Beauty and the Beat

Beauty and the Beat (22)

Sometimes I felt like my family liked to torture me on purpose.

Usually on Christmas, we would spend it at our grandparents’ house or our family would come to our place. But this year, since Ethan and Riley were now back from college and our families were connected by marriage, it had been planned that both families would spend Christmas at Ethan’s house.

I felt incredibly awkward bring at his house with all of our family there as well. They all had no idea what was really going on between Ethan and me, and I almost felt bad for lying to them.

We were technically family. That also bothered me. Not only were we student and teacher and boyfriend and girlfriend, but we were also brother and sister-in-law. Sometimes I forgot about that.

Halfway through the party, I found myself wandering upstairs. I didn’t know what I was searching for, but since everyone was too busy to talk to me, I needed something to do. If all else failed, I could have just fallen asleep in Ethan’s bed or something. Or maybe even go through his room, if I was that brave.

I looked at all the pictures that lined the hallway walls. I never took the time to really look at them during the short time I lived there. There were so many, and I knew that it was all because of Brianna.

“Some nice memories, huh?” a new voice suddenly asked me from down the hall, and I jumped. I looked over, expecting to see Ethan, but I was surprised to see Maxynn instead. “It seems like only yesterday some of these were taken.”

Maxynn seemed to like thinking about the past, though I didn’t really understand why. She had to go through a lot while she was younger, things I was too young to understand while they were happening, but once I was older, I knew that she had gone through a lot.

I looked over to see a picture of a very young Ethan laughing while a very young me was sobbing and screaming. I made a face. “Why would Brianna put that one up?”

Maxynn laughed. “You may be crying in that picture, but I think it’s a nice memory,” she told me simply, but I wasn’t so sure if I agreed with her. “That was basically how it was when you guys were younger. He’d make you cry and you would annoy him in return. I wasn’t there for all of it, but what I saw was pretty funny.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from smiling at all the memories that flashed through my head. Ethan and I really despised each other throughout our entire childhood. I found him too smart and he found me too annoying. It wasn’t the best combination.

I looked over to the right now to see a picture of Maxynn and Zach, though he looked so much like Ethan that it wasn’t even funny. It was a picture of them while they were in high school, I was sure, and they looked so happy in each other’s arms.

I looked at the background of the photo. They had family and friends around them. They could have been a couple out in the open and they didn’t have any troubles because of it.

I looked over at the scar on Maxynn’s arm. Alright… maybe they did have some problems because of it.

“I love this picture,” Maxynn suddenly smiled, reaching out and touching the glass that covered the picture she was so fond of. “This was taken a little while after Zach and I got together. Brianna loved taking pictures, so there are a ton of us where we don’t get along in photo albums. I’d like to see those sometime. It was actually kind of fun back then. Looking back on it, our bickering only brought us closer together.”

I thought about Ethan. Even though all we ever did when we were younger was fight, it really did bring us closer together. And I wouldn’t have changed anything about it.