Sweet Addiction: Just One Touch

001. Pink Frosting

Prologue

-Six Years Ago-

"Hey Ava, did you fall into a puddle of blood or something?"

Evan Emerson and his 6th grade cronies stared and tried to suppress laughter as the most mortifying moment of my existence thus far occurred. They really weren't doing a very good job of suppressing, though, because, at least as it appeared to me, they were practically howling with amusement.

Immature idiots.

I stood there, appalled that one of my defining moments of womanhood was going to forever play in my mind as the most embarrassing public catastrophe of which I could imagine.

I self-consciously reached around and covered the spot with my hands while they continued to stand there.

"What's the matter, Avy-poo? You don't expect us to believe it was strawberry syrup or something, do you?"

"Shut up, Evan!" I hollered back at him, feeling the anger starting to creep through my veins.

"Me, shut up? I think you're the one who needs to keep your mouth shut. Period," he whispered, with a twinkle in his eye.

Oh, how I loathed that pathetic excuse of a human being.

"Why would I expect you to believe it's anything, anyway? Since when are you the period police?!" I shouted, causing almost all of the people walking by in the hall to stare at me.

I could feel my cheeks slowly turning red with embarrassment, but hoped they would only notice that red, and not the red in the other place.

I surprised myself by shouting what I did. Normally I wouldn't let Evan and his buddies get to me, but this was a rather personal experience that I didn't want all over school. I would surely kick his ass when I got him alone. Yes, that sounded good.

"Aww, don't feel bad, Ave. Embrace that inner woman," he said dramatically, getting down on one knee and making dramatic arm gestures. He looked ridiculous, but was I going to tell him that?

No, I did something else instead.

May not have been the smartest move, either.

"Evan Emerson, you awful thing!" I exclaimed, lunging at him as best I could with a sweater now wrapped around my waist.

"Ewww, get off me!" he protested, trying to push me off of him. "I don't want that stuff all over me!"

"Oh, grow up, you stupid pig!" I now had him pinned down to the ground by his skinny little shoulders. He really needed to start working out.

Not that I would ever care what he looked like, anyway. He would always be the skinny, stuck-up, stupid little boy I'd known since kindergarten.

The fact that our mothers were best friends didn't lessen our animosity, either. It was useless for us to even try to get along; it would never happen.

I think Evan was probably criticizing and making fun of me since the womb. I don't know what I'd ever done to him, but he certainly had the notion that there were always a few bones to pick with me.

So I tried to ignore him every Saturday night that my parents invited his family over for dinner, which was at least twice per month.

This one time, we were watching some animated movie, the title of which is escaping my mind at the moment, but that's beside the point. We were sitting in my living room, Evan, his brother, his sister, and me. I was the only child in my family, so except for the times when they came over, I wasn't used to having any other kids in the house. Boy, those kids were the brattiest I'd ever seen in my mere six years of life.

Anyway, we were watching the movie, and suddenly Evan put his arm around me. I thought that was really odd, and since we were only six years old, I certainly wasn't thinking of it as a romantic gesture.

I looked over at him, and he had this funny, sloppy grin plastered on his face. I raised one eyebrow, something I managed to start doing at an early age, and asked him why his arm was around me.

"Do you want my arm around you?" he asked.

"No! You have gross cooties. Take it off!"

"Okay," he agreed, but immediately broke into giggles when he removed his arm from its awkward position.

"Why are you laughing?" I demanded.

"Because you have a spider on your arm," he said, pointing at the spot where his hand had been only seconds before.

I quickly looked at my arm and shrieked like I'd never shrieked before. It wasn't a huge spider, but it was big enough that I totally freaked out, and have been scarred for life as far as spiders are concerned.

My mom came rushing into the room, asking what all the commotion was about.

By this time I was standing up, flailing my arm about and to the point of tears.

"Get it off me! Get it off me! Get it off me!" I kept exclaiming over and over.

"What's the matter, Ava? Calm down," my mom said, coming over and taking a hold of my arm.

"He put a spider on me!" I said, frowning and pointing at Evan.

"It's alright, Ava. It won't hurt if you stay calm. Here," said my mom, "I've got it."

She held the squashed spider in her hand and went to the sink to wash it down.

"I hate you!" I directed this at Evan with an indignant tone.

"You're such a girl," is all he said.

My mother, however, made me apologize to him.

"He needs to 'pologize, too," I said. I crossed my arms and sat on the couch.

Mrs. Emerson had come in and seen what had happened as well, and she then asked her son to say sorry.

He came over to where I had made myself comfortable on the couch and held out his hand to signify his asking for forgiveness.

I shook it, but then wrinkled my nose in disgust when I felt something sticky all over my hand.

He started laughing uncontrollably again, and I saw that he had smeared some of the syrup from his pancakes all over his hand. Yeah, who eats pancakes for dinner, anyway? I mean, maybe occasionally it's okay to have breakfast for dinner, but he wanted the damn things every night, which was just not normal. But then again, he certainly is not a normal boy…it's quite the contrary.

I then pushed him with my sticky hand, and he fell to the ground with a now sticky shirt.

The resulting chaos was a bunch of screaming back and forth between me and Evan, but the main thing is that we were forced to sit on separate sides of the room for the rest of the night, and so we stopped talking.

Until dessert time, that is.

"Okay kids," said my mother, entering the room with a tray in hand, "who's ready for some dessert?"

I had helped my mom bake cupcakes earlier that day, and I was excited to finally have a taste of our creation, as any little kid would be excited for something sweet.

I am literally addicted to anything with sugar in it. Cakes, brownies, cookies, pies, candy. You put it in front of me, I'm eating it. They call me the Sugar Mama. Hah, just kidding. But seriously, I am the queen of all things sweet. If you want to win me over, a box of chocolates is a good first step.

My mom set down the tray on the coffee table and Evan's little brother and sister went crazy when they got their hands on them. When Evan saw them, however, he made an unpleasant face.

"These have pink frosting!" he yelled.

What a whiner.

"Yeah, so?" I retorted. "Pink is the best color."

"It's a girl color. I can't eat girl cupcakes."

"Cupcakes aren't boys or girls, stupid."

"Well I'm still not eating them."

"Fine, don't. More for me," I said, grabbing a cupcake and taking a lick of frosting.

"Mmmm…these are so good," I said, waving it in his face. "Too bad you can't have any."

"You're just going to get fat from eating cupcakes."

Mrs. Emerson was shocked that her son had just said something so…insulting?

"Evan dear, do not say something like that to a lady. That is not nice, mister. I don't want to hear you say that again, do you hear me?" she said sternly.

"Yes, Mom," he replied.

The adults left and I was stuck with the two little ones who were grabbing seconds, frosting smeared across both of their faces, and the evil one who was glaring at me from his position on my father's big arm chair.

"You're so stupid," he remarked, but I ignored him.

About a half hour later, he moved slowly toward the table and actually took a cupcake for himself.

I would have called him a hypocrite, if I had known what the word meant at that age.

Instead, I settled for "Snotface."

He stuck his tongue out at me, and that brought a close to the eventful night with Evan Emerson.

Have I mentioned how much I despise him?

Back to me having him pinned down on the ground…

"Oh, Ava. I always knew you liked me," he said with an awfully fake tone. He puckered his lips as if waiting for a kiss, but like hell was I going to kiss him.

"Oh, you disgust me, Evan."

I let go of him and got up, free to go back to cleaning out my 6th grade locker. It was the last day of sixth grade.

That was the last day I saw Evan Emerson.

Until junior year of high school, when he came striding back into my life, full of more sarcasm and insults than ever before.

Evan Emerson had not seen the end of my wrath yet.

A/N: Okay, here I am starting another new story. I can't help it. I'm kind of stuck on my other ones, so this just kind of happened. I promise not to give up on those, though. At least not BEOB?, since I've got 11 chapters of that and I'm not ready to give up on it. Anyway, hope you liked the first chapter of this. It's just the prologue. Please review! Thanks!

-HopelessDreamer07