The Masquerade Ball by Audrey Parker (best desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

-Devon-

Even across the room I could see the silver pendant swinging from her neck. Her red dress was bold and twined around her like a vise. Black satin flats christened her feet and didn’t help her height, which was tiny. Her hair was chocolate brown and her eyes as wide as a cats and emerald green. As she flaunted proudly through the guests, she locked eyes with me, beckoning to me with them.
I followed without hesitation, and quickly found myself next to her. Up close, I could see exactly how delicate her features were, but she still radiated unwavering confidence.
As we danced to a song unfamiliar to me, eyes trailed us. The stares side-stepped my shaky steps and mishaps. Except for a few glares in my direction, the audience was focused completely on her.
I felt like I was in a dream, an impossible one. It was because I recognized the girl I dance with and her name is one that is forever on my lips, parted on my tongue, ready in my throat. It is one that I would subconsciously whisper in my sleep, brighten up when it’s mentioned. It is a name that I know like the back of my hand.
The girls name is Kennedy, though I was the only one who bothered to learn it before tonight.
They announced it when she arrived at the Masquerade Ball at a billionaire’s mansion. There were many bachelorette’s before her, but it was her large green eyes and slight features that everyone remembered. And for a young lady attending this ball, it’s a good thing because in your eighteenth summer, the upper-class men must choose a wife, and she must accept him.
You can pick a spouse on your own time. The Masquerade Ball is just to help things along.
And I’ve decided that I want Kennedy, and I’ve known it for a while now. If only she already knew it.


-Kennedy-

The Masquerade Ball is something that has always been squeamish for me to think about. Nothing could get me to look forward to it, not even the prospect of finding a husband.
If we weren’t as rich and influential as we are, I wouldn’t have to even get engaged. I could stay unmarried for the rest of my life and set a good example for younger girls to follow.
In a perfect world, I could have all the money I desired, like I do now, and make my own decision on whether to marry or not. But it isn’t a perfect universe. There are people who are in charge, people who deserve to have authority, but haven’t been given any leadership. People demand, cower, don’t care, or are lucky enough to be left out of situations like that.
But as I entered the ballroom, my thoughts budged, only a little. All the young men my age, and even some of the servants, turned to stare at me.
My mother had picked out a scarlet gown for me to wear. If she hadn’t I would have worn yellow. My grandmother’s hulking necklace swung from my throat, and this is one of the only times I’ve ever worn my hair down. It cascades passed my shoulders and down my back to my waist. My mother had styled it to perfection. She had protested against me wearing no heels, but I wouldn’t allow it. She thinks that just because of my tiny height, I don’t hold my own in a room full of people.
But after the reaction tonight, she could not be more wrong.


-Devon-

I have known Kennedy all my life. Our parents are childhood friends and have always spent a lot of time together. As a result, Kennedy and I played together before we were even out of diapers.
But even when we got older, other boys didn’t like being around me, whether it was how I acted, or how I dressed or even talked, I never found out. Likewise, Kennedy seemed to be shunned by other girls her age. She hid her body with trousers and too-big shirts and didn’t sport makeup. Her hair was rarely brushed and always tied back in a low ponytail, staying out of her way as she had adventures like rope swinging into the cove and horseback riding in the dead of the night.
There was never a secret I could keep from her. She had the rare ability to read people like a book. In turn, she told me all of her heart’s secrets, and there have been a couple times when I’ve helped her keep them from others.
Kennedy and I understand each other better through one look than most friends understand each other through words. People see our connection and stay away, thinking we are together. What they don’t know is that we’re not, though I hope to soon be.
At the Masquerade Ball, I was hoping that this would happen. It’s my dream come true, and I have to pinch myself subtly to make sure I’m not asleep. Kennedy notices and smiles shyly, which is unlike her. Her face crisps with a blush and that makes me grin.


-Kennedy-

I realize that I look stunning at the Masquerade Ball and that’s the reason why all the boys are gawking at me.
I don’t care how many boys chase me. I don’t care how forcibly they crave me. What I do care about is my best friend. Devon.
Devon and I share everything in our lives. He knows me inside and out and is the only person that I absolutely know that I can trust.
He’s assumed that I’m too boyish to like anyone. He always thought that I’m too boyish to be liked. But as we dance, and I see how much he smiles, and feel how my skin transforms into a raging fire wherever he touches it, I realize exactly how wrong I was.
The boys here like me, though that’s what makes them boys, not men. They like me on the outside – they don’t truly know me. Devon does.
I look up at him and feel the butterflies in my stomach that I’ve heard about. I’ve never experienced them before, but now that I have, I determine that I like them. They make me feel more dangerous and compelling than an adrenaline rush.
Tonight, Devon is clean cut in a black tux. His hair is dark enough to mistake as black if you didn’t know better, and is tousled atop his head. His eyes are the same shade and are framed with eyelashes so long, thick, and dark that it looks like he is wearing eyeliner. Even though the sun isn’t as warm in May as it is during the summer months, Devon’s skin is already a tan color.
Our eyes meet and before I know what I’m doing, before he knows what I’m doing, I kiss him. I kiss Devon.


-Devon-

She kissed me. Kennedy kissed me. After all the months of daydreaming about this day, my wildest pleasures have come true. I’m elated, and when she pulls back I kiss her again. I can almost see all the stares on my back, all the bastards cursing me for being the lucky bastard among us.
Kennedy giggles against my mouth and I kiss her again and pull away a couple inches.
“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this to happen,” I say.
Kennedy glows up at me. “Me either.”

-Kennedy-

In the days following the Masquerade Ball I was vibrant with happiness. My smile never wavered away and my mother and everyone else undoubtedly noticed the new, and in love, me.
Now they all see that I’m not that different from other young women. Before there were no similarities in sight; evidently, my dramatic daydreams with Devon starred my eyes.
He clouded my every dream, from picnics beneath a waterfall or romantic evenings at d dress-coded restaurant that only people of our wealth dined at.
He clouded my every thought. A rather large portion of my brain shouted his name. Another part, his stunning face. I couldn’t focus on anything for more than a few seconds and it took me forty to dress myself in the morning – I refuse to let the maid that my mother commissioned to help me in the morning do her job.
What’s been eating me alive is that I haven’t seen Devon since the Masquerade Ball. I crave to look deep into his dark chocolate eyes and to tease his hair with my fingers and kiss him until my lips are numb.
I want it all to come naturally to us like it did at the Ball. No unsure hellos and careful hand holding thought the odds of those events happening are highly unlikely. Even if we choose to convert our friendship into something more romantic, our compatibleness would never cease. We would still be the best friends we’ve always been.


-Devon-

My heart’s been beating feverously ever since the Masquerade Ball. My thoughts are revolving around Kennedy, and I’m positive I’m all that she can think about.
I wonder if I should visit her, or if that would seem too clingy for her. I wonder if she wants me to come over. Certainly, that would make her mother happy, and when her mother if joyful, Kennedy is the opposite. I learned many years ago that they are like hot and cold, black and white. Their wants and emotions are never the same. It’s hard for one man to please both women at once.
It’s been three days since I have seen her, and I miss her more than I ever have before. But as much as I want to see her, I don’t want to upset her by making her mother ecstatic. If I choose to visit her, I would have to do it so only we know. And we can go someplace only we know and have the time of our lives.
I’ll make it our little secret.


-Kennedy-

My eyes had only drifted closed a minute ago, and my thoughts scrummed into dreamland. But a light plinking on the glass of my bay window awoke me. I rose from my pillows and slipped my soles into my slippers. I crossed to the window and peered down at the ground as best I could.
Devon was here, throwing pebbles up to my window. He came to see me. He saw me and motioned for me to meet him outside. I nodded my consent.
I raced down the kitchen stairs, the ones that only the servants use, instead of the grand staircase. I’d rather not have the guards at the front door ask me what I was doing in my frayed and threadbare pajamas and slippers, out of bed.
Devon is there, outside of my bedroom where I last saw him. he is