Her Brother's Best Friend - Aching Hearts Series #2

Five minutes of bliss (part 1)

CHAPTER 11 - FIVE MINUTES OF BLISS (part 1)

Where the heck are you?! I've been waiting since half an hour already!

Emily sent, frustrated. It's true that she loved wandering around bookstores all alone, but she'd left that shop purposely because she was to meet up with Vanessa, who was nowhere to be seen. Her best friend had dug a hole in her head to go shopping again, because the bonfire was on Saturday and Vanessa needed something new and stunning to wear (her usual excuse, according to Emily).

This bonfire was kind of like prom, with the only difference that it was held every year for everybody, it was on the beach and there weren't gowns and all those formal dresses.

Even though, rumors had it that it was some sort of rehearsal for seniors, some kind of playground where boys could start thinking of the girls they wanted and vice versa. There had been the homecoming ball for a while, but the principal decided to suppress it. After two boys made a mess a few years back. Two boys that were actually well known in the school, even new generations knew them all too well. Emily happened to be the sister of one of the two.

Now, it was already weird that Vanessa had delayed that much to get her outfit, but weirder was that she'd been a little bit off in the past week, always late to her dates with Emily, barely responding to messages, never at home ... she was a little bit of a mystery lately. Emily had noticed that, but honestly needed time alone. Time that she carved out by forcedly going out, to the park or movies or anything – just not to remain home.

At home she'd have to face her mom's scrutiny, because Sybil was worse than CIA, NSA and FBI when she wanted to find out something, so there Emily had to force herself to act normal, which was getting complicated by the minute. 

At the first "I'm not hungry" she used to refuse to have dinner, her mother would send her a penetrating look Emily didn't know how to escape, so she'd been resorting to the same trick she'd used for long years back, before Vanessa had her quit, but it was getting tiring nevertheless.

She needed fresh air. And ... at home there was the highest risk of someone dropping in to see her. Someone she'd been ignoring since the party on Friday, someone that she missed, someone she didn't know how to face without crumbling.

Hence, Emily had been spending her last days of holidays hanging around all alone, careful to avoid places where she knew that someone would search if he looked for her. 

But maybe he didn't. He'd texted and called her a few times then quit, which was reasonable, given the way she ignored him, and her mother had mentioned he'd dropped by to say hi a couple of times, as usual, but that didn't mean he really thought of her, did it? Maybe he just felt guilty.

You know he cares. He's certainly worried. Right, he cared. Riley cared about her. Truly. And she cared about him. Truly. But also too much. 

Part of her deemed her as stupid for losing the last days he'd be home before heading to Boston, but the other soon retorted that if she saw him, she ought to listen to what he had to say, and she didn't want to. She didn't want to know whether he'd actually wanted to kiss her or it had been just the heat of the moment, whether those words were true or it was just the song. She didn't want to know.

Now, Vanessa. She was late. And since Friday she had been many times, which wasn't a characteristic of hers, on the contrary, she was always dead punctual, even in advance, but lately she seemed distracted. 

Weirdly enough, now that she thought about it, Emily recalled Gwen telling her that Jason too seemed pretty distracted lately. His fiancée lamented that his mind seemed always somewhere else, that he was untraceable part of the day, moody and more detached than he'd ever been. Weird, to say the least.