Sparkling Hope (The Eastburgh Devils Series Book 1)

There was no cloud in the sky as I walked to the footbridge leading to the lake.

I didn’t know what made me do it, but I wanted to see how the wide view, which seemed so endless, looked from the end of the footbridge over the lake.

Mom and Camilla had already headed back out a few hours ago after both repacked their suitcases, and Weston put their bags in the trunk of the Uber that drove them to the airport.

‘Hey,’ Weston snuck up behind me and appeared beside me.

‘What’s that cabin over there?’ I pointed across the lake to the nearly collapsing wooden house.

‘That’s Dad’s hunting cabin. When he’s got an animal down in the woods, he always prepares the ones in that cabin.’

‘He just gets to build a cabin there?’

‘Of course, after all, he owns the property.’

I looked at him, puzzled.

‘You mean you guys own all this?’

‘Yes.’

My gaze fixed on the lake as Weston answered my question. This whole lake, shore, and forest belonged to them.

How absurd.

‘Absurd, isn’t it?’ he spoke my thought aloud.

‘But not everyone can claim to own a lake and the forest around it.’

He said nothing.

I wondered if I had said something wrong or needed to be more competent at keeping a conversation alive.

‘Listen, Luna,’ he said suddenly.

I turned to him and stared into those light brown eyes that could captivate you so much.

Suddenly someone yelled from the patio, and quickly that person turned out to be Carter, holding two six-packs of beer cans in his hands in the air.

‘Oh God,’ Weston smirked and, without finishing his sentence, walked up the hill from the footbridge to the patio to Carter.

‘Hey Luna,’ he greeted me when I arrived shortly after Weston.

‘Hey Carter, how’s it going?’

‘Good. What were you guys doing?’

‘Talking,’ Weston answered Carter’s question before I could answer him.

‘Yeah, of course. The others will be here in a minute, too,’ Carter gave me another quick grin and followed Weston inside, who was already pulling controllers out of the closet and turning on the TV.

The others?

Just then, Charles, Henry, and some more guys I knew only by sight came in through the sliding door to the backyard.

 Jesus.

I needed to start scheduling my weekends more often, and I already had an idea. The guys sat on the sofa, some in front of the sofa on the carpet, and some moved the chairs from the dining table next to the leather sofa.

Beer cans were opened. Chips bags ripped open, and popcorn was dumped into bowls.

Carter sat intently on the sofa and turned on the game.

The funny thing about this picture was that everyone wore either a t-shirt with the ice hockey team logo or a hoodie with the logo.

I sprinted up the stairs to the room and looked for my cell phone.

LUNA

I am bored.

ARIA

What’s the matter?

Oh no, let me guess.

Henry and Carter, Charles, and at least half the Devils team are over.

LUNA

100 points!!!

ARIA

Congratulations.

I have that when your Dad is the team’s Coach almost every weekend because my Dad sees them as his lost sons.

LUNA

Are you coming over?

ARIA

Already on my way. Pizza?

LUNA

Hell, YES!

Not even forty minutes passed before my phone rang, and my best friend’s message popped up on the lock screen that she was there.

The energetic roar of the boys grew louder and louder with each meter I approached the living room.

‘Oh shit, oh shit. Fuck Penalty,’ roared a deep voice.

‘FOR WHAT?’ roared the next one.

I hurried past them and was glad they put the game on pause at that moment because I didn’t want to know what I might be listening to if I had walked through the screen during the game.

‘You can hear them outside,’ Aria said, and we hugged after she entered the house.

‘Maybe I should have come to your dorm room.’

Aria glanced at me, reminding me of her roommate with her gaze.

‘Oh yeah, that’s right. Kaylee,’ we laughed.

Kaylee wasn’t talkative and greeted you grimly. I could swear she grinned a little when I left their dorm room.

Even though Aria’s family lived in the city, she chose to live on campus in a dorm room. That was my plan too, but I didn’t want to leave Mom alone after she decided to move here with me, and we would save some money if I lived with her.

Some guys were outside holding a can of beer or a cigarette, and the others continued to sit on the sofa.

Aria walked quickly to Henry, whom she promptly kissed before following me upstairs, and we disappeared into my room.

The weather was quite warm for a November day, and we could sit outside on the patio in the squeaky swing and eat our pizzas.

Sitting next to me with a blanket around her shoulders, Aria looked at me in disgust.

‘Don’t look like that.’

‘You’re eating pizza with pineapple and ham. That’s a sin, Luna.’

‘You better look at your pizza, and then we’ll talk about whose pizza is the grosser one.’

We both looked at her pizza, which had spinach leaves and onions. Spinach leaves got stuck in your teeth, and onions left a stench in our mouth.

It couldn’t get any worse than that.

Aria made this pizza look such edible piece by piece that you would think this pizza would be in the top three best pizzas.

I bit into my pizza crust and chewed on the already-cooled, baked pizza dough.

‘Your pizza belongs off limits.’

Aria fiddled her onions off the pizza with her red-painted, almond-shaped nails.

‘You better eat your onions on your oh-so-delicious pizza.’

‘I can’t do that to Henry and his good piece,’ Aria said so quickly that we both started snorting loudly.

It was one of those laughing fits where your stomach started to hurt, tears rolled down your cheeks, and it got funnier by the second.

But her sentence wasn’t what we were laughing about anymore.

It was just this moment.

We sat here complaining about each other’s pizza while the sun colored the clouds in the sky in the most beautiful purple and pink tones.

Among us, the conversation became louder. By now, we hadn’t been bothered by the fact that you could hear the guys yelling. Either a roar of joy or anger.

Time passed, and in the meantime, Aria and I knew that this was no longer a sitting together of the boys but slowly developed into a party. In the meantime, the sun had set, and we could see the stars and the full moon in the clear dark sky.

The chain of lights in the form of small light bulbs shone over the crowd in the garden.

What I have loved about this house since we lived here, besides the view over the lake, was the fairy lights hanging across the patio.

Music was getting louder, and I knew how much Aria wanted to join them. I felt the same way because who would pass up a party in the same house where you slept?

Exactly, no one.

Showing up down there would be weird, or go to the fridge and pretend to look for a snack, only to be asked if we didn’t want to join. As if Carter had heard our prayers, he suddenly burst into my room and staggered toward us with a beer bottle.

I was a little surprised that he hadn’t stumbled over the clothes that were spread out on the wooden floor.

‘Do you know what else is missing down there?’

He leaned against the door frame that led to the terrace, concentrating, not losing his balance while looking at us and waiting for an answer.

‘What?’ asked Aria, wiping her hands on a napkin.

‘You two,’ he pointed at us with his beer bottle.

‘I was just waiting for that.’ Aria stood up as if she had been waiting for this and pulled me off the swing with her hand, and we followed Carter.

Suddenly I was curious whether it was so good to show up downstairs. Not because it was Sunday but because there were no classes at the college tomorrow anyway because the professors had some important meetings.

I liked parties and felt like partying, but when we had the chance to mingle downstairs, I was suddenly unsure if it was a good idea.

I hadn’t told Aria yet that Weston and I kissed, and how was I supposed to deal with Weston after what happened yesterday on the ice and on the sofa, let alone in that damn storage room?

But it was relatively low to run into Weston right away among all the people who were in the garden and on the first floor by now.