Chapter 65) Heartbreaker

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

William Shakespeare

At the now tender age of 16 Everett was surfing along on the bright side of life, seemingly effortlessly achieving anything any teen mind could dream of. He was popular, one of the best students and achieving every goal he set for himself, one by one.

His musical talent was undeniable, Blaine had taught him so much and Rett was like a sponge, absorbing it, adding his own twist to it. Before even his 16th birthday he had two songs written/composed, receiving around 500-700 bucks a week in royalties and getting his name tossed out there for the world to see.

What I am going to tell you now I will precursor with the warning not to hold any of it against Everett. He was still so young, even though he looked misleadingly older, still he was far from any level of moral maturity at this point, suffering an extreme case of the carelessness of youth, without any bad intend. He was a good kid, kind-hearted, fair, helpful. Just something about him made girls act foolish and he took whatever they were offering without thinking twice.
I had high hopes that he would outgrow this soon, and once the right girl would come along he’d change his ways and never look back, like his grandfather Blaine had, who used to be exactly like Rett at that age, which was the reason we never dated until much later.

In the past few years Rett had dated a LOT, now finally settled for a girlfriend, Cordelia Reed, whom he also attended the Junior/Senior prom with.

Ever since before Blaine and I had gone to Windenburg High they had always combined the Junior and Senior proms as it just wasn’t a big enough school with enough kids otherwise. Now it meant that the boys could attend the same one and it made all our hearts sing that Everett managed to talk Declan and Rory into coming. Nope, no kissing there, Declan and Rory were just friends, their bond had grown very tight, and they still had tons of fun together.

Everett may have had a bit too much fun.

All night long he was spreading himself between all the girls in attendance, dancing with this one, flirting with that one … even with Ashleigh, under the watchful eye of her brother / Rett’s best friend Chris, and he even tried his luck with Rory, who seemed to be the only female near or far immune to his efforts. Knowing her story with bullying, it wasn’t really too surprising.

Ashleigh doing the duckface prom Selfie

Then there was the Bjergsen girl, Brittney, who showed up in a bright red designer dress, and who adored the ground Rett walked on and she made it very easy for him to get tangled up in her carefully placed net. She had a boyfriend too, who happened to be one of Rett’s very good and oldest friends, Julian DiLaurentis. Jason wasn’t shy by any stretch, so why he allowed her very obvious flirting with Rett was beyond everyone.

Confused yet? Welcome to our world, we all were.

So here is a bit of a better breakdown to try and make it a bit easier to keep up.

Everett was now an item with his first official girlfriend Cordelia. Why her, you ask? I think the safest answer would be that he was just ready for it and she was in the right place at the right time.
The moment they first met he had felt captivated, making him want to commit.

Bear in mind, she was not his first by any stretch in any romantic aspect, but the first he would be exclusive with. Well, mostly. At least officially. But we’ll get to that.

Things were great, Cordelia was a sweet girl, the type you want your son/grandson to date. Her parents liked Rett, mostly because they had no idea about Rett’s reputation. Around them he was charming, polite and just the nice young man he had been raised to be.
Her sister Maeve would whole-heartedly agree. Oh yeah … add Maeve to the list of Rett-conquests, very little effort had been required there. She was sweet too, none of Rett’s girls were whores, he never bothered with loose girls at all, just usually wholesome girls seemed to just go all goo-goo-gaga for him. And not to forget, Maeve knew very well that he was her sister’s boyfriend … yeah …

Enter the Bjergsen girl, Brittney. She would NOT agree that Cordelia and Rett were meant to be and took major issue with that union. Off the record, of course, since she herself had a boyfriend. Oh yeah, giant mess.

The boys’ childhood home on the Windenburg island had two immediate neighbors. One of those were the Bjergsens, who had been inhabiting Windenburg for more generations than anyone cared to count anymore. The current generation had one child, Brittney. She was polite and sweet, if you asked any adults, Declan though would have told you a very different and bitter story, as she had been one of the kids who laughed the loudest about his hazing incident, he even suggested her to have been part of instigating it and she most certainly started a lot of the fallout from it.
She was the typical rich kid, very spoiled and blissfully unaware of that fact. What she wanted, she would get. Including Rett, even if not officially.

During prom, in her way too adult and way too expensive dress, she finally got Rett exactly where she had wanted him.

Hidden in plain sight. Neither one was broken up with afterwards, no drama made the school grapevine, but somehow, most at least suspected something was going on.

To those of you thinking baby news now, let me nip that in the bud. Everett may have been a ding-dong about all things romance-related from a moral standpoint, but he was very adamant about making sure none would result in such drama. So no, there wouldn’t be any Cameron curse in his future. At least something clearly positive. And just to be clear, none of us adults condoned his behavior, but there was very little we could do about it. Everett was too much Blaine to truly listen to reason, let alone for something as forbidding him to date to be even marginally effective.

Anyway, back to the Everett and all the girls mess. Enter Ashleigh again. Her family incidentally made up the other immediate neighbors of the boys. Ashleigh was also a very sweet girl, not even remotely loose, both boys, Everett and Declan alike had a crush on her. Ashleigh liked Declan a lot, but she REALLY ‘liked’ Everett, if you know what I mean.

Upon realizing that she now was not only facing her own overprotective older brother Chris, Everett’s girlfriend Cordelia but now also reckless Brittney as hurdles to ever get to Everett, Ashleigh started texting Rett a lot more again. Always some sort of help she needed, but basically if you peeled back the very obvious cover-up, she wanted him alone away from everyone. Parks and other abandoned places to “study” – without even a single book or pen. Yeah … right.

It wasn’t like she had to drag Everett off, very little incentive was needed to get him to show up.

Here he goes for the oldest trick in the book …

And it worked.

See?

At least Ashleigh was single at the time, Everett obviously was everything but. Still, well aware of his rakish ways, she went for it anyways. And he took whatever she was willing to give. I always had the feeling that had it not been for his best friend being her brother, she would have been his first in many aspects, but most certainly his first girlfriend. And maybe those two were just waiting to turn 18 when no parents or brothers could torpedo them any longer. We shall see …

Now, here are some pictures I will leave you with from one of the latest teen hangouts at Everett Heights. Pay attention to the facial expressions …

Here we have Everett and his girlfriend Cordelia in the foreground, to the right Cordelia’s sister Maeve, and on the left are Brittney Bjergsen and her boyfriend Julian DiLaurentis.

Everett and Cordelia

It’s not just the fire that’s cause for some heat …

Brittney watches from the distance … while Everett and Cordelia take the heat from the fire and the kissing to another level … in a tent.

“~~~?!’

‘I HATE her!’

Once Cordelia and Rett re-emerged from the tent, Brittney waits for Cordelia to leave, then confronts Everett, pouty lipped and with her sweetest voice. “THERE you are! I missed you, Rett!”

Rett: “Yeah, I … missed you too, I guess, since I last saw you 30 minutes or so ago.”
Brittney *whiny voice* “Don’t you find me pretty?!”

Rett: “What? Sure. You think I’d fool around with any ugly chicks?” Everett jests.
Brittney: “Let’s tell everyone, Rett, about you and me. I don’t want to hide anymore!”

Everett: “What are you talking about?! I am not breaking up with Cordelia?!”
Brittney: “But Rett … “
*Rett walks off*

Brittney is fuming (far right), which Ashleigh notices (far left).

Later that evening
Cordelia suspects the wrong girl for being responsible for the traces of lipstick she noticed on Everett.

While Ashleigh wasn’t to blame for the lipstick, she is fighting her own battles, regarding Rett.

And this, my dear readers, was only the beginning …