Sixteen

Auriella Everleigh Soleil

I knew this was going to be a problem the second we walked through the door. Emmeline and Gabriel sat with their friends around the lounge, Madison and Liam were there, which wasn't unusual since they were in the same friendship group.

What was surprising was my boyfriend sitting right alongside them. When he caught my eyes, he sent me a pleading look, one that meant get him out of there. And to be a good girlfriend I should have but I hadn't had my doses of normal drama. I had come back home and I needed some entertainment in my life.

"Oh you guys are back." Emmeline says with faux excitement but I could hear the disappointment in her tone. "Nate was looking for you, Everleigh. I said he could wait here with us while you were out doing whatever it was you were."

"We just were picking up a couple snacks." I answer and Liam looks at all the bags incredulously.

"You call that a couple snacks, you guys look like you bought out the store." He exclaims dramatically. I just shrug.

"I mean I just grabbed what looked interesting since I haven't tried most of these. You're welcome to have some." Liam looks at me for confirmation before taking one of the overflowing bags and dumps it onto the table. He picks and chooses what he wanted, the other people in the room looked like they wanted some too. "You can take it all take, if you want you can dig through the other bags as well."

"Why don't you guys join us?" Gabriel offers, looking at me then to his brothers. "All of you, we haven't had a family night in forever."

Sure the Walkers could be counted as family but Mara, Coraline, Franklin and Lucas were all here. I didn't like Mara, she was bratty and was very similar to Emmeline. I didn't like Lucas for obvious reasons but I didn't mind the siblings. I have no idea why Coraline and Franklin were friends with these people but they were the most decent ones in the group.

Xander looks at me pleading with his eyes to say no.

Grayson looks at me pleading with his eyes to say no.

Ezra and Elijah look at me pleading with their eyes to say no.

So what do I do?

"Sure." I plop on the couch next to Lex with a packet of the crisps we had bought. "What are you doing?"

"You know." Emmeline draws out. "Just hanging out."

"Uh huh." I muse, she was eyeing the arm Xander had around my waist and when I rested my head on his shoulder I could feel her glare shooting holes into me. Another person was also shooting us but I didn't even acknowledge him.

Xander leans down to my ear, so close that I can feel his lips on my ear. "You are just trying to cause problems and start drama."

I don't give him a verbal answer, I just shrug like I have no idea what he's talking about but by the smirk he gives me he knows that was exactly what I was doing. He was glad, I had always been a bit of a troublemaker. I had taken a more docile stance when I got here not wanting to be hated for misbehaving but now I realise that whatever I do isn't going to be liked by Lilianna and is not going to be noticed by Nicholass so I might as well be myself. And Xander loved me for who I was not who I had been pretending to be, as exasperated as he acted about my antics he went along with them every single time and loved it.

Xander gave me a knowing look, a twinkling in his silver eyes. "I'm surprised it took you this long."

I gave him a pinch in the waist for that, to which he flinched back. I rolled my eyes, he was just being dramatic, but Emmeline caught that exchange. I mean, of course she did, she had been watching us with hawk eyes since I had sat down.

"You know I'm pretty sure that's counted as abuse." She states matter of fact, I raise an eyebrow at the statement.

"Because I pinched him, very lightly in fact. I don't even have my nails done." I glance down at my bare nails. Eleanor said she would take me in the next few days to get my hair and nails done, just the two of us. My love for Eleanor Walker was increasing everyday, she was like the mother figure I never had.

"He flinched." Emmeline argued.

"Because he's being dramatic." I wasn't getting worked up like she was. I was talking in my normal tone with my voice steady. While her tone was rising higher and higher, she was getting red in the face as well with what I assumed was anger. But surprisingly Emeline drops it, she doesn't comment on it anymore and the room fills with different types of conversation, but Emmeline was silent, she was scheming and I didn't know what she was planning to do.

"Dare." I said in answer to Liam's question.

"Okay, let Ezra go through your contacts and call one person there." I toss Ezra my phone unlocked and opened on my contacts. The way we had designed the phone was that you could switch easily between a work phone and a personal phone. He couldn't call any of my work contacts so I wasn't worried.

Ezra looks pleased and scrolls through the contacts I have. "Who's the Princess?"

"The girl you heard me on the phone with the other day in the car." I answered.

"Is she a princess?" Franklin asks, scooting closer to Ezra so he can see my screen.

"Yup."

They laughed like I was kidding.

"And who's Sylvian?"

"My cousin."

"Urg, that's boring." Ezra looks up at me. "Wait, you're friends with Ambrosi Valiente, what's his number saved under?"

They all thought it was so cool I was friends with a professional athlete. They brought it up in conversation a couple of times a week and always wanted to know more about him. Ambrosi thought it was awesome to have people wanting to know about him.

"Just go to my recents, he should be at the top, or at least under Atlas."

Ezra does that and the number rings three times before he picks up. "You know E, I love you and everything but if you call me so much your boyfriend might think you like me more than him."

Ezra silently clears his throat before speaking into the speaker. "Hi Dave, yes I've got the body, where do I put it?"

It was silent on the other end of the line. "Oh come on, you know where to hide the body, put it with all the others."

"I don't know, that hideout was almost compromised last time." Ezra answers AJ back, in the same very deep fake voice. "Do you really want to take the risk?"

Ambrosi groaned. "Come on man, if we want this business to work you have to use your head. I can't be the one thinking every single time, figure it out on your own and don't rush to call me, if you call too much they will be suspicious."

The call was cut and as soon as the dial tone rang in the air almost everyone burst into laughter.

"What the heck." Ezra looked at me with a huge grin. His blonde hair was falling into his face but I could see peaks of the bright blue eyes from behind. "He just went along with it."

"Ambosi and Everleigh have been best friends for nine years, they are partners in crime who have got into a lot more nonsense than prank calling someone. I'm even surprised he faltered a little, normally he just goes along with what Ev says, not even once questioning it." Alexander tells the room, pulling me back to him and pressing a kiss to my head. I make a grabby hand at Ezra and he tosses my phone back to me. I redial the number that had just cut on me.

"Human meat cafe, you kill it, we grill it. How can we help you today?" Ambrosi answers, I smile. He had been waiting for an opportunity to use that and I had just handed it to him on a silver platter.

"What's up?" I ask.

"Nothing much, sounds like your night is more fun than mine."

"My nights are always more fun than yours."

"That's because you have a kinky boyfriend you shag all night."

"Um." I interrupted, but everyone heard what he said. "Audience."

"What does shag mean?" Ezra asks.

"Fuck, bone, make love, take you pick of the litter." Ambrosi answers, I feel my cheeks heat. "May I ask who I'm talking to, assuming I'm talking to the person on the phone earlier."

"Ezra Taylor at your service."

"Oh the Ev 2.0." Ambrosi replies.

"According to who?"

"Nathaniel." I was kind of surprised AJ remembered to use our right names. Ezra turned to look at Lex, a grin once again brightening his face.

"You think I'm like Evie, that's like the biggest compliment."

"Is it really?" Ambrosi antagonises.

"Shut up AJ or I'm telling your mother what happened to her car."

"And that's my cue people, so nice to meet you. And Ev, if you tattle on me to my mother I am.... Or will come up with an appropriate threat and tell you later."

"He seems nice." Liam says.

"You sound surprised by that." I note his tone.

"I don't know, he's mega famous and super rich. I guess I just didn't expect it."

"You want to know a life secret." I tell Liam. "A lot of the people that come from old money rare really nice. Sure, most of them have a case of rich kid syndrome but that is because money is all they've ever known, they have never wanted anything they couldn't get,"

"Rich kid syndrome?"

"It's naivety to the world, they aren't really made aware of all that is happening around them. They are lost in this little bubble of wealth that they aren't made aware of the problems around the world. To them all the bad parts of the world are part of a fairytale, much like people who are born to less fortunate families can't fathom how these kids have access to so much. I'm not saying rich kids' lives are easy, they have their own set of problems, but they just aren;t aware of the problems other people have."

"I never thought about it that way." A lot of people trash rich kids, thinking they don't deserve the lives they have been given but the truth is money is an awful thing to be born into. Hunams are slimy, greedy and do anything to get ahead.

A lot of people have money problems, but for a small percentage of people money is the problem.

People I know have got up and left their lives of luxuries, their million dollar cars and billion dollar homes to go work minimum wage jobs just to lose the ties and responsibilities they have to their families.

"Okay, Gabriel truth or dare?" I ask, wanting to move on.

"Truth."

"Who's your favourite brother?"

Xander tugged on one of my curls in a warning. He was letting me know I made a cheap shot at the family but I didn't care.

"Um." He looked conflicted.

"Okay let's narrow it down, out of the brothers in the room, who is your favourite?"

That left Gabriel, Ezra and Elijah, but taking out Crew and Nolan I plunged him further into the deep end.

"Uh, I don't really know. I like them all the same." His friends chided him, letting him know he was cheating so giving in to the pressure. "Uh, I don't really know, Ezra. How the heck do you choose between your siblings?"

"I have a favourite sibling." Madison pipes up from where she had been silent.

"Me too." Ezra, Liam and Franklin all agree together.

"I have a favourite cousin." I offer. "I kind of have a favourite sibling now too."

Grayson meets my eyes when I say that and I send him a quick wink letting him know I was talking about him and no joke his whole body just brightened. Grayson hadn't been someone's favourite in his life, he was always on the back burner so I knew it was a big deal for him, but I was telling the truth. Grayson had quickly become someone very important to me, he was someone I could vent to when I was having a bad day, he was someone I hung out with and would just sit in the same room as me with no talking. He let me refill my social battery and then we would talk. I had learnt so much about him and I told him all about my life back home. I would tell him about my dad and he would listen to me.

One thing though is I haven't divulged my secrets. Sure, I had told him about Ambivalent and the agency but those were life secrets not personal secrets. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't tell him what was going on.

There was so much more going on than most people knew.

"Emmeline truth or dare." Mara spoke up. Xnader and I made brief eye contact for a second, this wasn't going to go well.

Hey but at least it wasn't me starting the problems this time.

"Dare." Emmeline states confidently. If there was one thing I admired about Emmeline, it was her confidence, she truly didn't give a second thought to what people thought about her.

"Okay I dare you to flirt with Nathaniel for two minutes."

The tension in the room skyrocketed, everyone watched me for a reaction and even when I didn't react the tension never dissipated.

Xander's hold tightened on me. He was uncomfortable, but he knew I was planning something. He sat through one of the most awkward two minutes of his life watching Emmeline attempt to flirt with him and when the timer went off she looked proud of herself while everyone other than Mara was mentally cringing. She was using pick up lines and corny jokes, trying to make her body seductive.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Emmeline snapped at me as I studied her.

"How many people have you flirted with, Emmeline?" I ask.

She stutters out a reply. "I don't know, a couple. Why?"

"Let me give you a few tips on flirting." I said to her, I move out of Xander's hold and push back so we are sitting side by side without touching, mimicking a first meeting or a pre-relationship setting where you aren't comfortable enough to be holding one another like we were. I positioned my body so we were face to face. "Okay first tip, hold eye contact. It's tricky for some but it shows someone you are interested in them or interested in what they are saying. A lot of the time it works because humans are self-absorbed creatures who like attention."

Was that a slight jab at her, yes?

Was I regretful I made it? Heck no.

"Step two smile, a genuine one, not one of those fake ones. People can tell even if it doesn't register, a fake smile is off-putting. But a real smile is contagious." I give Xander a bright smile and automatically his lips turn up. I'm not sure if it actually was my smile that made him smile, or he was going along with what I was saying or if he was amused at the situation.

"Step three talk, but ask them questions about themselves. And listen, ask questions, show them you are genuinely interested in what they are saying, but also give compliments, tell them something you have noticed about them, like whether they have a cool t-shirt or you like the way they smile. Something genuine again."

"Anything else." Emmeline snapped, looking at me with her arms crossed and her mouth in a pout.

"Nope, I'm sure you can figure out the rest." I stood up, I was done with this. "Goodnight."

Drama drama drama

I hate writing relationship drama but I can do sibling drama no problem.  I promise Emmeline isn't going to be insurable for too long from now.

I have already written half of the next chapter and the whole of the next so updates should come pretty consistant for the next two and I can not wait to share the coming chapters.

Hope you enjoyed, please vote and comment and I will see you next chapter.

Ara <3