Sparkling Hope (The Eastburgh Devils Series Book 1)

The campus was quiet, and only a few people with thousands of books in their arms were walking from one building to another.

Most college students probably took advantage of the long weekend and went out clubbing or partying yesterday.

Including me.

I called Aria when I got to my room, who was in the campus café getting everything ready for the slightly shorter week. I hadn’t mentioned anything, but that was about to change because I couldn’t keep anything from her.

She waved at me as she stood behind the counter, pushing around on the register before coming to the door and unlocking it.

We hugged briefly.

Aria locked the door as I walked over to one of the bar stools and set my bag down. I took a deep breath. ‘Weston and I had sex,’ I  turned to her and waited for Aria’s reaction.

‘Finally, it’s been so long.’

I furrowed my eyebrows at her reaction and tilted my head.

‘What?’

‘Oh shit, wrong reaction?’

I nodded as my eyes committed the burning and filled with tears again.

‘What happened?’

‘I fell in love with him. That’s what happened,’ I admitted for the first time, but it felt wrong to admit my feelings for Weston after his reaction this morning.

I would love to ask my heart why it had to be him.

Why did it have to be Weston?

‘But that’s a good thing,’ Aria released the hug and looked at me sympathetically.

‘Only if it’s reciprocated.’ I felt a tear leave my right eye and find its way down my glowing cheek.

‘Have you guys talked about this yet? Maybe Weston does feel  the same for you.’

‘He told me the next morning that it was just a one-time thing and I should get over it.’

‘What an asshole,’ she hissed.

‘How could I have been so stupid,’ I wailed, burying my face in my palms.

‘You know, sometimes our heart does something we can’t control and don’t want to. By the time we realize it, it’s usually too late, and our heart is ready to be caught or torn apart by the person.’

Why did Aria always find the best words in every situation?

I was so uncomfortable because I knew I had fallen for it. Too late, I realized that we didn’t have the same intentions. I had already fallen for him in the storage room at the Sigma Devils party.

‘I confided in him about Dad and the car accident,’ more tears rolled down my cheeks, ‘and he took advantage of that to get me into bed.’

‘Oh, Luna,’ she hugged me again, and I wrapped my arms around her while my cheek rested on her shoulder.

‘I have something for you,’ she broke away from the hug and reached behind the counter.

Aria held a coffee-to-go mug in front of me with cocoa in it.

‘This will do you good.’

It did, and if only for a moment, because I don’t think cocoa could fix a cracked heart. I put my bottom lip to the cup’s rim and blew lightly against the chocolate brown liquid before carefully siping.

‘Was the sex at least good?’

‘Aria!’ I rolled my eyes and laughed.

‘What? Maybe it’s in the Sinclair genes that the sex is more than just good,’ she said with her shoulders hunched, and it was obvious in her expression that she was concentrating on not laughing.

I picked up a flyer lying on a pile of catalogs and magazines. Newspapers were sent to us monthly, which we displayed here in the campus café for students. Since Aria has been here at college, this café has returned to life.

She also started the books to go.

A little old phone booth was here in the café where anyone could put books in and trade them for a new one.

Aria once told me that an older lady had previously run the campus café. I didn’t get to know her anymore, but Aria was here often during high school because of her father, Coach Henderson.

The way Aria talked about her, I believed they were very close.

She always talked about helping her in the afternoons after high school because the older lady couldn’t walk without her walker as time passed.

On the walker always hung a monkey, sewn from socks, which has since been suspended here with a photo, as she passed away last year in April. Aria wanted to honor the woman and is trying to keep the Campus Café going, and it couldn’t be going better right now.

I would love to tell her daily how proud I was of her.

The flyer was blue, and in dark blue cursive, it said Country Night as the headline, and on the C hung a cowboy hat.

‘We should go there.’

‘Huh?’ Aria looked across the counter as I held the flyer out to her.

‘We should go there,’ I repeated my sentence.

‘That’s what I wanted to hear.’

‘Did you put it there on purpose?’

‘Of course,’ she grinned widely.

I slid down from the barstool and retrieved my apron from the back room, hanging on a hook under a sign with my name on it. We both stood behind the counter and started cutting fruits, making sandwiches, and decorating cupcakes, which distracted me.

The thought of not being home tonight also felt good.

Landon knocked on the glass door, leaned his forehead against it, and waved at us.

‘I got it.’

I ran to the door, and before I unlocked it, I wiped my hands on my apron, which needed to go in the washer after this because I had cream stuck not only on the apron but on my face as well.

We greeted each other with a hug, and as he took off his jacket and settled into a chair, he looked at us in confusion.

‘I knew working with you guys was—’

Aria didn’t let him finish his sentence and blabbed in between.

‘Super? Fantastic? Grandiose?’ she licked her finger where the pink cream was stuck.

‘Something like that,’ he continued to look at us in confusion and laughed.

We were a lot faster, and as the sun turned the sky into the most beautiful shades of orange and yellow, we were finally done. Aria closed the store, and we headed to her car while Landon headed in the other direction.

‘See you there in two hours,’ Aria called after him, and he gave us a thumbs up.

In Aria’s car, we thought about what to wear and decided to wear satin dresses in the matching color of our cowboy boots.

We pulled into the driveway of the Sinclairs’ property, and the first thing I looked for was if Weston’s Jeep was there.

There was no car to be seen, and none of the lights in the house were on.

It was a good thing he wasn’t home.

We wouldn’t talk anyway because I didn’t feel like it and didn’t want my evening ruined. Aria had done an excellent job of distracting me, and it was good that I was out tonight.

‘Jesus, Luna. Stop thinking so much. Get your stuff now. He’s not here, and that’s a good thing because otherwise, he’d be a man without a dick.’

I looked over at her in shock.

‘What? He hurt you, and that’s why I don’t like him anymore.’

‘You don’t have to dislike him right away. After all, he’s your boyfriend’s cousin.’

‘Friends with benefits,’ she corrected the situation between Henry and her.

‘Yeah, tell that to the pigeon that shit on your car.’ without waiting for her response, I got out of her car and dug the front door key out of my pocket.

Once inside the house, it was pitch black.

All the cups and leftovers that proved that there had been a party here yesterday had been cleared away, and you could think that there had never been a party here within the last twenty-four hours.

I turned on the light in the living room and walked up the stairs to my room.

I was wondering if I had taken it with me when we got here or if I had left it in one of the boxes in the basement of the house, but then I found the black satin dress tied with ribbons in the back. The black cowboy boots, decorated with gold stitching, were next to the closet.

I grabbed both and made my way back downstairs.

I let the front door fall into the lock behind me and ran back to Aria, who was waiting in the car, typing something on her cell phone.

‘You got everything?’

‘Yup.’ I got in with her and placed my boots between my legs in the footwell of her car while I tried to fold the dress neatly to prevent wrinkles.

Aria and I decided to go partnered because she bought the satin dress I have in black in white when we both went downtown New Jersey shopping together.

‘Today, we’re getting drunk.’

‘There’s class tomorrow,’ I reminded her.

‘So what now? What am I supposed to do with that statement? I see no problem there now.’

I shook my head and grinned as I looked out the window.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad to have a little drink to at least give the crappy day a good ending.

Despite a coat I borrowed from Aria after we took the bus to the bar at her place, I felt the wind on my legs.

The dress was a bit shorter, but I loved it on me.

Especially the back, which was free and only covered with ribbons.

Aria wore the same satin dress, only in white with her brown cowboy boots, and while my hair was curly, she wore her light brown hair with blonde strands in a tight braid.

I loved our outfits and was sure this evening could only be good.

The closer we got to the bar, the more people we spotted wearing cowboy boots, plaid shirts, or cowboy hats.

A girl was wearing a pink cowboy hat with pink feathers stuck around it.

Landon was already waiting outside the red brick building, standing under the neon red sign where Eastburgh’s Best Beer Bar read. Under his winter jacket, he wore a plaid, unbuttoned shirt with a white undershirt underneath and waved at us as we crossed the street.

He held the door open for us, and initially, we came into a small vestibule where you could hang up your jackets, and after we did that, we snuck through a thick, red curtain.

Surrounded by people dressed in country style were walking around, and I felt the warm, stuffy heat on my skin.

Some played pool, darts, or danced to the country music blasting through the speakers. I took a quick survey and looked over the crowd until I got stuck on a particular and very familiar pair of eyes.

Weston was sitting in a corner with a few people, and on the table were nachos, pretzel sticks, beer bottles, and empty shot glasses with the chewed-off edge from a slice of lemon.

Of course, he wasn’t wearing anything that matched today’s theme in the bar.

A gray hoodie where you could see the hem of a white t-shirt at the collar and dark jeans.

It tempted me a stab in the heart to see a girl next to him, and it only confirmed to me that he meant his statement seriously and I had fallen for this asshole.

Everyone made mistakes, and this was one of them. It bugged me that I had fallen in love with him without realizing it or wanting to admit it. Deep down, a tiny part of me hoped that something about his shitty statement wasn’t true.

Sitting next to him was Carter and a blonde playing with the drawstring of Weston’s hoodie. Henry waved at us, and all eyes from that direction were on us while my eyes looked into his.

We looked at each other, but no one moved, and for a moment, it felt like it was just me and Weston in this bar.

I hated small towns like Eastburgh and wished there were more bars.