The Trouble with Love Is

Author's Note-Please, Please review. I write faster when I know someone's reading.


Chapter 1
The Calm Before the Storm

Bethany Norwood trudges down the stairs to a slow death march. Her blonde hair cascades down her back, covering her brillant blue eyes. Today was her thirteen birthday. She, in her mind, had grown a lot from twelve to thirteen. This year everyone else would notice it, too. No one would think her the little innocent girl any longer because...today she had went from a training bra to a B-cup.
She jumps down to the last step and makes her way into the kitchen where her father and older brother are sitting. She did not have a mother; she died giving birth to her, making her a complete tomboy. Her older brother Jesse Norwood has jet black spikey hair that his dark green eyes contrasted to. He had just cut his shoulder length Brandon Boyd from Incubus type hair. (Mostly because of people saying he resembled him.) He is more the laidback type not really not caring, but not, caring either. "Hey Jesse!"
He looks up from his cereal bowl and nods. He is now in his senior year in high school; seventeen years old and ready to graduate. " 'Sup." His handsomely deep voice cuts through the air.
Her father looks up from the morning paper. "Hello princess." Bethany is daddy's little girl in Richard Norwood's eyes. He also has black hair and green eyes. Both him and his son share a striking resemblance in strong, chiseled facial features and muscular build.
She is adopted. She had been adopted by Richard Norwood when she was ten years old and Jesse was fourteen. They are not particularly close and he pretty much steers away from her existence except when one of his stupid friends tries to hit on her.
Bethany prances around the table in her baby doll t-shirt that says "Life sucks and then you die, so fuck the world and let's get high" and black cargo pants with safety pins and paper clips intertwined along the sides and around the belt loops. Her outfit is almost identical to her older, much more popular, brother. As much as she hates to say it, she models herself to be like him ever since she moved in with the Norwood's. She sits down next to Jesse. "Um, Jesse?"
"Hmph?" He stands up and grabs his car keys to his black Lexus from the kitchen counter.
"Can you give me a ride to school?" She stands up running after his large leg trail.
Jesse turns around and looks down at the girl that his father told him is his baby sister three years ago. "You going like that?" Bethany nods her head apprehensively. He throws his only other leather jacket at her. "Don't take it off again until you're at school. If any guy looks down when he's talking to you today knee him in the balls cutesy of me. Okay?"
"Yeah, okay." She follows him out to the car. She only stands at the shoulder of his lean and slender figure.
"Hey Jesse! Hurry up and get yo bitch-ass over here!" Jesse's best friend Jason McCrossin yells across the lawn. Jason is loud and arrogant. The only thing bigger than his ego is his...
Bethany stares into Jason's light, honey-brown eyes. "Hi Jason."
" 'Sup. You're thirteen now, aren't you?" Jason asks with his best smile on his face. He eyes Bethany up and down.
"Yeah." Bethany blushes a deep red.
Jesse unlocks the car and motions for Bethany to get in the back. He closes the door behind Bethany. "Why the fuck are you always looking at her like that? She's not one of your bitches at school; she's my sister! She's fucking thirteen!"
"Why do you care? You always say how you can't stand her; how she's always hanging around you like some lost puppy. Fuck, with a body like that I'll adopt her."
Jesse gets into the car without another word. "Get up here." Bethany climbs over the chair into the passenger seat. "You like me enough to listen to me, right?"
"I love you, Jesse."
Jesse winces at the idea of being loved. "Why do you come to my band practices?"
Bethany shrugs. "I think it's cool.”
"It's not because of Jason is it?"
"Why would it-."
"Promise me you'll stay away from him. Girls like you don't need guys like me and Jason. Okay?"
Bethany turns around in the chair and buckles her seat belt. "Yeah okay. I guess so." Bethany leans her head back against the car seat. "Jesse, so you think I'm pretty?"
"Nope." Jesse says bluntly as he pulls out of the driveway and starts the twenty minute drive to their school. "I barely even want you in my school this year."
Bethany looks at her face in the mirror. She actually looks older than a ninth grader entering high school, but it would still be nice if one of the only two people who cared about her well-being, is there for her emotionally. "Why do you have to be so cold all the time?" Bethany pouts her cherry red lips under her strawberry blonde hair.
"Said the scorpion to the fox 'it's in my nature'." Torrance pulls into the parking lot of their school. "I think it was a fox."
Lakeview High School is a three story tall public school for the lower rich class that do not want to go to private school. It has an outdoor pool and an indoor track. The cafeteria food is actually food and the French chef has Japanese Friday's and Italian Tuesday's. Bethany jumps from the car before Jesse stops completely. She flings off his jacket and drapes it over her arm, only to resort to a full sprint across the courtyard.
Jesse steps out of the car and gets immediately ambushed by a small group of his friends. "Ay yo Jesse!" Darion Perez, a tall, dark, and handsome Puerto Rican guy, walks up to Jesse.
Jason stalks behind him, still simmering from what happened earlier in the morning. " 'Sup."
Storm, Jesse's on again off again girlfriend, wraps her arms around his waist. Unfortunately they were on again. "Hey baby!"
Jesse's friend Gene covers his ears at Storm's high-pitched "baby" yell. "Who was the bitch you came to school with? She looked new."
"She looked good." Darion chimes in his deep, sexy Rican accent.
Price, Storm's twin brother, smiles at Jesse. "Good to put my dick in. Who was she?" Everyone laughs at Price's comment; more from fear of what his mafia connected family would do to them.
"My baby sister." The group stops laughing.
Darion chuckles to keep the lightheartedness in the situation. Most of the time his charm swooned the ladies, but it never worked with his friends. "The little girl that used to play basketball with us?"
"The little girl that stalks us to all our practices and gigs?" Gene adds.
"Puberty's a bitch, huh?."
***
Bethany walks into the crowded lunch room of Lakeview High School. After she left Jesse in the parking lot she had put his jacket on after the first boy she walked pass stared at her chest. She has not met anyone of interest at this pop world reject school. Through the crowd of people she can see Jesse's jet black hair, with blue tint stinking out. She happily walks over to him and wraps her arms from behind him, planting a huge kiss on his cheek. "I'm so glad to see you. This definitely isn't middle school anymore." She whispers softly into his ear; barely able to exhale, but not knowing the reason why.
Looking up, she sees the whole cafeteria has frozen staring intently at this little girl who dared to kiss the most popular, but unavailable senior at school. "Did I do something bad, Jesse?"
"Nah." He moves over to let her sit down. "But don't touch me in front of people ever again."
Bethany is slightly hurt at the comment. She looks up again to see the whole "popular table" looking up at her. "Why do you sit with these people? They don't seem like your type." Bethany looks at the people opposite of Torrance's usual, death becomes us, twisted and proud of it, artsy, musician crowd.
"I was bored and the pussy ain't bad." He ruffles her hair as she gasps at her brother saying that word.
"Ay yo, you!" Darion calls to Bethany across the table.
Bethany shifts her weight slightly underneath the table, but feels light pressure on her hand from Jesse's. She loses the function to breathe until Jesse moves his hand from hers. "Huh?"
"Her name's Bethany." Jesse states. The rest of the table drags out a long "ooh" from their lips.
"Yeah. Yeah. So, Bethany." Darion continues in his smooth, suave accent. Bethany could not help thinking that his little patch of hair underneath his bottom lip funny. "You coming to the party tonight. I would hate to not see such a beautiful face."
Bethany blushes at the comment. Before Bethany gets the chance to answer Storm comes to the table and taps Jesse on the shoulder. Storm has a pack of five more girls standing behind her. Jesse turns around apprehensively. "What?"
"Me and the girls were talking and we've decided you don't spend enough time with me."
Jesse glances at the crowd of drones behind her. "The girls need to mind their own damn business. I just saw you this morning."
"What, you would rather spend time with your baby sister? I see incest runs in the family, huh girls?" Storm laughs loudly and the others follow suit. All of them knew that Jesse's father and mother were second cousins.
Bethany stands up from the table. "You can't talk to my brother that!" By now the whole cafeteria is staring to see where the commotion is coming from. "Why do you take this from her Jesse? She ain't nothing, but a x-man wannabe!"
"I don't think you know who you're fuckin' wit' little girl!" The getto fabulous girl comes roaring out of Storm. Her brown skin contrasting with her white hair, makes her honey brown eyes shine through.
"Just sit down Bethany. She's fucking psycho! Everyone within a forty-mile radius knows that."
"Girls like her need to be taught a lesson." Bethany steps forward, not backing down an inch.
"And who's going to teach it to me. The owner of the itti-bitti titty store?"
"Chick fight!"
"Back off or your face might get another blemish, besides the pimple scars!" She points a slender finger into Storm’s face. She is suddenly pulled out of the crowded cafeteria and into a desolate hallway.
"Storm is not your problem! She's mine!" Jesse is pacing back in forth.
Bethany racks her mind. "I don't like people hurting the things I love."
"Who said she hurt me!" Jesse's anger is rising with each passing moment. Who could blame him, right? How dare someone love him and care about his well being more than their own. Right... "That's how me and Storm's relationship is, everyone knows that!"
"I didn't." Bethany whispers and leans up against the locker and pouts into a slight frown. She crosses her arms over her chest. "That doesn't seem like a very good relationship to me."
"Well it is, and even if it wasn't, that's none of your business. God sometimes I wish you never came. You're always in my life!"
Bethany tries her hardest to ignore her older brothers temper tantrum. She did say older brother, right? "Is that all you think of me as? The little girl your father adopted?"
Jesse face grows unbrokenly serious. "That's all you are." Jesse turns and goes back into the cafeteria.
Bethany can feel the cool wind from the door as it slams shut behind him. It was not, however, as cold as the chill she got from not being wanted by another family.
***
"Okay, since Storm's not in the band, again, we need another temporary replacement soon." Price looks at the rest of the band as they sift through the many demos given to them by willing female talents throughout Lakeview. "We have to make the girl good this time."
Darion laughs as he pops the last tape into the radio in the middle of the table. "You mean we have to make her hot this time. That other girl was a dog."
Jesse walks into the garage they use to have their practices, beside his parents house. He is carrying five beers in his hand as the next tape starts. The girl is singing a cover of Evanescence's Bring Me To Life:
How can you see into my eyes, like open doors
Leading you down into my core, where I've become so numb
Without a soul, my spirits sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it back home

Wake me up inside!
Call my name and save me from the dark!
Bid my blood to run! Before I come undone!
Save me from the nothing I've become!
Half way through the song there is an echo in the house. Jesse stops the tape as the band nods in approval. Darion slaps a goofy grin on his face. "Ay yo we gotta get this girl. She's better than Storm. Who is she?" He slurs in his barely audible accent.
Jesses shushes him quiet. "Listen." They all stand up and follow Jesse through the den, pass the kitchen, up the back stairway, and outside the bedroom of his little sister blaring and singing along to the same Evanescence song they were listening to a few moments ago. Jesse pushes open the door.
Bethany is jumping up and down on her bed, singing, and playing the air guitar. Jesse walks into the room leaving the rest of the band at the door, who would not dare walk into his little sister’s room without permission. Bethany jumps one final time and spins sending her flying off the bed and into Jesse arms.
"Ahh!"
Bethany screams and jumps from his arms. She punches him in the arm, almost sending him ducking to the ground by the unexpected force.
"Don't scare me like that!"
She turns to the rest of the band who seems to have taken a particular interest in her braless, see through black t-shirt with the words "Young, Willin', And Eager" printed on them, and her fitted, short black shorts. She pulls Jesse in front of her, wrapping her arms around his tight muscular abs. "What are you guys doing here?"
Pierce let's out a high pitched hyena laugh that him and his sister are famous for. "Just checking out the show."
"What show is that?" Jesse snaps. Bethany pokes her head out from behind him.
"You know her singing..." Pierce pauses. "So, are you going to ask her or not?"
Bethany tugs at the hem of her brother's shirt. "Ask me what?"
Jesse coughs loudly. "If you want to join the band as the lead singer?" Bethany sounds a shrill squeal and somehow uses her little five foot three frame to tackle her brother's six foot five frame to the bed underneath her.
"Really?"
"Only if you get the fuck off me and promise to never dance like that on stage."
"Deal!" Bethany stands up from on top of Jesse. Her heart is pounding fast. She dives into the rest of the band standing at the door. "Thanks."
Darion's left hand moves up to Bethany's right breast. She gasps and jumps away suddenly. Jesse stands up and closes the door in their faces. "Why do you hang around them or can four dicks actually make a pussy?"
Jesse laughs and sits back down on his sisters black and pink satin sheets. "Such dirty words coming from such a sweet mouth. You shouldn't want to be like me." Jesse takes in a deep breath. He ruffles his black spiky hair. "Listen. I wanted to say I'm sorry about the things I said earlier. You aren't so bad. You can just be a little pushy and demanding and bratty and-."
"This is supposed to be an apology right?"
"Yeah."
Bethany sits down on the bed next to him. "How about I help you?"
"How are you supposed to help me, baby sister?"
"How about first thinking of me as a woman and not just your baby sister."
"You are a baby."
"You really look at me and only see a baby? I look at you and see so much more than just a big brother now."
Jesse smiles down at her. "What else am I supposed to see?"
"Whatever you want to." She says touching her fingertips to Jesse’s, sending a violent shock between the two.
Popping, blue electric, sparks.
Jesse immediately pulls away and stands up. "Yeah, I have to go." He almost runs to the door. Sweat is dripping from his brow and his heart is beating faster than his sister's was when she heard she was joining the band. After all she is his sister. His sister. "Practice starts tomorrow at three. Party starts at eight. Nothing too revealing." He leaves not saying a word about why his palms are sweating.
Sexual frustration is only the beginning.