest at the sight of it; with all these helping hands the house will be cleaned in no time.

  “Lex! Move it up top!” I hear Trevor yell from upstairs. I give Evan a look and we part our ways. He dips into washing stuff off of the walls. I watch him as I walk up the stairs; if he is aggravated at having to clean he didn’t show it. He was smiling and wiping at the walls like he was happy to do it. I can’t wrap my mind around someone that’s so happy all the time. I look around at the other guys, they’re working, but you can kind of tell this is the last thing they want to be doing. Every now and then they’ll get a little side tracked and get caught up in some horse play. Evan was in the middle of washing the walls when some goober wrings a dirty rag on top of his head. He jumps up and starts chasing the said goober until he manages to tackle him. Obviously Evan was smiling while he was playfully pummeling his attacker, most guys probably would be mad if someone poured water over their heads, but maybe Evan wasn’t like most guys.

  I shake my head at the boys downstairs, and then look around up top for Trev. His room is open and I can hear his voice inside, I walk in to see Blake scratching his chin, “you sure we can fix it to where your mom doesn’t know?”

  The two of them have their heads huddled together looking at samples of paint on a piece of paper, “so? You wanted me for something?” I wet my lips and swallow a gulp. Blake is wearing a muscle shirt; you know the ones that guys wear at the gym with the sides cut out; this is definitely a good look for him. I lick my lips and watch his muscles wink when he moves, I’m in awe as I watch them flicker and coil; I wonder how they’d feel under my fingertips. I tuck this image and file it in a little dark corner in the back of my mind; you know the place where you have all those thoughts of betraying your best friend, because that’s exactly what I just did by checking him out. I shake the thoughts away and refocus on the matter at hand; fixing the unfixables from last night.

  Trevor grunts, “We have like three different shades of white here,” I nod and walk over to the buckets of paint, “who knew freaking white could be so hard to match.”

  I nod agreeing, but already seeing with one glance that none of these were going to match the bathroom door. Because these were blindingly white and the door was off white. I probably should have gone to Lowe’s with them, “okay, none of these are going to work.”

  Blake closes his eyes in frustration, “this is all the white they had.”

  Trevor utters something explicit that I choose to ignore, “Well we could repaint the entire door instead of patching that one spot.” The boys look at me as if a light just turned on in their attics. I smile and hook my finger as I walked out of the room, “Let’s get to work boys.”

  Silence blankets the air as Blake and I paint the door together. Trevor had just puttied the hole when he was called away due to a commotion downstairs. To avoid another mess he had to go take care of business and leave me alone with Blake to paint the door. I stand up to stretch, with both hands on hips I lean back until my back pops. I didn’t think things through, I forgot that I was still holding a paintbrush when I put my hands on my hips, I must have smacked Blake in the face with the brush on my way back, because he’s got a white streak on his cheek. I feel a little nervous, it was an accident, but he’ll still probably kill me. I look down from where I’m standing; he’s crouched at my feet looking up at me with splatters of white running down his cheek.

  At first no one says a thing. He just stares up at me, and I just stare down at him. I think I know what’s about to happen, so to get things started I lean towards him and swipe his forehead with the paint brush. He just looks at me with a shocked expression on his face. I smile at him and raise a brow in a challenge. He slowly stands, brandishing his paintbrush like a sword. I emulate his behavior and the two of us circle each other like sharks in water. He steps forward and I shriek back. He wraps his arm around my waist and touches the tip of my nose with his brush, “Even Steven,” he says, and at that he lets me go and I tumble to the ground in a fit of laughter, unable to believe he was so cool about it.

  Then I look into his stormy eyes and a bubble of laughter gets caught in my throat, my breath catches and the last bit of laughter comes out as more of a gasp. My eyes drop to the rise and fall of his chest, then I fall back into his eyes. They’re cloudy and restless, my heart skitters in my chest, I should look away but I can’t. I want to rub my cheek against the stubble of jaw; rough against soft. I need to feel it, that he’s too gritty and I’m too delicate. But I’m stupid, and I like that he makes me feel fragile in the same way I hate it. Maybe I’m stupid, or maybe I’m a bad person, or maybe I’m just fifteen and full of raging hormones, but something in me ached for something in him; I saw his ugly and I wanted his raw. I knew he was no good for me, but I wanted him anyways. I felt it, I could see in his eyes the way he craved my innocence; his raw called to my sweetness. My resolve cracks, I know there’s a reason why I shouldn’t be thinking these things, but it’s difficult to come up with a reason why I shouldn’t give in to my urges. I wonder if this is how it was for Kammie, did she feel like this when it came to Trevor? Then I remember why I hold myself back.

  I don’t know why my heart couldn’t talk sense into my mind, this was wrong. Kammie’s my best friend, this is her boyfriend, he might be willing to cross that line, but I’m not. I didn’t want to be like that, I didn’t want to rip people apart, or make them lose faith in me. I know I’m not a bad person, I don’t understand why I’m being so shady, but this wasn’t me; I wouldn’t let it be. It doesn’t matter that I think Blake is wrong for Kammie, it doesn’t. All that matters is that she’s with him, and she’s my best friend, nothing else. I l look at Blake, he’s not meant for me either, and it’s more than the fact that he’s with my best friend.

  I don’t know how I know it, but I just do. I think it goes back to all the pretty wild things, there’re a lot of pretty wild things out there. Some you see and admire, but you don’t pursue because it’s easy to see they’re not yours. But sometimes it gets a little tricky; because sometimes you find a pretty wild t
hing that you’re drawn to even though you know they’re not yours. You see them for what they are, distractions, but you can’t resist them. And sometimes people chase the wrong pretty wild thing. I don’t know if it’s because they’re so damn pretty and wild or if it’s because you use them to pass the time because you’re not ready to give up wild and free.

  Maybe I was drawn to him because I was stubborn, because he was so pretty and wild, and I wanted him to be mine even while I knew he wasn’t. Maybe it’s because I’m younger and he’s older, or maybe it’s because I’m scared. I’m scared of forever, so I cling to Blake because I know he’s the wrong pretty wild thing. But he’s too damn pretty and wild; a girl could lose herself in a distraction like that.

  He looks at me and goes to say something when Trevor and Evan bound up the stairs breaking into our moment, “guys the paint needs to go on the wall,” Trevor says in mock desperation.

  Evan sits on the floor next to me, “so I think you deserve to go shopping with your girls,” I go to refute the idea but Evan continues, “and they’ve been blowing up your phone,” Trevor snorts, “I mean you’ve done more than your fair share, so I thought I’d go drop you off.”

  I go to protest but Trevor nudges the back of my head with his leg, “seriously go ahead, Kim is bugging the hell out of me to send you to the mall. She said something about needing your opinion on an outfit or something,” I nod and don’t need further convincing; I need to get away from Blake. I needed the noise of the mall to drown my thoughts before I lost my mind. I feel like such a terrible person, plagued with guilt, I think serious girl time at the mall is exactly what I need. I read in Cosmo once that a female surrounded by testosterone could go through major brain warp. And that had to be true; because there’s no way I’d get butterflies from Evan while accidently checking out my best friend’s boyfriend. I wasn’t that type of person—at least I hope I’m not that type of person.