7This is the second part of "Dear me,"; next is the prologue. Thank you for your input on the first chapter; I would appreciate any more advice for improving this story.
"Dear me,"
Ashley Elisabeth West went to Brianna Jordan Smith's house that night with the intent to kill her boyfriend and his new girlfriend. What she saw there as she perched on a tree branch and peered into Brianna's room was something similar to a myspace bulletin come to life and gone horribly, horribly wrong. Like in all relationships with a boy hot with sexual needs and a girl willing to be the ice, they were staying in Brianna's room. Specifically, they were in her bed. Even more specifically, they were naked and Ashley was given the privilege of seeing her ex boyfriend, David Joseph Flater, finally lose his virginity.
She watched in horror as he did to Brianna what she had always wanted to do with him. In a way, seeing the way he broke out into a sweat and the manner that Brianna had while she writhed beneath him, sealed the deal. Most women would have dropped the gun, and run away crying but most women wouldn't have been there with a gun in the first place. Now she had no second thoughts about her plan; they would die.
Silently, Ashley dropped from the old Maple tree's branch and landed on the ground. She crept around the building and noticed that only two cars were there- David's and Brianna's. That meant Brianna's parents were out: perfect. Carefully, she looked around and found an open window. It was a hot night and the house appeared to have no air conditioning on the first floor. She began to sweat due to the strain and nervousness, and she thought of David upstairs-sweating as he knelt above another girl. Her jaw cracked unpleasantly as she ground her teeth together.
She pushed the screen in carefully. It popped and she jumped; obviously, the police, FBI, other important governmental figures, and at least twenty, credible witnesses would quickly pile in after a screen popped on Maple Street. Taking a deep breath, she slowed her heart rate and lifted herself into their house.
Her eyes were already adjusted enough that she could make out the dark shapes of furniture. It was dark and unfamiliar but obsession has a way of guiding one. As though she were a trained profession, Ashley moved through the house and found Brianna's bedroom.
David gasped and lowered his body onto the bed. Brianna made room for him among the sweat-covered, dirty sheets and he stretched out. She grimaced a little as she thought about how sweaty and germ-ridden they both were. Her mother would NOT be happy to see this sheets in the wash.
Brianna was nervous about her parents- especially her father- finding out about this. They had yet to find out about her first boyfriend and especially not her second...or this. She began humming a monotone tone while chewing on her lip- two bad habits from her early years.
David smiled at her, amused. "Relax, I'm not going to hit you," he said gently. She looked shocked for a moment and David wondered if that had been the wrong thing to say. Technically it was, Brianna's parents strictly followed the motto "Spare the row; Spoil the child" the way others diligently follow their religion. She almost opened her mouth to ask if he was lying but she remained silent.
David sensed her increase in discomfort and gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek. "Relax," he repeated and she slowly nodded. They had been best friends for a long time before this spur-of-the-moment relationship so it seemed natural to just lie there; even if they were naked.
Finally, after she stopped thinking about her parents, Brianna fell into a light sleep and David carefully stepped out of the bed. He felt so odd, being naked in a room that wasn't his own. What felt even odder was that he thought more about Ashley than Brianna, the girl who had just screwed him. It felt like Ashley was very close and he still wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not; it just felt odd. David sighed and paced the room compulsively.
He still wasn't sure about leaving Ashley for Brianna. Ashley was pretty, intelligent, nice, and all around awesome...for everyone but him; she was so nervous and quick to anger over any emotion that they had never even really kissed let alone what he had just done with his best friend-gone girlfriend. This made him think about the time she had finally pecked him on the cheek and then slapped him for grinning over it like the teenage boy he was. Then he remembered when they had gotten detentions for their water fight in science class. Their stupid fight over whether they would watch 'Jackass' or 'Not Another Teen Movie'; they decided to watch 'The Terminator' after her five-year-old sister, Samantha, asked what "fucking asshole" meant in the middle of the argument.
He compared this to Brianna; she wasn't much of a looker or too smart but she was funny, they had been best friends for a long time, and she knew how to have a good time; their relationship was steadier than his with Ashley, so what did he have to complain about? He could always complain about her need to hug everybody she knew in public, her sometimes stupid way of screaming his name and effectively embarrassing him by fly-tackling him at school, or how she flaunting instead of accentuating-not that he was complaining about THAT. Of course, they shared a similar sense of humor, had no urge to kick him for looking at her the wrong way, and she didn't mind that he was a GUY with GUY urges. David sighed again and rubbed his forehead. It was so confusing because in a way, he loved them both.
Ashley heard him sigh as she stood outside the bedroom door and wondered what type of sigh it was. Could it have been sad? Happy? Was he really moaning? Her nostrils flared and eyes slanted at the idea of him moaning; she may have just seen him have sex but that didn't mean she could accept him liking it. It made her think about the time she had spontaneously kissed him before she had to hit him for blatantly laughing while staring at her chest; then there was the time she got sick off cookie dough and he had to hold her hair back as one would for a drunk woman, while she vomited up what seemed to be her intestines. Next, she smirked over the time he had jumped into her pool from the top of her roof , had broken his right arm (leaving her and his various friends to carry all his school books), and almost drowned. He was stupid, she thought to herself, but he was hers; then she felt crest-fallen when she remembered that he wasn't-not anymore, at least.
Then right as she felt her heart soften and the idea of forgiveness was rearing its head, Brianna moaned; her parents had screamed her over the habit, saying it made her sound like a whore, but it still remained along with her scars from playing "X-treme" softball with Ashley, David, his various friends, and a rock in place of the ball. Brianna was a moaner whether in a good way or a bad way but Ashley, haven't never heard her moan before, had no way of knowing whether it was sexual or that it was just something she did unconsciously in her sleep. Her heart hardened again (and a piece of it broke) and Ashley finally broke down the door.
David jumped and Brianna awoke sleepily before she shrieked at the sight of a third figure in her room. She grasped for the sheets while David looked for his pants. They failed to notice the gun.
"Hey baby," Ashley said calmly to David. "Did you miss me?" Ashley was pissed. In fact, she was beyond pissed; she was insanely hurt, mad, heartbroken, jealous, and PMSing. She lifted the gun and moonlight shone off the barrel. Brianna screamed again and David stopped his search for his pants. Slyly, Ashley positioned the gun between both naked teenagers to convince them it was pointed at their head instead of the other's.
"Ashley pleas- Before David could continue she slapped him. He stared dumbfounded at her and touched a hand to his burning cheek. She may have yelled at him out of nervousness before but she had never slapped him across the face; his skin tightened as he thought about the time she kissed him and the similarities between these two slaps. The room was dark enough that he never noticed the tears sliding slowly down her cheeks making her skin feel clammy.
"Baby, don't talk when my lips are moving. You know how much I hate being interrupted," She glared at Brianna. "Or stolen from." She actually did like Brianna, honestly, but stealing was a Christian pet peeve of hers. Her voice remained steady but the tears still follow the path down her face. Brianna quivered underneath her glare.
"Ashley, please we can work this out." He really wanted to work it out because he really just wanted his best friend to remain his best friend and his ex girlfriend to become his girlfriend again. David began moving towards her in an attempt to hold her and maybe grab the gun; he would keep quiet about it and he would make sure Brianna did too so nothing happened to Ashley. She sobbed and reached for him as Brianna wondered what the hell was happening. Ashley and David thought of when Ashley was crying over her parent's divorce and they had hugged for the first time, in front of their high school while he did his best to prove that it was for the best and yes, they would stay friends even if her really cool mom moved out, and NO, he wouldn't stop being there for her. He pulled her close and the trigger clicked. His hug had accidentally moved the trigger the right way for it to go off: the wrong way for him. Brianna screamed once more as David dropped to the ground with a bullet in his back. Ashley swayed as her vision darkened and her ears rang from both shock and the gunshot.
"David, babe," Ashley said in an uncertain tone, "This was probably for the best." She continued, almost conversationally while she felt her heart twist and turn in her chest. It made her remember the day she had almost suffocated him during a pillow fight with her two, younger sisters. "Besides,I wouldn't go out with you again, if you paid me," she finished in an attempt to convince herself, while she remember the day he had asked her out and then taken it back when she passed out. Actually, she would have gone out with him for free; in fact, she probably would have paid anything up to her soul for him to go out with her. Young love is strange. You would rather shoot them than admit you loved them despite the pain they had put you through.
She turned towards Brianna. Slowly, she moved towards the foot of the bed. Brianna shuffled back until her back hit the headboard.
"I don't like you," Ashley whispered, "I don't like you at all." Actually, she had been Brianna's friend long before she introduced her to David, and they had remained close throughout High School. She stared down at Brianna, unsure of what was the appropriate action; she had just unwittingly shot her boyfriend but had been planning to kill him early. Would she get in trouble? Probably. But the lust for revenge had died along with David, and even if he wasn't, he was as good as dead.
Brianna whimpered. Ashley stared through Brianna as though she wasn't there with the gun held loosely in one hand as she thought. Then the moon winked off the gun again.
Brianna screamed again, jumped off her bed, hurtled over David's body, and ran out into the hall. She slammed into Ashley as she went and the gun fell from Ashley's hands. When the gun fell it fired the final shot.
In horror, Brianna watched as Ashley's body and as the shell casing fell on the ground, beside the smoking gun. She ran out of her house and continued to run, scream, and panic until several hours and many miles later, a man finally picked the hysterical girl up and brought her home to the awaiting police.
David slowly gained consciousness and felt a sharp, bitter pain through his chest and upper back. The blood spurted and from watching shows on crime and murder, he knew an artery had been punctured. He groaned and looked at Ashley's body which laid motionless beside him.
A small line of blood slid down her face from the bullet entry and he gently wiped it away. He stared into her unseeing dead eyes and, for a moment, saw the young woman he had dated, loved, and spent a good portion of his life with. Despite all that she had just done, he still loved her.
"Sweetheart," he sighed while stroking her matted hair, "Baby-love." The story behind her nickname popped up but he didn't even bother to remember the details. He kissed her still warm lips. "I love you." David said the phrase she had always wanted to hear and never would, for the first and last time. Then he held her close for comfort as he had done many times before when the world seemed to hold nothing good except each other and maybe their friends, and bled out.