Picture of Liliana----------------->
“Wake up gorgeous!”
“Go away Sam,” I grumbled, not at all ready to be conscious. Lately it felt like no one was content to let me sleep. I was either working at the diner in the morning, taking someone to school or bound by some preexisting agreement to be awake before I was physically ready. Unfortunately, today seemed to be no exception.
“Not Sam,” the voice replied with a huff.
I cracked open an eye and squinted in an attempt to focus on the man in my bedroom that had identified himself as “not Sam.”
“Brad, I’m trying to sleep,” I complained, “This was my first peaceful night’s sleep in two weeks. Why do you feel compelled to pull me from this wonderful phenomenon?”
“Because you said you’d go shopping with us,” he announced, pulling the nice warm covers away from my body, “Has anyone ever told you that you have nice legs?”
“Brad!”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’. What do you think? She’s got nice legs, right?”
“Very. They’re so tanned and toned,” Sam replied.
My eyes instantly opened to find Sam leaning in my doorway giving me a very hot, very slow once over. His blue eyes felt like fire as his gaze burned into me and I could feel my heart begin to beat to the sound of a different drum.
“Out!” I exclaimed.
“You heard the lady!” Brad announced. “She wants some alone time with yours truly!” He wiggled his eyebrows at me, making me laugh.
“Both of you!” I amended as I swung my pillow at Brad for a surprise attack that hit him right upside his perfectly styled dirty blonde hair.
“Alright, alright! No need to get violent! I needed to go blow my nose anyway,” He protested, hands held out before him in placation.
When the door clicked shut, I ran and locked it to prevent any “accidental” interruptions. By themselves, I wouldn’t have even thought it was necessary, but together those two were always up to no good. I hurriedly dressed myself and brushed my teeth and hair, making sure to grab a light jacket so I wouldn’t be cold in the quickly changing seasons.
“Vamonos,” I told them the moment I walked into the living room.
“You heard the lady,” Brad said again, “Let’s go!”
“Shh! Kristy’s sleeping dumbass.”
“Oh, right. My bad.” Brad replied in an over exaggerated whisper.
Both Sam and I rolled our eyes, but said nothing further as we followed him out of the door and to the driveway. As we approached my Jeep, I pulled out my keys only to have Sam steal them from me.
“You better call it before Brad does,” Sam told me, his voice lowered conspiratorially.
“Call what?”
“Shotgun!” Brad yelled in a volume that could only be described as extreme overkill.
“You can’t call shotgun!” I exclaimed the moment he practically screamed it.
“Well according to the ‘Bro code’ the standard shotgun rules are as follows: ‘A. Shotgun may only be called within full sight of the car, B. Shotgun must be called outside, C. Shotgun calls last approximately ten minutes, and D. Shotgun never carries over to a second ride.’” He told me so seriously it was almost comical.
“But it’s my car!”
“I’m sorry, but the ‘Bro code’ was very clear in matters related to the rules of shotgun conduct.”
“Who made the Bro code?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“The very great and very wise Barney Stinson,” Sam replied with a smile, “it is a code that has served us well. Right Pitt?”
Jumping in through the rolled down window he said, “Right you are Sam!”
Moments later when we were travelling down the road that led away from the house, I was struck by my fair weather friend who goes by the name Diabolical Genius.
“Hey Sam could we go back real quick? Brad could you do me a favor? There is a list of groceries on the fridge. We can pick them up while we’re in town to save gas.”
“Yeah, sure.”
As soon as he got out of the car, I sat in his vacant seat.
“Brad’s going to have a cow, when he sees that you’ve stolen his spot,” Sam laughed.
“We’ll see.” I smirked to a smiling Sam who sat in the driver’s seat, patiently waiting for my moment of triumph.
About sixty seconds later I heard, “You can’t sit there! I called shotgun!”
“And the terms for your shotgun have been fulfilled. You called shotgun. You sat in the front passenger seat and we took a very small, very anticlimactic trip. You got back out. You did not call shotgun again and a shotgun does not carry over for a second trip. So ‘shotgun!’” I smiled.
“The travesty!” Brad exclaimed.
“Dang, she got you Bro!”
“Not to mention that you broke Article Four of the Bro code. ‘A Bro never divulges the existence of the Bro Code to a woman’.”
A sharp inhalation was heard from both men as Brad declared in shocked monotone, “I broke the code and deserve to be punished. I will take the back seat quietly as my punishment.”
“She knows the Bro Code! I think I’m in love,” Sam joked, causing me to blush like a thirteen year old girl who just made eye contact with her crush.
“That’s right! She just quoted the- You know the Bro Code!” he gasped accusingly, “I’ve been played!”
The rest of the trip into town was comprised solely of random banter and what I would later call the Bro Code Wars, which were more or less Brad and I trying to see who knew more about the Code. It also consisted of Brad wiping his nose a lot; lucky for him, I kept a box of Kleenex in my Jeep for that very reason and I added over the counter Zyrtec to my list of things to buy at the store today.
“So what are we getting my mom?”
“I have no idea,” I chirped truthfully. Kristy was a pretty easy person to please, but creative gift giving had never been my strength. Thankfully I had Andy, Jake, Danny, Ty and Rissa to help me brainstorm the perfect present. That said, normally I’d have turned down a gift choosing excursion, but one look at Sam effectively silenced my protest.
“Let’s just walk around. If you see a store that you think would have a good gift, we can check it out.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed, smiling as Brad threw an arm around my shoulder.
We didn’t get very far before Sam, Brad and I were greeted by a flash of light.
“Ohmgosh! You’re from Flight Risk right? I mean, of course you are! I heard you guys were back on a va-kay, but I didn’t think I’d run into you just out and about. I’m Liliana Reiches by the way! It’s a pleasure to meet you!” a beautiful woman with perfectly coiffed brunette hair said as she extended her hand in greeting. “Are Vince and Cody with you too?”
She quickly looked behind us before her eyes finally landed on me. I watched her brown eyes assess me critically as they trailed from my comfortable converse to my worn jeans to my Pittsburgh Steelers T-shirt and finally to the arm that was carelessly flung around my shoulder and the body that was connected to it. She blinked in what looked like disbelief, but carefully concealed it with a beauty queen smile and a bat of her eyelashes.
“And who might you be?” she asked, clearly fishing for information despite the fact that, beside her name, we knew nothing about her.
Before I could speak up Sam replied, “I’m sorry Liliana; can I call you Liliana? Are you a reporter or something?”
“I’m not a reporter, but you can call me anything you like,” she practically purred as she took a step toward him.
By this time, word that Sam and Pitt of Flight Risk were standing in front of whatever store we happened to be in front of, had apparently spread, and I glanced around uneasily at the growing crowd. People were snapping photos with their phones and I could hear parts of their conversations as they whispered about how hot one or both of them were. Several times I even caught envious death glares being shot my way, which made me realize that Brad’s arm was still on me.
Sam gave her an appraising look and if I was any judge, it looked like he liked what he saw. I told myself that he’d looked at me like that a time or two, but part of me felt like it was all in my head. Mere glances from him made me feel hot all over. My opinion was extremely biased and my judgment clouded where he was concerned. All I knew was that I wanted him to look like that at me, and only me.
My stomach dropped when he told her, “Liliana, you are a beautiful woman,” that charming, roguish grin of his, and I felt like purposely spacing out for whatever was destined to come next. Thankfully, I didn’t, because I’d have been completely and totally clueless about what happened next.
“But, you’ve got the wrong idea. I’m very much taken.”
Taken? I wondered. Since when has Sam had a girlfriend? Didn’t he just say that he and Liz weren’t together?
I was literally jerked from my thoughts as a warm hand pulled me from under Brad’s arm and in the arms of the man I’d wished had been around me to begin with.
“You see this is my girlfriend and we’re shopping for a birthday that is right around the corner, so if you don’t mind we’re going to hurry off and get one.”
At the word ‘girlfriend’, every eye seemed to be on me and I instantly looked up at Sam in a shock and confusion.
“Just go with it,” he whispered with his lips just below my ear. He placed a light kiss there to make it seem like that was his original intention.
“But, I thought…” Liliana began, looking just as confused as I was. Her eyebrows were scrunched together in confusion and her eyes flickered from Sam to an extremely amused looking Brad, back to Sam and finally to me. She seemed to reassess me, this time truly as competition.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, but we really have to get going,” Sam smiled.
Even with his very obvious attempt to end the conversation, Liliana still tried to delay our departure. With a skill one could only acquire through a lot of practice, Sam and Brad charmed our way out of there and we immediately went back to my Jeep. The whole way there I got looks that made me uncomfortable in my own skin and heard people, mostly female in nature, whispering things like, “She’s his girlfriend?” “Golddigger” “How’d they meet?” and my personal favorite “Is she dating both of them?” I couldn’t resist responding to that last one with an “Of course not!” That particular speculator blushed and quickly averted her gaze when she realized I was answering her not-so-quiet whispered question.
I let Brad call shotgun, emphasis on let, because if I sat in the back I would have time to think about today’s unsuccessful shopping trip. Back in Serenity, it was so easy to forget that at the end of the day they were stars. Sure we could gossip with the best of them, and be completely and totally star struck like the next person, but to us, Sam and Pitt weren’t “stars” in their basest form. To us, they were people; they were the home grown Serenity musical duo, practically inseparable since birth.
“Well that was a disaster,” Sam announced to no one in particular when we arrived back at the house.
“I’m going to head home,” Brad sniffed, “I have a massive headache.”
“Your allergies!” I exclaimed, “We totally forgot to pick up some allergy meds on our way back. I’m so sorry!”
“Take some medicine,” Sam told Brad as they clasped hands and did that guy hug-back pat that all guys do when they see or leave each other.
Brad wasn't gone for even five minutes and I was just about to ask Sam what possessed him to tell that lady from the mall and every one that was listening that I was his girlfriend, when the doorbell rang.
Not realizing that we had returned yet, Danny yelled from the kitchen, “I’ll get it!”
“Don’t worry about it,” I yelled back, “We’re back!”
I sped walked to the front and opened the door, immediately wishing that I hadn’t, because my arch nemesis and the bane of my existence stood before me with the fakest looking smile I’d had the displeasure of seeing in a while.
“Ashley,” I stated with bored contempt, “What are you doing here?”
“Trinity,” she replied with equal distaste before her head and eyes shift to a spot behind me. “Sam!” she cried as she ran to him and jumped into his arms and wrapped her legs around his waist, “Long time no see! I missed you!”
“Hey Ash,” he greeted easily supporting her weight, “I missed you too. I’m surprised that I haven’t seen you before this. Where’ve you been hiding?”
“Oh, you know… I’m so busy at the school. Maybe if you came to pick up Clarissa, you’d have seen me sooner.”
To say the sight of Sam still holding her the way he was made me sick would be putting it lightly. No woman wants to see the man she is interested in, in a position like the one I was witnessing; the who of the scenario only made it worse. Ashley Fisher. A beautiful, athletic, redheaded pain in my ass also known as my ex-best friend. My only saving grace where she was concerned lay in the fact that she lived in Granite Falls and not Serenity.
“Miss Fisher?” Rissa questioned, uncertainty apparent in her voice.
“Clarissa!” Ashley exclaimed as she at least had the decency to blush and extricate herself from their too friendly embrace.
Right about the same time, something else struck me as odd.
“Miss Fisher?”
“Yeah. Didn’t I tell you that Miss Fisher’s my teacher this year?”
“You might’ve mentioned it, but I didn’t realize that this was the Miss Fisher you were talking about.”
“Yep, this is her!” She chirped as I felt like banging my head repeatedly against the wall.
The room lapsed into an uncomfortable silence as we all exchanged glances.
“Well,” I said, refusing to stand here feeling awkward for the rest of my life. “Why don’t we hang out in my room and finish your homework?” I suggested to Rissa. I didn’t particularly want to leave Sam alone with Ashley, but I also didn’t want to witness her all over him like he was letting her be.
“I’ll join you!” Danny said, coming out of the kitchen.
As soon as I closed the door to my room, Danny let out a “Yech.”
“Yeah,” Rissa agreed, “that was weird.”
A smile crept onto my face, because the best adjective Rissa could come up with in that scenario was ‘weird’. The door opened and quickly closed as Jake joined us in my room.
“So this is where you went,” he said to Danny as he plopped down on my stool, “I thought you got lost when you never came back with the sandwiches.”
“Shit!” Danny cursed, adding “ake mushrooms…” when I raised eyebrow.
“Don’t worry, I know what to do!” Rissa smiled, pulling out the cell phone I thought she was too young for. She dialed a number, mentioned the sandwiches on the kitchen counter, and moments later Tyler and Andy appeared bringing a huge pile of sandwiches. Minus Sam, who was with Ashley, and Kristy, who was at work, I now had every Evans in my room and enough sandwiches to feed an army.
“So why are we all meeting in my room?” I asked when everyone was finally settled.
“Because we’re hungry, the kitchen is too close to Ashley’s awkward displays of affection for Sam, and you have the second biggest bedroom.” Andy shrugged.
“Yech,” Danny cringed again, “You guys should have seen her all over him before Rissa saved the day. She was on him like white on rice. I wasn’t even sure how to leave the kitchen. It was disturbing. I’m mean, she’s smoking hot, but she repulses and scares me as a person. If Sam ends up with her, I’m not sure if I should pat him on the back for baggin a red head or disown him for it being Ashley.”
“Dude!” Rissa exclaimed, “You thought it was disturbing? She’s my teacher! How am I going to ever look at her the same? Her arms and legs were wrapped around him like a spider monkey.”
Her likening Ashley to a monkey made me laugh.
“I wish she’d greet me like that. I’d do her,” Andy commented like he was mentioning the weather.
“Aw, come on bro!” The Evans boys all replied at the same time, “It’s Ashley!”
“What? I would. It’s not a crime you know. She’s hot. I’m 18. It’s legal.”
“Gross! La la la. I’m not listening!” Rissa sang with her hands over her ears.
“Alright Andy! Save it for a time when there isn’t a 13 year old girl in the same room.” I scolded.
“Fine, fine. It’s safe to remove your hands now Rissa. I know you can still hear me. Sucha drama queen. So why is she here? To see Sam?” He asked.
“You know what? That’s a good question.”
\\ Hope you liked the chapter! What do you think of the new character addition? Ashley is ready and willing to mix it up. A big thank you to everyone who voted for the last chapter, it really made me happy because I love this story more than any other that I've written to date. I hope you all continue to support me by voting, commenting and fanning! You all are awesome and we reached a record for FR with 125 on What's Hot! That's amazing and I am so, so honored to have readers like you!