Wes didn’t know. I never told him and neither did Sam. Our friendship was a tiny little secret we kept. Or, I did. Maybe Sam was embarrassed and that’s why he kept his mouth shut.
But the real moment, the final kill shot, had been the year he came home and could no longer tell us where he was stationed. Or what he did there.
I found him in the middle of the night in the kitchen—our kitchen. The Kane family kitchen. Wes had his own place at that point but he was away on business.
So, he’d come to me.
And his eyes were dark and his mouth was different.
“Is this okay?” he asked. “Me being here.”
“Always,” I said, surprised by how much I meant it. By how much I wanted it.
And I could tell something had happened. Something big. Something awful. Something he couldn’t tell me about and somehow he couldn’t handle on his own.
I popped popcorn he didn’t eat. Made tea he didn’t drink. Told stories until he smiled. Jokes until he laughed. I stayed at the kitchen island, and by the time the sun came up I was twenty years old and I was deeply in love with my brother’s best friend.
I’d thought it would go away. He got deployed again and I wrote him and he wrote me back. We played video games. He showed up, he vanished again.
I got my own apartment, and when he was home he’d come over and played Skyrim all day with me. We ordered pizzas and drank beer like nothing was different, but the entire time my body thrummed with the nearness of him. Tracking him around my apartment. Around my life.
Years I’d spent loving this guy and he didn’t know? Didn’t see? Was I so invisible? Or was he pretending? And why did that feel so much worse?
Now he was back with that fresh pink scar.
And I was dressed up in the shoes and the thong because I just couldn’t take it anymore.
I might end up in flames, but I was taking a shot.
The last of the champagne went down in one big gulp and I turned, ready to confront the love of my life.
Only to find Sam standing next to me.
“Jesus,” I shouted and dropped the glass. Which he caught—because of course he did—and set with a quiet click on the bar. “Sam, you can’t sneak up on a person.”
“A second ago you were staring at me.”
“Well, I was just wondering who the guy was who didn’t get the memo about the dress code.”
“This was all I had,” he said. Which wasn’t true. I’d seen him in his dress blues with the sword and everything. But he was making a point that I should shut up about his clothes.
“I’m surprised you came,” I said, shifting my body just slightly away from his because I could feel the heat from him. I could feel the iron strength of his arm beneath the too-big sleeve of his shirt. And it was distracting. And I didn’t want to be distracted from telling him how much I wanted to see him without that shirt.
Yeah. It didn’t make much sense to me, either, but that was the effect he had on me. He turned me upside down just being in the room.
“I love a party,” he said with a tilt of his lip—the illusion of a smile. I gave him my whole smile in return. Which was how the scales balanced between us. He gave me nearly nothing and I gave him everything I had.
“Me too,” I lied, the same way he’d just lied to me, and when our eyes met, a certain kind of understanding blazed in the space between us. I know you. And you know me. And I’ve never felt this way, ever. And I don’t know how to live if you don’t feel the same way.
“We could leave,” Sam said. “Go back to your place. Kill some dragons. Steal some scrolls.”
“My brother would kill us.”
“You missed the announcement.”
“He really did it, huh?”
“He really did.”
“Were you…there? Like…at the ceremony?”
“No, Soph. He didn’t have anyone there.” It was in his tone of voice, he knew what I was asking and why.
“Do you think it’s real?” I asked.
Sam grunted. And in the Sam Porter translation app that I had built and refined over years of knowing him, I knew that what he meant was, We’ll see and I doubt it and sometimes you’re right about people but I’m not going to admit that at this moment and I’m just worried about my best friend who has been acting like a mad man since taking over the company.
I poked him in his rock-hard side and he jerked back, smiling.
“Jesus, kid. I don’t know what to think.”
The kid stung. Not gonna lie.
“What a liar you are,” I said, laughing at him. “He’s always told you more than he’s told me. Not that I’m bothered.”