The Rules My Brothers Made

Chapter 20

As I drove through the streets of LA, I quickly came to the realization that I couldn't go home.  There was no way I could face Mike now.  He would just tell me he told me so, and once again, he would be right, I would be wrong, and he would never let me forget it.  I thought about going to Kate's but there was no way I could be that close to Evan's house.  Brianna and Olivia were obviously off limits.  Maybe I could have Matt meet me somewhere, but there was a chance that Mike would find out if I called him while he was home.  I always thought I had a lot of friends, but now that I needed someone, I realized I had no one to call.

Feeling completely and utterly alone, I made my way to the one place I knew I could go without judgment, my mother's grave.  As I pulled into the cemetery where she was buried, I drove through the lots until I pulled up alongside her row.  Climbing out of my car, I left all my stuff on the passenger seat and walked down to her grave.  Plopping down next to the headstone, I settled in to the grace, pulled my knees to my chest, and just cried until there was nothing left to come out.

If only my mother was actually here.  She would know exactly what to do.  Actually, she would make me a hot cup of tea and let me cry with her.  Tea was her solution to everything.  She claimed it had healing properties that could make any grey sky blue again.  Unfortunately, I think this heartache was one dark stormy day that would not clear up with any warm beverage, unless it was laced with a lot of whiskey.

I glanced down at my watch and realized it was already 1 in the afternoon.  I had been sitting there for almost four hours and didn't even realize it.  I started to pick the weeds from around Mom's headstone, talking to her about what happened as I went.  Maybe she could hear me, maybe she couldn't but it made me feel better about what happened.  Just getting the words out made everything seem lighter.

There was no doubt about it--Evan broke my heart.  I had let myself fall for him even though I knew I shouldn't have, and I learned my lesson.  I finally understood what my brothers had been trying to protect me from.  Maybe they were overprotective and a bit overbearing at times, but they knew what they were doing.  They knew that high school boys were unreliable, untrustworthy, and unfaithful. I mean, all of my brothers were like that.  Mike pretty much dated the entire female population when he was in high school.  Matt broke up with a girlfriend of three years and rebounded with my best friend and lord knows how many other girls.  Even Mark had hooked up with several girls in the past two years, and now that he was on varsity, his phone was ringing with phone calls from girls constantly.  If even my brothers were playing around, what was to stop anyone else from doing it.

The thing that made me feel the worst about this whole thing with Evan was that it was my fault he had hooked up with Alison.  My brother beat him up, kicked him out of the house, and I didn't stop him.  I had promised I would go to the party and didn't.  If I had gone, would he have slept with Alison?  Probably not, because he would have slept with me.  But if he was going to cheat on me then, who is to say he wouldn't still do it a few weeks down the road?  I was just lucky I didn't give up my virginity before this happened.  It was a gift, and if he was going to throw me aside so quickly, he didn't deserve it at all.

Just thinking about the scene I witnessed brought fresh tears to my eyes.  He told me he loved me, that he needed me, that he wanted me more than anything for all these years.  If all that was true, how could he be so careless with me?  I know that the whole thing with Mike was a lot of drama, and that I hadn't made anything easy for him, but I thought he was okay with it.  He had never complained about keeping me a secret.  I just don’t know how he even got to the point where he would want to sleep with someone else.

I had tried everything with him.  I touched him, I let him touch me, the only thing he didn't do was have sex with me, and that was something I was going to allow soon.  Was I really that bad at everything?  I must be.  If I wasn't bad, he wouldn't need Alison to meet his needs.  He never suggested he needed or wanted more.  In fact, he always pushed me away.  Alison was right.  I just wasn't desirable.