Sparkling Hope (The Eastburgh Devils Series Book 1)

My shift was over for Wednesday afternoon when Aria took the evening shift with Landon, preparing the coffee shop for tomorrow.

I packed myself some leftover pastries and two bagels that couldn’t go on sale tomorrow. Now that there were three of us working in the café, we divided what couldn’t be sold the next day among ourselves before it had to be thrown away.

The three of us usually took turns that two of us would close up the store and get everything ready for the next day, and luckily it wasn’t my turn today.

The first thing I did was take off the headband with the bats dangling back and forth on two spirals on the headband.

I loved my best friend to death, but this tacky Halloween headband was too much, and I was glad to finally take it off.

With a hug to Aria and Landon, I said goodbye to them both and made my way across campus to the campus apartments, where my brother Ethan shared an apartment with his best friend, Charles.

Afternoon dusk was making itself visible as the streetlights and lamps that hung on the brick facades of the campus buildings came on.

The campus housing development was a small, cute neighborhood, with cars parked in front of the houses everywhere and occasional lights already on in the homes and peeking into the rooms of the apartments.

Arriving in a newly renovated apartment block, I entered the stairwell and ran to the fourth floor, where the two lived.

Just as I was about to knock on the door since their doorbell was broken, the door was yanked open, and Ethan was standing in front of me with a towel around his waist and soggy wet hair.

‘Put some clothes on. This is unbearable,’ I entered the apartment.

Clothes were everywhere, either on the floor or on the sofa. Two full garbage bags were next to the front door, and the shoe rack was just for decoration because all the shoes were in front of it.

I threw a white, wrinkled shirt against his bare chest and spun around on my axis to completely notice this disastrous mess.

‘This isn’t my shirt,’ Ethan said, throwing it in my face.

‘I don’t care, but just put something on before I go blind at the sight of you topless,’ I took the white sweat-smelling t-shirt off my face with two fingers and dropped it in front of my feet.

There was nothing new about this place being messy.

Ethan and I had the messiness gene deep within us, and Charles joined in.

The two of them waited for the laundry to get feet and make its own way to the washing machine.

The only room that was neat was the kitchen because Ethan hated it when it was messy.

I still loved this apartment because they lived at the top of the building, and you had the perfect view of Eastburgh from the roof deck.

‘You’re the only one complaining about my upper body. Other girls don’t think it’s bad,’ Ethan returned from his room wearing loose-fitting sweatpants and a white t-shirt.

‘Maybe that’s because I’m your sister, and I’m not interested in having you standing before me like that.’

My brother was challenging to figure out when it came to girls, which made it difficult for me and my Mom to figure out if he had a girlfriend right now or not.

Even now, I had no idea if he just met someone because one thing usually gave him away, and that was that permanent smirk that was on his lips.

I removed my boots, put them next to the two garbage bags, and put my winter jacket and hat on the sofa.

‘I brought food,’ I slid my woolen socks across the light parquet floor laid out all over this apartment.

Music by Ethan’s favorite band, The Harpers, played in the background.

‘Charles is back from New York, isn’t he?’ I grabbed the pastries and two bagels onto a plate Ethan placed on the table.

We did this a lot. I’d stop by their place after my shift at the coffee shop and eat together. Sometimes with Charles and sometimes just my brother and me.

‘Yeah, since last night. You can already get him out of his room if you like.’

Ethan and Charles have known each other since elementary school, and he was part of the family from the first time he came to our house.

He even spent some holidays with us because his parents and twin sister were on the other side of the world attending some event or gala.

I didn’t know Charles’s twin sister well. We saw each other from time to time at parties or their birthday, but somehow we never really connected. I was hoping that would change because we were in the same college, but I last saw her a few weeks ago, and Ethan said that Charles wasn’t too fond of Paisley right now.

I slid across the floor on my wool socks, past the shabby apartment door to the door at the end of the hall.

‘Better knock once, Luni,’ my brother called after me from the kitchen.

I made my presence known as I knocked on the closed bedroom door like the FBI before ripping the door wide open. I was overcome by a stuffy air, and the disorder found throughout the apartment was also evident in his room.

The stuffy air and the mess were beside the point when I saw what I had actually walked into.

‘Holy shit,’ I whispered, and that’s all I could get out of myself because I hadn’t entirely realized what I’d burst into yet.

On the bed lay Charles naked while a girl with a blanket around her waist sat on top of him and rode him. As if all that wasn’t enough, the girl got off him, along with the blanket around her body, and I saw everything from Charles.

Everything.

The prize for the most embarrassing and clumsy moment went to me with full marks. I left the stuffy room with my eyes wide open and let the door fall behind me into the doorframe.

My cheeks tingled with heat that rose to my head, and I think I took on the color of a red lobster in my face.

This moment had already burned itself deep into my head, and when I came into the kitchen and sat down on the bar stool without comment, Ethan snorted loudly.

I threw him off with a sports catalog, but that didn’t stop him from laughing. ‘You idiot, you knew he had someone with him.’

‘Of course, I knew about it,’ he continued to laugh.

I was uncomfortable even after several minutes of Ethan still not calming down, and I was actually about to get up and leave.

How am I ever going to erase these images from my mind?

I didn’t want to see my brother’s best friend completely naked.

Although my thirteen-year-old self from back then would have been happy, my present self was traumatized.

Not even a good cup of hot chocolate or lemon pasta with lots of cheese would help here.

We heard the door of the room opening and the footsteps getting louder and louder.

The girl, who finally had clothes on, grabbed her shoes, yanked open the front door, and ran out.

‘Asshole,’ she yelled after her before Charles slammed the door and came into the kitchen.

This time with clothes on, though only a pair of sports shorts and socks that covered almost half his shins but still more than just a moment ago.

An overtired Charles helped himself to the pastry I brought and poured himself a glass of grape juice. ‘What’s it like living under the same roof with Weston?’

How could Charles continue to live so pleasurable and relaxedly without thinking of the situation just now, which was more than embarrassing?

My brother and I exchanged a quick glance. ‘Shitty, but listen, what just happened—’ I started to say, but before I could apologize, he interrupted me.

‘Let it go, Luna. I needed a reason for her to finally leave anyway. So I told her you were my girlfriend after you disappeared from the room.’

Ethan started laughing again, and I held my hands before my face.

‘You’re kidding, right?’ I mumbled into my palms.

‘Absolutely not. You should have seen her face when I said that.’

I don’t know which was worse.

I was Charles’ girlfriend, so the girl would go away, or I had entered the room while they were having sex.

Definitely number two.

‘Charles needs to fuck his heartbreak away,’ Ethan countered.

‘I don’t have a heartbreak, you idiot.’

‘Yeah yeah, you’re heartbroken, all right. Lie to someone else, Aaron.’

Aaron Charles Whitfield was his real name, but he hated his name so much that people only knew him by Charles, and that’s how he introduced himself everywhere.

I didn’t know anyone except his parents, that called him Aaron. Even Paisley called him by his second name.

‘Don’t call me that.’

Ethan put a glass of water on the table in front of me. ‘Then stop lying to yourself and realize you have a crush.’

‘I don’t have a crush.’

The last time I witnessed Charles having a girl by his side was five years ago. He had brought her to Thanksgiving. But that was also the only time I saw him with her. Shortly after that, they broke up and ignored each other.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous of the girl then.

Five years ago, I was pretty in love with the best friend of my older brother.

I was so in love with him the first time I saw Charles topless when he went to the coast with us in the summer. From then on, I wanted to be there for everything he and Ethan did that summer.

I wanted to go surfing with them, visit bars, and play volleyball, but I could only watch and not even come to the bar.

They said that I was too young.

But they were only one year older than me.

My fifteen-year-old-me was so sure that Charles would be my first kiss.

Spoiler Alert: He wasn’t, but instead, a guy on my swim team who was also my first boyfriend.

I had such a crush on Charles that I wrote his name inside my closet with a red heart around it at the time. There was also a pro and con list of what would be in favor and against becoming his girlfriend, and when Ethan was being a pubescent asshole at the time, he found that list and gave it to his best friend.

The awkward part of this whole thing was that Charles kept that note to this day and carried it around with him in his wallet.

‘You’re so smitten, Whitfield,’ my brother provoked him, and I watched them act like an arguing, gay, married couple.

‘Fuck no, she was a fucking flirt in New York, you hear me, asshole?’ Charles yelled at Ethan before grabbing the bagel, thanking me for the food, and walking towards the sofa.

‘I knew you met someone there,’ Ethan triumphed, sitting on the barstool across from me after pouring himself a glass of water.

I was curious because it was extraordinary when Charles was heartbroken.

‘Do you know anything about her?’ I whispered softly so Charles wouldn’t hear me.

‘Just that he came back from New York with a broken heart. The guy never picked up a girl as fast as he did today. In fact, she was the second one since last night,’ Ethan was about to add something, but then his smartphone rang.

‘Be right back,’ he took it out of his pocket and answered the call before disappearing into his room.

‘Hey baby,’ I heard the two words before he closed his room door.

Charles turned to me on the sofa. ‘Look, maybe you should care for your brother before you guys speculate about my heartbreak.’

‘So you’re heartbroken?’

‘Are you Montgomery’s always this fucking exhausting?’ he rolled his eyes, and I couldn’t help but smirk.

I was still figuring out who Ethan called baby and why Charles had been such a touchy person since he returned from New York.

After numerous attempts to get more out of my brother, who the infamous girl was that Ethan named Baby, I’ve given up on it.

For now.

Nothing could convince him to tell me who she was, and I let him be. Charles knew something about it but tried to pretend he didn’t know about it.

He said goodbye to us because his parents were in town, and he was seeing them.

Charles didn’t sound that convinced to see his parents because there was only one topic with them.

Ice hockey.

Theodore Aaron Whitfield wanted Charles to follow in his footsteps. He wanted to see Charles at the National Hockey League and take him to the top, but he already said he was doing this only for his father and not himself.

Who knew how long that would last.

Mrs. Whitfield would even prefer Charles to drop out of college and have his contract with the New York Islanders signed and in effect immediately. He came to college with a draft to the team, and his future was already planned out for him.

For him, it would be straight to the New York Islanders after college.

I left the leftover food with them and ran across campus to the swimming hall so I could swim again.

I felt like I had taken one step forward and three steps back, moving in the same place. Aria had already offered to help me. She was the only one who knew about it, apart from my parents and  my brother.

I didn’t want to refuse her help, and I knew that she was the last one who would laugh at me, but I felt obliged to do it on my own.

I wanted to prove to myself alone that I can do it.