Pure Belleza | ✔️

(16)

"What am I, a priest? Do I need a confessional box. What the fuck is with all the damn tea being spilled this week?"

Abby stared at me when I'd finished ranting over the fact that she had more to tell me.

She said whole truth. Which made me sort of nervous.

If I had beaten the shit out of Tanner for no reason, I'd be pissed. But in all fairness, I'd still heard him badmouthing her. So he deserved it regardless of what she had to say.

We stood in the pool house slash gym. I grabbed a skip rope and started a warm up while Abby paced back and forth with her finger between her teeth.

She'd peer over at me every other second, her cautious expression alluding to her truth as being unfathomable. As frustrated as her fluffing about was making me, I continued to warm up and pretended I wasn't two seconds from wringing her neck.

"Here's the thing Luc," she said. I threw the skip rope back on its hook and sat down on the bench press. "Tanner— he wasn't— I wasn't a virgin."

There wasn't a chance I'd have been able to stop from recoiling with disbelief, even if I had tried.

As much as no brother wants to think about his sister having sex, my brain went into overdrive while I tried to think about when this could have happened.

Especially after all of the effort I'd made to ensure it didn't. I stood up and tried to form a sentence about three times before words came.

"What?"

She continued pacing. I hated it when she did that. She'd done it from the time we were kids.

Whenever she felt nervous or anxious, whenever she landed in trouble for doing something stupid albeit harmless but dumb, she'd pace while she prattled.

And if she couldn't pace, she'd fidget. She'd fiddle with her hair or tug at her clothes. She could never hide the fact she was unsettled, her mannerisms called her out.

"Tanner wasn't the first," she said. "Remember our sixteenth? We had almost the entire school here?"

I nodded. We didn't always do joint parties. Max and I were born on November 30th. Abby was March 18th. But our sixteenth was a big one we went all out for and decided to combine.

We decided to do it at the end of March. The weather was warmer and everyone was looking for the next event after the spring break buzz had worn off.

Our yard had been transformed for the night. We had a DJ. Bounce houses and inflatable obstacle courses, which Max had claimed was childish but Abby and I had whole heartedly agreed you couldn't be too old for inflatable obstacles and bounce houses.

It was one of the few things we agreed on for that night. Even Mom and Dad spent a good hour challenging each other.

It had been a no alcohol event due to the fact there were too many people to get parental permission from.

So Mom and Dad had said no to begin with. That didn't stop people from finding other ways to guzzle back a few vodkas while no one was watching. Including me. There was no drama. It'd been a good night.

"Yeah so," she continued. "It was all over at like— two in the morning. We carried on in the rec room for a while. Just crashing out on the couches while we talked. Ingrid fell asleep first. Remember, you drew a dick on her face?"

I shrugged with an indifferent nod. "You're just telling me stuff that I know, Abs. What's going on?"

She took a deep breath. "Well, after everyone else fell asleep, it was just Flynn and I. The last ones standing. We went upstairs and—"