Pinky Swear

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Josh

“Are you sure you have to move?” Peyton whines, wrapping her arms around my waist as I throw my belongings into suitcases and boxes. She’s been here for two days straight and I’m itching to kick her out. She thinks she’s my girlfriend, but I have no idea why. I’ve never given her that f*****g impression. You’d think that at twenty-seven years old I’d want to settle down and find a wife—at least, that’s what my mom thinks—but I’m not interested. I’m young and successful and I don’t want to be tied down. I’ve lived in New Jersey for nine years now, working hard and accumulating a nice rotation of women to warm my bed. Peyton is honestly one of the few reasons I even decided to move back home—she’s suffocating me. The other being that I got an offer I couldn’t turn down.

“Yes.”

“I was just about to introduce you to my parents,” she tells me, pouting.

I extract myself from her arms and sit her down on the edge of my bed. “I don’t know what gave you the impression that I want to meet your parents, but I don’t. Peyton, this thing we have going—it’s just for fun. You knew that. We were never serious, and we’re not going to be.”

“You’re just saying that,” she cries, taking hold of my hands. “We were so close to making it official.”

We were? “No, Pey, we weren’t. I don’t want a girlfriend—I never have. I think maybe you should go so this doesn’t have to be harder for you than it needs to be.”

She smiles ruefully. “Always trying to protect me. You’re like my knight in shining armor.” She grabs her purse from my bed and stands to her feet. She kisses my cheek and then brushes past me. “You’ll call me in a few days and everything will be fine,” she calls over her shoulder as she finally leaves my place.

I remove a drawer and dump its contents into a box when I hear the front door open again. I’m out of patience.

“I swear to God, Peyton, get the f**k out. You are not my girlfriend!” I yell.

“Harsh,” a voice says from behind me, chuckling.

I don’t even turn around, I just replace the drawer and pull out another one.

“She wasn’t taking the hints, it was time to get it through her thick skull,” I tell him and he laughs again.

Derek has been my best friend for years, since elementary school. We’re both fairly similar, but where I’m rough around the edges, he’s suave. He breaks up with girls and has them thinking it was their idea. When I break up with girls I usually get slapped in the face. I’m the type to dress up from time to time, and he’s the type to occasionally dress down. He also happens to have gotten a job right outside of our hometown, so he was pretty excited when he learned that we’d only be about thirty minutes apart instead of a couple hours. That means we can still be each other’s wingman, and we can still spend our Friday nights getting wasted and picking up girls. What could be better than that?

“You’re supposed to have all your boxes downstairs in thirty minutes, bro. What have you been doing?”

“Peyton,” I answer simply, with a slick smile on my face.

“Ah,” he says. “Understood. You better hurry up or they’ll leave all your s**t here,” he tells me now, talking about the moving company we hired at the last minute when things became too much. They packed up Rick’s house while he was working, and I was supposed to be packing up my own s**t, but my d**k had other plans.

“I just have a few more boxes,” I sigh. All I have to do is get my clothes and my closet boxed up and in the truck. I rented a furnished apartment, so nothing big comes with me. My TV is already loaded up, and the few things I had in the kitchen. Other than that, I didn’t have many belongings.

“You know you can always crash with me until you get a place,” he tells me again. He’s told me this before.

“I know, man, but I already asked Alyssa before I knew that you were relocating too. I think she’s excited about it.”

I turn and toss him a box of clothes and catch him looking nervously at the floor. It’s kind of freaking me out. Like the guy is straight as straight can be, but I get this weird feeling that for some reason he’d really rather me crash with him than stay with my sister. So what is he hiding?

I shrug it off. I’m just reading too much into things.

He catches the box and hefts it out of the bedroom. I get the rest packed up within the thirty minute timeframe, not so carefully—more like haphazardly—throwing things into boxes and trash bags. I’ll sort it all out after I find a place in Knoxville. I grab my one suitcase and meet Rick downstairs so that we can get this road trip started, me driving my truck and him driving whatever new sports car he’s leased this month.

The drive is long and by the time I reach Alyssa’s townhome community, I’m beat. I search the numbers painted on the end of the driveways until I find hers and park. It’s late, but she immediately opens the door for me and pulls me into a hug. We don’t spend much time catching up before we both head to bed.

The room I’m staying in is small. Decent, really, but not what I’m used to. I climb into the queen-sized bed and close my eyes. By the time I open them again it’s bright and sunny out, the light pouring through uncovered windows. I make a mental note to buy blackout curtains as I check the time on my phone. 7 AM. Damn. I groan and force myself up out of bed. The house is quiet and I know Lyss isn’t up yet—she’s never been a morning person, and it’s a Saturday. I open my suitcase and pull out my exercise clothes. The moving company dropped my things off at a storage unit, so I’ll have to go by and pick up more clothes later, but for now I’m going for a run.

I step out the front door and into the fresh air and it feels good. Being home feels more right than I thought it would. I walk down the drive as I pop in my AirPods and set my music. I’m so engrossed in my playlist that I don’t notice the person jogging by and I bump into them. I catch her by the waist and right her before she eats cement.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I wasn’t looking where I was going,” I admit.

She gets ahold of her bearings and then looks at me.

“Josh?” She asks, surprised.

I force a polite smile. “Avery. You live around here?” I ask. Of course she does. Of course her and my sister are f*****g neighbors. This is going to just be great. Another reason to get my own place as soon as I can. This chick has always had it out for me and I don’t know why. I never slept with her, so she can’t possibly be mad about that. I never broke one of her friend’s hearts—Lyss’s friends have always been off limits, and I’ve always respected that. So I’m not sure what makes her hate me so much.

“Two houses down,” she tells me, pointing at a drive with a sleek Armada and a Ford pickup.

I nod. “Nice. I’m not surprised you and Lyss are neighbors.”

She gives me a tight smile.

“Did she not tell you I was back in town?” I ask. “You seem a little… shocked.”

She shakes her head. “No, she told me. She just left out the part where you were staying with her.”

“Is that a problem?” I ask, a smirk on my face.

“No?” She says, but it sounds like a question. She puts her hands on her hips. “Why would it be?” She’s asked me, but the motion of her hands has drawn my attention to her body.

How long has little Ava looked like… this? She’s wearing a pink sports bra with little matching shorts, and they fit her like a glove. Her waist is thin and her hips are thick. My eyes travel back up to her face, stopping at her breasts for a short moment, admiring the way her bra barely holds them in. She’s definitely not little Ava anymore.

“I don’t know,” I answer her, snapping myself out of my Avery-induced trance. She’s prettier than I remember, too. Her face is bright and open, her full lips the same soft pink as her tiny outfit. Her green eyes shine and her freckled skin looks soft enough to touch. Her dark hair is falling from her messy bun, and my hand aches to push the tendrils from her face.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I take an awkward step back. “I just always thought you didn’t like me much.”

She shrugs, either pretending to not notice that I checked her out, or actually not noticing I did it. “I don’t really know you well enough to dislike you.” She takes a step away from me too. “I’ll see you around, though. I’ve got to head home.”

“See you around,” I say, turning and jogging away from her. The best thing I can do right now is get her off of my mind.