Anna Martin's First Love Box Set: Signs - Bright Young Things - Five Times My Best Friend Kissed Me

by Anna Martin

  God bless you, Andrew Christian.

  The pants were stiff with newness as Jared tugged them on, struggling with the complicated clasp for a few minutes until they were properly fastened. He rolled the sleeves of the shirt up, then shrugged it on and purposefully only did up a handful of buttons at the bottom. The neck was left open, displaying his fuzzy chest hair and strong throat.

  Not bad at all.

  Not wanting to go too over the top, Jared slicked on light cologne and worked his hair through with a salt spray, mussing it up until it was perfectly nonchalant.

  A quick glance at the clock on his nightstand told him it was eight forty-five already, so Jared quickly pulled on his white Nike high-tops that he’d spent an hour earlier polishing up to their original, shining glory, and laced them tight.

  If you’d told him a year ago he’d be going to a white party, Jared would have broken his ribs laughing.

  Just like the first time he visited, the white mansion was ablaze with light and noise when Jared pulled his truck up front, blocking Adam in this time, because he could. He grabbed the bottle of Gray Goose—it seemed appropriate for a white party, somehow—and hopped out of the cab.

  Biggie was blasting some old school Snoop from his throne in the living area—he was definitely all Biggie, not Chris tonight—and Jared wove his way through crowds of his classmates, all dressed appropriately in shades of white, bopping their heads to the music.

  The man of the evening was wearing a full three-piece white tux, complete with white bow tie. The ice around his neck had probably cost more than the house, and he was swilling the requisite gin and juice from a short glass in his hand.

  Clare was perched on the arm of the chair wearing a daring white gown cut to her navel, showing off perfectly tight abdominals and impossibly high, tight breasts. Her dark hair spilled over her shoulders in elegant curls, and her red lipstick and black, shiny, manicured nails were clearly her own violation of the rules.

  Biggie didn’t seem to mind. One of his hands was resting on her ass.

  “’Sup,” Chris said in greeting, and Jared saluted him with the bottle of vodka.

  “Rockin’ party.”

  Chris grinned. “You’re not wrong. Homie’s in the kitchen.”

  “Huh?”

  “He means Adam,” Clare said, sipping her drink through a white straw. “Last I heard he was trying to set up body shots.”

  Jared huffed a laugh and nodded to Clare before wandering back through the house to the kitchen. He didn’t expect to see Ryder sitting on a counter, sipping lemonade from a glass bottle.

  “Ryder!”

  She looked up and grinned widely at Jared. “Hi!”

  She was wearing a short, white lace prom dress with layers of petticoats underneath. Her little feet swung back and forth against the cupboard underneath her.

  “You look great,” Jared said, setting the vodka down and pulling his friend into a hug. “How are you feeling?”

  “Okay,” she said, kissed Jared on the cheek, then pulled back. “Good, actually. I miss you guys.”

  “How did you escape?”

  He’d been exchanging texts with Ryder back and forth while she’d remained imprisoned in her father’s house, not allowed to go out or see any of her friends. Apparently Mr. Gorden was furious that the people who had given Ryder the drugs hadn’t been caught, and even more irate that Chris had a solid alibi for the time when she was in the hospital. The nasty, racial prejudice had come to a head a few days previously with a screaming public argument between Chris’s mom and Ryder’s dad outside Starbucks, where accusations were thrown and the police eventually called.

  There was now a neat restraining order against Mr. Gorden, preventing him from going anywhere near Chris or his family, although that didn’t stop his daughter going to a party at the Wallace house.

  “Adam came over and kidnapped me,” Ryder said with a grin.

  “Your dad knows you’re here?”

  “Yeah. He wasn’t happy, but Adam threatened to marry me to get me out of that house. Dad almost went purple. It was hysterical, but Adam made his point. He bought me the dress and everything.” Ryder smoothed it over her knees. “He can be nice sometimes.”

  “I know,” Jared murmured, surprised that the shower of attention Adam had told Jared would be heading Ryder’s way had been kicked off by Adam himself. It was a sweet thing for him to do. “You’re not drinking?”

  “Nope,” Ryder said emphatically. “I’m off that for now. It could mess with my meds, and….”

  “I get it. Did Clare come over?”

  “It wasn’t her fault, Jared,” Ryder said with a sigh. “It wasn’t very nice to gang up on her like that.”

  Jared gave her an incredulous look.

  “You don’t understand. It’s just the way things are around here.”

  If Ryder had brushed it off that easily, Jared figured it wasn’t his place to hold a grudge on her behalf. He didn’t go for the hard drugs, hating the comedown after, but didn’t judge those who did. It was their lives. Their bodies. He gave Ryder a quick kiss on the back of her hand, then moved through the tight knots of people until he got to Adam.

  “Hey,” Adam said distractedly. He still petted Jared’s butt, though, as he continued his conversation. “You’re up for body shots, right?”

  “Who, me?” Jared said. “No. Absolutely not.”

  Adam grinned wickedly. “Excellent. I’ll put your name down.”

  “No?” Jared tried again. “Am I saying it wrong? No.”

  “Body shots, baby,” Adam crowed. “I get to lick stuff off you. What’s wrong with that?”

  A few of the girls standing nearby tittered appreciatively. Jared kissed Adam’s cheek and ducked away to make himself a drink. People were starting to think of them as a couple, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  Chris had taken the theme seriously, and all the alcohol on offer was clear. Vodka, gin, white rum, all held in steel buckets filled with ice on the long island in the Wallace kitchen. Neat wedges of lemon and lime broke up the monochrome, and stacks and stacks of short, fat tumblers bookended the display. Mixers were Sprite or tonic water. No Coke tonight. Not the liquid variety, anyway.

  Jared fixed himself a drink, head bopping along to the familiar beat of blaring hip-hop music. It was warm inside the house, despite the almost freezing temperature outside. Not that any of his female peers seemed to have dressed for the weather. Short skirts were everywhere, summer dresses or more fancy gowns. Some girls were wearing bleached denim short shorts, or white jeans, or very short skirts. Most of them were in heels, despite being inside.

  Jared didn’t get girls. Never had. Never had any inclination to try to figure them out.

  He went back to the boy who he’d started to feel comfortable around, drink in hand.

  “Have you seen Mia?” Jared asked, murmuring his question close to Adam’s neck. She was the only one of his friends Jared hadn’t caught up with tonight.

  “She’s doing something, apparently. She’s on her way.”

  Jared nodded and put his left hand on Adam’s left hip, standing behind him but close. Close enough to smell the spicy, rich cologne on Adam’s skin, the perfect complement to the natural musk underneath that was all Adam. He wore designer clothes like he’d been born to slip into them, which Jared supposed he had. The knitted sweater was soft under Jared’s exploring fingers, and the pants were almost certainly more comfortable than the cheap pair Jared had picked up from H&M.

  Adam leaned back, tilted his head up, and caught Jared’s bottom lip between both of his—their first public kiss. Even though it was a slack-mouthed, lazy sort of kiss rather than anything gloriously intimate, Jared didn’t miss the significance of it. Neither did anyone else in the room, even if they were all looking in other directions when Jared looked up again.

  Biggie certainly knew how to throw a party, and by midnight the house was swinging. Jared had walked in on three different
couples fucking; by the third time, he made sure he was seen and gave the guy a filthy look before slamming the pantry door. He wasn’t sure what he’d even gone in there for.

  Right. More limes.

  Body shots.

  Apparently it was happening. Jared was just drunk enough to agree to it, sober enough to enjoy it. Through the evening, the living room where Chris held court had turned into a sweaty, writhing party space, the tunes blaring out of his imported speakers, the girls dancing and the guys plying them with drinks to make them wilder, higher, sexier. Not to Jared. Or Adam.

  Their domain was the kitchen and the dining room where things were more chilled and a lot more sensual. Here, couples came to steal a seat and grind on each other, eat face, or both. The music was more R. Kelly and Bobby Brown than 2Pac and Puff Daddy. Still rocking the ’90’s vibe, of course.

  In the dining room, the suggestion of body shots had gone down well, and a few girls had already stripped their tops off, balanced shot glasses of tequila between their breasts, and trailed a line of salt along their tanned, toned abdomens.

  “Get on the fuckin’ table,” Adam said as Jared wandered into the room empty-handed.

  Jared grinned and unbuttoned his shirt slowly, not surprised to find only three buttons still done up. People had been sporadically undressing him all evening.

  He left the shirt hanging off his broad shoulders and hoisted himself up onto the Wallace’s teak dining table, elegantly carved with inlaid pattern. There wasn’t anything on him that was going to leave a mark on the polished surface of the table, so he wasn’t concerned about that.

  One of the girls—Ryder—took the salt shaker and made a line with it along his treasure trail, dipping into his belly button, then up a little farther.

  “Lie back,” she ordered, then balanced a shot of clear liquor between his hard pectorals. A slice of lime, rind side down, was pressed between his lips, and he was all set.

  The sharp tang of the lime stung his nostrils as Adam hauled himself up onto the table to crawl sensuously up Jared’s body, his eyes intense.

  Around them, friends and classmates hooted and whistled, catcalling as Adam detoured to bite at the sharp ridges of Jared’s hipbones. He wet his bottom lip, then licked up the salt in a long, sensuous swipe. Jared trembled, felt his cock throb in his pants as Adam kept going, picking up the shot glass between his teeth and knocking the liquor back, then tossing the empty glass aside. Finally, he bit down on the wedge of lime between Jared’s lips, their erections mashed together now, neither of them trying to hide their arousal.

  A tiny trickle escaped the lime and slid between Jared’s lips, the tart juice stinging his already raw taste buds. Adam sucked the lime, shuddered, then spat it out on the table. They regarded each other for a moment, faces only inches away from each other, then Adam pressed his lips to Jared’s hard, possessively, tongue immediately stealing inside.

  The gathered crowd hooted and yelled, and Adam rocked his hips back and forth, back and forth, grinding hard cocks together.

  “Holy shit,” Ryder murmured. She sat cross-legged on the table next to them, and it was her startled words that made Adam break away.

  He licked his lips and grinned, then rolled off the table, extending a hand to Jared to pull him up too.

  They ignored the crowd (a girl was already crawling onto the table, ready to be loaded up with Ryder’s bounty, stripped to her see-through lace bra) and walked out of the house to the front porch.

  The cold was like a slap in the face, but Jared had made sure to fill a hip flask with liquor before it was all stolen by someone else, and handed it to Adam to swig from. Liquid warmth.

  While Adam drank, swallowed, shuddered, Jared buttoned his shirt. The wet stripe on his stomach burned where Adam had licked him, and his pants still felt too tight. Doing this in public felt far more dangerous than what they got up to in the peaceful solitude of Adam’s bedroom, and Jared was suddenly wary.

  Adam tucked the flask into Jared’s back pocket and pulled a thin joint from behind his ear. He held it up to Jared—an offer—and at Jared’s nod, he lit it and inhaled deeply. Passed it over. Then wrapped his arms around Jared’s waist from behind.

  “Does weed make you affectionate?” Jared asked, amused. He inhaled again then passed the joint back.

  “Nah. Not really.”

  From this position all Jared could see was the thick, white smoke as it curled over his shoulder with each of Adam’s exhalations.

  None of their friends or classmates had dared to venture out into the cold. They’d be smoking inside or out back where there were large standing heaters to keep them warm. Jared had followed Adam blindly, as had become his habit now.

  They finished the joint in companionable silence, neither man feeling the need to fill the frigid air with mindless conversation. For reasons Jared couldn’t quite put his finger on, he got the impression Adam wanted them to be alone together.

  When the joint had been reduced to a smoldering stub, Jared pressed a kiss to the edge of Adam’s mouth and ducked back inside to use the bathroom. The small space on the first floor was elegantly decorated in white tile and chrome fixtures, the white towels monogrammed with a swirling gold W.

  Through the glass at the front door, Jared saw Adam was still outside, leaning against the rail of the porch talking to someone just out of sight. He looked annoyed.

  Trying not to be seen, and ignoring the thumping party behind him, Jared snuck forward until he saw Clare leaning against the wall of the house, wearing a fur wrap and smoking a thin cigarette. The red of her lipstick stained the filter, making it look like her mouth was bleeding.

  Then they were yelling at each other, and Jared flattened back against the interior wall, hoping some of their conversation would drift inside. Clare looked completely nonplussed compared to Adam’s red-faced anger.

  With a little push, the front door swung open enough to create a gap for their words to drift inside.

  “Fuck the bet, Clare,” Adam snapped. “Fuck your bet, and fuck you.”

  “I take it you haven’t fucked him yet, then.”

  “No, I haven’t fucked him, you bitch.”

  “I’m starting to get bored with this, now, Adam. Either you don’t want to fuck him or you can’t.”

  “Fuck you,” Adam said again emphatically.

  “Or maybe the circumstances have changed? I’ve never known you to back down from a bet before.”

  There was a strange, twisting, sickening feeling in Jared’s gut as he listened to them argue. He’d seen this taunting, twisted Clare before, and he liked her even less than every other version of Clare. It was almost her natural state of being, tormenting other people for her own amusement. And he’d seen Adam mad before, but not like this. Not the hot cheeks or flashing eyes and tense hands, like he was holding himself back from hitting a girl.

  He couldn’t stand it any longer and ducked out of the house.

  “What bet?” Jared asked, purposefully keeping his voice light, innocent.

  Adam whipped around, and the color drained from his cheeks. Clare smiled slowly, and Jared realized Clare had known he was there, knew he was listening.

  “Oops,” Clare said, the word whisper-light in the cold air.

  She dropped her cigarette butt and ground it out with the sharp heel of her shoe, then turned and sauntered back into the house.

  “What bet?” Jared repeated, feeling a lot, lot colder than the outside temperature.

  “Forget it,” Adam said. “It’s nothing.”

  “If it’s nothing, you can tell me about it.”

  Adam paced to the edge of the porch, then turned. He wrapped his arms around his chest.

  “There was a bet,” he said, as if this was new information to Jared, and from inside the house, at least one of the DJs cut the music dead. The silence rang loud in Jared’s ears, and he knew Clare was behind it. They were the entertainment for the evening now and sure enough, people started to gather
in the vast entrance hall.

  “What were the stakes?” Jared asked, his voice surprisingly stable.

  Adam ground his teeth together, the movement of his rocking jaw thrusting it out defiantly.

  “To… fuck the new kid,” he said, eyes hard now. Jared didn’t look away. “To fuck the new, gay kid who was apparently a virgin.”

  Jared wanted to scream, to rage. Blood pounded in his ears, heating his face as he realized he’d been played. Not just on a superficial level, though. He’d been played by all these people, by Clare, by Chris, probably Mia and Ryder and the rest of them. And worst of all, by the person with whom he’d shared a bed, made out with, laughed with and confessed to and learned from.

  Any sign of weakness would not be tolerated. He couldn’t bitch out over this, couldn’t throw a hissy fit and slap Adam or make him bleed. They had been making fun of the new boy faggot for months now, months, and he wasn’t about to give them more ammunition.

  Bile rose in Jared’s throat, and he forced his eyelids open, hoping the frigid air would cool and freeze the tears that pricked and threatened.

  In the silence that grew between them, Jared knew it was all bullshit. All the laughter, all the sweet kisses, had been to prove a point. To win a bet. He’d trusted Adam, and that was his first and last mistake at New Harbor Academy.

  “What were you going to win?”

  Adam stared him down, eyes silently begging Jared to shut up. No fucking way.

  “What,” Jared demanded, louder now, “were you going to win, Adam?”

  Maybe the use of Adam’s name spurred him into action. He sighed heavily, rubbed his eyes, and muttered, “The Caddy.”

  “What?” Jared whispered, his voice dangerously low.

  Inside the house, everyone was watching. They didn’t even pretend not to. And in the middle of the crowd, Clare stood, a slight, empty circle around her, as if her aura of evil had repelled the others.

  “The fucking Cadillac, all right?” Adam snapped. “I fucked you and got the Caddy.”