Three Brothers (Completed)

The First Sign that Something was Wrong

For the two weeks between my kiss with Lily and the summer session starting, things with Lily were strange. For one, Lily was suddenly very distant not to mention distracted. She jumped whenever I called her name, she had begun to avoid me, to reject my offerings to take her places.

She was often on her phone, getting texts that made her jump. She frowned at her phone when she saw them and never typed a response in front of me. Whenever I asked her about it all she'd say that it was just some friend and then pocket her phone while giving me lame excuses as to why she couldn't go to coffee with me after work that day. Usually probing into the issue revealed an answer. Lily wasn't good at keeping secrets, it was easy to push it out of her. However, Lily had managed to wiggle out of answering my questions by changing the topic or suddenly needing to be somewhere else.

It was really hard to ask her out if she wasn't making herself available for me to propose the whole idea to her. I didn't want to do it in the break room when we were dripping wet from the pool huddled in towels putting our paperwork away. I wanted it to be romantic, not soggy.

Automatically I thought of James. He must have been sneaking around with her behind my back, completely ignoring the promise he had just made me. I stormed home after striking out again with Lily, James had already left the pool, I was thinking he had gone home to get himself all dressed up to take Lily out on some spectacular date.

I slammed the front door open and screamed for James on the top of my lungs. I got Sean instead. Up until this month Sean had been studying to be a lawyer, he had just graduated and was at home looking for a job. He came out of the kitchen eating the last of the cookies Lily had given me a week ago. "What are you screaming about?" he asked.

"Where's James? I'm going to kill him!" I growl looking around for any sign of my brother.

Sean watches me carefully. "He's not here dude. You're the first one home. What's got your panties in a twist?"

I stormed into the kitchen and pulled a soda out of the fridge. "He must be out with Lily, that lying two faced dick." I growled. Of course that was where he had to be, that was why Lily had been acting so strange. James must have told her that they had to keep their little relationship a secret from me, and then he took her out every night, texted her non-stop and was doing her in his car. Had I been paying attention I would have known all of that was untrue, but I was Crazy Royce at the time so it didn't occur to me.

"Why do you care so much Royce? She's just one chick!" Sean said. I stared at him a moment, not sure how to answer that strange question. Suddenly he started nodding like he understood everything. "Oh I get it. You think she's special. Alright, so what? She's a nice girl, she's kind of really pretty, she bakes some amazing cookies but she's five years older then you. Dude this girl is out of your league. Go find one that is just like her and closer to your own age."

"It's not like that Sean! She's the one. She's the future Mrs. Royce Soran!" I explain. Big mistake.

Sean started laughing, howling with laughter actually. "Royce! You're eighteen! This is not your future wife. She's a chick you want to bang." I glared at Sean as he continued to chuckle, he ruffles my hair which angers me further. "You've always been the hopeless romantic in our family."

At that moment James came through the door and I was instantly on him. "You shit-face, what have you been doing with Lily?" I asked, shoving him roughly.

James glared at me. "I haven't been doing anything with Lily. What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing? NOTHING? She's been acting weird, jumpy, whenever I talk to her. She's getting text messages she doesn't respond to and she won't go anywhere with me! I know you two are dating! Just admit it!" I demanded.

James stared at me like I was crazy. "I'm not dating Lily...I thought she was dating you." There was an awkward silence as we stared at each other. "You noticed all those things too? I've been asking her friends about it and they insist that nothing is up. I thought she was trying to keep your relationship on the down-low."

Sean laughed from the kitchen. "Oh God James not you too!" he said. "Both of you are after the same girl? And yet both of you have failed to notice that she's clearly going out with someone else?"

Both of us turned to Sean. "No, no, she's not dating someone else, she couldn't be. She would have told us!" I said.

"And I'm not that into her." James growled.

"Oh please, both of you have 'I'm in love' written on your puppy dog faces. This girl must be something special." Sean said, leaning back against the wall. "I'm kind of curious to find out what it is, but right now I have a date with a hairdresser who's going to give me highlights. They're the new fringe."

Sean left us there shocked by his revelation and once again James and I exchanged glances. "I assume he's joking, right?" I asked.

James looked like he was going to be sick. "About the hair? I don't know, and I'm not sure whether or not I want to know. However, I do know that the last time we both liked a girl he pulled my pants down in front of her," he said. "We need to keep him away from her."

"I think we have bigger problems, what if there actually is another guy?" I shot back. I didn't want to think of all three of us liking the same girl, it was creepy and distressing on so many levels.

"Another guy? Thereisn't another guy. If there was another guy she would have talked to us aboutit," James said, he sounded so confident that I already believed him. It neveroccurred to me that he was wrong.