Page 1 of Four Simple Rules
The first thing I notice when my mind comes to is the lack of body heat surrounding me.
"Jesse?" I murmur, lazily feeling around the spot behind me.
My heart jumps, fluttering a million times a minute when I jolt up, agitating the soreness between my legs.Who knew my first time would hurt so much? The spot my best friend once lay is ice cold and empty, like no one has been there for hours.
He abandoned me. Left without leaving a note or telling me goodbye, escaping the same way he came in—through my unlocked window—the doorway to his sanctuary.
My heart sinks, my emotions gripping me by the throat. I choke on the sob gliding up my esophagus. Heat burns behind my eyes, threatening to pour down my cheeks like rivers weaving a path.
Jesse. My best friend. The boy I've been in love with for years. Abandoned me after…. I suck in a breath, pushing my palms into my eyes. After he laid me down, crawled on top of me, and promised me he’d never hurt me. Memories of our time together just a few hours ago blast through my mind, setting off my rampant emotions. It’s too late now, and I’m already buried in the sadness he’s left behind.
It's just sex. It didn't mean anything.Meaningless.
Those phrases ring through my mind as I pull my emotions inside and lock them in a box in the back of my mind. If I didn’t mean anything to him, then I won’t let our actions mean anything to me.
I don't want to dwell on the inevitable. If I ponder for too long on what to expect when I walk through the doors of Brighton High in a few hours, I'll weep hysterically until I'm inconsolable.
I've cried too many tears over Jesse Rutherford. His rules. His lies. His meaningless words.
All the fight for him leaves my body, draining out of me.
I'm done.
I won’t pound my fists into his chest and beg him to gaze at me as if I mean something to him. I’m past that. I’m done being the girl he hides within the confines of my bedroom, looking at me with those hazel eyes that clutch my soul and make butterflies swirl in my belly. I won’t let him walk past me in the halls of Brighton High pretending not to know me anymore. It’s been four years since he made those rules—our freshman year. Now, as Seniors at Brighton High, he still expects me to be his good little girl.
But he has another thing coming. I will no longer be his doormat, abiding by his stupid rules.
My teeth sink into my bottom lip as memories come to the front of my mind. Taking me back to the day after my first day at Brighton High as a freshman when he sat me down, putting his rules into place.
“It’s four simple rules, Tulip,” Jesse rasps, settling on the edge of my bed, shaking his head.
His gaze drills holes into the wall, mounted with the pictures I’ve taken through the years. The waves smacking into the empty beach. The tree resting in the woods behind our houses—our secret meeting place when we need to escape. The place I sit when my thoughts become too much. And a picture of the brightly decorated capsule containing our secret messages to one another.
“Rules?” I ask, swallowing hard. “I don’t…” His words make no sense whatsoever.
“My friends are assholes, Tulip. They said some things today when they saw you.” He doesn’t bother to look at me when my brows furrow and a sinkhole forms in my stomach.
Said some things? Great. That’s all I need.
Today was my first day of public school after years of homeschooling. My freshman year. Talk about a brutal experience. Our mom—a former teacher—had always homeschooled my brother Gavin and me. But after—I swallow hard, thinking back on the past two years of my short life, and shake those dismal thoughts away. There’s no time to delve back into the depths of their deaths and wallow in them. It’s done. In the past. There isn’t anything I can do to bring them back.
I always wished there was, though. A way to tear their souls from the heavens and deposit them back into my life. Then, I wouldn’t be here. Alone. With only my father raising me. If you could call it that.
He probably doesn't realize I have a boy in my room who often sleeps beside me through the night to escape his father's fists. No, my father—a police officer—is too consumed with work to see anything but his own problems. Never mine. And never me. I’m the invisible girl stumbling through life all by herself. Well, all except for Jesse.
“What do you mean? I don’t understand. Today was fine,” I say, bumping his shoulder, plastering on a fake smile.
Today wasn’t fine. When I walked into school, Jesse darted away like I had a disease. He barely looked at me. I was left to my own devices, stumbling through the halls of the unknown school, trying to find my classes. Every turn I took, I ran into him and tried to wave, but his back turned in my direction. The people he was with giggled at my clothes and hair. Their fingers pointed at my unruly blonde locks, my glasses perched on my nose, and the braces lining my teeth.
I expected Jesse to say something—anything in my defense. But the jerk didn’t do a dang thing. He let them whisper about me as I walked by. He let them point at my clothes and giggle about my hair and glasses.
That’s when I knew Jesse wasn’t who I thought he was.
All day I hoped he’d talk to me. I hoped he’d look in my direction and offer me some help. But he didn’t. And I didn’t understand until I tried to talk to him at lunch, and he laughed in my face when I tried to sit with them.
“Go to the back of the lunchroom. That’s where all the freaks sit,” one girl sneered, pointing her manicured nail toward a lonely bench only occupied by one girl.
My heart sank into my churning stomach. I gave Jesse one last fleeting look, but he turned away with reddened cheeks.
