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

by Anna Martin

  Dylan grinned. “She doesn’t have to.”

  They ate in silence for a while—the food really was good—and Jared thought about what Dylan was offering him. It was hard to try and section out his life and slam the shutters on the feelings that had been brewing for Adam. He wasn’t sentimental, and didn’t think that Adam would forever be his “man that got away.” Nor would he be the man who broke Jared’s heart. Jared wasn’t going to let him have it.

  “The worst thing,” Jared said, apropos of nothing, “is that I thought they were my friends.”

  Dylan gave him a level look, scooped some rice onto his fork, and gestured for Jared to continue.

  “Not like, you know, BFFs for life. Moving to a new place is hard, though, and the first time I went out, I was suddenly in with the cool kids.” Internally, Jared groaned at how awful that sounded. “Coming from a fucking backward corner of Texas, meeting all of them was a new opportunity. Chris just has this aura, you know?”

  Dylan nodded. “Chris is a legend.”

  “I know. He’s the sort of person who seems like he shouldn’t be real.”

  “Larger than life?”

  “Exactly.” Jared dropped his fork and leaned back in his seat, absently rubbing his over-full stomach.

  “What about Adam?”

  “Hmm? What about him?”

  “You’ve mentioned all the others, but not Adam.”

  Jared shook his head. “I trusted him. He won the bet. Did Ryder tell you that?”

  By the shocked expression on Dylan’s face, Jared guessed not. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit,” he drawled. Then, “Shit.”

  Jared snorted.

  “Ryder doesn’t know,” Dylan said. “I know that much for sure. If she knew, everyone would know. Fuck, I love my sister, but she has a big mouth.”

  “What do they think happened, then?” Jared asked. The only person he felt comfortable enough around to ask these things was Dylan. Everyone else was too involved.

  “They don’t know, and it’s pissing them the hell off,” Dylan said with a grin. “There was some sort of argument at the white party?”

  Jared nodded. “Yeah. When I found out about the bet, I confronted him about it.”

  “Then you disappeared for a few days.”

  “This morning was the first time I went back to school. They don’t call me out if I don’t show up for school because my guardian is the principal’s ex-wife, and he doesn’t have the balls to call her. Oh, and Chris gave me the car.”

  “Hold up,” Dylan said, raising both hands. “Say that again.”

  “Chris gave me Elvis’s motherfucking pink Cadillac,” Jared repeated with a grin. “I think he wanted to play with them all, fuck it all up a bit further.”

  “That was the car Adam was supposed to win if he fucked you.”

  “Yeah,” Jared confirmed.

  “And you f—had sex with him.”

  “You can say ‘fuck,’” Jared said, rolling his eyes.

  “And then Chris gave the Caddy to you?”

  Jared nodded, and for a moment, Dylan looked like he was processing it all. Then he burst out in hysterical laughter.

  “What?” Jared said as other diners looked around at the noise. “Shut the fuck up, dude. People are looking.”

  “Sorry,” Dylan said, wiping tears from his eyes with his napkin. “Fucking hell, Jared. They must be going out of their minds over there.”

  Jared shrugged. “I don’t know about that.”

  “Did you tell Chris that you and Adam slept together?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Did Chris tell Adam why he gave you the car?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Shit,” Dylan drawled again. “I can tell you this much. No one has ever, ever fucked with these kids as long or as hard as you just did.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Jared protested.

  Dylan shook his head. “No, you did everything,” he corrected.

  “Whatever.” Playing them back was retribution, sure. He wasn’t hurting anyone, so as far as he was concerned, it didn’t really matter. The waitress came to take their plates away and offered dessert, which Jared refused. The curry had been delicious but filling, and he couldn’t eat another bite.

  “So, what are you going to do next?” Dylan asked, whisking the check away before Jared had a chance to find out what he owed. “It’s on me.”

  “Thanks,” Jared said. Definitely date territory now. “I don’t know. Keep driving the car, keep my mouth shut. I just want to get out of here.”

  “Keeping your grades up and getting into a good school is your best chance. Don’t let these assholes drag you down, Jared. You’re too nice to get caught up in all their bullshit.”

  Jared ducked his head and blushed.

  On their way out, Dylan paid, in cash, leaving a decent tip in the leather folder. Jared tried not to look—it was rude—but those were two fifties and the meal definitely hadn’t cost that much.

  They had parked their cars side by side, and Jared leaned against the door of his truck, Dylan doing the same opposite him. The night had drawn in, and it was cold, forcing him to wrap his arms around himself for warmth. The chill was probably caused by the endless, cloudless sky, broken up by bright clusters of stars and a full, heavy moon.

  “Thanks for tonight,” Jared said softly. “I don’t think I realized how much I needed to get out of there.”

  “It was nothing. You can call me any time, you know? I don’t mind. If the bastards are grinding you down, we can always go out in Seattle or something.”

  Jared nodded. Dylan smiled, and Jared reminded himself they were the same age. The status difference between them: tutor and student, plus the fact that Dylan was already a college student, made Jared think he was dealing with someone much older. But really… there wasn’t so much between their ages.

  He knew what happened next. This narrative was familiar—coffee, dinner, kiss, home, sex. Text message the next day, call a few days later if there was a repeat performance in the cards. But Dylan wasn’t a trick or a one-night stand. He was a friend, and Ryder’s brother. He was more than that.

  They regarded each other in silence for a moment, similar thoughts likely running through both their minds. Jared wasn’t sure who made the first move. Possibly Dylan extended his hand at the same time Jared stepped forward, closing in on Dylan’s space and softly pressing their lips together.

  Jared was taller—he was always taller—and bent slightly at the waist to narrow the distance between them. Dylan was a good kisser. He gripped Jared’s waist with sure hands and his lips parted just a little, allowing them to catch and break, catch and break the kiss over and over.

  In a moment, Jared knew what sort of boyfriend Dylan would be. They would go out on interesting dates, to art house movies, and quirky cafes and museums and galleries. They would talk about politics and society and what their role in it was. They’d be more than lovers. Their friendship would thrive until Jared had to go away to college.

  Then they’d make time to see each other a few times a month, their relationship becoming more open until one or the other of them met someone else and it naturally fizzled away with no hard feelings on either side. As Dylan’s lips massaged his own, Jared saw all of this and didn’t want it.

  He broke away with a smile, pressing a soft kiss to Dylan’s cheek.

  “Thanks for dinner. And everything.”

  Dylan nodded and they quietly got back into their own vehicles.

  There would be no art house movies, or galleries, or cafes. There would be no fizzling away.

  Because Jared was in love with someone else. And even the nicest, sweetest guy in the Pacific Northwest couldn’t change that.

  Chapter 16

  For the next couple of weeks, Jared developed a reassuring routine. Things at Harbor Academy were predictable enough for him to build his life around the key strategic points: home
room, gym, lunch, parties.

  There wasn’t anything planned until New Year on the party front, so he pushed that out of his mind. The one thing clearly driving Clare, and everyone other than Chris and Dylan, insane was Jared’s continued silence. He didn’t talk about the car, or the bet, or the white party.

  Someone suggested he should go into politics, and he remembered Dylan’s assessment of Clare and laughed harder than he probably should have. The other students thought he was a little crazy. That was fine. Crazy kept people on their toes.

  Adam was… a storm. Other people didn’t see it, but Jared did. He’d only known him for a few months and already he recognized the little tics and features that other people probably overlooked.

  Jared didn’t look too often, but when he did, there was something boiling under Adam’s skin. The bruised eyes and wounded expression were long gone, replaced with the arrogant sneer and swagger that was somehow reassuring.

  They didn’t talk. Oh, occasionally they exchanged pleasantries or curt nods. Jared acknowledged that Adam existed. It wasn’t his style to hold a grudge, and definitely not while half the school was watching, waiting to see what the next step in the drama would be.

  Things had definitely cooled between them; that was unavoidable. Occasionally Jared wondered how on earth the rest of their friends hadn’t noticed. They had been so, so close at one point, spending hours alone together and plenty of time by each other’s sides at school, too. Now things were different, irreparably so.

  As the days edged toward Christmas, Jared resigned himself to a trip to New York to spend time with his family. He hadn’t seen most of them since August, and since Hadley was coming too, he didn’t have much of an excuse to stay in Washington.

  “Come on,” Hadley said, leaning against the open door to Jared’s room. “We have a plane to catch.”

  Jared looked up from where he’d been fiddling with the laces on one of his sneakers.

  “Do I have to?” he asked, only partly joking.

  She gave him a sad sort of smile. “It’s three days, sweetheart.”

  “Five,” Jared corrected, grumbling.

  “Fine. Five if you count two days of travelling. But it’ll be fine. I’ll be there, and your sisters.”

  Jared sighed heavily and gave up on the sneaker, tossing it into a corner. It only took a moment to pull on a sweatshirt and shoulder the duffle bag he’d already packed for the few days they’d be spending with his parents.

  “You wanna talk about it?” she offered.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  Hadley nudged him back down on the bed and took the desk chair, echoing the talking-to he’d been given by Chris, not that she could know that.

  “Hadley,” Jared sighed. “I’m not great at girl talk.”

  “Excellent. Neither am I.”

  She pushed her long, hair over her shoulder, then twisted it into a knot, securing it with a Bic pen from the desk. Jared was always bemused at the hundred or so ways girls tied their hair back.

  “I don’t want to go home.”

  “I want you to tell me what’s going on, so I can protect you from what’s there,” Hadley said, her face fixed and serious.

  Jared huffed and rubbed his hands over his face. “I did something incredibly stupid.”

  “Tell me,” she demanded.

  “I’m in love with him,” Jared said with a humorless laugh. “I’m in love with him, and I can’t have him, and that sucks.”

  The last word was delivered with such hyperbole even Jared heard it and the teenage angst that had inspired his outburst. Most of the time he kept that under wraps, the teenager and the outbursts, so he was almost surprised at himself.

  “Being in love isn’t always candy and roses, Jared,” Hadley said with a soft smile. “Especially when you’re still….”

  “If you call me a kid, I’ll punch you in the mouth,” he said with a grin.

  “You’re so young,” she sighed. “I wish I was. You have so much still to come in your life; this is just the beginning for you. Don’t let one person steal your attention from the great things that are out there waiting for you.”

  “Very inspiring,” Jared said drily. Hadley reached over and smacked his arm, but she was laughing. “You didn’t even ask who I was talking about.”

  “I didn’t need to,” she said.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “What, that you spend more nights at his house than you do here? That half of the conversations we have are about Adam Hemlock? That when you’re with him, there’s this glow between you?”

  “Bullshit,” he muttered.

  “I don’t know what happened. And I don’t know why you think that you can’t have him. So as someone who’s completely outside this whole situation, I can tell you with a fair degree of certainty that whatever you feel for him, he feels it right back.”

  Jared rubbed at his eyes again and pretended very hard they weren’t stinging.

  “And now that I’ve almost certainly made sure we’ve missed our flight, can we please leave for the airport?”

  Hadley was joking, and they had plenty of time to get to the airport if the driver floored it.

  “It’s going to be constant gay digs,” Jared said as they walked out of the house to the waiting town car. It looked like Hadley had already loaded up her suitcase, gifts and all, in the back. “My mother won’t look at me in the eye, and my sisters are too self-obsessed to do anything for anyone other than themselves.”

  “That’s a stunningly accurate description of the family, yes,” Hadley said, pulling the door closed behind them. “Three days, Jared. We can do this.”

  They did. Of course.

  It was awful, naturally. Jared would have been disappointed with anything less. By the time they got back to rainy, murky Washington from snow-clad New York, he was grateful for the peace and quiet. The pace and activity of the city had always been its own kind of thrill, but Jared hadn’t had the energy to deal with it.

  After only a few days away, flopping onto the bed in the house that had become his home was such a relief. Things with his parents and sisters had been as tense as expected, Christmas dinner laughable, really, all of them drinking to be able to stand the sight of each other.

  There was no love lost between Hadley and his mom, and his father seemed to think that Jared’s aunt was a negative influence. Jared had never quite understood how his father thought, so anticipating which vitriolic rant he’d go on next was something of a minefield. Still. It could have been worse. Probably.

  School didn’t start again until New Year, but Jared had plenty of work to keep him occupied in the week following Christmas. He snuggled down with mugs of hot chocolate that would almost certainly make him fat, sugar cookies that wouldn’t help, and foot-high sandwiches which Hadley delivered to the study on a regular basis. He thought she was trying to make amends for forcing him to go to New York for the holidays, because there seemed to be a constant stream of food coming his way.

  Then there were the inevitable parties Hadley was going to throw despite her guilt. If she wasn’t hosting, she was at a friend’s place, leaving Jared to deal with an achingly cold, empty house or one so filled with noise and people, he was left with no option but to retreat. It was a strange back and forth, each end of the spectrum too hard for him to deal with.

  And then, of course, it was New Year’s Eve.

  Clare was hosting this time, which was apparently as traditional as Adam’s back-to-school and Chris’s Thanksgiving bashes. There was no way Jared could get away with not going, even an “I’m sick” excuse would surely be met with a “Boo, you whore.” Plus, he had a sneaking feeling Mia, or Ryder, or both, would come out to the Saunders house and drag him there by his feet if he didn’t make an appearance.

  Jared had far too much dignity to subject himself to that.

  There had been an offhand “oh, the usual” when he’d inquired about the dress code for the evening, a clear dig at ho
w he hadn’t been at Harbor Academy long enough to know all the ins and outs of social etiquette in this neck of the woods.

  “Glitter,” Mia had told him in a hiss on the last day of classes before they’d all split for the holidays. “Clare’s parties are always glitter and ice.”

  Jared had forced a smile and nodded. There was no way in hell he was going to dress in anything glittery for the party. Since his waistband had grown tighter on his diet of cinnamon buns and foot-high baked ham sandwiches, he went with a loose, comfortable pair of dark jeans and a black button-down shirt. The black was strategic; if anyone threw any damn glitter at him, it would show up and possibly hide his lack of effort.

  “Going out?” Hadley asked as he stopped in the kitchen to grab a bottle of liquor. They had enough of the damn stuff to open their own store, so he wasn’t about to go and buy any.

  His aunt was sitting at the island in the middle of the kitchen with a sketchpad, and her glasses perched on the edge of her nose, drawing aimlessly as Nat King Cole crooned over the stereo.

  “It’s New Year’s,” he said with an incredulous look. “You aren’t going out?”

  She laughed, a tinkling sound. “Of course I am. We’re going into the city tonight. But I don’t think anyone’s leaving ’til eleven.”

  Jared sighed. Of course, his aunt was way too cool to be seen anywhere before midnight.

  “Well, don’t turn into a pumpkin,” he said and snagged a bottle of Jack from the counter.

  She grinned at him and waved good-bye with her pencil as he went to the garage. The truck stayed parked out front. The pink Cadillac though, she got special treatment, and was kept locked up, under cover.

  The car purred to life, and Jared pulled smoothly out onto the drive. He was good at this now, knowing how the car handled, when to let it rumble and when to push her to the max. Chris had kept his vow and bought a vintage white Mustang to replace the car he’d given away, and seemed enamored with the new vehicle. Jared was pleased for him.

  Clare lived in possibly the most exclusive corner of the already-expensive island. Sure, Adam’s place was quirky and cool, and Chris’s was bold and brash, but Clare’s parents were clearly old money. He wasn’t surprised. She held herself with the sort of snobbery that spoke of deep-rooted entitlement.