AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well, I thought you might have realized that, perhaps, I’m not the great enemy you seem to treat me as, but I guess that was hoping for too much,” Paul said, his eyes rising up to mine over the table.
“I guess so,” I said as I took my eyes back down to the mug in front of me. “So, what are you going to do now that you’re super rich, anyway?” I asked him to change the conversation. “Are you going to sort out those clothes you’re wearing?”
Paul looked down at the shabby grey hoody and ripped jeans that he was sitting in. “What’s wrong with my clothes?” he asked with a defensive look on his face.
“I think it would be easier to list the things that are right,” I said with an eye roll.
“Which are?” he pushed for an answer.
“Nothing. Nothing is right about what you’re wearing. You look like a homeless person. You look like a hobo,” I said with a smirk.
“You really know how to make a person feel good, don’t you?” Paul said, his shaking head slowly.
“You asked. What did you want me to do? Lie?”
“I never said that. I just think you’re fully aware that there are nicer ways to put things than you often do.”
“Perhaps I don’t want to be nice,” I suggested with a sly smile.
“Perhaps you’re too afraid to be,” Paul said as he reached his arms up and stretched.
I watched him for a moment. His hoody rose up his stomach a little and revealed the tight abs that he kept hidden. My eyes lingered for a moment longer than they should have before I shook myself out of it and replied to him. “What’s that meant to mean? Just because I’m not nice to you doesn’t mean that I’m afraid to be nice.”
“Whatever you say, Isabella,” Paul said as he dismissed my comments.
“Don’t pretend to know me,” I said starkly as my temper started to heat up.
“You don’t think that I know you? I’ve grown up with you, Isabella; I probably know you better than anybody else in the world.”
I laughed out loud. “You wish you did,” I said as I stood up and carried my mug out of the room and back up to my bedroom. I only got to the stairs, though, before I heard footsteps following me and I turned around to see who it was.
“Are you really just going to walk away from me every time that I say something you don’t like?” Paul asked me with a strained face that looked stressed and uncomfortable.
“Well, it’s been working well for me for years, so I don’t see any reason to change a habit of a lifetime,” I said casually.
“Isabella, you know that I’m leaving for New York soon and I don’t know when I’ll be back?” he said in such a way that I could tell there was hidden meaning there, although I had no idea what the hidden meaning could be.
“Sure, and I’m leaving for college, so I guess we’ll both get rid of each other, won’t we,” I said with a small, forced smile.
“Well, I’m glad you’re so happy about it,” Paul said, and his eyes seemed to dim under the weight of sudden pain.
I watched his expression for a moment as I tried to work out what had brought it on. It was almost as though he’d been expecting me to act sadly over the idea that he would soon be out of my life. I couldn’t understand why he would ever assume that, though. I don’t think I’d ever given him the impression that he was a welcome addition to my life.
“You should be, too,” I said after a moment’s pause.
“And why is that?” he asked me with a voice that sounded strained.
“Well, you’ve said so yourself—I’m not exactly your best friend forever, am I?”
Paul shook his head, but he didn’t reply straight away. I could see faint lines starting to pull across his forehead as his expression turned into a thought and thought alone. “You really don’t see me how I see you, do you?” he asked me after the clouds of thought had left a sprinkling of ideas on the barren land between his ears.
I glanced up at him. I couldn’t help it. There was something in his question that made my heart beat faster. I could hear pain in the slight cracking of his voice as he pulled out the words, and it seemed to match a flash in his eyes that suddenly turned the beautiful blue waters into a gray storm. “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I said, but there was no spite in my voice. I was simply confused. I couldn’t understand why Paul’s words seemed so heartfelt. I’d always thought that he’d been looking forward to my day of leaving as much as I had.
“Of course you don’t, because you only see what you want to see, don’t you, Isabella?” Paul’s voice had turned bitter quickly and I flinched under the severity of it.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” I snapped when I’d recovered from the shock of his words. “What gives you the right to talk to me like that? I mean, what were you expecting, tears of sadness and me begging you not to go?”
“Obviously I wasn’t expecting that,” Paul said, and I watched as he shifted uncomfortably on the spot.
“Then what?” I snapped at him.
He didn’t say anything, but the pain in his eyes returned and I instantly felt guilty. I wasn’t sure what was actually happening between us, but obviously I was managing to hurt him and that had never been my intention. It wasn’t that I disliked Paul. If I’d met him under any other circumstance, I would probably have liked him more than I should, but I couldn’t be his friend or his sister, because I didn’t want him or his mom in my house. It was the home that my mom had picked out for her family and I couldn’t stand the thought that his mom was living out the life that my mom should have had.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said so quietly that I had to strain to hear him. His voice sounded defeated and he avoided my gaze as he spoke.
“It clearly matters,” I said quickly, but I was only met with a shake of his head. “You can’t just say all that stuff to me and then not explain where it came from,” I insisted when it became clear that he had no intentions of furthering the conversation.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Isabella,” he said and he sounded frustrated. “I know you’ve never wanted me around as your brother and I accept that, but I thought that under your entire cold, heartless-bitch act, there was actually a nice person. You know, I’m not going to deny that I care about you, Isabella, or that I’m going to miss you when you’ve gone. I guess I’m just upset that you won’t feel the same way. I kind of thought that you did.”
I stared at him blankly. I didn’t know what to say. What did he mean by saying he cared about me? What did he mean when he said that he’d hoped I’d felt the same way? I felt unsure and I didn’t like that. I hated not knowing the answers. I hated being made to feel as though I was stupid or somehow lesser than the other person. “I don’t know what to say,” I admitted, because I knew I couldn’t just walk away from him after everything he had said.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“When do you leave?” I asked him with a quieter voice than I usually used.
He looked at me for a moment with a sparkle of curiosity. I could feel his eyes peering into mine, as though my question had meant far more than it actually had. “I go in tomorrow,” he said in the midst of his search into my soul.
“And you don’t know when you’ll be back?”
“I know that I’ll be gone at least two months, and I know that you leave for college in four weeks,” he said with an edge that made it sound as though he was proving a point.
“Right,” I said as I tried to sort through the tumble of thoughts that all the new information had produced in my brain. “Well, that’s really soon, huh?” I said awkwardly.
“You don’t have to pretend that you care,” Paul said, and his voice had returned to the bitterness that it had carried before.
“Look, before you start to have a go at me and whatever, do you want to do something today before you leave?” I asked him before I could give myself enough time to back out.
He didn’t say anything for moment. I could tell
that he was thinking. I think that he was trying to find the lie in my voice, the cruel joke that I was surely playing, but they weren’t there to be found, because I hadn’t meant them to be. “Are you serious?” he asked me, because his internal scan of my words hadn’t been enough to prove the truth to him. I could see a glimmer of suspicion in his eyes as he delved deep into what I could have meant by the proposition.
“Sure, I mean, if you’re going tomorrow and I won’t see you before I leave, then why not? I mean, you’ve been annoying me since I was five; I can handle a few more hours, I suppose,” I said with a kind of smile that pulled at the corners of my lips, but didn’t quite set in towards the middle.
********
Chapter Five
“Where are we going?” Paul asked as I led him on foot down a small backstreet and out of the small town that we lived in.
“It’s a surprise,” I said with a smile that was becoming more real with each moment that passed.
“I really hate surprises,” Paul said, and his nose wrinkled in distaste.
“Well, when have I ever cared about what you like?” I asked him with a jokey kind of tone that actually made him laugh. I smiled at his reaction and, for a moment, our eyes met in a way they never had before. I pulled mine away quickly as the warm feeling that was starting to spread through my chest made me feel uncomfortable. “It’s not far away, anyway; we’ve got, like, another ten minutes and then we are there,” I said, so that he would stop frowning at me leading him away from the town.
