More Than Friends

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Falling in love had once seemed so ridiculous, full of heartbreak and betrayal, but now that I needed him more than ever, I realized that he might be the one.

"My mom hates me," I sobbed.

Jackson put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me towards him.

"That's not true and you know it." He said, "Your mom loves you, no matter what."

"This time is different," I whispered, "She said that wished she never had another daughter and she never wanted to see me again."

Jackson pulled me into a hug. He gently rubbed my back as I cried into his shirt.

"What were you fighting about?" he asked.

"Well, do you know my oldest sister Annalisa?"

"Yeah, she's the blond one right?" "Jack, they're all blond." I laughed.

"Sorry," he said with a smile.

"Anyway, Annalisa graduated medical school a few years ago and she's a doctor at St. Anne's hospital."

"So?"

"So...my mom wants all of her daughters to be like her. You know, like doctors, surgeons, lawyers, all that fun stuff."

"Okay, so what about you? You don't want to be... well all the stuff you just said?"

I started laughing. "Um, no way. I don't want to have a job where I can screw up someone's life. I mean, if I'm a doctor or surgeon or whatever and a surgery goes wrong, that person could die. I couldn't carry that burden."

"Okay..." Jackson said slowly, "then what do you want to be?"

I sighed and replied, "I don't know. All I know is that I want to be in the music industry. I want to sing or dance or act and just do what I love but my mom says that it's not a promising career and that I'm never going to make it. Also, she thinks that if I become famous I'll start doing drugs and become Miley Cyrus or something."

"Seriously!?" he exclaimed, "I'm famous and I'm not twerking or taking drugs."

I rolled my eyes, "That's 'cause you're a guy and guys don't twerk."

He winked and me and said, "Oh you know you wanna see me twerk."

I gasped in mock horror and shoved him so he nearly fell off the park bench we were sitting on.

"GIRL THAT'S RUDEE" he yelled sassily.

I rolled my eyes again and sighed dramatically.

"If you keep rolling your eyes like that, they're going to fall out of your head."

"That's nice."

He laughed, "Okay, so continuing our conversation about the wonderful future, what about the rest of your sisters, like what do they want to be when they grow up. Um...I forgot their names." Jackson said sheepishly.

"It's fine," I laughed, "nobody can remember all of them."

"Ok just for future reference, what are they? I mean, I probably wont remember them but still."

I sighed, "From oldest to youngest it's Annalisa, Brianna, Cecelia, Dianna, Elizabeth, Fiona, Genevieve, Hannah, the twins Isabelle and Jessamine, Kristal, Lillian and yours truly, Mirabella."

"Damn."

I laughed and lightly punched his shoulder.

"Umm...violent much?" he said, "okay anyway answer the question."

"Fine," I glanced at him, "This might take awhile."

"I've got time," he said, leaning back on the bench.

I took a deep breath, "Ok I already told you about Annalisa-

"Yup, graduated med school and works at St. Anne," Jackson said, cutting me off.

"Yeah. Now don't interrupt me," I glared at him.

"Okay, okay sorry."

"Alright. So then there's Brianna, her husband is so stuck up, who is a lawyer at some fancy firm in NYC, Cecelia, who is a nurse but moved to Australia to be with her boyfriend, Dianna, who is at her last year in college and I think she got a job offer from apple or something, Elizabeth, who is at Stanford and honestly I have no idea what she's doing, Fiona's majoring in a aerospace engineering at California Institute of Technology, Genevieve is at UC Berkeley majoring in computer game design, Hannah is at Stanford majoring in biomedical engineering or something, honestly I don't know what it's called. Okay then we have the twins Isabelle and Juliette who just started college at UCLA and I don't think they're majoring in anything yet, and Kristal, Lillian, and I are all at Pacific Gate with you.

"Umm...wow. How do you remember all of that?"

I laughed, "Actually it's kind of funny. So it was a rainy Sunday and Kristal, Lillian, and I were all in our room just talking about random things. Kristal had an idea where we should make up a trivia game about all our sisters and the winner would get $10 from each person. So we ran to the other rooms and asked our sisters if they could make some flash cards about themselves and they each made about 3 or 4. After that we went back to our room and quizzed each other on the questions, and I won of course."

"Okay well that explains everything I guess."

"Yup."

There was an awkward silence for a moment or two until Jackson abruptly grabbed my hands.

"I HAVE THE MOST AMAZING IDEA EVER."

"What," I said indifferently.

"You can stay at my house until you're ready to go back to your mom!"

I paused for a second. If I did go with him my mom would be pissed. If I didn't I would still have to face her wrath.

"I-I don't know," I said, biting my lip.

"Pleaseee Belle?" he pleaded.

"Umm...would it be okay with your dad?"

"Of course," he scoffed, "you're practically like family," he added sheepishly, "plus he's on a business trip in London and won't be back for at least another two to three weeks."

"Jackson!"

"But he won't mind, I swear." He said seriously.

"Okay." I sighed.

"But," I continued, "you know I have to tell my mom or else she'll think I died or something."

Jackson hesitated, "Are you sure you want to go and talk to her?"

"I'm sure," I said.

Let's go to hell.