Ethan

“You’ve got to be kidding.” I stared at my brother like he’d lost his damn mind.

“Nope.”

I sat up a little straighter in my seat, having perched myself on the ragged, ripped leather atrocity of a couch to watch him paint. He’d claimed our basement as his studio, and no one complained because it was just a place to collect old junk anyway. No one really used it. “You backed out of going to the prom with the head cheerleader a week before the dance? Are you insane? After all that time chasing her, you just walked away? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You wouldn’t understand.” He tapped his brush on a spool of cloth at the base of his easel and went back to making small strokes on the canvas. I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be yet, but he clearly knew what he was doing.

“Try me.”

“Why do you care so much?”

“For one, your former date has a sister in my grade who I kind of like. Now that you pissed off Christina, how will I ever get her sister to go out with me?”

He didn’t seem apologetic in the least. “I did what I had to do.”

“Why did you have to do it? Why? You’ve hooked up with half the girls at the high school without ever backing down. Why now? Why’d you have to ditch this girl and sink me with her little sister?” I was whining, and I didn’t give a shit. Christina’s sister was fucking hot.

“She’s not the one.”

I nearly swallowed my tongue. “The one? What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m with someone now.”

I rolled my eyes and picked up one of his discarded brushes, throwing it at his back. “You’re always with someone. Always. Sometimes more than one someone at a time. What’s your point?”

As a lowly freshman, I hadn’t been around the high school long, but I’d seen more than enough at home. My brother wasn’t just a player, he was the goddamn MVP—a legend whose name would live in infamy long after he accepted his diploma next month. And now he was talking about ‘the one?’ He had to be high or something.

“Dude, did you take something? What was it? Acid? Are you seeing purple elephants?”

“Funny, you little shit.” He chuckled despite himself.

“Really…” I shifted into a more serious tone. “What’s the deal?”

He set aside his palette and came to sit on the edge of the crappy couch next to me. “You really want to know?”

“Yes, fucker. I asked, didn’t I?”

He frogged my arm and grinned. “I’m in love.”

My first instinct was sympathy. “Damn, man, I’m sorry.”

He laughed out loud this time, shaking his head. “No, idiot. It’s a good thing. Actually, it’s a great fucking thing. She’s great. The best thing that ever happened to me.” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “She’s the girl I’m going to marry.”

“Who is it?”

“Cara Shaw.”

I bolted straight up out of my chair. “Jared’s sister, Cara? Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack, squirt.” He ruffled my hair, teasing me with the patronizing nickname I hated and had long outgrown.

“You can’t be in love with his sister. Come on, Ryan, don’t do this to me. He’s my best friend, and if you screw her over, he’ll never forgive either of us.”

“Not going to happen. I told you; she’s the one.”

“What happened to ‘it’s the thrill of the chase’ and ‘I’ll never settle for just one girl’?” I was panicking. Jared had been my best friend forever. As far as I knew, Cara and my brother had never even spoken before now. She wasn’t into man-whores like Ryan. She was a good girl, smart and focused. She was going to be a doctor one day. She had dreams. Ryan’s goals had never been much deeper than “screw as often as possible.” He made good enough grades, but he wasn’t driven like Cara was.

“I meant all of that at the time. But things change, little brother. And it happens so fast you don’t even see it coming.” He got a strange, faraway look in his eyes, but he never stopped smiling. “One minute, you’re strolling along, and you’ve got it all figured out, and the next your whole world shifts, and you’re never the same.”

“You don’t even know Cara.”

“My heart does. It saw her, and it was game over. I knew she was meant for me, and she knew I was meant for her. It was just that fast.” He snapped his fingers “And it’s real, Ethan.” He grinned down at me. “You’ll see, little brother. It’s going to happen to you too, someday. And when it does, when you find that instant bond, you’ll understand why I walked away from everything else for her. Because there is nothing else—no one else—not for me.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but the look on his face told me he was dead serious. I never thought in a million years I’d be sitting there listening to those words coming out of my man-slut brother’s mouth, but here I was, watching him stare off into space like a lovesick puppy.

“Jesus, man. When you fall, you fall hard.”

He just laughed and nodded, returning to his work.

I watched him in complete bafflement as his prediction played on repeat in my head.

You’ll see, little brother. It’s going to happen to you too, someday.

I scoffed under my breath and shook my head, leaving him to whatever daydream had stolen his attention.

Me fall that hard for a girl?

Not fucking likely.