Started With a Lie

Chapter Twenty-Six

        “I love you, too, Lee,” I say, resting my hands around his neck.

        He leans closer and closer, and then his lips touch mine. I smile as he kisses me and he grabs my legs and hoists me onto him. I wrap my legs around him as the bells ring and people cheer. He dips me as he kisses me and everything is going great until someone pushes us into the lake.

        Suddenly, all I feel is water.

        “What the hell are you doing here, you fucking prick?”

        I open my eyes and see my brother, Brent. His face is red and his eyebrows are so close together, it looks like he has a unibrow. His hands are holding a random white bucket, probably one of Mom’s old paint buckets. He looks ready to kill.

    Then I remember last night.

    I jolt up and look over. Lee’s slowly waking up, rubbing his eyes. His face has water all over it and it’s soaking through the jersey he’s wearing—and my bed.

    “Brent, what the hell?” I yell. There’s water all over Lee and a little on me. So the water from the dream was really just Brent angrily splashing Lee with water.

    “What the hell is going on in here?” he yells.

    Lee’s suddenly awake and he sits up straight and looks around. He looks down at his clothes and then at me. He sees Brent and his eyebrow twitches in fear. “Brent, I can explain!” he says before Brent does anything else. He stands up and he’s almost the same height as my brother, a little taller.

    “Brent, nothing happened, okay?” I say, getting out of bed, too. I grab the hem of my shirt and air it, trying to get the water off of it.

    “What do you mean? Why is he in your bed? How did he even get up here?” Brent says. He asks a million questions at once.

    Lee swiftly takes of his shirt, as if it’s normal. He uses a towel that just happens to be nearby on my desk to rub through his hair. My eyes are the size of the moon as he does this. The holy greek god himself is shirtless in my room, water dripping down his solid, muscular body. Lee moves in slow-motion in my head as he shakes his head to get water out of his hair.

    “Ivory? Ivory? Ivory!” Brent waves a hand in front of my face. He follows my path of vision at Lee. “God damn it, I will seriously kill you!”

    Lee discreetly points to the door so only I can see. “Hey, uh, Brent,” Lee says, “is that a new shirt you’re wearing, man? It looks really nice.”

    Brent looks down at his shirt.

    I’m grabbed by Lee and we’re running out of my room. Lee slams the door behind him, leaving Brent in my room. It’ll hold him for about 1.2 milliseconds but that’s enough for us to run downstairs. Mark is nowhere in sight as Lee and I make our great escape. Lee grabs Brent’s car keys on the coffee table in the living room and we run outside before Brent can reach us.

    The sun is adamantly shining down this morning, bringing traces of summer heat along with it, though it is May. The so-called breeze rustling through the air only releases sticky, humid air onto my face, which isn’t helping at all considering all the running I’ve just done with Lee. It’s probably the most I’ve ran in my teenage years.

    “Don’t just stand there, Ivory,” Lee calls, snapping me out of my stance. “Your brother is right behind us. Hurry up and get in the car.”

    There’s the real Lee. He’s rude and nice at the same time. I don’t know how he does it. His words are so sweet and yet his personality is like the Wall of China; built tall and high so you can never fully understand how it could ever exist (like him). But, when you do finally cross the entire thing, you feel amazing. Lee is a paradox I’ll never understand, though, I do wish he could be like my dream Lee at times.