Dear Arielle, what a Prudish Whore

Arielle padded through her house silently. After Jade and Chase had disappeared, she'd been quick to hightail it out of the dining room. Sitting there alone with Carson while staring at her dad's love-struck expression was yet another unbearable reminder of just exactly how alone Arielle was.

She had to face it: everybody got sick of her eventually.

Stop it, Arielle. She scolded herself sternly, pinching her pretty, upturned nose when she felt the all-too-familiar sensation of stomach sickness swooping through her insides.

Well, if Jade wanted to spend some night befriending Chase and getting drunk off her ass, that was fine with Arielle. She couldn't wait to see Jade in the morning, when the hangover and reality finally took over. And Arielle would be free as a bird to silently say inside her head, "I told you so."

Besides, not all fun had to be with Jade.

"Pst!" Arielle popped her head inside Blake's slightly open door.

"Oh, hey. " Blake popped his ear phones out of his ears, looking almost genuinely happy to see Arielle. "What's up?"

"Oh," Arielle stepped in almost embarrassedly, even this was technically her house and not his. Still, she felt awkward, like she was invading his private space. Plus, she was clothed only in her fluffy bathrobe.

Something tells me Blake doesn't mind at all.

"Yeah?" Blake asked politely, swiveling around so that his entire body was facing Arielle.

Arielle scrambled her mind. Somehow, the words got stuck in her throat. What did she want to talk to him about again? Oh yeah. "I was just wondering if you wanted to go down to the hot-tub with me? Because it's really hot in here and everything."

Blake shrugged, "Why not? Let's go." He hopped out of his chair, and dialed the switch, so that the lights dimmed down.

"Oh, aren't you going to change?" Arielle asked timidly. Nobody went into their hot tub without at least changing into swim-gear. Sometimes, if the six of them got trashed enough, they'd all jump in with nothing on.

"Into what? The three hundred dollar swim trunks my daddy's personal shopper got for me?" Blake said sharply, his eyes blazing indescribably with, surprisingly enough, hurt.

Arielle was taken back. Nobody talked to her like that. Besides, they had been getting just fine this afternoon. He seemed to have even more mood-swings than her. "Well, sorry, if you can't afford it. It's not exactly my problem." She said back at him, looking him angrily in the eye.

"You're right, your highness. It's not." Blake said curtly, turning his face away from hers so that the two of them spent the rest of the way walking in stony silence.

When they got outside, Arielle made sure that she got out of her bathrobe and into the water as soon as possible, closing her eyes, leaving Blake no chance to disturb her at all or talk to her. Maybe Jade was right, after all. These strangers would never be like them, never understand their lifestyle. From now on, Arielle decided, Arielle would back Jade in whatever nasty little plans she had. After all, these people weren't much nicer anyway.

Eyes still closed, she heard the small splash of water as Blake slipped into the water too. Did he really just jump in, fully clothed, she wondered briefly. Temptation guiding her on, she opened her eyelids a fraction of an inch, only to find Blake's face right in front of hers. She gasped, and quickly snapped her eyes shut again.

He laughed next to her. "Come here, you," he said, pulling her quickly onto his lap.

She opened her big blue eyes and glared at him. "Oh, so now you want to talk?" After you just yelled at me five minutes ago, she added, fuming in the back of her mind.

"Yeah. I have some anger issues. Child abandonment and loneliness, I'm sure you'd understand. But will it make it better if I apologized?" he said, burying his face into her hair. This move scared her a little. She felt tiny goosebumps raise her skin, and she shuddered a little.

"Maybe," she conceded, keeping her voice level even so it didn't squeak.

"Then, I'm sorry," he said formally, tucking her under him, the way her dad used to do, when she was little.

"You have to at least say why you're acting all bipolar!" Arielle said indignantly. A though suddenly came to her. Jade would absolutely just die if she could see Arielle right now. And somehow, that made Arielle stronger. She was tired of always thinking about whether Jade would like her decision or not. Even if it wasn't even that big of a deal, it made Arielle happy that she could do something that would go under Jade's no-no list. Like she was in control of her own life, or something

"God, I hate this place so much," Blake offered as an explanation, looking up at the stars painted against the black sky-drop of the dewy night.

"That's a first," Arielle grumbled at the lack of a better explanation. He might as well tell her the real reason. It wasn't like Arielle would go blabbed about it, anyways. Then, a sick feeling hit her. It would be like the old Arielle to go and exactly do just that: report back to Jade like a puppy with its leash lashed tightly around its neck.

"Yeah, this place is nice with all the hottest shit, but it's not home," Blake said abruptly pushing Arielle off of him abruptly so that she bumped her hip against the cemented edge.

Ouch. Gentler next time, please.

Arielle rubbed her bruised spot ruefully. But in a way, she understood exactly what Blake meant. She looked around the special grounds. It looked perfect, with its air of impeccable taste. From the gazebo, to the outside tennis courts, to the incredible silhouette of the swimming pool, with the house in the background, this place was outrageously expensive and exquisite.

But Blake was right: this was not home. From the empty hallways to the silent grounds, Arielle had always felt a sense of extreme loneliness, whenever she looked out her bedroom window and onto the pristine, perfectly cut grassy lawn. Instead of feeling like she had the perfect lawn, she's always felt like it was so fake. Unreal. A kind of cover for all the shit in life that was happening around her.

"You're right. It's not," she said softly, making little waves with her cupped hand.

"You live here," Blake said pointedly, raising his eyebrows inquiringly. "Don't you have to like it?"

"No. It used to be a lot better when my mom was still around. Our family didn't used to be so messed up." Arielle said, feeling the normal lump in her throat boil up to the surface.

"Where is she now?" Blake asked softly, but not unkindly. He watched Arielle curiously out of the corner of his eye with a certain curiosity.

"She's not with us anymore," Arielle said, feeling the smallest tear leak into her ear. She quickly passed it off as just another droplet of water from the hot tub.

"She left you?" Blake clenched his jaw. He suddenly looked very old all of a sudden, much older than seventeen years old.

"She died." Arielle simply said, letting those two words take care of everything. Many of her friends all wanted to know the same question. So, she just told them what they wanted to hear, and endured their oozing sympathies, even though she knew how lucky they felt inside that Arielle's mom was the one that died and not theirs.

"If it makes you feel any better," Blake licked his lips and blew out a stream of air, popping his head back so that it rested on the edge, "my father left me when I was ten."

"I'm sorry," Arielle offered, because it felt like the only thing to say to that kind of a confession. It was bad enough that her mom wasn't around. She could only imagine how it felt to know that a parent purposely abandoned you. Didn't want you. It made her want to know more, to let Blake trust her.

"What was he like?" She asked, putting a hand on him and watching him carefully, even as he carefully stared ahead into the darkness.

"He was everything I wanted to be, but could not be. I used to look up to him, and think to myself that if only I looked like him, everything would be fine. You see, I used to be one of those super scrawny kids who'd go running after the big kids, trying to fit in." Blake said, running his hand over his wet, golden-brown head nostalgically. "He would always try to toughen me up. If I came home beat up, he'd send me out of the house so I could get hit until I learned how to hit back."

"Back then, on the block, there was this kid called Tommy Gallagher, hands down the most brutal person in the school. My father would always say how he wished that I was just like Tommy: tough and brutal. I started running around with him to make my dad happy. And running around with Tommy Gallagher meant that the only option I had was to look like him. I started to eating more and working out at home. I started training after school. Then, suddenly, no one was beating me up anymore. With a combination of both Tommy Gallagher's group and my new physique, people started being scared of me. And that is power you don't get everyday."

Blake paused, just long enough for Arielle to look at his biceps to see if it was really true. It was.

"But I hated it. I hated Tommy and that entire group. They jumped scrawny kids like me all the time, and shop-lifted. The juvenile delinquents of our time, people used to say. The ones that would all either end up in jail by twenty one or die in a back alley. By the time we hit eighth grade, I had had enough of him telling us what to do all the time."

Now, doesn't that sound awfully familiar?

"So, one day, I plain out told him that I hated his guts. You can only imagine how someone like Tommy Gallagher would take that. I went home that day with a broken nose." Blake jutted his chin, showing off his slightly crooked nose to prove his point. "Tommy went back with three broken fingers, one black eye, and a broken leg. I think they had to take him to the hospital for that one." He smiled at the memory, while Arielle gaped horrifically.

"You don't feel bad at all? For beating people up like that?" In the world of Arielle, nobody did that kind of stuff to each other. Even if they did, they didn't go around parading it like a badge of honor.

"Nah. Some people out there actually deserve things like that to happen to them. And, I didn't even enjoy it that much. But it was the first time my dad told me he was proud of me. For beating his friend's kid." Blake laughed and shook his head so that specks of water fell from his hair. "He gave me that pocket-knife that day. Told me it was a sign of my manhood." This time, his laugh was bitter and full of anger.

"I thought I had earned his respect. I was wrong. Once I had done something good, he wanted something else. He'd been complaining a long time that I was never good at anything. No sports, nothing. He'd been the basketball star back then, and it was a damn crying shame to him that his son couldn't even dribble. I hated basketball. But he wanted a basketball star, so I promised to give him exactly that."

"He left us not too long after that." Blake said in his matter-of-fact voice. "It was my fourteenth birthday. And I came home early that day for us to practice shooting hoops together. I went upstairs and he was packing. I asked him where he was going and if I could come along. He sat down on his bed and told me, for the first time in his life, that he loved me. That one day, he'd come back for me."

"Well, it's been more than three years and I've never heard from him again. I made the school varsity basketball team my sophomore year. Even made the front page for scoring a record number of baskets in a game. I thought for sure that if he could see me now, he wouldn't be ashamed of me anymore, that he'd do as he promised."

"Well, he lied. I even made his precious fucking basketball team. I waited by the window so long after that, waiting to see him pull up in our driveway. I figured that now that I'd kept my promise, he'd keep his. Guess who was the liar?"

Arielle watched as Blake's eyes got slightly red. But she knew that it would embarrass him if he saw her watching, so she turned her head away and pretended to examine imaginary pieces of lint on her spotless bikini. A part of her was starting to understand Blake's refusal to leave his home. He was still secretly holding on to the hope that his father would one day come back and would be unable to find Blake.

"What's with all the questions anyway? Blake said, standing up out of the water, his short hair plastering to his forehead.

Goosebumps filled Arielle. Jade's words came flooding back to her. Find out Blake's dirty secrets and then report back to her, Jade had specifically commanded.

Well, Arielle was never going to tell Jade about this. The only thing Jade would do was to hurt Blake even more. And Arielle wasn't going to let that happen. She could imagine Blake as a scrawny boy again with Arielle standing in front of him, shielding him from Jade's evil plans and plots.

"Blake," she said softly, stepping out of the water, and secretly pulling at the back of her bikini bottom. "If you ever need to talk or anything, you can always come to me."

Blake leaned on the outside barbeque grill that was meant for summer parties of serving hundreds, and put his head in his hands, shaking it sorrowfully. "Actually, there is something I would like to talk to you about," Blake's voice was muffled, and it sounded like he was about to cry.

Arielle quickly rose out of the water, and ran over to see if he was okay. She was prepared for him to tell her everything, upon which she would, of course, be considerate and let him put his head in her lap while she told him everything was going to be okay.

"Tell me everything," she said in a soft, soothing voice, while her maternal instincts kicked in. Arielle could never stand to see an innocent truly hurt. Which definitely confused everyone around her as to why she and Jade Lewallen could ever be related.

"You really want to know?" Blake said, lifting his head a little and staring straight ahead, while Arielle felt her pulse quicken. She recognized that look. Jade frequently complained that Arielle was the same way, every single time Arielle started to think about her mother.

"Sure, I won't tell anyone. Promise." Arielle swore.

"Okay. What I want to tell you is," Blake paused, licking his lips and losing that far-off look in his eyes and turning to look at Arielle. "I think you are unbelievably hot and that someone like you should never have to worry about people like your sister."

"What?" Arielle was thrown off guard. What had happened to their fantasy bonding session?

"What I mean is, I think it's time you had a little fun and stopped worrying about Jade's thousands of things you can't do and just start living a little." And with that said, Blake picked Arielle up and dived into the pool, twisting at the last second so that he hit the water first, with her on top of him.

She broke out of the water, throwing her wet hair behind her and gasping for air. "What was that, Blake? Trying to make fun of me when I was being serious?" she asked, playfully slapping him.

" What?" he pretended to sound hurt. "I was being perfectly serious. Or don't you believe me?"

" Hm. I just thought we were going to spend the night having a heart to heart with each other." Arielle said, ducking her head shyly at her stupid assumption. She'd always known that her over-imagination would get her into trouble one day.

"We can still spend the night together in your bedroom, if that's what you're worried about." Blake raised his eyebrows at her, and swam over towards her.

Arielle stiffened and immediately stepped out of the pool angrily. "Stupid son of a bitch." she yelled, not bothering about keeping her voice down. "What kind of girl do you think I am?"

Tears nearly pooled her eyes. Every single guy was after one thing. Call her prudish, but she couldn't take it anymore. She'd dated her last boyfriend for over three months only to find out, when she was just truly starting to fall for him, that he'd only gone out with her to get some. Ever since then, Arielle had sworn off all guys who'd only wanted her body. And now, apparently, Blake was one of them. And she'd wanted to comfort that bastard.

"Wait, Arielle," Blake jumped out and ran after her as Arielle angrily took off towards the main house.

"What?" she snapped, never breaking her stride. "Shouldn't you be somewhere, finding someone who'll get you laid without asking questions?"

Guess there was some of Jade in her, after all.

"Wait," Blake said, his huge strides catching up to hers.

She whirled around. "No, you wait." Arielle glared at him, and all of a sudden, everything was back to last summer, and Arielle was experiencing another one of her flashbacks.

Trey and her were in his car again outside her house and the sun was beating down, through the glass windows.

She wanted to leave, because she was getting more tired. Trey's pressuring had been coming more often now. It had started off playfully, but now it was plain forceful.

Trey angrily tried to grab her. "Arielle, what the hell's wrong with you? Why are you making such a big deal out of this?"

Arielle squirmed, "Trey, stop. I don't want to."

Trey just grabbed tighter, "Who knew you were such a prude? With the way you look and dress, I'd have thought you'd be an easy one."

Arielle gaped as it dawned on her, "What? That's why you've been here this whole time? To have sex so you can go back and brag about it to the soccer team?"

Trey snickered, "No shit. And don't pretend like you're little miss innocent. You wanted it all along too. Just had to make me wait. Well, now, I think we're both done waiting. Let's just get this done so we can both move on."

But I don't want to move on, the then-Arielle wailed inside her head. I truly liked you. But she didn't tell him any of that. Instead, she kneed him in the stomach and settled for the small satisfaction of that, even after she watched him drive away fumingly.

Now, all the emotions of being duped came rushing back, as she stared into Blake's face. "You may think that you can just expect everyone to kneel to you, but you're wrong. If you thought I was going to be one of them, you are sadly mistaken because I wouldn't have you even if you were the last person in the world," Arielle's voice shook from the amount of anger and hurt and deception she felt.

Then, with that, she stomped up the stairs, and slammed her door and locked it. She didn't bother to look back, because she knew that if she did, she wouldn't be able to control herself any longer before she broke down and lost it completely.

Author's Note: Please Read and Review!!!

Thank you to chocolate is gawd and Lucy N. I've been so swamped lately, I haven't had a chance to reply to your review, so thank you both for reading and reviewing and for everyone else that also read and reviewed. You comments are great motivation, and I love hearing from everyone. Also, I know that this was a slow chapter, and I'm working on it. I promise something big is happening soon. But for that to happen, I need to set up back story first. Anyways, thanks so much for taking time to read my story. And please, please, please review!!!! Thanks. 3