BOYTOY

~ Chapter 13 ~

*Enjoy♥️
*This chapter is a whopping 6,000 words sorry in advance xD

'Round and 'round. 'Round and 'round. Pink and yellow and blue. Green and black and white. The colours of childhood and sweetness and life going around my wrist. I sighed.

Andrea poked my side and offered me a bright smile. "A horse sits down at a bar," she began, "and the barman asks 'Why the long face?'"

I gave her a withering look. "If that was your attempt at cheering me up, than thanks, but you failed abysmally."

"You frighten me," she said and at my quirked brows, added, "Even depressed you use words like 'abysmally'."

"'Abysmally' is a depressing word," I murmured, staring at the coloured bracelet wrapped around my arm.

"Yeah, but it doesn't mean you have to use it. It's too long and has too many syllables."

"Four syllables?"

"Is too many," finished Andrea, flashing a grin.

I couldn't help smiling.

"Ah huh!" She pointed at my mouth. "I got you to smile! And you said my cheering-up attempt failed atrociously!"

"Abysmally," I fixed.

"Whatever." She rolled her eyes. "Same thing."

"Actually," I began, but a hard look from Andrea shut me up. A chuckle warbled in my throat.

"See, not everything's messed up. Yeah, you might be falling for your sister's boyfriend, who tried to kiss you, and your sister might not like you right now, but not everything's bad."

"Yeah," I said hollowly. But, despite my best attempts not to think about it, Amber's words from the day before thundered into my mind. 'I love him!' She loved him; I had guessed it from the start. But she had admitted it to my face and said it as though it were explanation enough for everything. She loved him; therefore she was allowed to ignore me. She loved him; therefore she was allowed to yell at me. She loved him; therefore she was allowed to hate me.

It didn't make sense, yet it did. She loved him. Love, at such a young age, was mind-blowing. Amber loved Emery, therefore all her actions and words and reasoning made horrible, horrible sense. She would do anything to keep him, she had told me so herself. I was her sister; I would always be her sister. But Emery, Emery was there, right at that moment, and he was hers. High school relationships were as flimsy and weak as a card castle; Amber needed to keep Emery, she needed to keep the cards together.

I was competition, I knew that now. She saw me as an enemy to her relationship. And it hurt; it made my heart ache to know she could possibly think that low of me. Did she think I would steal Emery from her? Did she think Emery and me would fall in love and run off together? It was preposterous; and yet...

I couldn't deny the attraction I felt for him. But it was just that, wasn't it? An attraction? An infatuation? A passing, casual crush? So what if he and I shared some of the same interests. So what if he had almost kissed me...

But was I jumping to conclusions? It made my chest constrict to think I was making a bigger deal of this situation than what it was. Maybe he had just been resting there, like he had said. Maybe he had simply just exhaled over my lips, not knowing the reaction it would cause, the resulting chain of events it would create, the turmoil it had burst inside me.

Had he wanted to kiss me? Me after having Amber? Me, the younger sister? Me, the average sixteen year old, who was too awkward to be graceful and covered indecision up with sarcasm? Me, after Amber? It was too impossible to even consider.