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

by Anna Martin

  “So,” Evan said. “Wine. I’ll put it on the list. Do you actually want to go and pick wine or just find something that’ll go with the menu?”

  “You pick.”

  “Nu-uh. I’m not going to choose and get it wrong. We could always ask the caterers to suggest something.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Lacey said, pointing at him emphatically. “I’ll call them.”

  She reached for her phone, and Evan put a gentle hand on her wrist. “It’s almost eleven, Lace. Call them in the morning.”

  “Is it?” she shrieked. “No way. When did that happen?”

  “Somewhere between the first and second bottles of wine,” Evan mumbled, reaching for his glass.

  “I didn’t eat dinner either. That’s why I’m drunk.”

  “Mhmm.”

  “I’m going to make something. You want a grilled cheese? I’m in the mood for grilled cheese sandwiches.”

  “I can help,” Evan said. “Can’t have you setting yourself on fire this close to the wedding.”

  Lacey grunted and hauled herself to her feet. She was wearing sky-blue pajamas with fluffy bunny slippers and one of Anthony’s football jerseys. Evan pushed at her shoulder affectionately as they wandered through Anthony’s huge, gorgeous house, wineglasses in hand, to the kitchen.

  “So, we’ve got everything sorted for the rehearsal dinner now? I want to make sure I don’t need to think about that anymore.”

  “You don’t need to think about that at all,” Evan said as he pulled a skillet from the drawer next to the stove. “I’ve got that covered with Morgan.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep. Morgan’s got your bachelorette party covered too—”

  “Wait, you’re not involved?”

  “No,” Evan said. “Girls only.”

  Lacey had taken a seat at the kitchen island, clearly willing to let Evan make her snack for her. He didn’t mind, not really, and moved around her to take butter and cheese from the fridge and a loaf of bread from the pantry.

  “But you have to come!” Lacey wailed. “You’re my gay best friend. You’re an honorary girl.”

  “Geez thanks, Lace,” Evan said sardonically. “Just what every gay man wants to hear. While you’re busy emasculating me, do you want my balls too?”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said, waving his words away. “You know what I mean. You have to come.”

  “I really don’t,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll end up carrying you all home on my own, and you know what? I don’t want to be the one responsible for you.”

  “Scott won’t be there.”

  “I know that, Lacey.”

  “So you don’t need to worry. It’ll be nice to have you at one wedding-related event where you’re not all on edge about seeing him.”

  Evan decided to ignore her and cut thick slices of cheddar and provolone to layer between the bread. It didn’t take long to assemble the first two sandwiches—there would almost certainly be more than two—and set them into the sizzling skillet.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to contact him ahead of time?” Lacey asked. “It would be good for the two of you to clear the air.”

  “There’s no air to clear,” he said mildly. “I don’t have any beef with your brother, Lacey.”

  “It’s been years since you last talked to him.”

  “Which is enough time for everything that happened to be water under the bridge. I’m not going to cause a scene. Or be rude, or whatever it is you’re worried about. I’ll be polite to him. But Scott isn’t part of my life anymore, hasn’t been for a long time. But you’re important to me.”

  “Love you.”

  “I know you do,” he said, smirking as he flipped the sandwiches over. “I’ll behave. I promise.”

  “Evan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m really not sure about those centerpieces,” she started, and Evan tipped his head back, groaning loudly.

  “No. The centerpieces are fine,” he insisted, flipping the first sandwich onto a heavy wooden chopping board before slicing it diagonally and sliding it onto a plate. Without asking, he went to the fridge and brought back a bottle of ketchup. Lacey was weird like that.

  “But it might be too much, too many roses.”

  “It’s a wedding, Lace. A wedding. There’s no such thing as too many roses at a wedding.”

  “Okay, but the colors—”

  “I helped with the colors,” he said darkly, cutting her off. “Don’t go there.”

  Lacey took a big, crunchy bite of her sandwich and wisely stopped talking. Evan ate his while working on the next two, only aware of how hungry he’d been as he ate.

  “When’s the dress fitting again?”

  “The last one is Wednesday next week. Are you going to come?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “Yeah. My mom will just cry again, and I’m not sure I can deal with that.”

  Evan chuckled. “Okay. I can move some things around.”

  “If you have meetings—”

  “I don’t.”

  “Okay.”

  By the time the second sandwiches were done cooking, Lacey had polished off the first and gone rifling through the pantry to find chips. They split a bag while eating the next two in companionable silence.

  “Can you believe I’m getting married in less than eight weeks?” Lacey asked, leaning her chin on her hand as she stared out at the heavy moon.

  “I can’t believe you found someone willing to marry you.”

  “Asshole,” Lacey said with a laugh.

  “You’re sure about this?” Evan said, feeling the need to ask. Again.

  Anthony was six years older than Lacey, a sailor in the US Navy based in Norfolk. He was sweet and kind, and his family had serious money. But Lacey was only twenty-three and such a dreamer it almost hurt Evan’s heart. She loved so clearly, so openly, and he’d already watched her be hurt once before.

  “I’m sure,” she said seriously. “And, I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? If it doesn’t work out, I’ll just divorce him.”

  Evan laughed at that. “You romantic.”

  “He’s the one, Ev. Have you ever looked at someone before and just felt it? That ‘he’s the one’ feeling?”

  “No,” Evan lied.

  “You will one day,” she insisted. “I promise.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Are you bringing a date to the wedding?”

  “Oh no.” Evan shook his head emphatically. “Nope. Your grandma Sparrow doesn’t need to see me on the arm of another man. She hates me enough as it is.”

  “She doesn’t hate you! And it would serve the miserable old hag right for being so narrow-minded.”

  “I don’t want her causing a fuss on your wedding day. Plus, I don’t have anyone to bring. So I’ll be playing the role of your devastatingly handsome gay best friend for the day.”

  “Not just for the day.”

  “You’re such a brat, Lacey.”

  But he smiled.

  The last weekend in April was perfect for a Virginia wedding. Evan woke, like he did most mornings, to the sound of gulls and soft sunlight streaming in through the open window.

  He was alone, and that was usual too. The house he’d picked up after a foreclosure was farther down the beach from where he’d grown up. He’d crept into North Carolina; the distance from his hometown meant he could now step out of his front door and feel sand beneath his feet in minutes. It was a fair trade.

  This home was small, a step up from a trailer, not really a whole house. It was his, though, and that was the most important thing.

  Evan rolled over and glanced at the clock. He’d become an early riser over the past few years, preferring to appreciate the sunlight in the mornings rather than staying up late, straining his eyes with artificial lights as he worked. It was a little after six, meaning he could get a few hours work in before he needed to leave for the Sparrow house.

  As was
his habit, Evan rolled out of bed wearing the boxers he’d slept in and wandered through to the kitchen to set his coffeemaker to brew. The house was a low, squat one-bed-one-bath that had needed a fair amount of work when he’d moved in. It had taken months to bring the building up to code, and now it was his pride and joy.

  These days there was no mold in the bathroom, and with some of his stepfather’s help he’d fixed the water pressure, meaning he could take a steaming hot shower while the coffee brewed. The tiles in here were dark blue, and he’d laid most of them, as well as the grooved wood floors that ran through the whole house. He’d even helped install the new sink unit and toilet.

  Evan ran his hand over his jaw, decided he wasn’t going to shave, and shampooed his hair. Lacey had helped him pick out his outfit for the day, so he didn’t need to worry about that until later. When he was done in the shower, Evan pulled on loose cutoff sweatpants and a tank, grabbed a mug of coffee, then went through to his studio.

  In the other houses along this street, the room he used as a studio was a dining room. Evan had no use for a dining room—he’d fixed a breakfast bar in the kitchen to do that job—but the studio was definitely a necessity.

  Before he’d even graduated from ECU he’d started freelancing. It wasn’t so unusual; a lot of his fellow students with a major in art and design had done the same thing. It had been one of his housemates, MJ, who had put Evan in touch with Casey, who was an agent. Within a few months, Evan had started work.

  His projects were varied, purposefully so. He’d inked comic books and illustrated children’s storybooks, worked on concept art for big-budget Hollywood animations and Nickelodeon cartoons, and digitally inked teeny-tiny webcomics for almost no money because he was passionate about the story the artist was telling.

  In the summer Evan would take his face paints down to the beach and spend hours turning kids into superheroes and zoo animals and princesses. Sometimes he’d take a sketchbook and easel instead and do one portrait after another until his shoulder seized up. The fact that face paints and portraits brought in more money than the work his agent sent his way was neither here nor there. Evan was an artist, a paid one, and he knew how rarely his colleagues and peers got to make that statement.

  Over the winter, he’d taken one commission after another, working with whatever medium the project required, just to keep the heat on and food in his fridge. Now, as they crept toward summer, the regularity of seasonal work would keep things a little more secure.

  Due to the variety of his projects, the studio often looked like chaos. He could have huge pieces of paper tacked to the walls, ready for another splodge of paint that looked like it could maybe be the right color. He’d painted the whole back of the door with blackboard paint so he could jot notes to himself without interrupting the flow of his work. Those little scraps of paper he’d used before always got lost, often the ideas with them.

  Evan took a deep breath. It smelled like home in here, like freshly brewed coffee and acrylics and paper and charcoal.

  He set the coffee on his side table, pulled down a fresh piece of paper, and started to sketch.

  It was only because his alarm went off, startling Evan out of his focus, that he even realized how much time had passed. The morning of the wedding really was too late to be working on a gift for the bride, but he’d been busy, and it had slipped his mind. Fortunately Evan had been invited along on the wedding dress shopping trip and had a photo on his phone for reference. The other details he made up.

  The first few efforts lay abandoned to one side. Evan stretched his neck from one side to the other, appraising his sketch. He’d decided on a portrait of Lacey in her wedding dress, drawn from the back, which was probably unusual for a wedding portrait. She had her chin on one shoulder, a bouquet (and he knew what that would look like too) dangling from her fingers. The back of the dress Lacey had chosen was incredibly beautiful, with a deep scooped back edged with fine lace and a full tulle skirt.

  He’d caught it all with pencils and shading, improvising on the hairstyle and filling in with as much detail as possible while still leaving the form of the drawing fairly rough. It was meant to capture a moment, an emotion, rather than any specifics. After all, what girl got a portrait of her in her wedding dress before she even put it on?

  Evan checked the time and leaned in to correct the shading on the bridge of Lacey’s nose, then reached for his can of hairspray and gently covered the drawing in a fine layer. He’d bought a frame weeks ago for this very purpose and would carefully assemble it all before he left the house. It would take about an hour to drive back up the coast, and he wanted to leave plenty of time.

  When Evan got back to the bedroom, he noticed his phone was flashing with several missed calls, all from Lacey.

  Frowning, he hit the button to call her back and started to rifle through his drawers for clean, decent underwear.

  “Hey,” he said when she answered. “Everything okay?”

  “Oh thank God,” Lacey said in a rush. “What have you been doing?”

  “Working,” he said absently. “What’s wrong?”

  “They’ve fucked up the tables, Evan,” Lacey said, sniffling, on the edge of tears. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Fucked up how?” he asked. He wasn’t ready to panic just yet. Lacey had a tendency to be dramatic at the best of times, and this was her wedding day. He didn’t doubt her normal drama was about to be increased.

  “All the flowers,” she wailed. “The bouquets are fine, but the house looks like a three-year-old put it together. You’re the only one I trust to fix it.”

  “Okay. I can be there in an hour and a half. Can you wait until then?”

  “But the wedding’s at eleven!”

  “And it’s only eight,” he said, hopping into tight black boxer briefs. “Are the girls there yet?”

  “No, they don’t turn up until nine.”

  “Okay. Go back upstairs.”

  “How do you—”

  “Go back upstairs, Lace,” he repeated. “Take a shower if you didn’t already. Shave your legs or whatever. Calm down. I just need to get dressed, and then I’ll be out of here in less than ten minutes.”

  “You’re a lifesaver, Ev.”

  “I know.” He went to hang up when Lacey said his name again. “Hmm?”

  “In case I don’t get to say it today, thank you. For everything. You didn’t have to do this for me.”

  “Of course I did,” he said fondly. “You’re my best friend.”

  She blew a kiss down the phone and hung up.

  Evan was smiling as he set the phone down and went to the mirror to fix his hair. He still wasn’t sure exactly when he’d become so close to Lacey. When he’d moved back after college, that was for sure. She had always been around, a part of his life, so it didn’t seem weird when they’d started hanging out. Lacey hadn’t been interested in college. Very few people knew she was dyslexic. Evan certainly hadn’t. After spending years in a school system that didn’t really cater to her needs, she’d jumped the education ship as soon as she could and started training to be a dance teacher.

  These days she worked for a small studio in the city, putting her dance training to use by teaching the next generation of tiny dancers. After watching her struggle for so long, Evan couldn’t help but be proud of her achievement.

  Evan pulled on the dark gray pants he’d owned for years, meaning they fit him well and were comfortable as hell, and a white shirt. Lacey had agreed when he said he wanted to wear a tweed vest and bow tie instead of anything more formal. Informal was one of the words on her wedding mood board, after all. He had tan leather brogues to complete the look, which he decided would definitely be pulled out again at some point. Sure, it was a little hipsterish, but who cared?

  The frame for his sketch was still in its bag in his closet, right where he’d left it, thank God. Evan quickly brushed his teeth, fiddled with his hair, and wrestled the sketch into the frame before jogging ou
t of the house to his car.

  Traffic was on his side, and after breaking only a few speeding laws, Evan pulled up at the Sparrow house. He’d been friends with Lacey long enough now that he didn’t associate the place with his childhood friendship with Scott. It had been weird at first, but not for a long time now.

  There would be assigned parking for the ceremony later, but for now, Evan left the car on the drive, grabbed the framed sketch and the two Starbucks Frappuccinos, and left his sunglasses on his face as he rang the doorbell.

  He wasn’t expecting Scott to answer.

  “Hi,” Evan said, coughing on the cold drink as Scott gaped at him. “Sorry. I’m early. Lacey called me with some decorating disaster.”

  “Shit, sorry,” Scott said, opening the door wider to let Evan in. He was still wearing pajama pants, riding low on his hips, and his hair was sleep-tousled and messy. He looked adorable. “Lacey is upstairs.”

  “I’ll, uh….”

  Evan gestured to the stairs and pushed his sunglasses onto his head as he trudged up them. That was not how he wanted this day to go.

  “Evan, thank fuck,” Lacey said as he wandered into the master bedroom. She was wrapped in a soft white robe that was embroidered with bride on the back.

  “Lacey. Language,” Mrs. Sparrow—Annie—said as she leaned in to kiss Evan’s cheek. “I don’t care if it is your wedding day.”

  “Hey, Annie.” Evan handed Lacey her Frap. “Here.”

  “You’re a lifesaver,” she said.

  “This is for you.” He held the frame out. There hadn’t been time to wrap it.

  “Oh, Evan,” Lacey said as she took it, her coffee already set aside. Her eyes started to fill with tears. “Oh my God, Ev. Mom, look at this.”

  “Don’t spoil your makeup,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her head as Lacey passed the frame to her mother.

  “It’s beautiful,” she sniffed. “Thank you so much.”

  “Anything for you, princess,” he said. It had become an affectionate nickname during the wedding-planning process.