SNAPPED (The Slate Brothers 1)

I take a step back and wrap my arms around my waist, like I’m protecting myself. “More attached, then. We should stop before we get more attached. Look, you need to go talk to your brothers— I need to go. It was…nice. It was great, okay? But we can’t do this.”

“Ashlynn—“ he starts, taking a strong step toward me. I prance away, and then keep going— walking, then jogging off as quickly as I can without drawing attention. The tears really start flowing as soon as he’s out of my line of sight. What was I thinking, being with him? Not the sex, even— the being. Getting a meal with him. Falling asleep on his lap. Letting him stroke my hair like that. What the hell was wrong with me?

Except, the more I cry, and move away from the Sebastian, the less certain I am what exactly I’m crying over: That I fell for a Slate boy, or that I walked away from one.

13

I muddle through the rest of the weekend, the week that follows, the next weekend…but it feels like I’m in a play about my life rather than actually living it. My lines are right, my smile perfect, my schoolwork flawless, but it’s all just acting and props. I miss Sebastian, then I feel weird about missing Sebastian, then I feel stupid for feeling weird about it, repeat, do it all while smiling and telling Sarah that yes, I got so much good dirt on the team for the New Recruits Week project, thank you!

It’s Wednesday before I crack and call the one person who can always talk me off an emotional ledge: My mom. I know it’s not particularly cool to call your mom for advice on guys, but my mom and I are pretty close. She was actually the one to suggest I not call her quite so much as I did the first few weeks of college, since I needed to spread my wings and meet new people. That’s right, folks: I was the one with empty nest syndrome.

Of course, I can’t very well tell her that my guy trouble surrounds the guy who killed her sister-in-law. But still, I know I can chat with her about generic emotional woe and get some sound advice.

“Are you getting enough sleep?” she asks as soon as I tell her that I’ve been feeling distracted and depressed and lonely, lately.

“I am— well, I’m trying to, anyway. I had four shifts at Papa Pig’s this week. I don’t know. I think there’s just too much going on in my head, right now. It’s like I need to stick my thoughts on a hard drive for a few hours just to get a break from them,” I sigh back at her. I’m lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling and the dozens of tape marks where whomever lived here before me had posters stuck up right over her bed. I’d take them down, but they make a flawless tape-version of the Big Dipper, which I think is kind of cool.

“Maybe Papa Pig’s needs to be down an employee, for a while? Or maybe you can try to take only delivery shifts. Those are lower stress, you said,” Mom replies. She’s not wrong; with deliveries, I can sort of zone out on the drive. Unfortunately, deliveries now remind me of the night I met Sebastian. And working in the restaurant reminds me of the night we were together on the restaurant patio. And not working makes me sit around and think of how I want to see him, how I want him to touch me, to touch him, to feel him, to feel him in me—

Maybe I shouldn’t have called my mother about this, now that I think about it.

“Hey, question,” I say offhand, in my best changing-the-subject voice. “So, one of my roommates—“

“Which one?”

“Uh, Maddy,” I say swiftly. “Maddy is with this guy. She is totally in to him, but he’s not the sort of guy she’d normally date. He’s not the sort of guy the world would approve of her dating, either.”

“The world?” Mom asks skeptically.

“Well, her family, mostly. Anyway, she’s having a hard time— she feels badly for being with him, but she wants to be with him, and they seem to be pretty great together.”

“Is he dangerous? Is that why her family would object? Is he a crack dealer or something?”

“No. No crack.”

“Meth?”

“What? No! No meth. No drugs at all,” I say.

“Hookers?”

“Mom, be serious,” I say.

She laughs. “As long as he isn’t bad for her, then I think she shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks. If they’re great together, and they make each other better people…her family has to accept that. It’s hard, I know, when your kids start making their own decisions, especially when they’re not the decisions you would have made. But it’s also something that’s bound to happen sooner or later. Your family can’t pick your love for you.”