Love, Lust & Friendship

by Elizabeth Stevens

  “You talked me into making it official last time and still acted like a twat.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I did do that.”

  “So, what makes this any different?”

  He shuffled. “This is real, Ads…”

  “What is?”

  “This breakup. Toph wouldn’t come out of his room last night and you stayed here. Aunt Jelly and I had the quietest night in history. My worst fears came to pass – I’m so close to losing both of you. And, that aside, two people I love are hurting because I couldn’t be a grownup and deal with it. So, this is me growing up, Ads. For real this time. As shallow as it is, I know you’d never leave me behind now. I should have known earlier and I didn’t. I’m sorry it took this for me to realise it. But, I have to fix it somehow. You belong with Topher.”

  And, I didn’t know that I could risk losing Ander again.

  “I… I don’t know that I…” I sniffled. “He might not want me,” seemed like the easiest excuse, which suddenly became a real fear that took hold of me.

  “Babe, I’m a teenage boy, but I’m not a total idiot. I see the way the two of you look at each other. I will always worry that he’s playing you, but the sensible part of me knows he’s not. And, I know you feel the same way about him.”

  “Ander, I don’t… I can’t…”

  “What, babe?”

  “What if I’ve messed it up? What if I’ve ruined it? What if it’s not worth it? I promised I wouldn’t love any boy, but you. And, I broke that promise.”

  “Ads, you can love us both,” Ander said quietly and I looked up at him. “You can let us both love you. I mean, I don’t want to bump fuzzies with you and I have zero urge to kiss you and the idea of any kid being half you and me is just…kinda gross. But, I love you more than anyone else in the world and I will always want to protect you and make sure you’re happy. Sure, a part of me wants to be the Hendo that you come to when you’re sad, wants to be the only one who can cheer you up effortlessly. But, there was always going to be a risk that you wouldn’t need me with whoever finally saw how great you are.”

  As always, Ander knew what to say to make everything better. I walked willingly into a thing with Topher before and wouldn’t let fear get in my way. So, I wasn’t going to now. Because, even if it all fell apart and I lost him, Ander would always be there for me. It wasn’t Topher who’d come between me and Ander; we’d forgotten how to talk to each other and that’s what had nearly broken us.

  “I will always need you, Ander.”

  He smiled sadly. “Maybe.”

  “Dude, bros before hos. Always.”

  He huffed a laugh. “Bros before hos.”

  “None of that has to change just because…” I stopped, not sure he needed to hear it again.

  “You can say it, babe.”

  I looked at my trusty Vans. “Because I fell for your dillweed of a brother.”

  He chuckled. “Then let’s get you to school and you can tell my brother exactly what you think about him.”

  “You really don’t–”

  “I really don’t mind.” He closed the space between us and wrapped me up tightly in his arms. “I promise. This time I’m beside you all the way. Almost all the way. As long as I don’t picture you two naked, I’m golden.”

  I pulled back to look at him. “So, I won’t tell you how he–?”

  “Ew!” Ander clamped a hand over my mouth. “No. Please, for the love of God, no,” he laughed. As we looked at each other, there was nothing but tenderness. “I don’t think I’ll ever want to hear about my big brother in bed, but I’ll listen to the rest of it. Okay? We just forgot how to talk to each other, babe.” Best Friend 101. “But, we won’t forget this time. I’ll tell you if I’m feeling weird, we’ll talk it through. We’ve always been honest with each other about everything, so this is no different.”

  I looked him over. “If you can’t insult the people you love, who can you insult?”

  “Exactly. I need to remember even if we fight – about him or anything else – we’ll always love each other. We’re family, Ads. It means we get to say all the mean things to each other when we’re pissed off and it changes nothing.”

  I laughed. “Definitely.”

  He kissed my forehead, took my hand and scooped up his bag. “Right. Let’s go and declare our love for my brother.”

  “Our love?” I asked him sceptically as he pulled me down the stairs.

  “Yeah. Whoever you love, I am obliged to also love, remember? Come on, babe. That’s Best Friend 101.”

  I laughed. “Aren’t you already supposed to love your brother?”

  “Yeah,” he fake-gagged, “but now I have to love him…platonically. Yuck.”

  I laughed as I pulled the front door open.

  “Oh, you two off to school?” Sonya asked, popping her head into the hallway. I’d never seen my mother look so hesitant.

  “Uh, yeah…” I said, slowly.

  “Good. Well, it was good to see you, Alexander.” She actually smiled, in a way that didn’t look horrifyingly terrifying. “And, I had a good time last night, Addy. Thank you.”

  I blinked. “Uh, sure, Mum. Me, too.”

  “I might see you two later, then?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “I’ll talk to you about Sunday, Ads?” she asked.

  I nodded again. “Uh, sure…”

  I dragged a stunned and mumbling Ander out of the house and we climbed into our baby.

  “So, that was weird…” he started.

  I sighed. “Ever since she found out about Topher, she’s been ‘trying harder’ or something. She actually invited me to lunch this weekend.”

  “Did you tell her about the breakup?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. She ordered pizza and let me pick the movies last night.”

  “No way!”

  “Way.”

  “You going to lunch?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “You might be able to work out what’s behind the personality change.”

  “I might. It’s probably body-snatchers.”

  He sniggered. “Probably.”

  We drove along in silence for a while.

  “Hey,” he suddenly cried, “so does that mean you can claim half of Topher’s car as yours now?”

  I snorted. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s how that works.”

  “Shame.”

  “Why.”

  “Then, Baby could be all mine.”

  I whacked him. “Never happening.”

  “Well, I’m not sharing Baby with him. His car is way better.”

  I patted Baby’s dash. “Daddy doesn’t mean it, Baby.”

  Ander laughed and we chattered like nothing had ever changed. We were both singing loudly and bopping along to the music as we pulled into the car park.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I spent all day telling Ander I was going to bloody well get around to it when I was ready.

  It was worse than the day he’d wanted me to talk to Topher about making it un-casual. He was excited. He was excited to the point he was grinning sub-consciously and he kept throwing me these looks like it was Christmas Eve and he couldn’t wait for presents in the morning. I was half expecting him to tell me he’d proposed to Tess and she’d forsaken Tate and they were planning a spring wedding.

  “He’s right there!” Ander said, elbowing me again.

  “I can see that!” I snapped.

  “Ads, you need to just do it. Like a Band-Aid,” Will said, nodding to me encouragingly.

  “Can I not just do it at home, behind the privacy of closed doors? What am I supposed to do at school? A flashmob in the quad? Highjack the principal’s PA system and make a grand announcement? You want me to run up and down the bleachers and sing him a song?”

  “Just go and talk to him. People ask people out at school all the time,” Derek said.

  “O
kay. But the weird alt girl who hangs out with the skater nerds doesn’t ask out the freaking Head Prefect all the time,” I told them.

  “Well, she should,” Tate said, leaning back on his hands.

  “Thank you, Mr Helpful.”

  Tate shrugged. “What? Go and give your freakishly socially inept people a role-model, Ads.”

  “You can take that piss somewhere else, jackass.”

  He gave me the briefest, but largest, smile I had ever seen on his face. “If you go and talk to the dillweed, I will.”

  “At home. I’ll talk to him at home. Okay?”

  “Oi, Hendo!” Tate yelled right across the quad and Topher swung to look at us. “Yeah, you’re needed, man.” I shoved Tate and he actually laughed. That made twice in my lifetime. He also thoroughly ignored me with all the zero cares only Tate could give. “Addy needs to talk to you about the whole breakup thing.”

  Oh, my God. I went bright red, shoved Tate harder and shot up from my position on the grass.

  “I will kill you, Tate Hennessy!” I hissed, looked at Topher and saw he was walking towards us, and hurried in any direction but that, feeling absolutely mortified.

  I successfully managed to avoid Topher all day, but I was taken unawares when a tacky bomb crashed into me in their backyard after school.

  I turned, expecting to see Ander trying to cheer me up. But, it was Topher.

  “Topher…” I said slowly.

  “Addy…” he said just as slowly and I was remembering another day and another tacky-bomb fight. But, I wasn’t in the mood for nostalgia.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I snapped.

  “Winning you back,” he said, juggling another tacky bomb.

  I blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re excused.”

  I glared at him. “How is pelting me with shit winning me back?”

  The dillweed had the audacity to grin at me. And, it was one of those smiles I had a hard time resisting. He juggled the tacky bomb again. I knew better than to not be ready to move in case he decided to throw it.

  “Well, I realised something…”

  “Really?” I pressed when he didn’t go on.

  “Really.”

  “Are you going to tell me what that was?”

  He looked at the tacky bomb in his hands like it held the answers. “I got to thinking after Hennessey yelled at me today… I hoped – I guessed – before… But, well, Lex has just confirmed something for me…”

  I clenched my jaw in the hopes it was going to give me some patience. “Spit it out, Christopher.”

  “You love me.”

  Wait, what?

  He juggled the tacky bomb again, acting for all the world like we were talking about the weather or something. “You love me, Addison MacGuire. I mean, I wanted to know that was what you were not saying when we broke up. But, I thought to myself, who are you to come between Addy and the love of her life? Especially when that guy was my little brother And, then I thought, I’ll tell you who you are. You’re the dillweed who looks at her and knows she’s the love of his life. So, I got to thinking, how do we all get what we want? I had no ideas. But, luckily, Hennessey has a big mouth on him and Lex went behind your back, freaking out about breaking more Best Friend 101s. But, it comes down to this, Addy.

  “Spoiler alert, there’s some cheese coming. Relationships are hard. Harder than I ever thought they’d be – it’s not always just about two people who like each other. But, I don’t care how hard I have to work, what obstacles or awkwardness or arguments we have to overcome so long as I’m with you. I know you and Lex, but I still got jealous when you were spending time with him that you could have been spending with me–”

  “You did?”

  He nodded. “I did. I just handled it differently after years of experiencing the same thing anyway. Lex and I had words, proper words that almost involved fists, but words all the same. We agreed we’d talk about this shit when it bothered us, rather than pretending it doesn’t–”

  “Did you also agree to custody arrangements while you were at it?” I asked, snapping with all the swirling emotions inside me.

  He shook his head, an aggravatingly smug grin still in place. “No. We both know you too well for that shit. The point is, I want to be with you, Addy. And I know there’ll be awkward patches, but I want to keep working through them. Not give up when we hit them. Lex is on board and promised I could hit him if he acts like a twat again–”

  “Because, that will help,” I muttered.

  “It’s up to you, Ads.” He dropped the tacky bomb to the grass at his feet and walked towards me. “It will always be up to you. I’d never expect anything from you, but I will hope. Because, I love you. I’m totally in love with everything that makes you you and I know we can make it work.”

  I smiled softly, unable to help myself after that speech. But, one thing was bugging me.

  “You stole my thunder, Christopher. Again. This was supposed to be my epic apology speech. You got to hit that dillweed for Ander on your first day at Basils. The least you could do was give me this.”

  “Oh, we can start again?” He stepped back again. “Shall I throw another one at you? Or, shall I just stroll past… How do you want to do this?”

  “No, you’ve ruined it now,” I laughed.

  “Oh. And, here I was, looking forward to the big speech,” he teased.

  I smiled. “You want to know what I was going to say?”

  “Yes,” he said instantly.

  “Take a minute to think about it, why don’t you?” I huffed.

  He noticeably paused, then nodded. “Yes.”

  “Fine. I was going to say something along the lines of ‘how about it.’”

  He blinked. “Seriously?”

  I shrugged. “What was it you said? No teenage boy knows what to do with whatever it is I do?”

  “God, is that still biting me in the ass?” he muttered with a wry smirk.

  “Well, fact is, Toph, you do. You know what to do with whatever is it I do. And, I don’t even know what that is. I just exist and, for some reason, you still want me instead of any other girl. And, sure, that’s not a reason to be with you in and of itself. But, I do have to stop and wonder if it’s because you get me. I don’t even know what sort of me I am with Ander, but I can be whoever that is with you, too, and not feel like I’m doing everything wrong.

  “Ander and I always promised that no one would come between us. So, I let you go. But, you weren’t coming between us, Topher. Ander and I were getting in our own damned way. We were so focussed on pretending everything was okay and normal that we forgot how to talk to each other about what wasn’t okay.” I sighed. “We’ll probably do this and Ander’s going to act like a little bitch again, or I’ll start acting like a little bitch. But, like you said, we’ll talk about it when that happens.”

  I looked at him and my breath caught and my chest fluttered and felt that uncontrollable smile tugging at my lips.

  “I want to be with you, too, Toph. Basically, that was the… That was where that was all leading. Through the awkwardness, the fights, the good times and the times I want to pelt you with tacky bombs. I want to find a way to make this work. You annoy me as much as you make me happy. But, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “Does this mean you’ll finally accept my relationship request?” he asked and I laughed.

  “Yeah, maybe. But, like, I’m not really sure I want people to know we’re dating,” I teased.

  He grinned and I pulled him to me to wrap his arms around me.

  “I guess we could just not put a label on it…yet?” he asked.

  “I dunno. Ander didn’t seem to like that.”

  “Well, we’d best do what Lex wants.”

  “He might not be the only one…”

  “So, you want a label?”

  I nodded. “I want a label.”

  �
��How about ‘Australian owned and made’?”

  “Well, technically true…” I snorted.

  “No? Okay. How about ‘my contain traces of nuts’?”

  “Also, technically true…”

  “All right. What about dillweed and the alt girl?”

  “I can get behind that.”

  “Yeah?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  He held me tighter and mused, “You know, I’ve told you I loved you like at least three times now and I’ve just realised I didn’t really get anything back here…”

  “I thought we didn’t work on an eye-for-an-eye basis?”

  “We don’t. But, if you’re going to turn around and tell me you don’t love me, then I’d like to know before I tell you how I feel too many more times. Just to stop all that awkwardness, you know. I don’t really want to be the guy constantly proclaiming his love to the girl not interested because he hasn’t worked it out or whatever.”

  “Oh, but you told me I loved you once. That counts, right?”

  He laughed. “Sure.” He leant down to kiss me and I pulled back at the last second. Panic crossed his face and I fought not to smile. “What?”

  “Relax. I was just going to say I love you, too.”

  I reached up to him, but he was the one who pulled away before our lips touched that time.

  “What?” I asked with a humorously exasperated sigh.

  “So, that love of your life thing…?”

  “Yeah… What about it?”

  “Can I, like, earn credits? Or… How does that work?”

  I laughed. “I’ll let you know how you’re going.”

  “Oh, good.”

  He grinned and we actually managed to kiss that time.

  ****

  Flash-forward something like five months and things were still going well.

  Ander had been true to his word; he’d been nothing but supportive of and beside me (almost) every step of the way with Topher. These days, you could tell how he was doing with it all; the more supportive he was the more he was vocal and teasing about how gross we were together. It was an unintentional but good way of keeping track of the three of us.

  We actually got along a lot better than we had – for realsies this time. We hung out as friends more. Even Nick joined us and, while Topher and I kissed and cuddled (gasp, even in public, yes), the four of us were all just really good friends. We’d even managed to get Nick hooked on tacky bombs, much to Topher’s dismay.