“I think you’d make a cute couple,” she said quickly and then turned on her heel and went back to the fire.
Later that night I fucked Kayla up against a tree, then fucked her in my tent the next morning, after James had vacated to make breakfast.
We hadn’t made a cute couple. Kayla and I only fooled around for a few more weeks until I broke it off and then had to avoid Steph’s flat for a while.
Aside from fucking Kayla, I felt like I fucked something else up. It was that moment where I think any possibility of something between us finally vanished. After Kayla, I made a conscious decision to get Steph out of my head. I fucked more girls, became the player she always thought I was. I did what I could to just focus on her as a friend.
And it worked. But then life got in the way. At twenty-five, I was already sick and tired of just a string of girls who meant nothing to me. I didn’t want that in my life. I had grown up with that, with a vacant, pill-addicted mother and a cold father who never showed any love to each other, let alone to their two sons. I grew up with high society and dead hearts, lazy morals and cruel ambition.
I didn’t want to become like them. I wanted something real and pure and true and fuck it if it sounds like pussy-whipped bullshit because I needed something in my life that made my life worth sharing.
I wanted Steph. My best friend. She was my baby blue and I was her cowboy.
So a pact, a foolish, naïve pact, was born.
I take the sleeping bag over to the couch and curl up on it. I’m about to switch on the TV but the sickness pulls me under.
When I wake up later, it’s because my cell phone is ringing. There is drool everywhere.
I quickly wipe my mouth and answer it. It’s Steph.
“Hey Steph,” I say but it comes out in a muffled slur.
“Linden? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sorry,” I say, coughing lightly. “Just fell asleep for a bit.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Sick as fuck.”
“Need me to come over?”
Yes, I fucking need you to come over. I find myself sitting up a little straighter. “Are you going to wear a slutty nurse’s uniform?”
Pause. “You’re a pig.”
“Oink. But seriously. Nurse’s uniform?”
“Do you want me to come over or not?”
I grin. “Yes, yes. I’ll be on the couch.”
“Please be wearing clothes.”
“No promises.”
Forty-five minutes later, I hear Steph’s spare key in the door and she appears holding two bags of groceries. She looks flustered, her face a bit red, her long dark blonde hair a mess. She looks like she just had sex and I have an image of her dropping the bags and coming over to the couch, flipping up her fringe skirt to straddle me.
I try to adjust my pants under the sleeping bag without being too obvious about it.
“You look like shit,” she says before she takes the bags over to the kitchen. I can hear her rummaging around in there like it’s hers, things going in cupboards, the kettle being switched on.
When she comes back out, she has a small plastic cup filled with blue liquid.
“Are you drugging me?” I ask her.
“Yes, Nyquil,” she says. She shoves it in front of my face. “Drink it or die.”
I warily take the cup from her. “If I recall correctly, the last time I took Nyquil I pretty much died.”
“That’s because you chased a six-pack with it. Now drink it.”
I knock back the obnoxious blue syrup and relax back into the couch. I have to say, it’s kind of nice to have someone take care of you, especially someone with an ass as nice as hers. It seems to get better every day.
She disappears back into the kitchen and then comes out with mug full of steaming hot tea. “It’s got lemon and honey in it,” she says. She’s about to turn around again and head back to the kitchen but I reach out and grab her hand.
The movement shocks her still and she stares down at my grip around her wrist.
“Just relax, baby blue,” I tell her and tug her toward me. “Stop fussing over me.”
She smiles and her cheeks go a bit pink. “Sorry. Old habits.”
I give her a sympathetic nod. Poor Steph. When she was young she had a younger brother with some autoimmune disease. She rarely talks about it, in fact it kind of surprises me that she hinted at it right now, but what I know is that he was the shining star of her family, a boy genius, but only got sicker over the years. He died from pneumonia when she was eighteen and he was fourteen. I guess she’d spent a lot of time taking care of him.
I let go of her hand, aware that I have been holding it longer than I should. “Sit down, that’s an order.”