Sparkling Hope (The Eastburgh Devils Series Book 1)

‘Fuck me,’ I cried in panic, startling up as I glanced at the time.

‘What, now? I mean, why not, but—’

‘Wes! I’m serious,’ I interrupted his insinuation.

‘Me too,’ he sat up straight in bed and rubbed his eyes before running his hands through his hair, and I panicked, searching the floor for clothes still lying around spread out from yesterday.

‘Don’t you get undressed for sex rather than dressed?’

‘I’m serious. Have you looked at the time?’ I threw the sweater, which I picked up from the floor, at him.

‘There’s plenty of time. I don’t have a class for another two hours.’

‘Well, I don’t.’

I quickly ran to the bathroom and put the toothbrush with toothpaste in my mouth before running to my room to find clothes.

I rinsed my mouth out with water, and when I looked up into the mirror from the sink, Weston was standing behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.

‘I don’t have time for this right now,’ I tried to pull out of his tight grip.

I managed to break free from his grip after he kissed me. ‘Do you need a ride? I can take you to campus,’ he asked me, leaning his shoulder against the door frame while I put on my shoes and packed my bag.

‘Really?’

‘Sure, I’m going to the ice arena afterward. Coach wants to talk to me.’

Weston changed into fresh clothes, and I ran down to the kitchen and picked some grapes and an apple, putting them in a small can.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked as he came down the stairs.

There was still a slight sheen of gel in his brown hair, loosely parted back in the center, while a single strand hung in front of his forehead.

He looked hot.

‘Mhm,’ I mumbled with a grape in my mouth.

We left the empty house, got into his car, and drove towards college. I was stressed because my journalism class had already started, and I definitely wasn’t going to make it on time, and the only thing that calmed me down right now was that Weston was kind enough to give me a ride to campus.

That class was so important to me.

So was sports management.

That’s what I was here for in college. Someday I want to be in front of the camera and tell people about sports.

For the first time this morning, I looked at my phone and saw that Aria and Lucy bombed me with messages in the group we created after lunch.

THE FLEET THREESOME

ARIA

Meet me in front of the building?

LUCY

Yes, I’m on my way!

ARIA

Luna???????

LUCY

The class starts in ten minutes. Where are you?

ARIA

Are you dead?

LUNA

Sorry, I overslept. I will wait for you outside the building.

LUCY

Since when do you oversleep? You never oversleep…

ARIA

LUNA FLORENCE MONTGOMERY We need to talk!

LUNA

Nothing to talk about!

ARIA

You had sex!

LUCY

Apparently, lots of sex, if that is why she overslept.

I need to know who the lucky guy was…

ARIA

Take a guess. He’s her roommate.

LUCY

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!

Weston stopped the car in front of the building, where I could already see Aria and Lucy standing across the street by the stairs from further away.

‘Thanks for the ride.’ I put my phone in my bag and got out.

‘You can get used to this,’ he smiled.

I walked around the car and waved at Aria and Lucy, who looked my way. People walked around, some almost running across campus with their thousand books and some sitting on the benches enjoying the warm November sun.

Weston also got out of the car, ‘Luna.’

‘Mhm?’

‘Didn’t you forget something?’

I looked down at myself to see if I was missing anything.

My cell phone was in my bag, my bag was hanging over my shoulder, and I was sure everything I needed for today was there.

What should I have forgotten? Oh.

I realized what he meant and went back to him, and with tiptoes, I reached the level of his mouth and kissed him.

‘See you later,’ I kissed him one last time before crossing the street and approaching my friends, looking at me with wide eyes.

‘Suspiciously happy grin on her lips, a sweater I don’t recognize from her closet, pink cheeks, tired eyes, slept through a class,’ Aria enumerated, scanning me from head to toe.

‘Definite signs she had sex,’ Lucy said, looking at me like Aria did.

‘Definitely.’ They both gave each other a high five.

‘You guys know I’m standing here, right?’

I hugged them both, and we walked together to the campus café, which was already in sight since we still had some time before the next class, and I also really needed to eat something.

‘You have to tell us everything,’ they both squeezed onto the bench to sit across from me after we had our drinks and something to eat for breakfast on our table.

‘Is this supposed to be a sex interrogation?’

‘So you admit you had sex with Weston,’ Lucy said without looking at me while I sipped my cup of cocoa.

‘Again,’ Aria added.

‘WHAT?’ The students from the following table looked at us as Lucy yelled throughout the café.

‘You already had sex with Weston?’ she whispered, leaning across the table.

‘Mhm,’ I mumbled as I took a bite of my blueberry muffin.

I would love to stuff my mouth with food until class started, so I couldn’t talk for a few minutes, but my best friend beat me to it.

‘Hey, give me back my muffin,’ I begged my best friend.

She leaned over the table just as Lucy did. ‘First, tell us if you still want me to cut his dick off or if you want him to keep it for now.’

‘Please leave his dick alone,’ I whispered in the same tone as Aria, trying to look left and right inconspicuously to ensure no one was listening.

‘What happened that you changed your mind about him?’

Typical Aria.

She always asked precisely the questions you couldn’t get around.

No wonder she majored in psychology and minored in criminology.

‘We talked,’ I said, which sounded more like a question than an answer.

‘They were talking. Did you hear that too?’ asked Lucy, Aria.

Jesus Christ. ‘Did we talk? Yes. Did he come to the café in the evening and revealed his feelings? Yes. Was I shocked? Yes, definitely. Did we eat afterward? Yes. Did we have sex? Yes. Terrific sex. Are we together? I don’t know.’

Now I was looking at two perplexed faces.

‘I think I’m going to cry,’ Lucy looked at me like a helpless puppy.

‘That’s corny,’ Aria said, biting into my muffin, of which hardly  anything has been was left.

Lucy and I looked at her indignantly when she said that was corny because she and Henry were the ones who said they were just friends having sex but acted like a high school couple meeting love for the first time.

‘You are not allowed to voice your opinion on this because you and Henry are the definition of cheesy,’ Lucy defended me.

I proudly looked at her and took my muffin from Aria’s hand, or rather what was left of it, and she just rolled her eyes.

‘So,’ Lucy dragged out the last letter so much that I interrupted her.

‘So what?’

‘The party at Trevor’s?’

Immediately, his birthday party came to mind. I probably blocked out the party because Trevor and I have birthdays on the same day.

Funnily enough, almost at the same time.

Carter thought it was all so funny that he thought Trevor and I were twins separated at birth. Just stupid that Trevor was born in Eastburgh, and I was born in Pennsylvania, thus contradicting Carter’s theory.

One of the reasons I blocked out the party was because that was the anniversary of the car accident.

The day my fear of being in the deep water began.

I haven’t been to the swimming pool on campus for a few weeks because it would be better to stay away from it and concentrate on my studies.

After Weston ambushed me there, I never considered going back.

‘Oh yeah, sorry. I totally forgot,’ I lied.

Lucy looked at me curiously, like I knew what she would ask me. „So, are you and Weston coming as a couple? So officially?’

‘What?’

‘You guys are together now, right?’

‘I don’t know.’

In fact, I hadn’t thought about it at all. When should I, when it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since he and I stood here in the coffee shop and revealed his feelings to me.

I decided to take things slowly because nothing was worse than breaking something I didn’t even have a chance to develop properly. I never thought he would put his vulnerable ways before me so openly.

He trusted me, and so did I.

If Weston and I were to decide that we were in a relationship, there was no need to make it official.

He had me, and I had him.

I was sure about one thing. If he asked if I wanted to be his, without hesitation, without doubt, I would say yes.

Immediately.

Of course, we would let our friends know. After all, we have the same circle of friends.

‘Why should we make it official?’ I asked Lucy and scraped the sticky cocoa powder from the cup bottom.

‘Well, Weston is one of the most popular ice hockey players, everyone knows him on campus, and you’re just you.’

‘Thanks, Lucy.’

I thought about Lucy’s words while Aria sat beside her typing something on her phone.

‘But we haven’t even talked about it yet, and I think that would be kind of too soon to bring up the subject,’ I voiced my doubts.

The thought of being in an official relationship with him  sounded nice. Aria put her phone in her pocket and looked at us.

‘What are you guys wearing to the party tomorrow?’

Good question.

‘I guess any dress I can find in my closet,’ I said, mentally going through my closet.

They both told me they already had their outfits. Lucy in a tight, off-the-shoulder white dress, and Aria in white denim and a white top with sheer sequins.

Shit. The color.

It was a party with UV lights and paint you could smear on your skin, and once you were in the room with the UV lights, the colors glowed, just like the white clothes.

‘Don’t tell me you don’t have an outfit,’ Aria complained, looking at me askance.

‘Surely I could have that white satin dress of yours that I have in black, right?’ I asked with a hopeful look.

She rolled her eyes laughing, which was enough confirmation for me to borrow it for the party.

‘What would you do without me?’

‘Go to the party naked?’

‘Well, we know who would definitely like that,’ Lucy nudged me with her shoulder as we packed our things, and the three of us exited the cafe.

Lucy and I said goodbye to Aria because she now had practice at the swim center, Lucy was walking to fashion design class, and I now had sports management.

It was afternoon by now, the sun was disappearing over Eastburgh, and it was getting dark. The streetlights were already turned on, though the sky was turning the gaudiest shades of purple and orange.

I loved the sunsets in the fall.

I had just finished my last class and was walking across campus, somehow trying to find Weston since he had sent me a message a few minutes ago.

WES

I need to see you!

LUNA

What’s going on?

Is everything okay?

WES

Where are you?

LUNA

On campus, outside the labs.

I sent the last message over twenty minutes ago, but I still needed an answer from Weston.

He was still at the rink.

There was always lousy internet there anyway, and right now, the swim and hockey teams were practicing almost intermittently to prepare for game week. Aria was also back at the rink for practice for the second time today, and it reminded me again that I could have gotten a spot with the Eastburgh Sharks as well.

I should have been preparing for the game week now too.

But my asshole of a father ruined everything, and my anxious self wouldn’t let me not be anxious anymore.

The game week was every November and was a decades-long tradition at Eastburgh Sports University. The swim teams also had several competitions. Whether it was with other teams from neighboring towns in New Jersey or boys versus girls and relay swimming.

I loved relay swimming.

The adrenaline pumped through you as you wait at the start to be high-fived by one of your team members and then jump into the water. Nothing in this world could describe how much I missed that.

I talked to the Coach of the Eastburgh Sharks and explained everything to her.

Not the truth, but some lies, because I was somehow afraid she would judge me. The Sharks’ Coach said she would still keep a place for me on the team, which motivated me to work on it to get back into the water.

But if I continued at this pace, it would never work out.

But this year, it was not meant for me to make it to the team yet, but maybe I could overcome myself someday and actually make it because I really wanted to. I want to make myself proud and not give my fear more power.

Suddenly my cell phone rang in my hand, and my first thought was Weston, but when I looked at the screen, I read my brother’s name.

Shit.

‘Are you still planning on showing up today?’ my brother’s deep voice rang out as I answered.

Shit again.

‘I’m already on my way,’ I lied.

Without Ethan saying anything else, he hung up.

Immediately, I set off for a fast walk to my brother’s apartment near campus.

Eastburgh was a college town.

At that time, the town was not much inhabited, many elderly people lived there, and to avoid letting the city die out, they built the most prominent sports university in the country more than eighty years ago.

I rang the bell at the sign where the last names of Ethan and Charles were written and ran up the stairs until I reached the fourth floor.

Before I could knock, the door was opened.

If not even torn open.

A girl stormed out of the apartment, visibly angry.

Charles stood at the open door with a pair of boxers and a pillow in front of his lower body.

Will I ever see this guy clothed when I come here?

It was nothing new for Charles to invite girls to join him and Ethan at the apartment. Charles walked past me and ran down a few more stairs but as fast as the girl left the building, he wouldn’t catch her anyway at that pace.

‘Kelsey, why don’t you wait and let me explain?’

This was like a bad movie where the male protagonist adds: It’s not what it looks like.

‘My name is Julie, you fucking asshole,’ Julie, whose name Charles thought was Kelsey, slammed the stairwell door and was gone.

A visibly annoyed Charles came running up the stairs and greeted me.

I followed him into the apartment and wrenched my eyes open as I understood why Julie was so angry at him and called him a fucking asshole. In the doorway of Charles’ room stood another girl who had wrapped a blanket around her body.

Holy shit.

This was getting really exciting here.

‘Don’t tell me you want to have a threesome,’ she spoke, scanning me from top to bottom.

‘No,’ Charles and I said at the same time.

‘Where’s Ethan?’

My question was answered as Ethan came out of his room and Charles disappeared back into his.

‘What a greeting. Is it always like this?’

‘I don’t want to talk about that. I’m too sober for that,’ he said wryly, and I followed him into the kitchen.

Ethan got out one can of beer and a glass of apple juice and set them on the already set table, where he portioned the pasta onto the white plates.

Mom always wanted us to have family traditions like Pancake Saturday or Taco Tuesdays.

We had Pasta Thursday.

Dad instituted that day, and despite all that happened, we stuck with that tradition.

The only difference was that we managed to have Pasta Thursday once a month at most, and it was almost even rarer for all three of us to be there.

‘What do you have planned for Saturday?’

I hated this topic as much as I hated this question.

I tried to block out the fact that Saturday was my birthday, I was turning twenty, and the accident was exactly one year ago.

A year after, I stood outside the pool hall at seven o’clock at night, and my Dad picked me up with the car. We drove over the bridge, he lost control, and we ended up with the car in the river.

I don’t know what would have happened without a car behind us calling emergency services.

Who knows if my Dad, who is too proud to call me, and I would still be here.

I poked around in my noodles and thought of an answer that would be enough to keep my brother from even thinking of doing anything.

‘Sobering up from Trevor’s party.’

‘Come on, Luni. Will you be this stubborn forever and not do anything on your birthday?’

I looked annoyed from my plate of noodles to the face of my brother sitting across from me.

‘The day I almost died because our asshole of a father has an uncontrollable drinking problem?’

‘Don’t even start ruining your birthday like that. You loved having birthdays.’

I hated to admit it, but Ethan was right, and I hated it when he was right. I will never give him that triumph and admit that he was right.

I’d rather stay stubborn and stare at the lemon pasta with salmon.

I loved having birthdays just as much as Easter, Halloween, and giving people presents. He was also right that I shouldn’t even start thinking about my birthday that way.

If there was a remedy that would make me forget this day, I would drink it like a tequila shot.

‘Come on, Luna. Just the two of us and Mom,’ he pleaded.

‘I don’t know.’

‘We could go out for dinner, and then I’ll drive you and Mom back home. That’s all.’

The food sounded good. Food can always win me over.

‘Alright,’ I smiled and took the first fork with the already-cooled noodles in my mouth.

It will never be possible for me not to think about it, but I can try my best to minimize that thought and work on making the beautiful moments from my upcoming birthdays pop up first in my mind, not the car accident.

I was unsure if I should ask if I could bring someone, but Weston and I think we should first talk about what we were.

I never thought I would fall in love with him, yet there is no word to describe what happened inside me when I was around Weston.

But the word home hit it pretty well.

Suddenly we both heard Charles’ bedroom door open, and two voices got louder and louder until the female voice went silent, and the front door slammed shut.