Broken (Brown Eyed Boy book 2)

What's It Going to Hurt (Carlos POV)

“You had to get out of the house and go somewhere,” Emmett said as he pulled the car up to the curb outside of my old lab partner Nicole's house. Even from inside the car, I could hear the music pounding from the inside of the house. “Somewhere that isn't the playground with your six year old sister.”

            “What's wrong with going to the park with my sister?” I grumbled.

            “Nothing,” Emmett shrugged, taking the keys out of the ignition. “I get you love Cassie and she loves you, blah blah blah. But you need to hang out with people your own age too. You can't stay locked in your house the rest of your life, moping over Jessie. She still loves you even if she doesn't know it and eventually she's going to come back to you. But in the meantime, you have to live your life.”

            “I'm thinking this is more of your life than mine,” I said, turning from looking out the window to look at him. “I don't go to parties when I don't feel like it and right now, I don't feel like it.”

            “Fine,” Emmett shrugged. “So you're living my life. Whatever. The point is, you aren't in your room listening to depressing music or staring at pictures of you and Jessie.”

            “I don't listen to depressing music,” I defended myself. “Stop trying to make me out to be taking this worse than I am. I'm fine.” It wasn't entirely true, but for the most part it was. I wasn't listening to anything depressing or just staring at pictures of me and Jessie. I wasn't waiting by the phone for her to call or jumping every time there was a knock at my door, thinking it was her. I wasn't calling her then hanging up and I wasn't sending her notes or texts everyday, telling her how miserable I was without her. I was going on as much as I could with my life, trying not to dwell on the last time I saw her. Trying not to dwell on how easy it seemed to be for her to just give up on us after I tried so hard to keep us together. Throwing myself into almost anything that could distract me long enough from the thoughts of how I was supposed to be going to court in two days to testify against that bastard Michael, who was the cause of all of this. Who was the reason I didn't have Jessie anymore. So when I said that I was fine I didn't mean everything was all sunshine and rainbows in my head, just that I wasn't plotting ways to kill him in the court room in front of a judge. As far as I was concerned, that left me as fine as I could be.

            “Well that's not what your mom said,” Emmett said lightly. “Look, we get it, okay? You're trying not to push yourself on Jessie and you're waiting for her to come back to you and that's fine. But it's been a week since you last saw her and you haven't really left your house much. As your only other best friend here, your mom told me to take you to this party. You don't have to stay the entire time but at least stay for a half hour or something so I don't look bad.”

            “Fine,” I sighed. “But you'll be lucky if it's a half hour.”

            “Fine by me,” Emmett said. We both got out of the car and made our way up to Nicole's front door. We had to ring the doorbell three times before it finally opened and a breathless Nicole greeted us.

            “Emmett, Carlos!” she said excitedly, waving us in. “I'm so glad you guys could make it. Sorry about the wait, but apparently no one around the door felt the actual need to answer it.”

            “No problem,” I replied, trying to sound even a little happy to be there and failing miserably. Admittedly I probably wasn't as okay as I wanted everyone to think. “It's good to see you.”

            Nicole's smile dropped slightly as she focused on me and I was sure that she could tell I didn't want to be there. I thought she assumed it was because I didn't want to see her but before I could say anything to assure her otherwise, she spoke. “I heard about Jessie,” she said and the wrist with my bracelet suddenly felt heavy. “I'm really sorry.”