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Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Charlotte

“Damn, Charlotte!” Freddie said from my doorway in his awesome English accent.  “You look gorgeous.  If you weren’t my stepsister, I’d definitely tap that.”

I turned away from my mirror and looked at my stupid stepbrother.  “Okay, that was seriously gross, Freddie,” I said, rolling my eyes. 

I looked back at myself in the mirror.  I had on a black lace top that came off one shoulder and was completely see-through.  Under it I had on a tight red tank top and then white skinny jeans and red pumps.  I had just put diamond studs in my ears when Freddie spoke. 

“So why are we dressed to kill today?” Freddie asked, walking in to sit on my desk chair. 

Freddie’s mom and my dad got married a year and a half ago but I’d known him since we moved to England when I was in eighth grade.  He was my best friend when I started school in England and our parents had worked with each other, though they didn’t know that before they met.  They’d fallen in love and got married, so Freddie and I were officially siblings, even though we acted like it before. 

When I first started to school, I was still heavy from my depression.  Freddie – his real name was Fredrick but I only called him that when I was mad at him –  was the popular guy with all of the girls hanging all over him, even in eighth grade.  I would have thought that he wouldn’t make friend with the new fat girl but he did.  We’d been best friends ever since.

He was the one who encouraged me to lose almost eighty pounds three years ago.  When I broke down one day after school, he was the one who told me he’d work with me.  He was the one who got me into running.  Now I was running two miles every morning and three every evening. 

I got myself into dance, though.  Since I did, I had a lean dancer’s body but with all the right curves that every girl seemed to envy.  I never thought that I was going to have a body that girls would want.  It had been the other way around for a while.

When our parents got married, we easily fit into the brother/sister roles.  I never could have wished for a better big – even only by three months – brother. 

“I haven’t seen any of these people since eighth grade when I was a two hundred and ten pound fourteen year old,” I said.  “They probably still think I’m that way.”

“But now you’re a hundred and thirty-three pound sex goddess that will have all of the guys falling over her and death glares from the girls.  You should be proud to show them all what you accomplished,” he said, smiling, looking at me in the mirror.  “Really, Charlotte, you look absolutely gorgeous.”

“And how exactly do you know just how much a weight?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“Because you told me,” he said, rolling his eyes.

I walked over to him, my heels tapping on the dark hardwood floor of my massive bedroom, and kissed him on the cheek.  “Thanks,” I said.  “You don’t look half bad yourself.”

He looked down at himself.  He was wearing dark jeans, a black button up shirt that was rolled up at the sleeves, and dressy shoes.  His golden blond hair was styled into looking like he’d just rolled out of bed.

“Thanks,” he said.  “Mum picked it out.”

“You let your ‘mum’ pick it out?” I asked in my fake English accent.

“Oh, shut it,” he said, standing. 

Even with my heels on he still towered over me, him and his six-foot-four muscular glory.  I felt so short next to him, even though I was five-foot-seven.  He slung an arm around my shoulders and we headed downstairs.