Sparkling Hope (The Eastburgh Devils Series Book 1)

What the fuck?

These three words I whisper to myself almost every day several hundred times.

I’d rather have this brunette living next to me in the guest room than the husband I was actually expecting.

Then I remembered that I didn’t see a wedding ring on Ruby’s fingers, and my idea of having a married couple living next to me in the guest room was illogical.

Ruby actually moved into the guest room downstairs next to the front door.

I had known Ruby before but only from hearing Dad talking about some new construction project, and Camilla had been going out with her a lot the last few weeks.

The resemblance between Ruby and her daughter standing half-naked in front of me was impressive.

The big beady eyes, the thick black eyelashes, the freckles, the thick brown hair.

But what didn’t sit well with me was that she set herself up in my bathroom with matter-of-factness. I stood with a towel around my waist and still thoroughly soaking wet body and hair in front of my open bathroom cabinet.

On the bottom shelf were her products.

Bottles, small jars of all sizes and shapes, a toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, and hairspray.

How could a person need so much stuff?

I put all her products back into the white toiletry bag with red hearts on it, which was still lying on the washstand.

I hope she’ll choke on all her heart-printed stuff and drugstore products that she slapped on her face daily.

The toiletry bag found its place in the last drawer of my vanity between a hair dryer, a pack of open condoms, and towels.

I ran back to my room, flooded with cold air, and sniffed at the clothes that formed a second closet on my chair.

Half of the clothes made me frown, and I wondered why the plague hadn’t broken out in my room yet or why some people in yellow suits with oxygen tanks hadn’t evacuated the floor.

I found what I was looking for among the clothes and pulled on a pair of dark jeans and a dark blue sweater. Once downstairs, the smell of vanilla candles and dinner hit me again.

Everyone was seated at the round dining table, already eating.

My father sipped from his wine glass. ‘Luna is off to the movies with her friend. Why don’t you sit down, Weston?’

So Luna was her name.

Her name already screamed cheesy crap, and I should have all her products in my bathroom and stink it up?

I would alert the epidemic protection in person.

I hate to disagree with my Dad, but the party at the abandoned diner on the outskirts of Eastburgh started two hours ago, and I can’t waste any more time because the more time that goes by, the less is left of the alcohol.

CARTER BUNNY

I’m in front of your house.

Get your ice hockey ass out. I want to get drunk and show up there before the party’s over.

WESTON

Be right there, relax.

I was glad when I read the message from Carter that he was already outside because this would save me from an awkward, superficial conversation with my Dad.

‘Carter is already waiting outside, Dad.’

I grabbed a jacket from the coat rack.

‘Get your ass off my car,’ I greeted my best friend.

Before he pushed off my tire with his bent leg, we slapped our hands together, which we always did when we saw each other.

As I started the engine, Carter buckled his seat belt, and we headed down the driveway.

‘Pull over,’ he commanded. He pushed one of the buttons on his car door, and the blacked-out window on his side rolled down to reveal Luna.

‘Ey! Montgomery!’ he called to her, whistling his fingers between his lips to get her attention.

Wait a minute, Montgomery?

‘Hey, Carter,’ Luna greeted him friendly as she approached the jeep.

She didn’t give me a single glance.

Neither did I to her. As I stared at my cell phone, I helplessly typed something into the group chat that we were running late because Carter thought it would be more important to start talking with my roommate.

We were already over two hours late.

‘Do you need a ride somewhere?’

Jerkily, I looked up from my smartphone and glared at Carter.

Luna will never set foot in this car, and if Carter kept being so fucking friendly to her, he could wait right there on the side of the road with her, and I’ll drive alone. I was about to push the button that closed the passenger side window on my side.

‘Thanks Carter, but Aria should be here any minute.’

Thank God.

‘Besides, you guys are going to the movies anyway, right?’ I reminded her with a provocative smile.

Without either of them being able to say anything else, I hit the head, and the window went back up, separating Carter and me from Luna.

I pressed the gas pedal and pulled out onto the road.

In the rearview mirror, I watched Luna get smaller and smaller the further we got away from her.

She put her cable headphones back in her. I licked my bottom lip as I glanced in the rearview mirror one last time before we turned.

‘Don’t even think about it, man. Just because you’re going by what owns a pussy and boobs don’t mean it’s going to work on Luna,’ he warned me, ‘and stop fucking looking at her like that, Wes.’

‘Don’t worry, I’d keep my hands off her despite a nice sum of money,’ I hissed at him and turned my gaze back to the street illuminated with the lights of my car.

I didn’t know her, and it would stay that way.

I would be a blind idiot if I said Luna wasn’t pretty.

But that was all.

A lot of things can be pretty.

It was somehow a weird feeling to have strangers living with us.

Especially when the first meeting was in the half-naked state.

Mostly we had only over the Christmas holidays visit from my grandparents, or Carter slept on my sofa in my room because of his father.

Now I have to share my bathroom with Luna. I found the whole situation really shitty.

But maybe Luna would turn out to be a person who would engage in uncomplicated sex.

After all, there would be nothing more practical than having to go one room over where someone lived who also just wanted to fuck.

With my stepmother’s offer to let them stay with us temporarily, her hospitality almost quilled out of her pores.

Carter turned up the radio a bit, and the car’s silence filled with music.

‘So Luna Montgomery is staying with you now?’

‘She’s a Montgomery?’ I asked almost too curiously.

I needed to lower my curiosity about my roommate.

‘Ethan’s sister, yes,’ Carter answered the question I would have asked him next.

Ethan was Charles’s roommate, best friend, and brother in spirit.

Ethan was known to everyone. The brown-haired, big guy who set a new record every year in the summer relay race.

This guy was a machine.

‘Stop thinking about it like that, you’re getting wrinkles on your forehead and probably on your ass, and it looks like shit,’ Carter muttered as he dug a can of Coke and a silver, scratched flask out of his backpack.

The can hissed as he opened it, and after taking large gulps to empty the can a bit, he dumped the contents of his flask into it.

‘Not now and definitely not in my car,’ I snatched the can of Coke from his hand with what smelled like vodka as I put my nose to the can opening and threw the can out the window.

‘You owe me a can of coke.’

‘You owe me a gas tank as often as I let your ass ride here,’ I argued.

I parked my car in one of the last available parking spaces in front of the abandoned diner.

The diner was said to have been quite popular in Eastburgh in the nineties before the owner died of a heart attack, and no one wanted to take over the diner.

It was empty until the Eastburgh Devils hockey team opened a party diner there.

It continued from season to season, and now the Sigma Devils was quite popular and known for good parties.

The old diner now had Sofas, chairs, strings of lights hung on the walls, a beer pong table, and a pool table.

Above the door hung a sign with the words Sigma Devils.

Some jackass came up with the idea several decades ago to associate the name of the Eastburgh Devils hockey team with a fraternity.

There were two devil horns on the S and a devil’s tail on the last letter of the word Devils.

From year to year, the key of the diner was passed down to the captain of the current season.

I don’t know who on my team had the keys right now because Charles, the captain, didn’t have them because he was in New York until recently.

You could only get in here with an invitation from the hockey players or if one of the team brought them directly.

We’re their ticket.

Carter and I entered the Sigma Devils and were welcomed by a kinky, stuffy air mixed with alcohol, sweat, and weed.

The place smelled like this almost constantly, and I was sure the smell was already so deep in the furniture and on the walls that you couldn’t quite get it off, despite airing it out.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the tiles fell off the diner’s bathrooms because of the smell.

Carter held a cup up to my lips.

‘Here, drink and enjoy, Wes,’ he handed me and Trevor a red cup, and I already smelled the strong odor of vodka.

His mixes were usually the worst.

Especially if you plan to crash with memory lapses, you just have to drink a mix of Carter Rhodes.

Trevor screwed up his face as he sipped the drink carefully.

‘I’m driving.’

‘By the time you drive again, every drop of alcohol will be gone from your blood.’

‘If you puke all over my car later, you’re screwed,’ I warned him.

I skimmed the people in the diner to see if anyone was there for the night.

‘Your cousin is probably out for a threesome today,’ Trevor laughed out into his cup, and Carter and I looked to the door where Henry entered the diner with two girls.

Luna.

That didn’t look like going to the movies to me.

‘Yo, Weston,’ Henry called out to me, and I gave him a handshake while glaring at Luna over his shoulder.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I could ask you the same thing,’ Luna hissed at me.

Henry looked at Luna and me in confusion. ‘You know each other?’

‘You can’t be here. You should be at the movies,’ I argued, ignoring Henry’s question.

It was enough that she lived one room beside mine and used next the same bathroom, but I don’t feel like seeing her here either.

‘Get the fuck out of here, Luna,’ I hissed softly between my teeth so only she could hear.

Luna stepped closer and stared at me with her brown, wide eyes.

‘What do you want, Weston? You shouldn’t be here either, or what does a study session like you told your parents look like for you, huh? I guess we’re both lying tonight,’ she mumbled and walked with Aria to the bar.

Touché.