Best Friends Forever

ecture students bought. But that magazine paid the bills, for now at least. If Diana ever heard about my moment or two of weakness, I’d be done for.

I’d had an entire flight back to Chicago to figure out the truth: it was more than just a moment of weakness. It was something I had dreamed about since I was a little girl. He was every bit a fixture of home as my own house.

Now, I was sitting on the living room floor of my apartment, going through a very different set of pictures. I’d tried to dig up some original photos of the old ranch house to show the renovations side by side in the article. After finding two or three great photos of the porch and the living room with its stone fireplace, I’d happened on picture after picture of Colt and my brother…and me.

At first the pictures were a pleasant surprise, and a few of them were even funny. By the time I reached the bottom of the box, I’d been struck by an unbelievable thought, one that had never crossed my mind until that very moment: Colt had been a big part of my life back then. More then just my brother’s friend. More than just a little crush.

There were dozens of photos of the two boys spread out over the antique steamer trunk that served as my coffee table, and scattered among them were just as many pictures of the three of us together. Riding horses, fishing in the stream, walking on the split rail fence like it was a tightrope, going to 4H competitions and rodeos. But there were just as many pictures of just Colt and me, obviously taken by Bryant with his 35mm camera or snapped by my mom while we were doing something goofy. In all of them, Colt is looking at me, never the camera. Whether I was proudly holding up a skinny little fish on the end of my hook or waving from the back of a horse, he was looking at me every time.

Colt had always been a part of my life, but the twisted way I remembered things as an adult meant I now looked back on him as just my brother’s friend. Not my friend. And certainly nothing more. But these pictures told a different story, one where his life and mine had been so intertwined that we might as well have been one big family instead of the Stones and the Forbes.

I loved him. I always had. And while I’d somehow managed to convince myself he was just being nice to Bryant’s kid sister, these long-forgotten photos told a different story. I was guilty of not allowing myself to imagine something I never knew I had, and then when I finally got my hands on him, I’d walked away like he didn’t matter.

There weren’t enough tissues in my cramped apartment to handle the hours of sobbing. I’d finally resorted to toilet paper, and when that got dangerously low I switched to trying to control the flood with paper towels. The end result was a messy pile of emotional carnage, the evidence of which surrounded me like a sopping wet barricade.

It was only because I needed to breathe that I heard a knock on my door. It’d be just like my neighbors to come complain that I was heartbreaking too loudly. The nerve of coming up here to complain only switched my sadness to fury, and I flung open the door ready to go toe-to-toe.

“You’ve got some ner— Colt,” I said, my voice fading to a whisper.

My breath caught in my throat as I stared at him, looking almost unrecognizable. His jeans and boots had been replaced by khakis and loafers, and his plaid button up shirt was gone, replaced by a starched white shirt. The only thing that remained of the Colt I knew was his typical gentlemanly white t-shirt beneath. His hair, while still threatening to turn unruly at a moment’s notice, was brushed back from his face, giving him the appearance of a sinner on his way to church.

“Colt, what’s this? You look… you sure don’t look like the cowboy I know. What are you—” I started to ask.

He took one step towards me and wrapped me in his arms, pulling me close to his chest. He looked at my wide eyes for a second, obviously judging my reaction, before kissing me hard.

I practically fell against him, so relieved to feel him close to me again. Even as my mind was swimming with questions, I blocked all thought and just tasted him, remembering how this had felt only a day ago. I held my lips to his like we were made for each other. The few hours since I’d felt him hold me felt like so much longer, like weeks had passed instead of hours.

“Wait just a second, I don’t understand,” I finally asked, pulling away when the questions became too much. “What are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t just let you go, Meredith. Not after you’d finally come all the way home.” He brushed my hair back from my face, taking in the sight of my swollen, bloodshot eyes with a mixture of confusion and worry. “You’ve been crying… because of me?”

“Yeah,” I admitted after scrambling for some plausible excuse. It was almost a relief to admit it, and my whole body slumped with the confession.

“But why? You’re the one who left.”

Instead of an accusation, it was followed up with the softest kiss on my forehead, his arms encircling me even tighter.

“Because I can’t have you. You’re my brother’s friend, and my work assignment, and your life is back there on the ranch, working your family’s land. It all doesn’t work together, it just doesn’t line up.” I rambled on, and then gave up trying with a tearful sigh.

“Darlin’, none of that matters, least not to me. Besides, how could your family be put out by us being together? Who else could your family want for you than someone they’ve known their whole life? There’s no way they’d rather see you with a stranger you met off in the city, or some far-flung country where you were working. And once your article is finished, there’s no one to say that we can’t be together.”

“Meredith,” he said, taking my chin with his fingertips and lifting my face to meet the most sincere look I’d ever seen, “I can’t let you go. I never really understood that, but I’d already let you go so many times over the years. It took watching you get in that car and leave to know what I’d done. But I’ve come to ask you to reconsider. I’ll beg, if that’s what it takes…”

The corners of my mouth turned up slightly at the thought of Colt begging on his knees for me to be his, and he took my smile for reassurance. He kissed me again, walking me backwards and closing my apartment door behind him. We’d made it a few feet before I bumped into the coffee table, jolting us back to reality.

“What’s this?” Colt asked, looking down over my shoulder. I turned and was flooded with embarrassment. The evidence of my pity party was scattered all over the floor, but that wasn’t what had caught his eye.

He stepped around me and picked up a picture from the table, holding it closer to examine it. His eyes squinted slightly, then his face lit up.

“Oh my god, I remember this!” he said softly, a hint of amazement in his voice. He bent and picked up another photo, and then another, turning them over to see the dates that had been penciled in by hand on the back. “You’ve had these all this time? Look, there’s my dad in this one!”

I hurried to look, kicking myself for not having thought of it sooner. Of course his father would be in at least a few of the photos, his grandfather, too. He must miss them terribly.

“These are just…incredible. I had no idea you’d hung onto them. Look, there we all are having dinner. I remember this, it was the Fourth of July and we’d all gone down to the lake for the day. It was such a great day.” His voice trailed off as the memory took root in his mind, but he finally whispered, “God Meredith, you were beautiful even back then.”

He turned to look at me, hunger in his eyes. “You were always so beautiful… and I love you. I always have. I see the shy, knobby-kneed boy in this picture and I remember how much he loved to see you walking up the road, sent over on your bicycle on some errand for your mama, or just coming to spend the afternoon out there.”

It was all I could do to keep breathing, let alone reply. With every passing second, Colt’s happy smile began to falter, certain that I didn’t feel the same way. But without the right words, I answered the only way I could: I kissed him hard, clinging to his shirtsleeves as though I couldn’t stand the thought of ever letting go.