Summer Love (First Love Book 1) (6 page)

The next morning was Memorial Day. Brayden was going to spend the day at the park, and Chad had planned to stay home and work on some more homework. Marissa was torn. She wanted to spend the day with her boyfriend, but she didn’t want her aunt to think they were getting too close. After changing her mind multiple times, she decided to go to the park with her cousin.

“I know it’s hard keeping it a secret, especially when you want to run through the town screaming about how you feel and how happy you are,” Brayden told her as they walked through the cemetery. “Melanie and I have been together for about six months, but hid it from everyone. The other night, Chris figured it out while we were shooting pool, so I figured it was time to tell Chad. I’ll never tell either of them it’s been going on so long though.”

Before Marissa could reply, they climbed the fence and Brayden took off. She noticed Melanie was sitting on her boulder. She climbed up and settled next to her.

“You really like my brother, don’t you?” Melanie asked.

“Yes, I really do,” Marissa replied.

“Just be careful.”

“I will.”

The girls watched the game silently for a few moments. “If you really like him, then why are you here instead of with him?” Melanie asked.

Marissa explained how her aunt was making him move in and sending Marissa to stay with her grandparents.

“I’m glad she don’t want him to move in with Eric. He’s bad news. Chad would probably fall back into that world. You will find some way to make it work. He really likes you too. He must have started to call you a million times when you were gone, but he never went through with it. And he never went out with a single girl all year last year.”

“He had Anthony,” Marissa pointed out, secretly happy to hear that there was no one else. She hadn’t dated either.

Melanie shook her hear. “Not until March.”

Just then, Marissa noticed Chad pushing Anthony in his stroller across the foot bridge heading to the park. Marissa jumped off the boulder, but resisted the urge to run to him.

“You never come down here anymore,” Chris shouted at Chad. “Or did you just come to see your little girlfriend?”

“Actually, I came to see if my girlfriend and my sister wanted to watch my son while I kick my brother’s ass in football,” Chad shot back.

“This could be bad. Chad will get arrested if he gets into a fight,” Melanie told Marissa as she ran across the field. She pushed Chad back, away from Chris.

Chad threw his hands up. “Easy little sis. I seriously just want to play.”

Brayden was standing next to Melanie in the middle of the brothers. They looked back and forth, from Chad to Chris.

“It’s fine. He can play,” Chris said.

Melanie pushed Anthony’s stroller over to where the girls were sitting. The baby was sleeping.

Much to her relief, there were no problems in the game. Chad played for nearly two hours before he heard the baby fussing.

“That’s my cue. Bye guys.” Chad turned to walk toward the girls.

“You can’t handle playing all day any more anyway,” Chris started in on his brother again.

“Seriously, what is your problem, little brother?” Chad turned and approached his brother.

“Little brother?” Marissa asked.

“Chad’s older by seven minutes,” Melanie explained as the girls walked towards the confrontation. Marissa stood to the side with Anthony, while Melanie walked up to the boys.

Chris pushed his brother. “My problem is you! No matter what stupid shit you do, you always seem better for it. Get arrested, have college scouts come see you wrestle. Have a kid, take a month off school, and still somehow seem to pass. Getting kicked out of the house and having a 12 year old girlfriend will probably win you the lottery.”

“Hey, I’m thirteen!” Marissa interjected.

Chad turned to her. “Just stay out of this and stay with Anthony please,” he said.

Chris took advantage of his brother having his head turned to punch him in the jaw, hard enough to knock Chad back. Chad stepped back and again put his hands up.

“I’m not going to fight you.”

Chris swung again, but Chad ducked. “Since when do you back down from a fight?” Chris asked.

“Since I stopped acting like a little kid. Since I realized that shit ain’t worth it. You are the one with the problem here, not me.” Chad turned to walk toward his girlfriend and his son. Marissa expected Chris to swing again, but he just stood there, watching Chad walk away.

Chad took the stroller from Marissa and began to leave the park. She turned to follow, unsure of what to do or say.

They walked back to the house in silence. When they turned into the driveway, Chad parked the stroller and sat on the porch.

His jaw was already starting to bruise, and he was spitting blood.

“Are you okay?” Marissa finally asked.

“A bruise and a cut lip,” Chad answered. “It’s really not a big deal. This is nothing. One day I came home with a broken collar bone and two cracked ribs. But that time, it wasn’t my brother swinging at me.”

“What set him off?” Marissa asked, ignoring what Chad had said about the previous fight.

Chad shrugged. “I really don’t know. Believe it or not, he is the good twin. Me, him, and Brayden used to do everything together, before Tamara. Now, I feel like I don’t even know him anymore.”

Marissa had no experience with fighting with siblings. Her sister was only five. She had two older step sisters at her dad’s, but she really only ever saw them at Christmas. She had an older half-sister on her dad’s side, but she was 23 and lived in Louisiana in the Air Force.

“Maybe you should stay away from him for a few days,” Marissa suggested. “Give him time to calm down.”

“I’ll see him in school tomorrow,” Chad pointed out.

Brayden walked through the yard from the cemetery with Melanie. “Your brother has lost it,” he said.

“He has been acting strange for a couple of months now,” Melanie added. “Since Anthony was born.”

“Well, there is something going on with him,” Chad said. “He has always been the one pulling me away from fights, not starting them.”

“We need to figure it out,” Melanie told him. “I’m not losing another brother.”

Marissa, looking confused, opened her mouth to ask what she meant, but Brayden caught her eye and slightly shook his head.

“I can try to talk to him tomorrow,” Brayden suggested.

Anthony’s cries interrupted the conversation. “He’s probably hungry,” Chad said as he picked up his son. Without another word, he disappeared into the house.

“I should probably head home any way,” Melanie told Marissa and Brayden. “I’ll see if I can talk to Chris.”

“Be careful,” Brayden told her, leaning down to kiss her goodbye.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll talk to you later.” She turned and walked away.

Once Melanie was out of sight, Marissa spoke up. “What was that about losing another brother?” she asked her cousin.

Brayden sat down on the porch. “Dravyn,” he started. “He was Eric’s twin.”

“Was?” Marissa prompted.

“Dravyn committed suicide three months ago, just a few days after Anthony was born,” he explained. “He moved away from here last spring. I think he felt guilty for what happened to Chad. He was the one that introduced Chad to Tamara and the rest of the crowd that Chad got in trouble with.”

“Why hasn’t he ever said anything about him?” Marissa wondered aloud.

“Because it’s not exactly easy to talk about.” Chad was standing just inside the screen door.

“I’m sorry.” Marissa felt bad for bringing it up.

Chad shrugged. “Talking about it won’t change the fact that he’s gone, so why bother. You up for another tutoring session?”

Marissa knew that once he changed the subject, there was no going back. “Sure,” she told him as she stood up and walked in the house.

Anthony was settled in his swing, and Chad had all of his work on the dining room table. Marissa sat down and began explaining the assignment he had in front of him.

By the time they had finished for the night, Chad’s missing math work was almost completely caught up. Marissa had almost forgotten about the problems with Chris, but not about Dravyn. After she helped Chad clean up the dining room and get Anthony settled in bed, he pulled her outside, away from her cousin.

“I don’t want you to think I was trying to hide my brother’s death from you,” he told her. “It just hurts too much to talk about.”

“You don’t have to,” she started, but he interrupted her.

“Dravyn and I were always pretty close growing up. Once he got into the partying, we were still close. It was at his party that I met Tamara. He is the one that I was always able to get liquor or drugs from. If I wouldn’t have gotten arrested last year, there is no telling how bad I would be right now.”

“But you’re not,” she tried to speak again He put his finger to her lips.

“Please, let me finish, because I won’t do this again. Losing Dravyn tore me up, and if it wasn’t for Anthony, I probably would have escaped into drinking and drugs again. Just thinking about my brother makes me want to.”

Marissa watched Chad intently. She could see the tears welling up in his eyes. She could see how much this conversation was hurting him. She almost wanted to stop him, but she realized he needed to get it out as much as she wanted to hear it.

“I never got as into the drugs as he was. I smoked weed and did ecstasy. That was it. He was into coke for sure, and I think heroin. But that was probably where I was headed too. He ended up overdosing. I had just seen him the day before, to tell him about Anthony, and then he was gone.” The tears were falling down his face, but he didn’t bother to wipe them away. Instead he put his arms around Marissa, and he held her close, burying his face in her shoulder. “It would be so easy to disappear into that world again, but I can’t. I have to be strong, for Anthony, but sometimes I just cant.”

Marissa held Chad tightly, running her fingers through his hair. She didn’t know what to say.

The couple stood there in the dark, holding each other in silence for several minutes.

Eventually, Chad pulled away, turning from her, and wiping his tears.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I shouldn’t have lost it like that.”

Marissa put her hand on his shoulder. He turned to look at her. “Don’t apologize. You can’t hold things in like that. You can tell me anything.”

Instead of answering her, Chad moved in and kissed her, longer and more intense than he had ever kissed her.

Marissa’s heart was pounding and she was out of breath when they separated. Chad turned away.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“I’m not,” Marissa told him. Marissa leaned in to kiss him again, wrapping her arms around his neck. He put his arms around her waist, holding her tight.

It was Chad that pulled away first. Marissa tried to keep him close, but he was able to break her hold.  “We can’t do this,” he said as he tried to catch his breath.

Marissa nodded. She knew he was right. She didn’t want to lead him on, and they were out in the open where they could get caught at any time.

Chad reached for her hand, heart still pounding. “Someday, we won’t have to hide this,” he assured her.

Again, she nodded, unsure if she could trust her voice.

“I should probably go in and get some sleep. Back to school tomorrow,” Chad rambled.

Marissa reached up and hugged him. “Goodnight,” she whispered.

He turned his head to kiss her cheek. “It is now,” he replied. “Thank you,” he said, breaking the embrace.

“For what?” she asked.

Chad opened the screen door and turned back to her. “Everything,” He walked into the house and down to the basement.

Marissa entered her bedroom and closed the door.
There is no way I can sleep now
, she thought. She picked up the phone and began to fill her best friend in on how things were going.

Over the course of the next four days, Marissa fell into a routine. She would spend the day with Anthony while the boys were in school. She tried limiting the time he slept during the day, in hopes that he would sleep better for Chad at night. She would lie on the floor and play with him or take him for walks around town.

Once the boys were home from school, she would sit at the dining room table with Chad for hours, helping him through his seemingly endless pile of homework.

On Wednesday, they had finished his math and moved on to physics.

Sometimes, Brayden would join them, and Marissa would help him as well. Other times, he would leave to spend time with Melanie or play football with the guys.

On Friday night, Marissa convinced Chad to take a night off from homework. They invited Melanie over to have a movie night in the basement.

Halfway through the movie, they heard footsteps behind them on the stairs. They turned to see who it was.

It was Chris. No one had mentioned his name since the day of the fight.

Chad stood up, defensively. “You need to leave.”

Chris put his hands up. “I’m not here to fight,” he said. “I just want to talk.”

“So talk,” Chad told his brother.

“Alone. It’s about Dravyn.”

Marissa squeezed Chad’s hand at the sound of the name. “I’ll be outside if you need me” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and started up the stairs. Brayden and Melanie followed, leaving the brothers alone with the sleeping baby.

“What do you think that’s about?” Brayden asked when the three had stepped outside.

Melanie shook her head. “I have no idea. Chris hasn’t said a word to me all week.”

“Same here,” Brayden said.

Melanie turned to Marissa. “Dravyn is our brother that died a few months ago,” she started to explain.

“I know. Chad told me all about it the other night,” she told them.

“I’ve never heard either of them talk about him since it happened. Chris didn’t even seem to care,” Melanie said.

“Chad took it hard, but he tried to hide it,” Brayden added.

A few minutes later, Chris walked out the door. “Don’t leave him alone tonight, please,” he told the group as he disappeared down the street. Eventually, Chad emerged from the basement.

“Can someone keep an eye on Anthony for a little bit? I need to go for a walk. Need to clear my head.”

“Do you want company?” Marissa asked.

“I don’t know what I want. I want to be alone, but I don’t want to be alone. I just don’t want to have to talk about it right now,” Chad told her.

“You two go,” Brayden told Chad and Marissa.

“Anthony will be fine,” Melanie added.

Chad walked toward the cemetery. Marissa followed. The walk was silent. After climbing the fence to the park, she reached for his hand. He pulled away.

“I’m sorry if I’m being a complete asshole right now. I really want to be alone, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. I just don’t trust myself to not do something stupid,” he told her, not bothering to even look at her.

She backed off a couple of steps and continued to follow. They walked passed the empty field, back to a dark corner of the park with a small, sandstone cave.

Chad began to search through bushes inside the cave. He handed Marissa a small metal box and a bottle of tequila that were hidden there.

“Get rid of them please,” he said, still not looking at her.

Marissa opened the bottle and dumped it out. When she opened the box, she didn’t know how to get rid of its contents. Inside the box were several small bags of a white powder that Marissa assumed was cocaine. Another bag contained a large amount of marijuana, and yet another bag was filled with various pills. It was nothing she could just dump in the park, so she stuffed the box in her bag, intending to flush it when they returned to the house.

Suddenly, Chad started punching, kicking, and shouting at the cave wall.

“Chad, what is wrong?” she asked, but he didn’t hear her.

“You were my brother! I trusted you!” He shouted between punches.

Marissa didn’t know what to do. She knew he had to be stopped before he seriously hurt himself, but he was throwing punches so wildly, she was afraid to get in the way.

Suddenly, a dark figure rushed passed Marissa and put his arms around Chad, holding him down. Chad continued fighting and after a couple of kicks to the person holding him back, he broke free and continued to pummel the wall.

“Chad!” Marissa shouted again, but it was useless.

The mysterious person stood up and wrestled Chad to the ground. Once Chad saw that it was his own twin brother holding him down, he began to calm down.

“All you are going to do is hurt yourself,” Chris told his brother. He looked at Marissa. “I know what you did with the box, but what did you do with the bottle?”

Marissa held up the empty liquor bottle. “I dumped it,” she told them.

“Would you let me up?” Chad yelled at his brother, in between gasping for air.

“Are you going to lose it again?” Chris asked.

Chad took a few deep breaths. “I’m okay,” he finally said.

Chris loosened his grip on his brother to allow him to sit up, but he didn’t completely let him up.

Chad’s hands were a bloody mess from his fight with the stone wall. Marissa pulled a bottle of water from her bag and handed it to Chris, who opened and dumped it on Chad’s hands. He also pulled off his shirt, ripped it in half, and wrapped each hand. When he was done, he allowed Chad to stand.

“You are going to need to clean that better when you get home,” Chris told them. “I’m sorry, but I had to tell you.”

“I know,” Chad muttered, looking at the ground.

“And you are going to need to tell her, before you do something else stupid and end up losing her.” Chris looked at Marissa. “I’m really not as much of an ass as I have been lately.”

“He is the good twin usually. I’ve always been the evil one,” Chad forced a laugh. He tried to reach a wrapped hand into his jeans pocket. “Shit. I don’t suppose one of you has a cigarette? Mine are apparently at the house.”

Marissa handed him one and lit one herself. “Is someone going to explain what the hell is going on?”

Chad lit the cigarette and leaned against the cave wall. “Apparently, Tamara was cheating on me the whole time we were together. With Dravyn. I can’t believe my own brother would do that to me.”

Marissa didn’t know what to say. She smoked her cigarette and kept her mouth shut.

“Did you open that box?” Chad asked her. Marissa nodded. “Just so you know, none of that is mine. I haven’t touched anything in over a year. I want to, but I know I can’t. Do me a favor, will you? Can you see if there are any white pills that say Watson 388 on them?”

Marissa looked skeptical. “It’s a pain killer,” Chris told her. “It might be a good idea. Don’t open it here though,” he added. “Keep him away from everything else in that box.”

Marissa nodded. She walked out of the cave and out of sight from the boys before taking the box out of her bag. After going through every pill in the bag, she found six of the pills that Chad had described. After putting everything else away, she returned to the cave.

“Is there anything else hidden here that we should get rid of?” Chris asked Chad.

Chad shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. I haven’t been back here since I was arrested. I assumed Eric still had stuff stashed here, but I wasn’t sure.”

Marissa handed Chris the pills along with another bottle of water. He handed one to Chad and put the rest in his pocket

“How did you know to come here?” Chad asked his brother after swallowing the pill.

“It was the last place I wanted you to end up at, so naturally, it was the first place I checked. I knew you and Dravyn always stashed stuff here, and I know Eric still does. I just hoped you weren’t going to ever come back for it. Why did you?” Chris asked. “And why did you bring her?”

“I didn’t think I would lose it like that,” Chad explained. “At first, I wanted to get high and forget everything. Then on the walk down here, she reached for my hand, and I realized I didn’t need it. I wanted to search this place and get rid of everything, but I knew I wasn’t strong enough to do it by myself. If I would have opened that box, I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop myself,” he admitted. “Then I got here and this place reminded me so much of Dravyn that I just snapped.”

“I’ll walk you guys home and come back here to clean out anything else,” Chris told them. He pulled Marissa aside. He handed her the five pills from his pocket. “Chad has never had a problem with pain pills, but I don’t want to take chances. Give him one in the morning and one at night. No more than that, no matter how much he begs. Don’t let him know where they are. And flush everything in that box as soon as you get to the house. Can you handle that?” he asked.

Marissa nodded. They returned to Chad and began the walk back to the house.

“Go take care of that,” Chris told her when they entered the yard. “Stay with me, brother,” he told Chad as Marissa disappeared into the house. “Okay, I don’t know her, but you apparently have a good thing going there. Don’t mess it up. Brayden has been trying to tell me how good she is for you, and I’m now agreeing with him. I’m sorry for getting you kicked out. I’m sorry for the other day in the park. I’m really sorry for what I had to tell you tonight, but you needed to know.”

Marissa walked back into the yard. She handed the open box to Chris so Chad could see that it was empty.

“Thank you for caring about him so much. I don’t even want to think about what could have happened if you weren’t there. I’m going back to make sure there isn’t more hidden.” Chris walked off into the cemetery.

“I’m sorry,” Chad began. “Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“As long as you go clean your hands right now. I’m exhausted and going to bed,” she told him, even though she wouldn’t sleep. Her mind was racing.

“I will. Is everything gone?” he asked. Marissa nodded. “Thank you. I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”

“Goodnight,” she told him as she walked into the house and down the hall, shutting herself in her room.

Marissa didn’t know what to do. Her first instinct was to call Melissa and ask for advice, but Melissa would probably tell her to end things at this point.

Part of Marissa considered ending the relationship. He had seriously scared her that night.

Another part, a larger part, told her to hang on tight. It was going to be a bumpy ride, but they would get through it. Chad needed her, and she found herself needing him. She couldn’t imagine her life without him.