Machine by Normandie Alleman
6
Dynassy
“Canyou believe that when I invited him in, he just left?” I was on the phone with my soon-to-be sister-in-law, Eden.
“No, I can’t.”
Eden had been my friend since we were babies, before both our fathers had been killed in a plane crash, on the way to one of their concerts. After their deaths, we didn’t see each other for a few years, but she and I had always kept in touch.
My brother and Eden had both found themselves in Austin, Texas, last year, where they reconnected, and now they were engaged and the happy parents of six-week-old twins Albert and Annabelle.
“I mean, I can’t remember the last time I invited a guy in and he turned me down.” I paced the floor of our family’s Beverly Hills mansion. I’d bought a home of my own, but since it was being remodeled, my mother had invited me to stay with her and my twin brother and sister. Ivy and Leo were rarely home, so it was usually me and Lucinda.
I was wearing a path in the expensive carpet as I fumed. “In fact, I don’t think that has ever happened to me in my whole life.”
I heard baby whimpering in the background. “Maybe he’s just trying to be a gentleman. Have you even considered that?”
“In this day and age?” These days, people were hooking up all over the place, but perhaps she was right. I’d heard there was a time when girls waited until the third date to put out. Could it be that he was just old school?
“Or maybe he likes you a lot, and it freaks him out. That’s what happened to me with Nick. I needed to tap the brakes because my feelings for him were overwhelming.”
Eden and Nick were really cute. It had been adorable watching my friend fall for my brother all over again. As kids, those two had always been inseparable. A few years ago, Nick was your typical playboy athlete, and now he was a doting father and soon-to-be husband. I had no doubt he was going to make a great one. They were the perfect couple.
It made no sense that Lucinda had such a problem with Eden. Especially with the way she placed such a premium on appearances. Eden and Nick were the perfect All-American sweethearts Lucinda was always trying to make me out to be. But I wasn’t as squeaky clean and wholesome as Eden had always been. I’d never been shy about my attraction to a man, and I couldn’t really relate to this idea of holding back. I was a “what you see is what you get” kind of girl.
That might be why I seemed to be always getting in trouble, at least lately, and why my mother had insisted on the latest PR campaign.
A baby howled through the phone. “Dynassy, I may have to call you back.”
It had been like this ever since the babies were born, and while my niece and nephew were adorable, they sure seemed to take up a lot of time. “Okay. Which one is that? What’s the matter?”
The cacophony on the other end grew louder. The screams had turned to wails. “It’s Albert. I think he has colic, and now he’s woken up his sister. So sorry. Got to run.”
Click.
I guess she didn’t have time for a goodbye. So much for girl talk.
I wished Ivy were home, but she’d gone to stay with Eden and Nick to help out with the babies. She wasn’t being very helpful just then. Oh yeah, Eden said she’d gone shopping…
The last person I wanted to talk to about my love life was my mother, so it was a good thing she wasn’t home or I might be tempted to discuss Bridger’s rejection with her. But she’d gone to some party and taken her cameras with her, leaving me in an unusually quiet house.
Just then, I heard the plink of a guitar and realized that my brother Leo was home.
Yay!
He was probably working on a new piece of music. That’s what he’d been doing during the break Ivy had negotiated with our mother over the summer.
Leo was the most creative of all of us Barnes kids. He inherited our father’s musical genius, and while he played the pop music that he and Ivy were so famous for, when left to his own devices, he wrote songs that were even more beautiful. Haunting almost.
My brother might be a teenage heartthrob, but he was also a true artist.
I tromped up the stairs to his suite and knocked on the door. “Leo? Can I come in?”
“Yeah.”
I opened the door slowly. I’d learned a long time ago that the room of a teenage boy could be incredibly frightening. Even though Leo had recently graduated from teen status, he held on to some of those characteristics, so I still felt some trepidation upon entering his domain.
Leo sat in a chair, one leg draped over one of the arms. He looked like he’d fallen from the sky and landed like that with the guitar in his lap. “What’s up?” he asked, not looking up from the guitar strings he strummed.
I’d never talked to Leo about guys before, but over the past few years, while he and Ivy had been on the road, Leo had grown up without me actually realizing it. Each time I saw him after a few weeks had passed, he seemed taller. His shoulders grew broader. His black hair grew and his blue eyes seemed more intense.
“Not much.” I almost asked if he wanted a sandwich, just to give me an excuse for being here. This whole thing was so embarrassing. And little brothers were nothing if not pests who made fun of their sisters. Why give him the ammunition?
“Then what are you doing in here?” His tone was more curious than annoyed.
I knew I shouldn’t talk to him about this, but he was the only one home, and I really needed some help figuring this one out. So, abandoning my better judgment, I launched into it. “So I met this guy…”
Leo chuckled.
“What?” Great, he was already laughing at me.
“Nothing. Go ahead. So you met a guy.”
I rolled my eyes, but continued. “Yeah, at the event yesterday for wounded warriors, you know how I went to that?”
“Yeah, how was that?”
“It was fine,” I answered impatiently. “So this guy, he’s a mechanic, and he’s been working on my car—”
“The one you crashed into a tree or the one you were thinking of having painted?”
“The one with the tree. Anyway, he was at the event. Apparently he’s a former SEAL who had some sort of injury while he was in Iraq. And he asked me to dance.”
“Sounds okay.”
“It was more than okay. There was a great vibe between us, and then he offered to give me a ride home, so I said yes. That way I could stay and dance longer and the production people could take the car home.”
“So what’s the problem?” Leo had stopped playing the guitar and now set it on the floor, propping it against the chair.
“Well, he brought me home and walked me to the door and that was it.”
“What do you mean ‘that was it’?”
“I mean that was it. He didn’t try to kiss me or anything, and when I invited him in, he said no, then made some sort of excuse and left.”
“What sort of excuse?”
“I don’t know. He just said something lame like he had to go.”
“Okay. So?”
“So? So he rejected me, and I don’t understand why.”
“Why do you think guys reject girls?”
“Because they really have to go and do something?”
Leo slapped his leg and laughed. “No.”
“Then why?”
“Because he’s not into you.”
Leo’s words stung. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“Why? It’s true. What else did you think?”
Suddenly my mind was spinning. Could Leo be right? Had I completely misread Bridger’s signals earlier? But why would he have asked me to dance and stayed later with me, offering to take me home, if he wasn’t interested?
“Could be that he thought hanging out with Dynassy Barnes would be epic, then he realized it wasn’t all he thought it might be. That happens to me with girls. They look great, and I think they’ll be awesome, and then they turn out to be airheads.”
My chest tightened. “I’m not an airhead!”
“Calm down. I wasn’t saying you are. I’m just saying that sometimes you think you’re going to like somebody, you get to know them a little better, and you don’t connect.” He shrugged. “Happens. Don’t get all bent.”
What Leo said was slowly sinking in. “But he asked me to dance and gave me a ride home,” I mumbled.
Leo shrugged. “So giving you a ride home was enough for him. It’s not rocket science, Di. And it’s not personal. Not every girl is for every guy. Don’t read too much into it. Besides, it’s not like you don’t have dudes chasing after you. You can have any guy you want.”
Except, apparently, Bridger Thompson.
This whole conversation reminded me why I didn’t come to my younger brother for advice on guys. Leo might be right, but he was also harsh.
Talk about a blow to my ego. Part of me wanted to crawl in bed and pull the covers up over my head stay and there for a week.
“Hey, sis, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” Leo chewed on his bottom lip.
“It’s okay.”
“Do you know what’s for dinner?”
“No.”
“Should we order a pizza?”
I backed out of his room. “Pizza sounds good. You order it.” And I stumbled back to my room, hoping that a hot bath would help me finally get my mind off Bridger Thompson.
And if I still felt like crap after that, I’d take a sexy selfie and post it online.
If tens of thousands of likes didn’t make me feel better, nothing would.
Eat your heart out, Bridger Thompson.
