0 6
s o u t e n u
rising to demi-pointe while simultaneously drawing the gesture foot into fifth
If you have a sibling I'm pretty sure you can relate to me when I say they're either the best or worst part of your life. For example, my sister is awesome sometimes but most of the time she's just a pain in the butt and keeps embarrassing me in front of people.
So believe me when I say that when my mother suggested the two of us go on a road trip together for three nights, I wasn't that excited about it.
"Oh, come on, girls, it'll be fun," She exclaims, taking another fork-full of her pancakes. "You get to spend some time together before you go back to school again. Bella, your sister might be moving across the country next summer and you won't see her for a long time."
"That's what I'm most excited about," Bella murmurs under her breathe. "I'm tired of her behaving like a second mother. I understand that dad died a while ago and she wants to make this family more stable, but her behaving like that won't make a difference. To be honest, it makes me wanna hang myself."
A sigh escapes past my mother's lips, "Isabella, that's not a nice thing to say about your sister. The two of you are going on this road trip together."
"Hell no!" Isabella exclaims once more. "I can't stand being in the same place with her for more than an hour."
"Then invite some or your friends or suck it up."
"I don't have any friends here," Bella rolls her eyes, and then proceeds to look at me. "But you can invite your gorgeous friend Sven with us. I wouldn't mind being in his presence for three nights."
"Bella, no dirty thoughts."
I shrug, "I don't know if he wants to come. Then I'd have to ask Rosen as well, and Saskia since she's amazing."
"I don't want your other friends there," Isabella groans. "I just need Sven to be there and that's it."
"You do know that he would never be interested in you, right?"
Bella scoffs, crossing her arms over her chest, "And you think he'd be interested in you?"
I let out a laugh, "I don't want him to be interested in me."
"Girls, stop arguing!" Mom yells. "Bella, Hazel will invite her friends if she wants to. She's the one who's gonna be driving. You can invite friends too if you want to."
"Fine," Bella groans, pushing her chair away from her table so she could stand up. "Just so you'd know, I'm never doing something like this again." With those words, she heads upstairs, leaving Mom and me sitting behind the table.
Mom lets out a sigh and runs her hands through her hair, "She's such a pain in the butt sometimes," she chuckles. "I'm glad you're being the bigger person here."
"That's the least I could do since she's always such a brat."
"Hazel," mom rolls her eyes at me. "Don't call your sister a brat."
"What?" I chuckle. "You know it's true."
❀❀❀❀❀
My afternoon passed in a blur. Saskia, Sven and Rosen all agreed to come on the road trip with my sister after some convincing on my part. Rosen was a little hesitant at first but in the end, he pulled through and decided to come, as he wanted to get away before school starts as well. He kept mentioning something about not being here when there's an emergency but I didn't question him about it, I just want him to come along with us.
Saskia was the only one who was super excited. She plans on getting drunk and having bonfires and just having a good time with friends. Her biggest plan was to get Rosen to open up to her again but I doubt that will happen.
Also, Sven didn't mind coming at all.
We agreed to leave Walden around 4 p.m as the drive to our rented cabin was about an hour and a half. We also wanted to get there before sunset so we could explore the area a bit, maybe buy some foods and later we would have a bonfire night. Isabella, Saskia and me would start driving from my house and then we'll head to the dance studio where we'll pick up Sven and Rosen. Luckily mom agreed to give me her car for the road trip as my Nissan wasn't big enough for the five of us. Well, it was big enough but it had two doors which I'm sure would be annoying for the others. My car is more of a sports car anyway, while mom's is a Range Rover which is humongous compared to mine.
"Hey," Saskia greets me as she steps out of her house, a pink sports bag thrown over her shoulder, a bring smile accompanying her all the way to the car. Throwing her stuff in the trunk of the car, she sits in the back next to Isabella, who's furiously typing away on her phone, occasionally laughing at something. "You ready to party for the next three days?"
"You know I don't drink," I roll my eyes at her.
Saskia adjusts the strap of her shirt, "Oh, right, you're the good girl."
"I'm not necessarily a good girl," I tell her as I back out of my driveway. "I just prefer to not drink, you have no idea what it does to your organs. You will regret it in the future."
Isabella snorts behind me, "You're just pathetic," she turns towards Saskia. "Don't worry, I'll drink with you guys, Hazel can go to sleep at like eight."
Saskia frowns, "I'd rather not drink with 15-year-olds. We'll buy you some Capri Suns."
Isabella huffs, crossing her arms over her chest, "That's just age discrimination. How the hell do you know that I can't hold down alcohol?"
"I don't really care about that," Saskia replies, grabbing her phone out of her pocket as it buzzes. "I just prefer the company of people my age, not some underclassmen." She quickly checks over her text and leans forward, grabbing my shoulder. "Imogen asked if she and Everett can join?"
"I don't know," I hesitate. I'm not really a fan of Everett, to be honest. He gives me bad vibes and I don't want him to be with us, especially when my naïve sister is next to us, who will literally do anything when a guy tells her she's pretty. I'd rather not see her get heartbroken by some douchebag. "I don't really like Everett, Imogen can come though."
Saskia furrows her eyebrows, "I won't invite either of them, Imogen doesn't really go anywhere without Everett. Why don't you like him anyway?"
"He gives me weird vibes. Plus at the party a few days ago he started hitting on me," I tell Saskia. "Rosen was there and he told Everett to leave me alone but he didn't really listen. I just don't feel comfortable around him, I don't understand why Imogen's still together with him."
"You should tell Imogen if that's how you feel," Saskia chirps. "It's better she finds it out from you rather than from someone else. She'll feel disappointed when she finds out you knew the whole time but didn't tell her."
"I'll just wait for the right time and then I'll tell her."
"Make sure the right time comes fast, though. You don't want to see her when she's hurt."
As we arrive at the dance studio we see Sven and Rosen standing near the door, Sven bouncing from one leg to another from excitement. Rosen has his eyebrows furrowed as he scrolls on his phone, occasionally pinching the bridge of his nose and letting out a sigh. Saskia jumps out of the car as I park and heads over to the guys, hugging them tightly. As I step out of the car, Rosen looks at me, smiling.
"Hey," I greet him. "Try to ignore my sister as much as possible, she tends to say weird stuff."
"Is she the one who asked me if I have a girlfriend?" Sven laughs. I nod my head and Rosen gives Sven a weird look. Saskia and Sven sit in the back, with Saskia in the middle, and Rosen sits in the passenger's seat. Isabella greets all of my friends before I start the car once more and head towards the highway.
Sven taps Rosen on his shoulder, "Bro, play some music." Rosen grabs the aux cord and attaches his phone to it and a slow song starts playing. "Something not so romantic, please," Sven chuckles, making everyone laugh as well.
"Just pick any song," I tell him. "I don't really care about what music we listen to."
Rosen plays a random rock song and Sven starts rocking out like crazy, singing the song very loudly and off-key. I stare at Rosen for a second as he laughs at Sven. His face literally lit up when he laughed and he looked so much better. He seemed so carefree and happy but in reality, he definitely wasn't carefree. I was able to tell that by the constant dead look on his face. It was very obvious to me that he wasn't happy with himself or with life or whatever.
About an hour and a half later we arrive at the cabin. Isabella's the first one to get out and she immediately starts taking pictures of the nature around her. She's probably going to upload all of those pictures online so everyone could see that she's an active and outdoors kind of girl, when in reality, all she does is go shopping and tan at the beach like a typically girly girl basically. I don't mind getting down and dirty in the mud, unlike her.
The cabin was definitely nicer than expected. I thought it's going to be a small wooden house that has an outdoor toilet and stuff like that but I was mistaken. The house in front of us looked stunning, I don't even want to know how much my mother paid to rent this for three nights. It had gigantic windows and you could see inside where there was a beautiful fireplace and cozy looking couches with soft blankets piled on top of them. On the table, there was a bowl of cookies along with five cups with some liquid. The outside part of the house was lit up in lights, making it extremely pretty. On the right side of the house there was a cobblestone path that lead to the back, where was the grill area.
Definitely making s'mores tonight.
"This is really beautiful," Rosen softly murmurs as he walks up next to me. I look up at him and nod my head. "Thanks for inviting me here, it means a lot."
I smile, "No problem. I can't handle three days alone with my sister so I might as well invite you since we're friends."
"Oh, are we?" Rosen chuckles. "Since when are we friends?"
I hit his elbow with mine and giggle, "Shut up, you know we're friends. Without me you wouldn't have an awesome choreography."
Rosen shoves his hands to the pockets of his pants as I say that, "About that," he trails off, scratching the back of his head. "I know you want to go to Juilliard as well so I thought maybe we can dance that for our audition. Auditions won't start before February so we still have a lot of time to practice."
"What if I mess up? You might not get accepted because of me."
"You're an incredible dancer," Rosen whispers. "I'm positive you won't mess up. And if you do then it's completely okay. Things like that happen sometimes."
"Hey, love birds!" Sven yells. "Saskia, Bella and me want to get drunk, do you want drinks as well or are you staying sober tonight?" I turn around as I hear Sven saying my sister's name. I'm definitely not going to let her get drunk tonight, not on my watch.
"You two can drink if you want to," I tell Sven. "But you aren't buying my sister anything, she's underage."
Isabella groans, "Don't always be a fucking party pooper. If Sven is willing to buy me drinks then that's what he can do. You can't tell him what he can and can't do."
"You're fifteen, you don't know anything about alcohol."
Isabella crosses her arms over her chest, "I know more than you. You haven't had a single sip of alcohol after what happened to dad."
"So what? I don't have to drink to look cool in front of my friends. You have to do that but newsflash, you're still a child next to all of us and none of them will spend time with you on their own."
Rosen grabs my arm, "Don't say stuff like that to her. You might not have a chance to apologize for all of those words."
Listening to Rosen's advice, I roll my eyes at Isabella, "You know what, do whatever you want."
"I will," she turns to Sven and Saskia. "We can go now."
The three of them sit inside the car and leave Rosen and me alone in the cabin. For the first time, we walk inside and the smell of the cookies hits us. My mouth waters at all the goods placed on the table, I'm guessing Mom had someone prepare all of this for us.
"This is awesome," Rosen grins, taking a cup of hot cocoa from the table. "I swear to god I'm never leaving this place."
"Neither am I," I laugh. "Let's go check the upstairs area as well."
The upstairs area was just as beautiful as downstairs. There was a small hallway that had four doors. One of them was a bathroom and the other three were bedrooms without bathrooms in them so there was a single bathroom for the whole house. I didn't really care about that, though. I was the type of person to shower at night so I could sleep in and not have to worry about taking a shower early in the morning.
Rosen and me check out one of the rooms and I frown when I notice there's just a king size bed in the middle of the room. And that's what every single room is like. So it's pretty obvious that we have to share beds with someone. The question is with whom.
The others come back about 15 minutes later. Their bag is filled with different types of alcoholic drinks and some snacks we can eat as we sit around the bonfire that we're about to make. Saskia grabs a bottle of beer from the bag and opens it, taking a big swig of the drink.
"Guys, there are only three bedrooms here," I announce. "And all of them have a single king size bed in them."
Saskia's mouth curls up into a smile, "Hazel can stay with Rosen and I'll stay with Sven and Isabella can be on her own."
"What if I want to stay with Rosen or Sven?" Bella asks, crossing her arms over her chest.
"No one asked you," Saskia deadpans.
With those words said, the five of us head to the backyard where there's a small fireplace area. Saskia and me sit down as Sven and Rosen go to grab some wood so we could make a fire. Isabella's the one who's in charge of preparing the s'mores for us.
"Why do you want to sleep in the same bed with Sven? We could've shared a bed." I ask Saskia.
She smiles, "I know you have feeling for Rosen, it's so obvious from the way you look at him. So I decided I'll let you two share a room so you could get to know him more."
"You mean you're basically giving me permission to date your ex-boyfriend? Isn't that weird?"
"I just want him to be happy," Saskia admits. "And by the look on his face every time he's around you, I can tell you that you make him happy."
"You're just imagining things," I chuckle. "We've known each other for like a month, maybe a bit more."
Saskia rolls her eyes at me, "So what? A month is enough to start liking someone."
"You're just making stuff up, he doesn't like me."
"Whatever you say," she trails off as Rosen and Sven walk back to us.
After the guys make the fire, we spend the rest of the night making s'mores, drinking and talking about random stuff that comes to mind.
Where you can contact me:
Twitter • aulhoei
Instagram • aulhoei
Email • pretenceonwattpad@gmail.com