K, Well, THE scene is written, but it needs to be put in context so here we go again. I have no idea how I keep writing these long chapters, so don't expect them. Think of them as a nice surprise. If you're reading any of my other stories, Bromance is on hold until all my files get put on my new computer. K, well, that's about it. Wish me luck ;)
Miley was angrily knocking on the Oken's front door. The nerve of that little creep to not come to say goodbye. She could barely stand the look on Lilly's face when she had to leave without seeing him.
Neither of them would tell her what had happened. All she knew was that they were in the middle of a fight when Lilly left.
She continued knocking on the door until she heard the lock turn. The door opened and she began her rant.
"I can't believe you pulled that you asshole! She was really depending on you and you let her down! How could you—wait a minute, you're not Oliver."
"No I'm not. I'm the one with the boyish good looks."
Miley looked up to see Oliver's older brother Scott standing in the doorway. He had obviously just woken up. His sandy blonde hair was tangled and messy and he was only wearing a thin white shirt and…boxers. Very, revealing boxers. She looked away.
"Um, Scott…" she said as she was blushing "…could you, um…" she pointed in the general direction of his shorts.
He looked down as started blushing while he covered himself.
"Sorry. Uh, do you want to come in?" he said as he fumbled his words.
"Sure", she said as she slid past him into the house. She came face-to-chest with him. Pecs. All pecs.
She blushed at the things she was thinking as she made her way into the house, following him into the kitchen.
He went to the cupboard and started to make a bowl of cereal, probably the only thing he could make for himself.
"Oliver isn't here. I don't know where he went before you ask. He stayed in his room for an hour after she left, then he grabbed the keys and just…left."
He turned around to face the shocked look on her face.
"You seem surprised?"
"I thought he was mad at her, that he didn't like her anymore…"
He grinned, "Not a chance, that boy is too far gone. I don't know why he didn't stop her from leaving."
"Wow. So are you the only one home?"
"No, my parents are upstairs, asleep. We got back late last night."
"Oh, that's right, you were checking out colleges weren't you?"
"Yeah, I still don't know where I'm going though. I've got athletic scholarships from a couple places, but I don't want it all to be about sports, you know?"
"I guess there's a heart in every jock", she said teasingly.
"I don't know about that, but there's one in this jock. Just be glad you're still a junior. You still have a whole year to decide what your future holds. I have a few months. It's so overwhelming."
"Life is overwhelming sometimes…" Miley said as she ran her Hannah life through her head. She had a concert and a press event tonight and tomorrow she had to go to the premiere of Jake and Mikayla's new movie.
"So, do you think my brother's having a nervous breakdown? I need to know if I have to put him on suicide watch."
She smiled at the sarcastic tone in his voice, "I don't think he'll go that far. Maybe we should go look for him?"
"Yeah, but he has the car. Did you drive here?"
She shook her head. Her license had been left alone since she got it, driving made her nervous. Scott and Oliver shared an old Jeep, which, according to Scott, Oliver had jacked this morning.
"Oh, well. We better be back by the time my dad gets up."
He took a set of keys off a hook by the door and made a move to leave.
"Scott!"
He turned abruptly before he opened the door.
"Mr. Macho, indecent exposure is looked down upon by the Malibu Police Department."
He looked down at his attire, which happened to be lacking pants. Realization dawned on his face.
"Hold these", he said as he threw the keys at her and ran upstairs.
Within five minutes he was coming downstairs looking absolutely fabulous. Now he was wearing khaki shorts, a maroon Hollister shirt, and a grey zip-up hoodie.
"How do guys do that?" she questioned as he handed back his keys.
"What do you mean?" he said as he bent down to tie his shoes.
"Getting ready fast…" she said quietly. She was occupied with the view she was getting of his…
He stood up and sent a smile in her direction, "It's a gift."
For a second she thought he was talking about his butt before remembering their previous conversation. Her eyes met his and she realized that their was a double meaning in his answer.
He took her arm and pulled her toward the pickup truck. The tingly sensation in her arm refused to go away. She tried to ignore it, but it was making its presence known.
He helped her into her side of the car before running around to the driver's seat. Now there was a ghost tingly sensation in her arm and the absence of his strong hand made her arm feel dead.
After putting the car in reverse, then in drive, he released the gear shift (A/N: OMJ! PRNDL!) and managed to covertly put his hand on her knee. She looked up at him for a moment, but he was pretending it wasn't there. She decided to leave it there. The shots of jitters ran up and down her leg. Her hormones refused to control themselves.
They drove quietly for a few minutes. The radio was softly playing on some generic pop station.
"Where do you think he went?" she asked.
He shook his head, "I don't know. It's kind of sad. We just started talking about things again. I've really been an idiot. You probably know more about him than I do."
Miley barely knew how to respond, "You make it sound like one of you is dying. You're only eighteen; you guys still have the rest of your lives to be close to each other."
"I know, but next year I'm going to college, then the year after that he is, and the likelihood of us going to the same school is pretty dismal."
"Come on, you're being a downer. Let's just find your brother. I need to whip his ass."
"Sounds dirty…" he said with a wide grin.
"It might get a little messy, but I don't let 'Oliver' and 'dirty' be in the same sentence together. They don't get along well."
He laughed and said under his breath, "Good, less competition…"
"What?" she said, not paying attention to what he said.
"Um, nothing. Grocery list?" he said, covering for himself.
"Oh, okay…" she said, letting the conversation die off for a few minutes. She instead concentrated on his hand, which ever so often would squeeze her knee, sending another round of shivers down her leg.
"Scott, have you ever been in love?" she said as she tried to sound random.
"No, I've seen the way Oliver acts. I don't think I could handle it."
"He'll never fall in love he swears as he runs his fingers through his hair/I'm laughin' cuz I hope he's wrong"
She looked at the radio, then at him. He was doing the same.
"That was so weird!" she said, trying to relieve the awkwardness.
"Totally!" he said.
He pulled into a Dunkin' Donuts and took his hand off her knee to put the car in park. She sighed and almost slapped herself for doing so.
"What are we doing here?" she asked as he unbuckled his seatbelt.
"We're looking for a donut. We might as well check the home planet first. That and I'm hungry."
"It has got to be an Oken thing!"
Lilly opened the first box, the one she had labeled 'Important'. She took out Mr. Wugglebear along with a picture that had sat on her night stand for almost twelve years.
It showed a little blonde girl in pigtails and a little boy with short spiky brown hair. They were showing off a crayon-made drawing of two stick figures holding hands. Written under the figures were the crudely scrawled words 'Best Frends Furevor'.
Lilly wiped a tear from her eyes before placing the frame face down on her bed.
Her new bed. In her new room. In her new house. In her new city. In her new country.
It was all so new. She needed something old to hold her down. All she had were material things.
Now she was in a country where she couldn't speak the language and she had no friends to make it easier.
She couldn't take any more memories at the moment. She went downstairs to what was supposed to be the family room. Right now it consisted of a couch.
As she came closer, she saw that there were two boys on the couch. Both had blonde hair and blue eyes. They looked almost exactly the same, but one had a small scar on his cheek.
She saw her mother in the kitchen and went up to her.
"Why are there strange boys in the family room? And why do they look like they stepped out of an Abercrombie catalogue?"
Her mother looked up as if noticing for the first time that she was there. She smiled as she looked around Lilly's head at the two boys.
"They're our neighbors. The Laine's or something. Their names are Eduardo and Nick or something. They heard we had a teenage daughter and came over to welcome 'us'." Her mother winked at her own cleverness.
"Mother, don't embarrass me."
"I would never embarrass you honey…" she said innocently.
Lilly didn't believe a word of it.
"…that's why I gave them your baby pictures to look at."
"Mother! How did you even find them in all the boxes?!"
"I have ways…"
"Ugh!" Lilly said as she composed herself to do damage control with the neighbors. The really cute neighbors.
She walked into the room and the one without the scar stood up and held out his hand.
"You must be Lilly! I'm Edvard Laine and this is my brother Niko. We live next door."
His heavy accent was apparent, but he was speaking perfect English.
"You speak English?"
"Uh, yeah. Our mother grew up in England, our father is Finnish. By the way, now that the proper introductions are out of the way, my name is Edvard, but please, please all me Eddie."
"Sure Eddie. And Niko, right?"
The other brother hadn't moved since she had come in. At the mention of his name, his eyes glanced at her then went back to aimlessly flipping the pages of her baby album.
Eddie seemed to be taken aback by his brother's impoliteness, "I'm sorry, he doesn't speak much. But actions speak louder than words, right Nikki?"
His brother sent him a death glare.
"Niko got grounded for using the school steps as a skate park, during school hours. He was suspended too."
Lilly looked at Niko, the shy one. Now they had something in common.
"You skateboard?" He slowly nodded.
"I never caught on. It seems that twins aren't as drastically the same as people say."
"I used to compete, back in the states."
"Can you kick flip?"
"Yeah, I've been able to do that since I was 11."
The shy one seemed to open up as they dove into an intense conversation about their favorite sport, leaving Eddie in the dust.
It had taken them almost four hours, but they had found him. He was on a secluded piece of beach throwing a Frisbee at himself.
They watched him run back and forth for a few minutes before Miley told Scott to stay by the car while she went to talk to him.
He saw her coming but pretended he didn't. He continued to throw the Frisbee back and forth until she caught it.
He walked up to her and got in her face.
"Can I have that back?"
"No", she stated simply before she sent it flying toward the car.
Oliver met her eyes for a moment before trying to walk away. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
"Where were you this morning?"
"At home, like I am every Sunday morning, then I went to church…"
"Oliver you know what I mean! She's gone!"
"Good, she listened to me"
"What?" Miley said quietly, not wanting to believe what he was saying.
"I wished her luck in Finland, then she threw a spoon at my head and left."
"Why did you tell her to go? Why didn't you make her stay?"
"She didn't bother to ask. Miley, I was the last one to know! I don't think she gave a rat's ass about my opinion!"
"Oh my god, Oliver…"
"What?"
"Your opinion meant the most. She was going to let you decide for her, but you told her to leave…"
"You mean, I made her leave…"
Miley's hand covered her mouth, but she nodded.
"Oh god! I am such an idiot!"
"Oliver, you're not an idiot, you're just a guy."
"Well, this guy really screwed up, and now the love of his life is halfway across the world."
"I'm sure there's something…"
"Give me your phone!"
"But Oliver!"
"Please, I left mine at home."
"She has a new number."
"That you have programmed into your phone, right?"
She groaned and handed him the phone. He quickly found the number in her phonebook and called it.
He waited through three rings before he heard a voice on the other end.
"Hey…"
"Oh my god Lilly! I screwed up so bad!"
"…this is Lilly. If you leave your name and number, I'll get back to you. Or I won't. I guess you'll never know! Well, unless I—"
The machine cut off. Oliver hung up without leaving a message.
He handed the phone to Miley, his hands shaking. He turned around to face the ocean. Then he screamed in agony.
She was gone.
