Friends & Forever (4 page)

There was nothing
loving
about it,
nothing sensual. It was sexual. It was pure, raw, unadulterated fucking. She
cried out as he thrust into her, her nails clawing his back. He closed his
eyes, losing himself in the sensation of sinking inside of her, the pleasure
and pain. It was everything.

It wasn't long—a few deep strokes,
not long enough for either to break a sweat or reach their peak—before it
was over, ended as abruptly as it started. The door flung open, slamming into
the wall. "You in here, DeMarco? Please tell me your punk ass isn't passed
out already. I need to borrow a condom."

Nicholas
.

Carmine instantly stilled, deep inside of
her, as dread coursed through him. His eyes shot toward the doorway as Nicholas
stepped into the bedroom and flicked on the light switch. Carmine grunted,
squinting from the harsh light, as Amy cursed beneath him.

Nicholas glanced toward the couch and
quickly turned away. "Oh fuck, sorry, man. Didn't know you were with a…
girl
."

The moment he said girl, Carmine could
detect the change in his tone. His voice dropped low, a cold, hard edge to the
word. Carmine quickly sat up, pulling the condom off and throwing it in the
trashcan as he fixed his pants. Amy wordlessly fumbled with her clothes,
covering herself up.

Nicholas took a deep breath, the movement
obvious in his back as his shoulders stiffened, harshly rising and falling,
before he slowly turned back around. He glanced between the two of them, his
expression blank… so detached a sense of trepidation simmered inside of
Carmine.
The calm before the storm
.

Amy said not a damn word as she bolted
right past her brother and out of the room. She knew it, too. This was bad.
Real fucking bad
.
Nicholas just stood there, staring
at Carmine. Carmine didn't know what to say. All the reasoning he had ignored
earlier pounded away at him as he quickly sobered up again. 
Not good
.

"That wasn't a girl," Nicholas
said, his voice low.

"Uh, well…" Carmine was going to
point out that Amy was, in fact, a girl, but he knew what Nicholas meant. She
wasn't
just
a girl. She wasn't just a 'nobody'. She was a 'somebody
'
to Nicholas. "No."

"My sister?" Nicholas raised his
eyebrows, the first sign of anger showing as he clenched his hands into fists
at his side. "You fucked
my sister
?"

"Well, uh…" He wanted to deny
it, to lie his ass off, but he'd been caught red-handed with his dick in the
honey-pot, so-to-speak. Anything short of an admission would be a goddamn
insult. "Yeah, I did."

Nicholas stared at him for a moment longer
before turning around and walking out of the room. Carmine stood there,
stunned, and decided to follow his friend. That couldn't have been it.
Not at all.

Carmine made it to the front door when
there was a commotion outside. He thrust the screen door open and stepped out
on the porch when he heard Dom yell. "Whoa, Nick… what the hell are you
doing, man?"

Carmine looked up in just enough time to
see Nicholas swing a baseball bat at the Mazda, shattering the driver's side
window. Gasping, Carmine stared with shock. His car.
His
fucking car
.
"My fucking car!"

Before Carmine could even fully register
what was happening, Nicholas came toward him with the bat. Carmine ducked as
Nicholas swung, barely missing him. Cursing, he jumped back when Nicholas swung
again, his screaming echoing over the sound of the music, drawing everyone's
attention. "My sister, DeMarco? Of all the girls in this town, you think
you can fuck around with
my sister
?"

"Look, calm down," Carmine said,
raising his hands defensively, but it did nothing to stop his friend. Nicholas
tried to swing again when Dom jumped in, snatching ahold of the bat and prying
it from Nicholas's hands. Dom tossed it away from them, the bat landing in the
grass with a thud, but being disarmed didn't stop Nicholas. No, he wouldn't be
deterred that easily.

Nicholas lunged at Carmine, barely giving
him enough time to brace himself for the impact. The fist landed on his jaw,
pain tearing through his face and down his neck as his head jolted to the side.

"Knock it the hell off!" Dom
shouted.

Carmine held his hands up to stop his
brother from intervening again. "Let him get it out."

He'd get it out, and they'd be fine

They always were.

Dom hesitated but took a step back at
Carmine's insistence. Carmine, watching his brother, not wanting to involve
him, hadn't been prepared for Nicholas's attack. Another blow landed right in
his nose, blinding pain blasting him as whiteness coated his vision. The agony
spurred him to react, and he blocked Nicholas's next hit, instead punching
back.

Fists flew as the boys lunged, kicking and
striking, all out brawling in the grass as the crowd formed around them. They
beat the daylights out of each
other,
blood pouring
from both of their faces, knuckles bloody and bodies battered by the time their
energy waned. Dom finally stepped in then, ignoring Carmine's protests, and
shoved the two of them away from each other.

"Enough!" he shouted. "What
the hell, guys? You're best friends!"

Nicholas spit on the grass as he shook his
head, blood running down his chin. His lip was split. "Not anymore."

Those cold words struck Carmine so hard he
visibly flinched. He hadn't even flinched from Nicholas's fists. "Don't be
fucking stupid."

"Stupid?" Nicholas stepped
toward him, but was blocked by Dom's body wedged between them. "You're
dead to me, DeMarco.
Dead
."

* * *

For the second time that night, both boys landed in the
emergency room in Durante. This time, however, there was no laughter. There was
no joking. There was nothing funny about it.

Carmine sat still on the edge of the
sterile white bed as Jenn
restitched
the wound on his
eyebrow. His earlier stitches had been torn out in the scuffle.

Nicholas sat no more than ten feet from
him, on the end of the adjacent bed, another nurse cleaning his wounds. Between
them stood Vincent DeMarco, both of their charts in his hand, a look of
indecision on his face as he glanced between the two of them. He obviously
wondered what the hell happened, but Carmine knew a part of him realized it was
an answer he didn't want to hear.

After Carmine's stitches were back in and
both boys were bandaged up, Vincent waved the nurses off, dismissing them from
the room. They quietly left, and Vincent shut the door behind them, sighing as
he tossed the charts down on a small table. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he
turned back to look between them again. "The ER twice in one night…
are
we looking to set a record?"

Neither spoke.

"What happened?" he asked,
waving between them. "Who did this to you? I know you didn't do it to
yourselves
."

Carmine scoffed at that as Nicholas let
out a dry laugh, licking his split lip. They still didn't speak. What the hell
could they say?

"Ah." Vincent seemed to get it
at that moment. "You did it to each other."

Again, they said nothing.

Vincent eyed them peculiarly. "Do we
need to involve the police?"

That
finally got them speaking.

"Nah, no big deal," Nicholas
said, hopping down off the bed and wincing as he put weight on his ankle.
"I just fell."

"Sounds about right to me,"
Carmine muttered.

Nicholas knew the routine by now, going
into his own chart and grabbing the sheet out to be discharged. He said nothing
else, strolling out without another word. No 'goodbye'. No 'see you later'. No
nothing. Not even a 'fuck you'.

Carmine sat there for a moment, staring
straight ahead. He could feel his father's gaze on him, assessing him, judging
him. "What did you do, Carmine?"

"What makes you think
I
did
something?"

Vincent strolled over and roughly grasped
Carmine's chin, lifting his head to survey his face, purposely making him look
him in the eyes. Angry, Carmine shoved his father's hand away. He hated when he
did that, when he so casually manhandled him. It made Carmine feel two feet
tall and ten years younger.
Fuck that
.

"He's your best friend, son,"
Vincent said gently.

"Not anymore."

Saying those words out loud stung Carmine,
like the verbal acknowledgement made them real. Nicholas wasn't his best friend
anymore.

"Why not?"

Carmine glared at his father. "Why do
you care?"

"I always care about what's going on
with you," he said. "You're my son."

Laughing dryly, Carmine jumped down from the hospital bed.
"Don't try that fatherly bullshit out on me now,
Dr. DeMarco
."
He purposely sneered the name as he shook his head. "You can play that
game around everyone else, but I know you. I live with you. That ship sailed a
long, long time ago."

* * *

Thumping bass vibrated the school gymnasium as hip-hop blared
from the speakers flanking a DJ. Colored lights swirled around the makeshift
dance floor with bodies amassed in the center, laughing and dancing the night
away.

Carmine stood along the side, his back to
the crowd as he poured himself a glass of punch. A quick glance around ensured
nobody was watching as he slipped his flask from his pocket and poured a bit of
the liquor into his small cup. After putting the flask away, he turned around
and leaned back against the table, taking a sip.

The subtle burn soothed his nerves.

Why was he here? He didn't know. He didn't
want
to be. School dances weren't his idea of a good time, but he had
made plans to come weeks ago… plans he just seemed to instinctively follow
through with, despite what had happened the night before.

His muscles ached and his head pounded
viciously along to the beat of the music… last night's fight with Nicholas had
taken a toll on his body. He knew he looked like hell, too, cuts and bruises
marring his tanned skin.

He looked about as good as the
motherfucker across the gymnasium.

Nicholas stood along the other side of the
room, laughing along with a group of friends. Their friends, or more so
Nicholas's friends, it seemed. Even Carmine's own brother was over there,
laughing and joking along with him.

Seems they chose their side, and it wasn't
with
him
.

Carmine's gaze drifted from them to Amy
out on the dance floor. Amy, who had helped create this fucking mess, yet she
looked as if she had not a care in the world, wearing her homecoming crown and
dancing with the starting quarterback of the varsity squad.
Bullshit
.

Guzzling the rest of the punch, Carmine
tossed the plastic cup in the closest trashcan as he strode through the crowd,
toward the exit on the other side of the gymnasium. He could be miserable
elsewhere… somewhere quiet, that didn't make his head pound so fucking hard.
Pulling his keys from his pocket, he nodded goodbyes to a few people who caught
his eye, keeping his head down as he approached the crowd with Nicholas. He
wasn't in the mood for the shit tonight. Maybe if he kept his distance and gave
him time to cool down, it would all blow over.

The sound of his friend's laughter made
his hair bristle as it frazzled his nerves yet again. How the hell could he be
so
happy
? Carmine nearly made it to the door when he heard Nicholas's
voice, purposely raised.

"What's the best sex position to make
an ugly baby?"

Carmine rolled his eyes.
A joke
.

"I don't know," someone said.
"What?"

"Don't know either," Nicholas
said. "Too bad Carmine's mom's dead or we'd ask her."

A low murmur rolled through the group
before strained silence fell over everything. Carmine felt like he'd been
plunged in a bucket of ice water. A sickeningly painful numbness slowly coated
every inch of him, pins and needles on his flesh, as his heart rate
skyrocketed. Mere seconds passed, barely a blink of an eye, but it felt like an
eternity inside of Carmine.
An eternity of indecision.
An eternity of devastation.
An
eternity of disbelief.

There's no way he just said that.

No way.

But when the second passed, all indecision
was gone. The devastation manifested into rage, the disbelief pure adrenaline.
Turning, Carmine pounced, swinging his fists without hesitation.

The crowd backed up, getting out of the
way, as Carmine unleashed his rage. Nicholas had been caught off guard and
could do nothing but try to shield his face, blocking the attack. It ended
almost as fast as it started, the school administration and security stepping
in and tearing the boys apart. Carmine was shaking, furious, as someone dragged
him away from Nicholas.