Always and Forever (5 page)

His nostrils flared at the unspoken invitation in my words, and I recalled what we'd been discussing just before my little space out.

“Uh…to take a nap,” I finished lamely, my face coloring ten different shades of red. Damn Ricki and the mental images she drew for me. She was right, of course. Bed and a naked Kal was just about all I could think about now. Thanks a lot, Rick.

We trudged out to the student parking lot in silence, each of us mulling over everything that happened both yesterday and today. The ride home was just as devoid of conversation. At my front door, Kal hesitated.

He reached out, tucked a stray lock behind my ear. “Get some rest, Mia,” he murmured. “Call me later, okay?”

“You're not coming in?” I asked stunned.

Ever since Kal and I had first met as kids, our routine had always remained the same. I'd go to his house after breakfast and hitch a
ride to school. In the afternoons, he'd come straight here and hang out until dinnertime when we'd either part ways or eat at one house or the other. The only times this didn't happen was when we went out after school, but the end result was always the same. For those few hours between school letting out and our parents coming home, we were always together. Inseparable. Even when I was sick before, that had never once changed.

“I thought you wanted to take a nap. If you're tired, you should rest.”

I rolled my eyes, grabbed his arm, and dragged him into the house. “Come on, Kallie. We don't have to do homework. Let's get a snack, and watch a movie.”

After raiding the kitchen to make up a platter of sliced apples, celery sticks, and peanut butter, we clamored upstairs and flicked on my ancient television.

“Seriously,” Kal grumbled, “this TV is older than I am. I'm surprised it still works.”

“Quit dissing my TV,” I said, swatting him in the chest. “Gert still has plenty of good years left.”

He snorted out a laugh, shifting into a more comfortable position next to me on the bed. “It's so weird that you name your stuff, Mia.” He pilfered a celery stick off the plate, swabbed the end in peanut butter, and held it up to my mouth.

A partially eaten apple slice already in my hand, I leaned forward and bit into the celery. Then, I held the apple out to him, my stomach tying itself into some very intricate knots when his lips brushed the tips of my fingers as he bit down. Our eyes met for one heated minute. The world could have fallen into complete chaos outside my window and I wouldn't have known or even cared.

Unfortunately, Horcrux, my morbidly obese yet very nimble black cat, chose that moment to jump up onto the bed, dislodging the plate from my hand and sent apple, celery, and peanut butter flying through the air.

With a sharply cried
“Oh!”
I jumped up in an effort to catch the wayward food, smacking my head into Kal's in the process.

“Ow!” We both howled at the same time, our hands flying up to cradle our injuries. I dropped back down, moaning in agony as pain shot through my head.

“Mia?” Kal's hands were on me, gently probing my temple and scalp, searching for any bumps or bruises. “Mia, are you alright?”

“I'm going to kill that cat,” I groaned, hand clamped on my head where it had kissed Kal's rock-hard skull. Of course, having completed his task, Horcrux was now gone. “He's evil. Pure evil.”

He let loose a startled laugh. “I told you he should have been named Voldemort instead. I do have a habit of being right, you know.” He smiled at me winningly.

“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled, struggling to sit up.

Kal just pushed me back down. “You just relax. I'll clean this up.” He scooped up the escaped food, and shoved it all back onto the plate which then he set on my desk. The sweater that the peanut butter had landed on got tossed into the hamper. Before he came back to my side, he flipped through my DVD collection and popped one in. “In honor of your evil cat,” he whispered as the opening credits to
The Half-Blood Prince
, my favorite of the HP movies, rolled across the screen.

“You're the one who gave him to me,” I muttered.

“Shh, movie's starting,” he admonished as he settled in next to me. I rolled onto my side so I could see the TV better, and Kal propped himself up on an elbow behind me, his body mere inches from mine.

As the movie played, he leaned in close, and whispered the words in my ear like he always did. But this time, I didn't laugh at the way he pitched his voice to imitate the different characters. I was too consumed with the heat from his hand on my hip, his chest pressed against my back, and his breath on my neck.

I wanted to roll over, wrap my arms around him, bury my face in his chest, and breathe in the essence of him. I wanted him to pull me in close, slant his mouth over mine, and do things to me that friends had no right doing with other friends.

But I did none of those things. Because he was my friend. My best friend. And, whether I chose to believe it or not, I was most probably dying, and that was so unfair. Unfair to me, and especially unfair to him. I'd already hurt him enough. How terrible a friend would I be if I professed grand feelings of love and passion for him, and then died? I couldn't do that to him. I wouldn't.

So, instead of doing what I wanted, I closed my eyes and feigned sleep. A few minutes later, I heard the television click off, but Kal didn't leave my side. He curved his body around mine, and wrapped me up in his warmth. I wanted to say something then. I was about to, but before I could, the first of his tears fell. Hot, salty demons slid down his face and plopped onto mine. His pain poured out of him in never-ending sheets of acid rain, burned and corroded everything it touched, changed it forever. I didn't know what I could do, what I could say to make it all better for him. I didn't know how to soothe away his aches, take away his fears. I didn't have the words to make the pain disappear.

And so, I stayed silent.

S
IX

I'D JUST SHRUGGED INTO MY COAT
, prepared to do battle with Mom and Dad over going out so late when the doorbell rang. “I got it,” I called to no one and crossed the hallway to the front door.

A hot guy appearing on your doorstep is almost always a welcome sight, but not when said hot guy is 1. gay 2. covered in a whole crayon box full of colorful bruises and 3. sobbing and sniffling so loudly he'll wake half the neighborhood in a second.

“Brad,” I yelped, my eyes widening as I took in every cut, bruise, and swollen knuckle he owned. “What happened?”

Not waiting for a response, I reached out, grabbed his arm, and pulled him inside. I closed the door while he sniffled his way through pulling off his coat and boots. “Who's at the door, Mia?” Mom called from the kitchen.

“It's just Brad,” I shouted back. Before she could respond, I shoved him toward the stairs. “We're just going to go up to my room. Watch a movie or something.”

“Okay, honey. If you need anything—” We were already upstairs and closing the door to my room before she'd finished the sentence.

“This is Dave's work, isn't it?” I didn't really need him to respond to know the truth. Only Dave ever got away with landing more than one punch on Brad. It was written all over his face, so to speak. It was there: etched into each bruise, carved into the sad lines that pulled the corners of his mouth down, in the hurt which shadowed his baby blue eyes.

Brad scrubbed at those puffy eyes and nodded.

Dave Edwards and Brad Zeiler were the school's first openly gay couple, and besides being the cutest, straightest-looking guys on the planet, they were also the top athletes in the school. Brad headed the football and wrestling teams, and Dave captained basketball and baseball. The only stereotypical-gay-boy quality they had was their flare for drama. Nearly every other week, they'd have a very public argument that usually ended in one or both of them with black eyes or broken noses, or both. Then, a day or two later, they'd be back to hanging all over each other, acting as if nothing had happened.

“Oh, Brad,” I sighed, and stepped forward to fold him into a hug. For being built like a brick, Brad was like a big old lovable dog, one that wasn't quite housebroken but could just look at you with those big expressive eyes and make you want to cuddle him until he felt better. “What happened?”

His head dropped onto my shoulder. His arms closed around me and squeezed until I could barely breathe. “He's an asshole, is what happened.”

That knocked an uneasy laugh out of me. “Well, yeah,” I said. “I kind of figured that. Now, tell me what happened to make you realize this tonight.”

He blew out a long, heavy breath, like it physically hurt him to do so. He pulled away and swiped the back of his hand across his nose. “It's a long story.”

“Those are my favorite kind of stories.”

His lips tipped up in a small, watery smile. But it was a smile, nonetheless, so I counted that as a good sign. He started to lift his shoulders in a shrug, thought better of it, and then dropped onto my bed, instead. “It's a really long story,” he repeated, “and I wouldn't even know where to begin.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but before I formed any words, my phone buzzed in my back pocket.

“Mia, your butt is vibrating.” He pressed his fists into his eyes and rubbed vigorously.

“Gee, thanks. I didn't realize.” I rolled my eyes at him, pulled the cell out to look at the screen.

Are you coming over or what?
Ricki's text demanded.

Brad's here. 911
, I typed back. Since Brad and Dave had gotten together, Ricki and I had made up codes for the level of drama
between them. It ranged from 411, nothing major, like little pieces of gossip we thought were noteworthy, all the way up to epic panic, end of life as we knew it—911. Basically, the level of a nuclear holocaust. With all the bruises that colored his skin, tear tracks which skipped gleefully down his face, and the fact that he hadn't spilled every last one of his guts the moment I'd opened the door, this was definitely a state of emergency.

The phone jumped in my hand almost immediately. Ricki's response popped onto the screen.
On my way
, it read,
Will bring supplies
.

“Okay,” I said, turning to Brad. I tossed my phone onto my nightstand and perched on the bed next to him. “Tell me everything. From the beginning.”

He pulled his hands away from his face, sniffled again, and nodded. “Okay, well you know how…” Then, he launched into a retelling of everything that had happened after school all the way up until the moment he found himself bruised, bloodied and ringing my doorbell.

Apparently, while I'd been holed up here with Kal, mired in my own health drama, Dave had been ripping Brad's heart out with a dull, rusty butter knife. What kind of a friend was I, not to have noticed the warning signs earlier today? Looking back, they'd been there, in the way that Brad and Dave had scooted their chairs apart when they'd sat down at lunch and in the way that Dave had been mysteriously absent from Brad's locker every time I'd walked past during the breaks between classes. Typically, the two of them were as inseparable as Kal and me. Where one went, the other followed close behind.

That was the thing about illness, whether you truly were sick or had to endure that hated time while awaiting a second opinion, one that would no doubt save you from a death sentence. There was still some small part of me that believed this was all just a horrible mistake, one that the new doctor would clear up, but there was that other part of me that just…well, things might just get ugly, and soon.

But that wasn't the point. The point was that whatever the case may be, illness turns you into a selfish bitch. It makes you more important than anyone should ever deserve to be. It brings you into
the spotlight, when all you really want to do is fade back into the shadows where you've always known you belonged. And, worst of all, it makes you believe that nothing and no one else matters as much as you and your problems.

Well, not me. No right now, anyway. Tomorrow, I could worry about cancer and life and death, and all that went with it. But for tonight, at least, I was going to be me, dammit. Mia Gordon. And the real Mia Gordon thought of her friends first. Considered their feelings before her own. And she definitely paid attention to what they were saying to her.

“And then I hit him,” Brad finished with another sniffle. He scrubbed at his eyes again and mopped up the new batch of tears that had cropped up during the retelling.

“Aw, Brad. That sucks,” I said. I slid closer to him so I could loop an arm around him and give a squeeze. “Are you sure it's over? I mean, don't you think this might just all blow over in a day or two?”
Like usual.
But I didn't add that aloud. So not the time.

“I don't think so, Mia. I mean—”

“Well, it looks like I'm just in time,” Ricki said from across the room. She sauntered in, juggling a cardboard carrier containing three steaming coffees and a brown sack in one hand with her overfull purse gripped in the other. She kicked the door closed and shot us a narrowed look. “A little help here?”

“Oh, sorry.” Brad shot up to his feet. Relieving her of the coffees and the bag, he settled down on the floor by the bed and went about rummaging through the assortment of pastries she'd brought. “Thanks for this, Ricki. You're the best.”

“Of course, I am.” Her flippant reply earned her a grunt from Brad. She rolled her eyes and dropped down onto my bed. “Gimme one of those, Nancy, before they get cold.”

He didn't take the bait, evidence of just how upset he still was over his fight with Dave. Instead, he handed over the other coffees, keeping the donuts for himself.

“You might want to watch yourself,” she needled him further. “Those things will go straight to your hips.”

Again no reply. He just shoved a Danish into his mouth.

Normally, Brad and Ricki passed the time they spent together bickering. They just weren't happy unless they were picking on each other. They always had a smart remark or a snide comment for one another. It was how their friendship worked. Without it, they really didn't have much else.

“Okay, that's it.” She lunged across the bed. Stretching her arm to its limit, she snatched the bag out of Brad's hands. “If you're not going to talk to me, you don't get these.”