Chapter Thirteen #2
I can’t be in this room with him. I can’t stare at a face that holds so many memories, so much comfort and love, and not try to sew this betrayal into it. To shove these two conflicting sides of him into one whole being.
Does this mean that I want him? That this attraction is more than lust? I can figure that out later. Right now, he needs to go before he sees me cry.
I refuse to give him this—this part of me he’s earned through poor wording and betrayal.
“Get out,” I tell him, searching for self-preservation.
He jumps, startled. “Puppy—”
“Everett, get the fuck out of my apartment before I drag you out.” I believe my words are stern, but as Everett makes no move to leave, I step forward, adding, “I’m not sure what your problem is; if you have some kind of internalized homophobia or if you’re just actually an asshole who used me to get off and now you’ve let it ruin our friendship, but either way, I can’t fucking look at you. Leave. Now.”
He looks devastated. He looks as if whatever was left of his heart when he walked in hours ago has disintegrated, and I’m the prime suspect. I’m staring right at him, holding the torch.
Everett looks at me one last time, then takes those sad eyes and grabs his bag, putting on his shoes and slipping out the front door.
Practice kills me; I’m exhausted from barely sleeping after Everett left last night, and I haven’t been eating well.
Now I’m at Seabird, and even on a slow day I still have inventory and regulars to keep up with. And if that isn’t bad enough, apparently Mondays are the perfect night for a date here in Sinclair.
Everett is in the center of the bar dancing with Ashley, their bodies pressed together as if they’ll lose some kind of contest if a single drop of water manages to slip through. His hands are on her hips, gripped so tight his knuckles are white, all smiles and laughter.
She blushes as he talks, and I try not to imagine what obscene things he might be saying, or how he might be praising her.
And he looks beautiful. Everett is date-ready with his jeans and his tight black button-up. The first three buttons are undone, revealing a portion of his chest. He looks slutty and so biteable that it’s kind of pissing me off.
“Sky? You’ve wiped that counter three times now.” Mandy comes up behind me and takes the rag from my hand. “Go take Mr. Jenkins order.”
She’s eyeing me in concern, but doesn’t ask what my problem is, which I’m grateful for. What would I say? Sorry, boss. I’m watching my best friend, who I’ve been fooling around with, dance with his date, and it’s really ticking me off. Oh, and I think I might like him.
Ha. Right.
“What can I get you?” I ask Mr. Jenkins, an elderly fellow who frequents the bar most nights.
He orders his usual, which works out nicely as I’m barely paying attention. Everett is kissing her, his hands twisted into her long hair, his tongue working her mouth like he’s trying to swallow her.
I know what it feels like—what it’s like to be on her end, to feel like the whole room is disappearing and nothing matters but where he might touch you next. It feels like heaven.
It feels like dying.
“Son?” Mr. Jenkins calls out.
My attention snaps back to our customer. “I’m on it.”
Grabbing him a new Miller Lite and a chilled glass, I slide it across the wooden bar. He gives me a curious look, which I promptly ignore, turning to add the drink to his tab.
“Skylar,” Mandy shouts, and as the word rises into the air, Everett’s head snaps up from his date, his eyes finding me.
I turn from his line of sight, quickly facing my boss. “Yes?”
“Are you okay?” she asks.
Rolling my shoulders, I prepare my half-lie. “Yeah, just tired from practice.”
She hums, eyeing Everett over my shoulder before returning her attention to me. “Maybe you should take the night. It’s dead anyway.”
I guess I wasn’t nearly as discreet as I thought I was being. And she’s not wrong; she and her husband have this place covered without me, and I’m tired of watching Evie swap spit with Ashley.
“Thanks, Mandy. I’ll see you on Wednesday.” I grab my things from the employee shelf, and without looking back, at incredible speed, I leave the bar.
I need fresh air; I need silence; I need space.
Everett is killing me, slowly but surely. I thought for sure there was a chance this obsession was just lust, that he had opened a dam within me that I needed to fix—a lust-driven desire that needed to be satiated.
But instead, every time I look at him, warning bells go off, and mine is all I can hear. How am I just now able to decipher them?
He’s my best friend, has been for twelve years. Therefore, I should have first dibs; I should have rights. But I’m a guy, and that immediately boots me from the running for some fucked up reason.
If he really were one hundred percent straight, it would be understandable, but he’s clearly not. No straight dude comes all over their male best friend.
This has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with me. Or maybe he really is an internalized homophobe. I’d rather it be a me issue, though; it’d suck if he were actually a dick.
But I’ve known Everett for so long; I would have noticed if that was the case. At least, I think I would have. We’ve encountered gay men before, and he never minded them.
Maybe it’s different when they’re in bed with him. Maybe it’s different when their dick is in his mouth.
But he wanted that! He’s so fucking confusing that I might just hate him. Or I would, if not for wanting him so badly.
Fuck, I think I want him. I want him bad—and not as my best friend. Not just that; not anymore.
I take this thought to bed with me. I take it with me as I jerk off to the memories of that last night we spent together, and while I shower off the shame.
And as I’m falling into a fitful sleep, I try not to cry thinking about the friendship we might have just ruined in such a minuscule amount of time.
I am not allowed much time to sleep away this dread before I hear a loud crash sound throughout my apartment. Shooting up in bed, I clutch a hand over my chest as I stay tangled in the sheets, watching the entryway to the bedroom.
Either someone just broke in, or Everett is trashing the place.
Neither is true, apparently, as a very drunk Everett stumbles in holding a smashed picture frame.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, placing the shattered photo of the two of us lounging at the beach onto my dresser. “I fell into the wall too hard.”
“Jesus Christ. What are you doing here?”
I watch as he slides his shoes off, leaving them discarded on the floor as he stands at the end of my bed, chest rising and falling rapidly as he stares down at me.
He’s a mess—clothes in disarray, hair all fucking up, face puffy.
“I came to see you.” His words are slurred.
“Why?” I untangle myself from the sheets and get up, grabbing pajama pants off the floor so that I’m not prancing around in my briefs.
Everett watches my every movement, his eyes roaming every inch of my skin.
So fucking unfair.
“I miss you. Stop being mad at me.” He’s pouting. The audacity!
Sighing, I turn to face him, arms crossed over my bare chest.
“But you’re a dick. Leave—I don’t want to see you,” I demand, but the words lack the bite I intend for them to convey.
Everett stumbles toward me, now only inches away.
And suddenly, I can smell him. A mix of vanilla perfume and sweat—and then something else; something dirty, something I only know how to detect because of him and what we’ve done.
He smells like sex.
“But I want to see you,” he complains. “I know I’m mean; I know I’m selfish. But I can’t help it. I can’t stop thinking about you, puppy.”
I can feel the barbed wire closing around my throat, a hot ache pulsing through my chest.
Those words might have worked in the past; they would have had me sighing and opening my arms, watching as he crawled under the blankets to hold me. To touch me.
But Everett fucked up; he made a vital mistake.
He didn’t realize that by showing me what real pleasure felt like, what it smelled like, I’d be able to detect it on him as he betrays me.
“Fuck you.” The two words leave me before I can stop them; that little monster made of anger inside of me is clawing its way free.
He frowns, eyes watery. “Forgive me. Tell me what to do—I’ll do anything.”
“Leave. You said anything, so leave.” I’m so close to crying. In all the years we’ve been friends, he’s hardly ever seen me cry.
I don’t intend to give him that privilege tonight.
“No! I can’t!” Everett sounds like he’s pleading.
“Why?! Why won’t you leave me alone?”
He takes another step, and I can smell her even better from this distance; I can smell what they did. I almost choke on it.
“I need you!” he insists. “I need you so badly. And I know I shouldn’t; I know it’s not meant for me, but I’m here anyway because I’m horrible and cruel to myself. But I can’t help it. I just… I want you.”
I feel as if he’s just punched me. As if he just laid my ass out with one hit; like we’re fifteen again and I’ve broken his favorite copy of Shutter Island.
Once again, those large, warm hands have balled into fists and are barreling toward me at a devastating speed, so fast that my skin is splitting open under the sheer force of it.
What a fucking joke my life has turned out to be. I can feel the hot tears as they leak from my eyes, as they roll down my cheeks. I can see the moment he notices them, as he reaches forward to catch them with his fingertips and save them like mementos from the first time he crushed me.
I dodge him and whisper, “When did you find that out, before or after you fucked her?”
Everett’s eyes widen, his mouth falling open and then closing like he knows he needs to speak, but whatever it is that he was going to say will only damage his case.
So he did. I’m not wrong.
He fucked Ashley, put his pants back on, then came here to confess.
“Skylar…” There is nothing he can say to remedy this, and he knows it. Even drunk, he knows it.