All Wrapped Up (ON HOLD)

Chapter I.

ALL WRAPPED UP

-CHAPTER ONE-

            It had been three years.

            Three years since Paige had felt the warm, comfortable, clean sheets of her queen sized bed. Three years since she spent Thanksgiving dinner at her Grandma Annie’s home and Christmas Eve at her own. Three years since Paige laid her heart on the line, only to fall without anyone there to catch her.

            Three years since the streak began on that one night. Three years since she began to lose who she really was to a controlling conscience. Three years since Paige had even spoken to or set foot anywhere near her parents, closest friends, and most importantly him.

***

            “Come on, mate. You’re turning twenty-one this year! You’ve got to have some kind of wicked party.” Logan exclaimed, bringing a beer bottle to his lips and taking a large gulp of the toxic liquid.

            Across the room, lounging on a worn out and faded black futon, Dean shrugged his broad shoulders. “I guess.”

            “You guess?” Logan questioned, placing his beer down on a countertop and walking over to his best friend. “What’s up with you, man? Are you and Catherine having troubles again?”

            Dean shook his head, refusing to look his best friend in the eye. “No, no troubles.”

            “Then what the hell is wrong with you? You never turn down a good party.”

            The truth was, as much as Dean wanted to know what the matter was going on with him as well, he couldn’t. Turning twenty-one was meant to be a milestone in his small hometown of Hampson. Everyone knew that a guy turning twenty-one meant a huge ragger with drinking, loud music, and girls upon girls. But, for some unexplainable reason, Dean didn’t feel the need to throw some big party with a bunch of faceless people he wouldn’t know.

            You don’t want to throw a party because you know she won’t be there.

            “I don’t know what’s up with me,” Dean admitted. “I guess my head just isn’t into the whole party thing right now.”

            Silence met the two normally gaudy friends and the air filled with a tension that both of them could feel radiating through their bones. An unanswered question hung in the air and only Logan, being the asshole he was ninety nine percent of the time, had the guts to lay it out in the open.

            “It’s because of her isn’t it?”

            The single question made Dean’s heart pound in his chest and blood turn to ice in his veins. There was no way that Logan could’ve read his mind let alone knew that she was the thing that was bothering him most.

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

            “You know exactly who I’m talking about, Dean.”

            He didn’t want to admit that Logan was right. Knowing him, he would only rub it in Dean’s face and mock him for even thinking of her in the first place. She made her decision to leave three years ago without saying goodbye, so why was he still hung up on thoughts of her?

            Logan sauntered over to the futon and took a seat next to his best friend. The futon creaked as it took in the weight of the two men, but neither seemed to care. Wrapping a supportive arm around Dean’s shoulder, he knew that he needed to be there at that moment.