Beachwood Bay 04 - Untamed Hearts

it’s give and take? You’ve got to give some charm to take what you want.”
    I shake my head. “Enough about our parents, where are we headed?”
    “There’s a party on the beach, end of summer thing.” Jace replies.
    I stop. The party those guys invited Brit to; the one she said she’d drop by. “How did you hear about that?”
    “I hear everything, little brother.” Jace laughs. “I already snagged some booze from the cabinet while we were packing up. We’re all set.”
    I pause by the back door, feeling torn. I’ve kept my distance from Brit all summer. Just one more night, and I’ll be safe a hundred miles away from her chaos.
    But do you really want to be?
    I catch my breath, feeling the kick of anticipation in my veins. “Let’s go.”

“Hey sweetie, I guess you’re out, or busy, or... Well, it doesn’t matter. I was just checking in. Things are real good here, I’m going to meetings. Eight weeks sober now... I’ll be home soon, I promise. I miss you, baby.”

    I listen to the voicemail message five times over, and then delete it before I can listen five hundred times more. There’s a pain in my chest so tight I feel like I might explode, a hot stab of anger and bitterness and desperate ache.
    She does this. Every few months, like clockwork. Just when I’ve forced myself to forget, mom calls and leaves some bullshit message, and it all comes flooding back: that she just took off and left me alone here, with nobody but my brothers to watch out for me.
    That everyone I love always leaves me in the end.
    “I’m going to meetings again..”
    I know too well not to get my hopes up, that her promise to be home soon is nothing but a temporary plan. Soon, too soon, she’ll slip, on pills or booze or worse, and then she’ll drop off the face of the earth for another few months, leaving me to lay awake in bed at night, wondering if she’s even alive anymore.
    You can’t do this again.
    I bite down against the swell of tears rising, but I refuse to cry for her—not when I’ve wasted so many tears already. Instead, I grab my purse and take one last look in the mirror.
    This dress is dangerous, even for me: a flimsy red scrappy thing that dances around my bare thighs. I run my fingers through my choppy dark hair, and smudge a line of black liner around my eyes. The desperate ache in my chest is building, and I need to go find some way to block it out. Lose myself for an hour, a night, just get the hell out of my own skin for a while and quiet the dark thoughts whirling in my mind, and the emptiness crying out in my soul.
    I clatter down the hall and find my big brother, Emerson, just coming in from working at the bar. He takes one look at me and shakes his head.
    “No way in hell are you going out looking like that,” he vows, glaring in determination.
    I push past him. “You don’t get to tell me what to wear.”
    “Jesus, Brit, you look like... like...?” Emerson struggles.
    “What?” I shoot back. “A slut? A whore? It’s what they’re saying anyway,” I shrug, even though it stings coming from him. “Why should I care what anyone thinks?”
    “Because you don’t know guys.” Emerson’s jaw clenches. “You’re only sixteen, can’t you act it, just for a night?”
    “You mean invite some girls over and watch The Notebook?” I snort. The last time anyone invited me to a sleep-over was in eighth grade, when Marcy Hampton accused me of stealing her charm bracelet and then spread I’d confessed to fucking half the basketball team. I had to put up with whispers and stares for a month after that. And Emerson wonders why I don’t have any girlfriends. “Yeah, never gonna happen.”
    “I’m worried about you, Brit.” Emerson’s glare slips, and I can see my brother is genuinely concerned.
    “We both know I can take care of myself.” I sigh, then reach up on tip-toes to land a kiss on his cheek. “Relax, Em, it’s just a party on the beach. I’ll be back before dawn.”
    “Midnight.” He demands. I laugh.
    “Or what, you’ll ground me? See you tomorrow!”
    I head on out before he can say another word. I love my brother, but he can’t talk. Odds are, he’ll be hooking up with some skank in a bar in the city tonight—still trying to forget the epic heartbreak he suffered at the hands of his last girlfriend, Juliet.
    That’s another reason I won’t believe in fairy-tales: I’ve seen up-close the damage love does when it’s over, when somebody walks away