My Best Friend's Secret
Bonus Short

Author Notes:

These two short chapters admittedly had no real place in my book My Best Friend's Secret. It often happens with books where things just don’t fit, but that doesn’t mean they magically go away. So instead, I decided to write them for people to read.

For those who have already read My Best Friend's Secret, these are some nice background scenes for you, and for those who haven’t read My Best Friend's Secret yet, well, consider this an introduction to the two main characters, as well as other parts of Fairlake, where the book and series take place. Both scenes take place a couple of years before the events of the book, so you get to see what their lives were like before everything that happened in My Best Friend's Secret.

Bennett

Chase smirked, patting my stomach. “I’m sooo glad I can make you happy, Bennett. It thrills me, gives my life meaning.”

“Ass,” I grumbled, but I smiled anyway. His sarcasm was much like everything else about the man, a screen. 

I knew full well he was happy that I was happy, but he had a hard time accepting praise or appreciation. Our friendship seemed strange to a lot of people, but then again, they took one look at Chase and decided he wasn’t someone to mess with. While smart, it meant far too many people didn’t realize that under all that snark and bitchiness, was a guy willing to help others, especially if no one knew about it.

“Are you going to get up or just sit there all day?” Chase finally asked, giving my thigh a slap.

“Fine,” I groaned, rolling away from him, only to immediately be reminded that we were on the couch. “AH!”

I hit the ground with a thud, landing between his coffee table and the couch. My natural reaction was to shove my arms out, catching myself as I hit the floor, feeling electric shocks of pain sizzle up and down my legs and arms.

“Ow,” I managed, letting my head drop with a light thump on the hardwood floor as I pondered what was wrong with me. 

“Well,” Chase grunted, and I could tell from the silence the bastard hadn’t even rolled over to check on me. “From the bitching, I’m going to guess you didn’t break anything.”

“Just my pride,” I grumbled, pushing myself upright to glare at him. “The least you could’ve done was check on me.”

“You were clearly fine.”

“Other than feeling like I just broke my knees, yeah, I’m great.”

“It’s not the first time you’ve hurt your knees with someone.”

I rolled my eyes, slapping his arm hard enough to leave a red mark and make him flinch in surprise. 

“Since you’re already up,” Chase said, “maybe grab a drink?”

I sighed. “You’re supposed to keep them on hand for movie night.”

“If I could predict when you were going to come over, maybe I would,” he said with a roll of his eyes.

He pretended to ignore me when I chuckled in a self-satisfied way. So yeah, maybe I had shown up out of the blue.

Pushing up to my feet, I walked out of the living room and into the kitchen. I grabbed two beers from the fridge and took a moment to peer out of the small window that faced the street Chase lived on and frowned.

“I’m thinking,” I began as I entered the living room.

“God save us from that,” Chase muttered, sitting up and holding out a hand impatiently as I handed him a beer.

“Ass.”

“I’m pretty sure your chief told you he’s going to start docking your pay for every ‘idea’ you have,” Chase said, taking a drink.

Rolling my eyes, I dropped onto the arm of the couch. “I should probably stop by the Jensen’s again. I haven’t seen Diane and Erik in a few days.”

“You’re the only person I know who still drops in to visit his ex-best friend’s parents,” Chase said with a snort, pausing to glare at me

“Adam isn’t my ex-best friend,” I protested, even though it sounded fragile and weak to my ears. 

Okay, maybe it had been almost a year since I’d heard from Adam, now he lived in Boston. And his communication with me had been petering off at a steady rate over the past few years. I also knew he was kept pretty busy, and I suspected there was a lot more going on his end than he was willing to let me know.

“Is that what you’re going to keep telling yourself?” Chase asked, looking up at me in annoyance.

“We’ve been best friends since we were in single digits,” I reminded Chase, “It’s not easy to erase that and forget about it.”

“Seems pretty easy for him,” Chase scowled.

“Really? And when was the last time you heard from Devin?” I shot back.

It was possibly a low blow on my part, and I could see his regular annoyance turn into a shadow of anger. “That isn’t the same thing.”

“Really?” I asked because I couldn’t help my irritation. “Because last time I checked, you hadn’t heard from him in quite a while. And you two were just as close back in the day as Adam and I were.”

“You…he has his reasons,” Chase said, averting his eyes to hide the sting of my words that I’d already spotted.

I felt bad immediately, which killed what anger I’d had. Chase didn’t like to talk about what was happening with Devin, especially when there were more than enough people in town who were perfectly happy to gossip when he wasn’t around. After Devin had disappeared from Fairlake with barely a word to Chase, he left plenty of running theories about what happened to him. Some thought he was probably dead and just a John Doe in some city, others suspected he’d ended up a victim of sex trafficking, and others thought he was busy selling himself in some hellhole neighborhood.

My knowledge of Devin’s whereabouts was just as lacking as anyone else’s, and Chase rarely spoke about it. From what I could gather, there was a very high chance of him ending up dead somewhere. As for whether or not he was selling himself for his drugs, well, Chase never said, but I suspected that was true too.

“Look,” I said, with a pained expression. “Maybe that wasn’t fair.”

“Maybe?”

“Yes, Chase, maybe. You can’t sit there and say we’re both being treated like background characters in Adam and Devin’s lives. Just because their circumstances are different doesn’t mean it doesn’t amount to the same thing. So, if I have to deal with the fact that my best friend is wrapped up in his shit, spending zero time paying attention to me, then you have to do the same.”

His jaw tightened, and he pushed to his feet. I could tell he was still pissed, but his silence told me I’d gotten through to him. Chase could be a stubborn ass, but he wasn’t so stuck on himself that he was unwilling to admit when he was wrong. Well, to himself anyway, and to any who knew how to read him, but not so great at doing it openly.

“Your phone’s going off,” he grumbled, still not looking up.

I knew he would sulk for a good twenty minutes or so before he managed actual conversation. So the best thing to do was to ignore him.

“Oh,” I said, plopping down on the couch. “It’s Diane.”

Chase grunted before leaving the living room to head to his kitchen. From the clinking I could hear, he was busy rummaging through his supply of beer. I’d never known someone who insisted on having more varieties of beers than actual bottles. 

Diane, Adam’s mom, liked to text me occasionally, especially when she hadn’t seen me for a while. She never asked after me, and I suspected she was trying to respect my independence, but I rarely went too long without responding. Sometimes a late shift or a long call while I was working might keep me away, but I was always sure to allay her fears. 

Diane had easily filled the role of a second mother for me over the past few decades. My parents and I hadn’t been natives of Fairlake when we’d moved next door to the Jensens. So Diane had wasted little time coming over to introduce herself, equipped with a bottle of wine and a huge casserole. My mother still liked to say that casserole got our family through the first few days and a couple of nights with all the stress of moving in and getting settled.

“Oh,” I muttered when I opened the message from Diane.

Look at the picture I found! You two were only about seven. Isn’t it cute?

The picture in question was Adam and me, and sure enough, we were probably only about seven. Adam was giving me a strangely adult look of exasperation, one hand on his dirty shirt in a swiping motion. Beside him, I stood with a gap where my front teeth should have been, almost completely covered in mud. It had been my bright idea that day to try and dig down to see if we could find sand because I desperately wanted to build sand castles.

The result had been predictable, especially after a few days of hearty spring rains. Adam had tried to stick to using a shovel that was too big for either of us, while I’d been content to use my hands. We’d been found out by his father when I had the bright idea to throw a mud ball at Adam. Our shouts had drawn his attention, and we had to fill the hole in ourselves, much to Adam’s annoyance.

That was just how things had gone throughout our friendship. Admittedly, I’d grown better about not insisting upon every single one of my ridiculous ideas. Adam had grown better about holding me back sometimes. It had simply been the nature of our friendship, but Adam had always sworn he would rather get in trouble with me than behave with anyone else.

That’s a good one :) I sent back to her. Did you send it to Adam?

Yes. But it’s kind of late over there. Not sure if he’s seen it yet.

It was probably the nicest way she could have said that Adam didn’t respond. Unless something had changed since we last spoke, Adam had never been the type to go to bed early. He’d always had the absurd power to need only five hours sleep.

Knowing it was probably a bad idea, I opened my phone and flipped through some old files. I wasn’t always good at transferring everything over to new phones, but there were some things I always kept. There were also a couple of hard drives at my house that had them and cloud storage, just in case.

I opened the folder named ‘AJ’ and looked at the first picture. It was from right after our graduation, with our arms around each other. It was one of the rare pictures where Adam was smiling at the camera. Much to his mother’s ire, Adam believed in frowning at cameras or making goofy faces. But we were overjoyed at being done with school and excited at the idea of being adults, shaping our futures. Less than a year after this picture, Adam would move away to Boston to try his hand at independence, and I would remain behind.

There were other pictures, some of them scanned copies of older physical photographs. Adam, at fourteen, holding up a massive fish with a startled expression as it flopped vigorously to be free. Adam and I, at ten with matching sweaters his mother and I had both adored, and Adam had refused to wear again. A picture of him laughing hysterically at me when we were fifteen after I’d fallen into a barely thawed creek that I’d first tried to push him into.

I didn’t usually wander down memory lane, especially not when I was already feeling wistful and heart heavy. It was too easy to get lost in the old memories and make myself miserable. I hadn’t seen Adam in two years and had spoken to him only half a dozen times through weak, halfhearted conversation.

It wasn’t difficult to admit that sometimes I missed my best friend so much it physically hurt. This was a man who I’d spent so much time with growing up, who had been like a brother to me. He had been the first person I’d ever come out to when I’d been a teenager, and he’d been there when I’d first been stung by the ever-fickle hand of infatuation. I had been the best man in his wedding a few years before, and he had come running back to Fairlake when I’d taken a nasty fall and thankfully only broke my arm. He had been the person I’d gone to for everything.

Well, almost everything.

The last picture was of Adam from about five years before, when he’d come back to Fairlake before opening his own business and marrying his wife. He was sprawled out in a hammock in his parents’ backyard in a pair of shorts. Feeling like a creep, I’d snapped the picture while he dozed and had held onto it ever since.

Honestly, if the times I’d fantasized about him and jerked off in the past hadn’t felt like a violation, the quick, clean picture wouldn’t cross the line. But I had told myself since I was thirteen and realized I was gay and attracted to my best friend that feeding the attraction was a bad idea. Over a decade later, I was still feeding it. Only little tidbits and the days of heartache and pining were gone…for the most part.

Yet, seeing that picture made the ache in my chest double, and I closed my eyes at the sudden rise of emotion inside me. For a moment, I almost thought about scrolling through my contacts and hitting the call button over Adam’s name. Maybe this time he would answer, and I could hear my friend’s voice again. I wouldn’t tell him why I was missing him so much, but I could still tell him, maybe make a lame joke about it that made him laugh. I missed the soft chuckle he made when I amused him and how his eyes crinkled at the corners.

No, just no. I wouldn’t call him. I couldn’t, not when I was raw and bare like this.

Sighing, I exited the picture app and locked my screen to set my phone aside. I jerked when I found Chase beside me, his dark eyes unreadable as he set a beer on the coffee table. Without a word, he stepped over my legs and sat down in his ratty armchair, expression still unreadable.

“How much did you see?” I asked him suspiciously. It wasn’t like he didn’t know. The bastard was sharp and had figured it out.

“I keep a picture of Devin and me in my wallet,” he said, staring at the blank TV rather than at me. “It’s…whatever.”

“I guess we’re both carrying people with us…literally,” I said with a small smile before picking up my beer to take a drink.

“You’re the cheesiest motherfucker. Your name should have been Cheddar.”

“My parents thought about it, but ‘Cheddar Livington’ sounds like expensive cheese, and we’re too poor for all that.”

“Idiot.”

“Asshole.”

We both chuckled as he flipped on the TV, and I could take comfort that at least some parts of my life were still good.

Adam

Bending forward, I twisted the poseable light over my desk, so it shone onto the plans. Someone had sent in an order for a specific desk for their office. The other guys at the shop had all wondered why someone would need so many hiding places and extra locking mechanisms in a desk. Personally, all I cared about was that it was doable, and the woman who’d ordered it was willing to pay extra for all the work.

Which it was, and she was, so all was well.

Admittedly, when I’d said almost that exact thing to them, they looked at me warily before returning to their stations. While I’d been left standing in place, realizing just how curtly I’d snapped at them. They were good guys, hard workers, and hadn’t given me trouble unless I deserved it. Even now, hours later, I still felt bad. They didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of a bad mood that wasn’t their fault.

Taking a deep breath, I pushed the thought away, looked over the plans, and then at the list of supplies we needed. We didn’t have some of the parts, and the wood would have to be specially ordered. Opening up a repair service of my own a couple of years back had been a nerve-wracking but exciting new venture, but adding on a specialty furniture-building aspect was a mixed bag.

On the one hand, I loved the idea of being able to make different furniture rather than showing up to fix floors, walls, or re-shingle roofs. There was a creative aspect to it I liked, even though I had to admit I was generally a pretty practical and serious person. Sometimes it was nice to make an absurdly private and complex desk instead of building another shed.

My phone buzzed, and for a moment, I was tempted to ignore it, even when it buzzed again to show it was a call and not a text. Only when I picked it up and glanced at the ID did I finally answer it.

“Hey, Mom,” I said, setting my phone on the desk. “You’re on speaker, but I’m alone.”

“Oh, I hate the echo from the speaker,” she complained with a sigh.

“Well, I’m trying to go over some things for work, so my hands are a little occupied.”

“Every time I call you, you’re doing something with work.”

“Owning, running, and working for your own business is time-consuming.”

Which wasn’t strictly the truth, or at least not the whole truth. I’d been throwing myself into work more and more over the past few months, and my ever-aware mother had picked up on it. Of course, so had my wife, but she was also aware it was intentional and that I wasn’t the only one doing it.

“Honey, I know your work is important, but you really should consider getting someone you trust to take on some of your responsibilities,” she said, sounding troubled. “All this working can’t be any good for you. What if you and Bri decide to have children? Won’t you want to be around for them?”

Right, kids. Because there wasn’t a long list of reasons why Bri and I shouldn’t go anywhere near the idea of having kids, let alone the actual logistics. Oh sure, we’d talked about it several times, deciding that yes, we did want kids one day, but it was better put off until we were in a better position in life.

At first, we had only just married, and she was starting at a new firm. Then I decided to start my own business and deal with the costs, trying to keep it afloat. Then we were both doing well, she was making a name for herself, and my business was stable and flourishing. Then I expanded and was kept busy, and she was constantly working. Everything in our lives seemed to get in the way, and now we were the ones getting in the way.

“Look, I know you and Dad made a lot of time for me as a kid, and I appreciate that. But right now? Really not the time to be thinking about kids,” I said, glancing at my wedding ring sitting on the desk. I had absently taken it off when I’d gone into my office and hadn’t put it back on. Used to be that I couldn’t stand the idea of taking it off, always quick to slap it back on after a shower or washing dishes. Now here I was, taking it off whenever I was alone or in the shop.

“Well, I know kids nowadays are having families later and later,” she said, not sounding convinced.

That made me smile. “Mom, I’m gonna be thirty in a couple of years. I don’t think I’m a little boy anymore.”

“Well, you’ll always be my little boy.”

“I suppose it’s good I’m no longer at the age where I cringe at some of the things you say and can smile instead.”

“It didn’t stop me when you did get embarrassed, so I’m not stopping now.”

The conversation tightened my chest, and I ached to be in her dining room, having a coffee with her at the nicked and scratched dining room table they’d owned since I was five. To simply sit there and listen to the news coming from the living room as my father sat with a cup of coffee instead of the beer he used to have when he came home. Otherwise, he’d have to hear about his liver from my mom. 

I wanted to step out on their small porch to stare over the privacy fence and see the Rockies in the distance. Maybe even to linger and watch the sun as it began to set, sometimes casting light over the snow-tipped mountains and making them look like fire. I desperately wanted to hear the soft wind and the quiet of the neighborhood I grew up in. Hell, if I was lucky, I would have Bennett right beside me, and I would—

“Is everything okay over there, by the way?” I asked suddenly, pushing the thoughts away before diving deeper into them. As much as I didn’t want to think about him, Bennett had always accused me of brooding too easily. I might have protested it heavily at the time, but as I got older, sometimes that old ‘accusation’ came back, and I began to wonder just how right he had been.

“Oh, everything’s fine. I was just fighting with your father earlier.”

“Bickering.”

“What?”

“The last time you two had an actual fight was when you refused to let him keep a couple of people’s cars in our driveway.”

“It was in our yard!” she contested in sharp annoyance. “Our yard is not a junkyard.”

“Oh, for the love of…Diane, let it go!” I heard my father bark from the background.

“I’ll let it go when you stop having those foolish ideas of yours,” she snapped back, but I could hear the lack of anger in her voice. For as long as I could remember, they’d always gone back and forth, bickering more than anything else. Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find a couple that loved spending time together and going on short trips as much as them. “As I was saying, we had a little argument over his salt intake. The doctor is real worried about his blood pressure. Your father thinks the doc’s too young to be telling him anything.”

“Too young?” I questioned in confusion. “Hasn’t he been seeing Doctor Mevin his whole life?”

“Sweetheart, Doctor Mevin retired almost six years ago,” she chuckled. “Doctor Abraham took over.”

“Well, he can’t be any younger than what, thirty?”

“He’s forty-one, though I must say he looks closer to thirty than forty.”

I smiled at the tone in her voice, recognizing the playful flirtation she used only when she knew my dad could hear her. “He’s giving you the stink eye right now, isn’t he?”

“He’s pretending he can’t hear me. Funny how he only has hearing problems when I need something or he wants to pretend he does,” she said. “In any case, your father thinks that’s much too young. And, of course, I told him, ‘Erik, you didn’t go through medical school. You didn’t get trained by Doctor Mevin. So shush up and listen to the doctor. He knows about blood pressure.’ But of course—”

“He was stubborn and didn’t want to listen.”

“Right on the nose.”

Giving up on the plan and giving in to the homesickness, I turned and left my office to make for the kitchen to pour myself a drink. “Well, you know how he gets Mom. But I have every confidence you’ll be on his ass to make sure he takes his meds.”

“Language,” she chided. “Though…you sound like him.”

“I know,” I said with a smile, taking a sip of my bourbon. “And that’s your greatest fear, that I’ll be just like him.”

“Well, it doesn’t scare me completely, but…I do hope you’ve got enough of me in you.”

“I’m sure there’s a piece or three hanging around in there.”

Her next words were drowned out by the sudden slam of the apartment door, making me flinch. Why Bri felt the urge to slam every door, whether it was the bathroom door or a cabinet, was beyond me. I’d always tried to treat it as something that irritated me, and I could tolerate, but time was intent on making me a liar, and now I just found it jarring and annoying.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I heard Bri mutter loudly under her breath. “Because a trash can is hard to find.”

Immediately I realized what she was talking about and grimaced. I’d been eating takeout at the table when I’d come home but had been pulled away by a call over a shipping error for our next supplies. It had been giving me a headache for days and had pulled my attention away from my meal. By the time I’d got off the call, I was in my office and completely forgot, turning my attention to the plans instead.

“Hold on a second, Mom,” I said as I heard the sharp click of Bri’s heels approaching the kitchen.

Bri entered, stopping short, scowling when she saw me standing at the counter. At that moment, I couldn’t see the pretty woman I had literally run into while on a coffee run. Her blue eyes had widened, catching the sunlight and sparkling, and I’d found myself distracted by the intricate bun in her hair that seemed somehow at odds and yet worked perfectly with the suit she’d been wearing that day.

“Is it so hard to throw things away when you’re done with them?” she asked me sharply, stomping her heel down onto the trash can and dropping the container in. “As if I don’t spend the day cleaning up people’s messes as it is.”

“I had a work call and forgot about it. I would have seen it and cleaned it up eventually,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.

“A work call at this hour?” she asked doubtfully. 

“This is my mom,” I said, tapping the device as I pressed it against my chest to muffle any noise. “The work call came earlier.”

“God, are you drinking again?”

“I’ve had a whole sip so far. Maybe you could try having a drink yourself. Might calm you down for once.”

She glared at me. “I don’t have time for your bullshit tonight, Adam.”

“Works for me,” I said in the same even voice. “I’m not in the mood to deal with yours either. So how about you stomp off to your office, and I’ll leave you alone.”

“Well, you’re clearly in a mood, so I think I’ll do that. Why don’t you go to the local bar, have yourself some real drinks.”

“I might just do that.”

“Wonderful.”

“Perfect.”

She gave me a withering look, as she’d never been a big fan when I adopted a cool and even voice with her. Bri disappeared, her heels clicking as she marched down the hallway to get as far from me as possible.

“Uh…Adam, sweetheart?” my mom’s voice chirped from the phone.

“Oh fuck,” I muttered, flipping the phone over to turn the speakerphone off. “I’m sorry, Mom, you weren’t supposed to hear that.”

“No, I’m sure I wasn’t,” she said as I drained my glass and pushed toward the front door. “Are things between you and Bri still rough?”

“No, they’re smooth sailing and full of love,” I said, squatting down to jam my boots on. 

I could still hear Bri muttering from down the hall, and the sound clawed at my nerves. Snatching up my keys from the bowl, I left our apartment, ignored the elevator, and chose the stairs instead.

“I wish you’d talk a little more,” my mother said. “At least to Bennett. We all know how busy you are, but I know he’d pick up the phone in a heartbeat if you called him.”

And there was probably the worst part about it all. Not that I hadn’t been back to Fairlake in over two years. Not that I had all but shoved my friendship with Bennett into a forgotten corner of my brain. No, it was that despite all of that, Bennett would pick up the phone and try to help me in a heartbeat if I asked for it. 

The past couple of years had felt like just about everything in my life had begun to fade, threatening to take hold of me and drag me under. The business was alright, but I had no friends in Boston that weren’t my wife’s. My family and everything I’d ever needed to fall back on was in Fairlake. By my blundering, my best friend had been left to think I didn’t care about him anymore, and my marriage was falling apart rapidly.

“Yeah,” I said as I stepped outside, taking my wife’s ‘advice’ and annoyed that I was, and heading for the bar on the next block. “I know he would, Mom. But he’s got his own things going on too, and I’m not…look, it’s all being handled.”

“Is it, though? Because it doesn’t sound like it's being handled at all,” she said, sounding worried. “You don’t talk to people you love like the two of you just did. That wasn’t two married people having a rough patch. That was two people who despise each other.”

I couldn’t argue with her assessment. I didn’t know when the line between ‘rough patch’ and active dislike of each other as people had been crossed, but it had. Bri and I were only around one another when we had to be seen in public. Yet the last time that had happened had been three months before, and every engagement from then on had been done with both of us making excuses for why our spouse wasn’t there.

“Hey, uh, it’s about to get noisy on my end, so I’m not sure I’m going to be able to hear you very well.”

“You’re going to a bar, aren’t you?”

“Not because of what she said,” I said, knowing we both knew it was a lie. “I’m meeting someone for some…I don’t know, I guess, networking. A couple of drinks, fun conversation, and boom, business arrangements are being made.”

“Well, whatever you have to do,” she said, and I had a feeling she wasn’t talking about any networking I was bald-faced lying about.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said with a chuckle. “I’ll see if I can’t make it next Christmas, alright? Things should be calm enough by then.”

“Well, we all hope to see you soon,” she said. “I love you, and so does your father.”

“I love you guys too,” I said, meaning it as I hung up the phone.

It was a few hours before I looked at my phone again and found a picture from Bennett. Apparently, my mom had sent him a picture of us earlier, and he wanted to know if I remembered that day. I did, of course. I’d been so irritated that he’d got my favorite shirt filthy, all on the hunt for sand, of all things. 

But I was drunk and miserable, so heartsick and tired of my life that I couldn’t bring myself to text him back. That would open up the mental floodgates, and then I’d want to call him. I’d want to hear his voice and feel the ache in my chest that was somehow awful and wonderful at the same time. I would positively burn to see him in front of me with that goofy smile, and I’d want to wrap my arms around him and hug him close.

I didn’t deserve any of those things, though. Even now, Bennett was still trying to be my friend, and it was more than I’d given him for too long now. Perhaps one day, I might be able to fix things to make up for the bastard I had been.

But not now, not today.

 * * *

I hope you enjoyed the My Best Friend's Secret Bonus short!

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