Every Rose Read Online Free

that I was glad that they had hit it off.
    She looked at me like I was the village idiot and barked, “I couldn’t possibly date Michael for real. You know that. I just did it to piss off my parents. Mission accomplished. They told me when I went to their room to check in that we’re going car shopping tomorrow, which is exactly what I had hoped for. Can you imagine me driving my brother’s hand-me-down?!”
    I felt tears spring to my eyes. If that’s really all it was, why did she seem to have such a good time with him? She hung on his every word, laughed at all his jokes, and shared food with him. It all seemed a little too personal to have been faked on either part.  Now, I really did feel sick to my stomach. Calling my mom suddenly seemed like a great idea.
    On the ride home, I let myself consider all of the implications of what Stacy’s little rebellious standoff might have. What if Michael really did like her? What then? He would be crushed. He didn’t deal well with rejection. I knew that all too well. I had set him up for this. I just had to have a little experiment to see if he really was over me. I felt like a naïve, meddling nitwit.
    Once I was at home, I sneaked the phone to my room and called him, breaking my phone curfew. Customarily, I hung up on the first ring.
    I called him right back. He answered on the first ring. “You know, you don’t have to do that anymore. My brother doesn’t care, and he won’t tell a soul,” he said sleepily.
    “I know. It’s just habit,” I snapped back.
    “Er…What’s with all the hostility?”
    “I’m sorry.” I said aloud. To myself, I amended my apology to I’m sorry for existing.
    “For what?”
    “For setting you up with Stacy.” To myself, for acting like I don’t care about you when clearly I do. I just don’t know what to do with that.
    “Oh yeah? Why’s that? I had fun.”
    “Yeah. You really liked her, and she’s a spoiled little brat.” And I’m the biggest brat of them all.
    “Yeah. I know, but it was fun hanging out with her and helping her piss off her parents.”
    “What? You were in on it?” My voice rose incredulously.
    “In on what exactly?”
    “On Stacy getting her way and her new car.”
    “I don’t know anything about that.”
    “You knew she was using you, though?”
    “Of course, you’d have to be completely oblivious to not have known that that’s why she agreed to go out with me in the first place.”
    It was the first time I’d ever hung up on him. Almost two years we’d been talking, and he’d pissed me off on countless occasions, but I picked that moment to hang up on him. The cool part was he wouldn’t dare call me back for fear of getting me nice and grounded. Or so I thought. When my phone rang, I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Hello?” I breathed.
    “Don’t ever hang up on me again,” he said through his teeth.
    I’d never heard him get angry with me before. I cringed. Then, a part of me delighted. I didn’t get that. “That’s what you get for calling me oblivious,” I shot back. “You know better than to call me. If my mom had picked up and realized the phone was for me at this hour…”
    He ignored my protests. “I wasn’t calling you oblivious. You’re just too kindhearted to get that she was only using me for my good looks and rebellious appeal,” he snickered, losing his anger quickly.
    I contemplated this a moment and decided to level with him. “I’m not kindhearted. I set you up as a test, and I knew that was the only reason she would go out with you. It’s just that you two seemed so—”
    “Yeah. I knew that too.”
    “Really? Why, then, did you agree to go?” He was really starting to piss me off. Freaking know-it-all.
    “Because you wanted to know whether or not I was over you, and I wanted to know what you were like when you were on a date.” He hesitated for the briefest of moments before he proceeded to completely blow my mind. “When we finally have our time