Life Interrupted Read Online Free Page A

hung.  He looked so dejected in that moment that even my hardened heart broke a little for him.  When I walked over, he looked up at me and a small smile curved his lips, his lids heavier than normal, his beautiful blue eyes a little glazed from the beer and the shock of no more Lovely Lauren.  I didn’t care, though, not when he took my hand and we walked to my car together.
    As we dr ove away, I asked again what happened. “I don’t know.  The whole night was fucked up.  She got mad when I said I would meet her here because I wanted to celebrate with the guys first, and then she took forever to get here so I’m already half pissed when she does, and then she starts complaining that I pay too much attention to other girls, that I don’t make her feel special anymore.”
    He scrub bed his hands over his face and leaned his head back against the seat.  “I had no idea what she was talking about, and when I told her that she got mad and said she wouldn’t dance with me when I’m like this so she went and let Henry put his hands on her.  When I pulled him off, she said I was being irrational and told me to leave.” 
                  Lauren’s greatest weapon is being a girl—she knows exactly how to aim and hurt someone simply by manipulating them. Unlike me, she didn’t just punch Tripp when she got mad at him.  She manipulated him, worked him into a jealous rage until he conformed to what she wanted.  Not this night, though, I thought as I felt Tripp’s warm hand in mine.  Instead of chasing her like he’d been doing their entire relationship, he came running to me.  I held this revelation tightly like I did his hand while I drove him home, my excitement growing more when he asked if he could go to my house so he didn’t have to deal with his brothers.
                  We snuck through the back door and into my room as we had countless times when we were growing up, times when he needed a place to get away from the ever present pressure of his family, times when he’d messed up with his parents and needed a place to hang out until they calmed down.  Times when we were just friends and wanted to be together.
                  But this time was different.  We weren’t Tripp and Rachel, best friends. We were Tripp and Rachel, scorned boyfriend and the girl he’d run to.  I sat down on the bed, scooting back and leaning against the pillows and instead of taking his normal side, Tripp sat down on mine, scooting until I had to curl my legs up to make room for him, staring at me while I stared at him.  And before I could think or breathe his hands were in my hair and his mouth was on mine, his tongue sweeping inside to stroke my own, his lips taking mine so firmly, so thoroughly, so familiarly, it was as if we kissed every day.  In the back of my mind I worried over the fact that I could taste the beer on his breath, and then his hands swept under my t-shirt, pulling it up and over my head in one move, and all I could think of was him.
                  His hands possessed every inch of me that night, taking me to places I had never been with anyone else, his mouth making the same journey, and when he lay on top of me, his bare chest pressed to mine, he framed my face in his hands and looked down at me as if seeing me for the first time.  This was it, I thought.  He finally felt as I did.  I gave him everything I could that night, stopping him before he could search for a condom.  I wasn’t ready, but it was okay, because now that we were together I would have time to be ready.  He didn’t say anything when I made him stop, he just continued to kiss me and stroke his hands over my body, loving me in the way I always dreamed he would.
    In the morning after what felt like hours of kissing, I lay in my bed, Tripp next to me as he had been countless times in our childhood, but this time it was different.  He’d seen me without most of my clothes on,