“No.”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You have to,” Will told me as we sat in our last period of the day, which was business applications. It was the last day of school before winter break so our teacher just let us do whatever we wanted for the period although most of the students had already left the building, too eager to get out of school for two whole weeks.
“No I don’t have to,” I shook my head at him. “And I’m not going to.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to,” I said to him. “I hate your stupid parties.”
“What’s so bad about them?” He asked me, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Do I need to make a list?” I wondered and he just looked at me expectantly, so I did. “Well, at the first party, I almost had a panic attack because that guy almost assaulted me. At the second one… you know,” You kissed me and made me think that we could be a thing before you kissed another girl. He knew what I was talking about and just nodded.
“That’s only two though,” He said. “Third time is a charm, you know.”
“I’m not going.”
“Maddie,” He sighed. “I really want you there.”
“You do not,” I said with a small laugh. “You want Aster there and the only way to get her there is if I invite her.”
“And it’s the New Year. What better way to celebrate the New Year than to go to a huge awesome party?” He wondered pleadingly.
“I’m not going,” I shook my head at him. “You’re going to have to ask her yourself.”
“Has anybody ever told you how impossible you are?” Will asked me with a dramatically sad sigh. “It won’t be that bad. It’ll be so much fun, it’ll be insane.”
Luckily, the bell rang then and I was able to escape Will’s constant pleading with me to go to his New Year party. It was going to be at the house but I planned on locking myself in my room through the whole thing and ignoring the party downstairs. That, or I could spend the night with Paige if she didn’t want to go to the party either but I was sure that she’d want to go.
I get to my locker after basically having to wrestle through the crowded hallways of people ready to get out of the school. A two week break sounded like heaven and it couldn’t have come sooner. I pulled my winter coat out of my locker and tossed it on over my blue Aztec-like sweater because it was in the negatives outside (Fahrenheit) although it wasn’t snowing, it was freezing outside and layers were crucial.
Once I had everything ready to go, I met Will and Carter near the back door of the school where we always met up to get to the car.
“So, what if Carter went? Then would you go?” Will asked me, obviously not forgetting about this whole party thing.
“Go where?” Carter wondered.
“To the New Year party,” I told him.
“Oh, man, really?” Carter laughed, looking at his brother.
“Shut up, it’s a good party,” Will defended, glaring at Carter.
Carter turned to me, holding my gloved hand in his. “You shouldn’t go if you don’t want to. It’s one of the worst parties of the year- or the best, depending on how you look at it. It seriously gets wild.”
“Carter. Shut up,” Will hissed but I just laughed. I wasn’t going to go with or without Carter’s testimony, so I wasn’t sure why Will got so frustrated at Carter.
“I’m not going. No matter what you say, Will, I’m not,” I told him with a pointed look. “If you really want Aster to go, Sophie will bring her.”
“Aster?” Carter wondered with raised eyebrows. “Are you into her or something?”
“No,” Will says at the exact time that I say, “yes.”
“It’s the only reason that he wants me to go, so I’ll invite her,” I told him as we all got in the car and right when we got in, Carter turned on the heat all the way so that we didn’t get frostbite or something. “And he can deny it all he wants but I know that he’s the one who left flowers in her locker the other day because the note was in your handwriting.”
“Why do you hate me?” He wondered dramatically.
“I don’t hate you,” I denied with a small laugh. “I’m just saying that if you like her, you should ask her to the party yourself.”
“I’ll just get Sophie to do it, since you won’t,” Will mumbled, sitting back in the backseat.
“We should go to the cabin,” Carter suggested randomly. “Since the party’s going to be going on at the house and you obviously want to be as far away from that as possible, we can just drive up to the cabin for a few days and spend the New Year there.”
“Really?” I wonder with an excited grin. I really did love that cabin a lot.
He nodded. “Sure.”
“Would that be my Christmas present then?”
“Absolutely not,” He shook his head with a small laugh. “But speaking of that, what do you want for Christmas?”
“Just going to the cabin is fine with me,” I assured him. “I don’t want anything else.”
“Try again.”
“Seriously,” I laughed at my ridiculous boyfriend.
“I’ll figure something out,” He said to me and I just rolled my eyes at him. “What are you getting me?”
“I’m not telling you,” I shook my head at him as if to emphasize my stubbornness to not tell him what his Christmas present was. I did already know what it was though, I just wasn’t going to tell him until Christmas happened next week.
“You both make me want to gag,” Will mumbled from the back seat as we pulled up to the house and got out of the car.
“Says the kid who put flowers in a girl’s locker,” Carter teased his little brother although they were only a year apart so Carter really shouldn’t be calling him a kid but whatever.
Will glared back at Carter. “Shut up. She liked them,” And then he paused and looked over at me. “Didn’t she?”
“Yes,” I tried to stifle my laugh. “She loved them.”
Carter didn’t even try to stifle his laugh, so he kind of had it coming when Will forcefully punched his shoulder. I left them in the living room so that they could fight it out in a wrestling match downstairs and went up to my room. Hanging my coat up on the hanger on the back of the door, I went to my bed and opened up my laptop.
I had a Skype message from my mother asking me how I was doing but I didn’t respond to it. I hadn’t spoken to her since the whole virginity fiasco and I didn’t plan on speaking to her for some time. I still couldn’t get over the fact that she knew about Brian sneaking into my room at night. Every time I thought about her, I remembered that and it made me sick to my stomach. I knew from her messages though, that she’d made up with Gerard so she was planning on staying in France for some time now, probably until summer.
She didn’t even know that I’d been in contact with my father. I knew that if I told her that, she’d have an absolute cow. She absolutely hated Randy and I wasn’t looking forward to telling her that I’d been talking to him for a little while now. Things were still awkward, but I guess they were getting better little by little. They’d get ten times worse though, if my mother knew about it.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on my door and then Carter was walking into the room with his face red and his shirt tousled.
“Did you win?” I wondered jokingly.
“I always win,” He scoffed. “Will’s a wimp. Anyway, I really do need to know what to get you for Christmas.”
“I already told him,” I reminded him with a small laugh.
“Okay, I’ll just find something without your help,” Carter decided. “But now I really want to know what you got me.”
“It’s a secret,” I told him, giggling a little bit. “But I think that you’ll really like it.”
“I’m sure that I will,” He grinned at me, sitting beside me on my bed and leaning over to kiss my cheek. “Anyway, Anthony is going to be here soon so you’ll get to meet him tonight.”
“Anthony is your brother,” I said, more to myself than to him because Carter obviously knew that Anthony was his brother. The only Fisher that I hadn’t met yet since I’d met Owen at Carter’s basketball game at the beginning of the school year. He wasn’t coming back for Christmas though, because he was spending Christmas with his own family- his wife and two kids- and they lived a while away and weren’t going to make it.
Anthony though, being in college is coming back for winter break. I didn’t meet him during Thanksgiving break because he’d went to his girlfriend’s house to meet her parents and everything so he didn’t come back home but this time, he was.
“He is my brother,” He agreed jokingly with a small nod. “You’ll like him, he’s pretty cool. But we do have a while before he gets here.”
He said that last part in a dark and suggestive voice and it made my heart start to race, but I used all of the will power that I could muster and shook my head at him as he started leaning in to kiss me. “I have homework to do first.”
“It’s winter break,” He reminded me incredulously.
I shrugged apologetically. “It won’t take long, I promise. Half an hour maybe.”
“Alright,” Carter let out a very dramatic sigh and I rolled my eyes at him.
“Don’t be a baby.”
He gave me a look but didn’t say anything else as I pulled up the homework that I had to do. With Carter staring at me the whole time, willing me to go faster so that we’d have time to make out before his brother got home, I started working as fast as I could and was able to finish the small essay that I had to write in only twenty minutes. I submitted it and then shut my laptop.
“Are you happy now?” I asked him as he leaned over to me, effectively knocking me down on to the bed.
“I’m ecstatic,” He grinned down at me before pressing his lips to mine.
“You’re very impatient,” I mumbled against his lips, wrapping my arms around his waist.
“It’s only because I love you so much,” Carter supplied with a sheepish grin that kind of made my heart melt.
“Okay, cheese ball. I love you too,” I said just before he kissed me again, effectively silencing any future arguments.
His hands gripped my waist with a firm grip and held me to him, as if I’d want to be anywhere else, and we laid like that for a while, just rolling around in my bed laughing and moaning and groaning and kissing and touching.
We eventually had to stop when we heard Andy knock on my door, causing both of us to jump away from each other but it wasn’t soon enough because Andy was already in the room and he was grinning at us.
“You mischievous kids, you,” He teased, glancing between Carter and I. We’d obviously just been in the middle of a very intense make out because my lips were probably red and there was probably a hickey or two on my collar bone, our clothes were ruffled, and we were both breathing heavily as if we’d just ran a marathon. “Anthony’s here.”
“Alright. You can get out now,” Carter grumbled at his older brother. Andy didn’t object, he just laughed loudly as he left the room, shutting the door behind him.
We spent a good five minutes preparing to go downstairs to greet Carter’s brother so that we didn’t look so obviously hot and bothered. The sweater that I had been wearing that was now resting in a pool of fabric beside the bed wouldn’t hide the hickeys so I tossed it into my dirty clothes basket and pulled out a pullover sweater from my closet and pulled it on over my black tank top so that the hickeys would be well hidden.
Eager to see his brother, Carter grabbed my hand in his and then we were hurrying down the hallway.
“Does my hair look alright?” I asked him, self-consciously trying to pat it down where I felt like it got tangled while we were rolling around in my bed.
“It looks fine,” He assured me with a small smile. “You look beautiful.”
Although I was only wearing some boyfriend jeans and a sweater, I knew that I didn’t look stunning or anything but it was nice of him to say. “I just don’t want it to be obvious what we were doing,” I explained.
“It’s fine,” Carter shrugged as we went down the stairs, still hand in hand, which is easy to do considering how wide the staircase is. I could hear the chatter of people as we moved down the stairs and then I could see everybody in the living room, greeting their older brother. Anthony, who I recognized from a few family pictures that I’ve seen hanging around the house, looked a lot like his brothers, which was expected. Tan, tall, generous looks, handsome wide smile. He was definitely a Fisher.
Will, Andy, Tommy, and Anna were already in the living room, greeting Anthony so Carter quickly pulled both of us to the front and when Anthony saw him coming toward him, he grinned.
“Hey, Carter,” He smiled. “How’ve you been, twerp?”
“Better than you’d think,” Andy answered for him with a wide teasing smirk.
Carter punched Andy in the shoulder and I glared at him but he was unaffected, he just started laughing at his own ‘joke’ and I looked away, blushing.
“Really,” Anthony’s smile widens as he glances at me and then back to Carter. “So this is your girlfriend?”
“Yeah, this is Maddie,” Carter motioned to me and I felt like that was my queue to reach my hand out toward Anthony and he politely shook it.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, my voice quiet and my face still red from the implications of what Andy had said. I reminded myself to punch him in the nose later for that.
“You too,” He said, still smiling. “I’ve heard an incredible amount of things about you so it’s nice to finally put a name to the face.”
“Really?” I wondered, glancing at Carter, who was now glaring at the guy in front of us, before returning my attention to Anthony.
“Oh, sure,” He assured me with a nod. “Every time that I’m on the phone with one of the guys, they usually mention you. Especially Carter, it’s almost sickening. Anyway, I’m going to get my bags up to my room and then we’ll go eat, yeah?”
“Yeah, I’ll help you with your bags,” Tommy offered, grabbing his suitcase from where it was propped against the couch behind Anthony, who grabbed his two duffels and they both hurried upstairs.
“Just ignore him,” Anna told me, motioning toward Andy.
“I try to as much as physically possible,” I sighed, giving him a dirty look.
“You can be as mean as you want but I know that you both love me,” Andy grinned, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and kissing my forehead like an abrasive grandma. He then does the same thing to Ana, who wrinkled her face in disgust but still laughed and then jokingly shoved him off of her.
“That doesn’t mean that I’m okay with your blabber mouth,” I told him with a pointed look.
Carter wrapped his arm around my waist and kissed my cheek. “Babe, I’m sure he would make the assumption that we make out sometimes even if Andy didn’t insinuate it.”
“If you’re taking Andy’s side, then we’ll prove his assumption wrong,” I told my boyfriend but I was obviously joking because there was absolutely no way that I’d be able to just stop making out with him. He didn’t have to know that though.
“What? No, I’m not taking Andy’s side. He’s an asshole,” Carter said quickly and I laughed.
“Way to get whipped, bro,” Andy told him and Will laughed beside his brother.
I let out a loud sigh- I would never get used to these damn Fisher Boys. But of course, I loved them to the moon and back. Everybody did.