My Best Friends Brother

Chapter 82

Did you know that there are like a fucking hundred of these Twilight films? My vision is now so blurry that they are all starting to look the same, or maybe they just are the same?

Luckily I have the best kind of distraction.

“No fucking way! He actually caught you guys?!” I howl with laughter as Xade recounts how he came out to his father.

“Yep.” He replies, popping the ‘P’ and almost spilling what little he has left in his wine bottle onto the couch. I’ve lost count of how many we’ve had now. “It’s kind of hard to deny you’re gay to you’re very conservative father when he finds you bent over the same dining room table that he eats his dinner at every night, with the gardener’s dick buried so deep inside you that you can feel it in your stomach. He started screaming at me so hard that Olive came running down the stairs to see if I was still alive.”

Although the story clearly wasn’t fun at the time, it makes for an hilarious anecdote now.

“Oh my fucking God! So she found out then too?”

He chuckles, shaking his head and pouring the last drop from the bottle directly down his throat.

“No, she’d caught me with my stepmother’s pilates instructor about six months before so she was pretty much used to it by then.”

Now I’m laughing even harder. Charlie has told me virtually every detail of his adventures as a questioning teen, but I think that Xade’s stories put even him to shame.

“So... Was your plan always to make it through every member of the house staff, or was that just a convenient by-product?”

Xade reaches out like he’s about to smack my chest, but loses his balance and almost goes tumbling over the back of the couch whilst balancing precariously on the head, until I managed to grip his shirt and rip him back down onto the seats next to me.

“You're a cheeky shit! I didn’t plan it! Sorry not all of us can lose our virginity to our first fucking love, for some of us it takes kissing a fuck load of frogs to find a Prince!”

“I wasn’t a fucking virgin! I’d been with a few girls before him.”

He shivers like it’s the most disgusting thing he’s ever heard. If I keep laughing like this then I’m going to piss myself.

“Oh God, why would you put that disgusting image in my head?! That doesn’t fucking count anyway, you're gay so it's only your gay virginity that fucking matters... Honestly, I don’t know how you did the whole girl thing.”

I smack the end of the bottle in my hand like it used to be full of ketchup rather than wine, but there isn’t a drop left so I just dump it on the floor with the others before reaching out to grab the last one that I brought in an hour ago. I’m opening it, making a mess in the process because... well have you ever tried to use a corkscrew after like four bottles of wine? At least I haven’t broken this one this time...

“I don’t know,” I shrug, “It's what everybody else was doing so I kind of figured it’s what I needed to do too. Had to picture most of them as Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic just to make it work though... God my mother was fucking obsessed with that movie... Took me a long time to figure out why I always watched it with her”

“Draw me like one of your French boys huh?” Xade cries with laughter, almost falling from the couch again as he throws himself back trying to pose seductively. He’s such a dick, a funny dick, but a dick none the less.

I manage to get the cork out but before I can even take a swig, Xade snatches the bottle from my hand and drinks a giant sip for himself. His lips form around the neck with ease and I’m surprised he’s not choking with how far he’s taking it into his mouth trying to stop it spilling back out. “Wait, you're telling me that you never fucked a girl? Not even once?”

He finally releases the bottle and I take it from him before he can protest, wiping the neck on my shirt before bringing it to my lips. I don’t know why I’m bothering, at this point I’m pretty sure I’m drinking half wine, half his fucking saliva anyway.

“Never. I just didn’t get the appeal. I had a girl kiss me once at a party but it felt like I was kissing Olivia so it took everything I had not to throw up on her after. Besides, look at me, I’m tailor made gay bait.”

He stands on the sofa cushion, lifting his shirt and showing me everything he has going on underneath whilst laughing to himself. He’s not fucking wrong, I think most of the guys I know would sell a fucking kidney to be with a man that looks like him. He isn’t super jacked or anything, but everything about him is toned, he's really athletic in build - like a swimmer or a dancer. Kind of like...

Slamming his ass back down on the couch, he tumbles and I drop the bottle from my hand as I try to stop him falling completely off for the tenth time. Turns out my reflexes aren’t that awful even under this much influence, I manage to grab the bottle before it ruins the seats, but not before it ruins my shirt.

“Oh fuck! Quick, give it here and I’ll throw it in the washer. Should I put white wine on it? Or is that one of those myths made up by alcoholics?” He says through relentless laughter, pointing at my spillage before smirking my inability to even find the hem of my shirt. Where is it? Why do I have four hands?

Oh god I’m really fucking drunk...

Xade is still laughing as he half straddles my hips, trying to keep us both upright whilst helping me pull my shirt over my head, the smell of rich red wine overpowering as the fabric slips up over my face. Oh that actually smells good.

The laughter quietens down until I realise I’m the only one making a sound anymore, Xade still sitting almost on top of me, now clutching my shirt in one hand but looking down over my body with his eyes completely focused on every ripple of my abs. Yeah he looks good, but we both know I look better..

I smile trying to bring his attention back to my face, but then I see his other hand twitch from his side as if it was about to reach out and touch me, before he thought better of it.

“You don’t have any ink...” He says so quietly my ears can barely pick up the words.

“Only this one.” I show him the lyrics that me and Brie got tattooed last year but he doesn’t even look over at where I’m pointing, seemingly mesmerised by everything else about me.

I reach up and push his hair back from covering his eyes to behind his ear, like I have to do with Al every time she drinks and loses her scrunchie, breaking him from his trance as he shakes whatever images were floating around in his head free before sliding off me, but not moving far.

My shirt is long forgotten as our shoulders rub together until we both turn on instinct and end up laying facing each other. He’s been good to me tonight, made me laugh and kept me busy, I appreciate that. I find myself being drawn into him, his eyes look so alive with unsaid emotion, even through my disjointed vision they are like a beacon in the night sky that promises to lead you home.

“Do you think you'll find him one day? Your Prince among the frogs?” He asks, his eyes falling closed for a moment as he breathes in deeply. He’s going to fall asleep any minute.

“Yes.” I answer without hesitation, I can’t let myself believe anything else, my Prince is out there, hopefully not giving up on me right now. “So will you, I’m surprised somebody hasn’t made themselves your Prince already. You need to be out there though, try new things or take risks. He isn’t just going to turn up on your doorstep..”

Xade is kind, he's incredibly compassionate and ferociously ambitious. He has the ability to make you feel comfortable whilst also having an edge that lets you know he could take power if you needed him too.

In a world where so many guys want something extra from a partner that they are not willing to give them themselves, Xade is a rare find that I know will make someone really fucking happy one day.

His hair begins to fall in front of his face again but as I reach forward to swipe it away before it can, he leans out of my touch...

...and places his lips to mine.

Wait... no...

His lips begin to move against mine but I pull my head back from him so sharply that is smashes straight into the head of the couch behind us.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Shit... He looks back at me completely blankly, as if it's only just hitting him what he tried to do. Fuck, I have to get out of here.

I didn’t mean to... Did he think I was talking about... Fuck.

I sit up quickly and snatch my shirt up off the floor before pulling it straight over my head, but I don’t get the fabric all the way down before I feel Xade spring up to be right next to me.

“Josh, fuck, I’m so sorry. I honest to God don’t know why I just did that, it really wasn’t okay.”

No it wasn’t. I can’t even look at him, pulling my shirt the rest of the way down before standing up and making my way back towards the kitchen.

My phone sits on the counter and I open it quickly, stumbling to find the app before ordering the closest Uber I can find, which thankfully is only two minutes away.

I’m pulling on my shoes and racing towards the front door when suddenly I feel his hands grab hold of my arm. I turn to face him and can see he’s genuinely mortified by his actions but that doesn’t change what he just did. I know that me and Miles aren’t officially together or anything, I don’t even know what the fuck we are after today, but I know I’m not the kind of person that would kiss somebody else whilst there was still fucking hope for us.

“Josh, please. I really don’t know why I did that but don’t leave like this, your friendship actually means a lot to me and I don’t say that often. I’m so fucking sorry.”

It’s crazy how something like this can instantly sober you up. I’m sure I don’t look it but my mind has never been clearer, and now looking at him properly I can see how fucking wasted he is.

“It's okay, it doesn't change anything with us as friends but I just have to go.”

I’m grateful when he makes no further attempt to stop me, stumbling over the cobbles and stepping through the gate straight into the awaiting car. I’ll get Steve to come pick up mine tomorrow.

The street lights seem to melt together the further we get back into Westbrooke, the moment we pass the high school my heart clenches in my chest so tight that it brings tears to my eyes.

Back before we’d even been on a date, Miles had the chance to kiss somebody at a party, but he said no. He told me he wasn't someone capable of doing something like that.

I didn’t kiss Xade, but I did go to his house and get fucking drunk with him, knowing that the night we were in Rave Charlie said he was fucking flirting with me. Maybe a part of me wanted to see what would happen? No. Or maybe what happened with Miles today terrified me so fucking much that I decided to try and destroy it on my own terms before he got the chance?

Either way this is my fault. I was too tactile with him, treating him like I would Brie or Al, when it took us years to get this comfortable with each other. I tried to just force my friendship with him to be the one I feel like I’ve been lacking with them, of course he would take that as me being fucking flirty.

He didn’t have to kiss me but I didn’t need to put myself in the position to get fucking kissed either.

I should never have been there, I should’ve stayed at the fucking school until I saw Miles, I should’ve driven straight to his fucking house and waited outside until he was ready to talk. I should’ve fucking been there for him, his brother fucking injured him and I just left!

My key doesn’t appear to want to fit into the lock, the front door finally springing open after I’ve kicked it enough fucking times, the rain outside drenching me down to my skin. I strip down to my boxer shorts in the middle of the living room, leaving my alcohol soaked clothes on the floor before stumbling up the stairs and crashing straight into my bed.

My phone slips out of my hand onto the pillow next to me, but when I go to pick it up and put it on charge I see there’s a message on it from four fucking hours ago... How did I miss this?

The clench in my chest squeezes to the point that my heart feels ready to explode under the pressure, the tears that were once sitting in my eyes now roll mercilessly down my cheeks as I read each word.

‘My stars: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I hate myself for talking to you like that. Of course I fucking need you Josh, you’re all I think about. When I close my eyes and try to picture where this world could take me, you’re all I see in my future. I’m here, I’m right where I was going to bring you tonight. If you can find a way to forgive me or even just be willing to talk to me, I’ll tell you where I am and you can meet me here.

I’ll be waiting, the stars will keep me company until you get here.

I’m sorry, you are my stars X

He was waiting... He was fucking waiting for me and I was with another fucking guy.

I look out at the rain cascading against the bedroom windows, it’s been like this for hours... Please don’t tell me you stayed out there in this...

Xade was right about a few things; we are on different paths, we are in different places and maybe he can't be completely sure of what he wants - even if he keeps telling himself he is...

But he was absolutely wrong about one thing... I’m nobody’s fucking Prince.

And I never deserved someone like Milo Thompson.

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭