Like a piece of art.

The first rule.

I leave the room listening as Ryan closes the door with a single blow, I shake my head for his behavior and start making my way to his room in silence.
"Brooklyn" I hear Ryan try to stop me but I ignore him. "Brook," he says again impatiently. "Brooklyn!"
"Not now Ryan" I turn around to look at him with warning, I don't want to make a scene in the hallways of the school. He stares at me and then agrees resignedly. I turn around to start walking again.
I don't know what I'm gonna tell him, I don't know what I'm gonna do to convince Ryan to let me be with Jack.

I mean, it's not like Ryan controls my whole life but he has good reasons to forbid me from being with Jack and one of those reasons is my mother, Ryan knows my mother very well and knows that all this can only end badly.
We walk in silence until we are at his door, he pulls me aside and opens it with force, making his anger clear to me.
"What happened?" Mikey is inside, on his bed with a magazine in his hands.
"What happened??" Rye stops in the middle of the room with her arms folded, looking at me accusingly. "Ask him"
"Oh, God, Ryan, stop being so childish," I tell him and I pass by him to sit in my chair.

Ryan and Mikey share a room thanks to their parents' influences, like most things they do, and it's our place to do everything. Here we spend most of the afternoons, here we keep the secrets and we are ourselves, without restrictions.
"Sorry but what you did deserves me to behave in this way," he says with complete indignation.
"But what did he do?" Mikey drops his magazine and sits on the bed to see us better.
"Well-" Ryan doesn't let me end the sentence, causing me to roll my eyes.
"He slept with Jack," he says bluntly. Mikey opens his eyes as if i had done something really bad and looks at me perplexed.

"Dude" he says after a long pause "You love to shit things right?" He says shaking his head.
"It's not that I made the worst mistake" I tell them, taking away the importance of the subject.
"I remind you that if your mother finds out, Jack is going to lose the stupid scholarship and you few remaining privileges," Ryan tells me sitting on his bed.
"But she's not going to find out," I tell them with confidence.
"Well, suppose she doesn't discover it. You know who Jack is, right?" He says, raising his eyebrows.
"Yes, but that doesn't concern me" I try not to look at him.
"It concerns me and therefore you. This is not just you, Mikey and me. This is us. It has always been like that" His voice causes my skin to rise, he is right.

"I know Ryan but..." I try to talk but I don't have the courage to do it.
"You fell in love with him" he ends the sentence for me, he knows me so well. I don't know how I could hide my relationship with Jack for so long. "Brook ... it was the first rule. You don't fall in love here and you know that if it were any boy from anywhere in the world I would support you and help you because that's always been the case, you are my best friend and that won't change. But it's Jack we're talking about, a student at this school, someone you know perfectly well is not good for you or anyone else" his voice suddenly is soft.
"He's not bad" I try to say it for sure but my voice trembles.

"I would like to believe it Brook, but you saw the same thing that I saw, nobody good does what he did" his words are full of reason but I don't want to believe them. My eyes start to fill with tears, I always try to convince myself that Jack is not the person he really is, that when we talk about Jack we are not talking about my Jack but I know that it's not the case, I know we always talk about the Jack I know. The Jack that hides his true self, the Jack that does bad things, the Jack that I fall foolishly into.
"You have to leave him Brook" Ryan says approaching me to hug me. "I hate to tell you this because I'm nobody to tell you who to be with and not be, but Jack doesn't deserve you and if I don't tell you, nobody will do it" he ends saying and I know he's right.

"You know we only want the best for you," Mikey adds from afar and I know they're right but I can't believe it, I can't just accept what we know.
"I can't ," I say, moving away from him. "I'm going to find out the truth, I promise. I know he's not bad, he can't be bad, Ryan" I get up from the chair ready to go to my room again.
"Even if it's good I'm never going to be able to forgive him, Brook," he tells me, also getting up from his bed. I look at him breathing hard and he also looks at me as he always does, telling me everything and telling me nothing.
"I'm going to make you forgive him" I keep looking into his eyes, he shakes his head and returns to sit on his bed.

"I would do anything for you Brook just as I would do anything for my brother but you can't make me choose between you and him. Both are too important for me" he ends up saying.
I know he's right, I'm putting Ryan in the middle of me and his brother, in the middle of what's right and what's wrong but I'm also putting myself between what makes me happy and between what I'm supposed to have comply. I hate having fallen in love with Jack, I hate that he has gotten under my skin, I hate that he has done what he did and I hate more that he has to do with Ryan. Maybe if he was someone else I could be with him and forgive him and Ryan could accept it but that is not the case, Jack is what he is and he did what he did and I can't change it.

"What are you going to do?" Ryan asks me, I'm still in the same position as before, not knowing what to do.
"I'll think" I answer and turn around to leave the room.
I walk through the damn corridors, I don't want to go to my room or go back to the room. I need to be alone and think, I need to find a solution. Ryan wasn't supposed to discover this, even though it hurts me to think about it but he discovered it and now my relationship with Jack is on the edge of a cliff, about to fall and be destroyed maybe forever.

(Sorry for taking so long to upload chapters, I promise to upload more often)