Fighting for my Best Friend (Fated Series Book 4) Read online

  Fighting for my Best Friend

  Hazel Kelly

  © 2015 Hazel Kelly

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, copied, or stored in any form or by any means without permission of the author. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  All characters in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.

  “Anything you want, you got it.

  Anything you need, you got it.”

  - You Got It, Roy Orbison

  Chapter 1: Lucy

  He still hadn’t called.

  It had been weeks. Almost a month. Well, twenty two days, but it felt like several times that.

  I missed my friend.

  If I hadn’t seen the green dot next to his name on Facebook, I wouldn’t even have known he was alive.

  I mean, I knew he could hold a grudge, but I was sure he would’ve called by now. After giving him a week to cool off, I tried to call him, but it always rang through to his voicemail.

  It was crazy what a tease it was to hear his voice for those few seconds and not be able to talk to him. I’d left a few messages, each more rambling than the last, but it was no use.

  He was over me.

  And it was all my fault.

  Things had been going so well. The thought hadn’t even occurred to me that he would find out I hadn’t told him the truth about Chelsea. But I got what was coming to me.

  Fucking karma.

  One second I was having the time of my life, finally getting the kind of attention I always wanted from him, full of hope for our future together. And the next moment the rug was pulled out from under me when my own selfish cowardice came back to bite me in the ass.

  It was bullshit.

  And it was all my fault.

  Well, it was kind of Fiona’s fault, too, but she got her act together really quick when she realized what she’d done. Which was good and bad.

  It was good because it meant she stayed sober enough to help me mobilize the other girls and fill them in on our plan to hold Chuck accountable for the pervert he’d become.

  But it was bad because her obvious guilt made it harder for me to sulk. I had no choice but to downplay my misery and pretend she hadn’t set fire to the best thing that had happened to me in years.

  And summer nights had never felt so cold.

  Aiden crossed my mind with such regularity I couldn’t get a break. I thought of him every time I saw someone eating ice cream, every time I saw an athlete, every time I saw a fat kid on a bike. And it was worse now that my feelings for him were more than familial.

  I found myself constantly reaching for the phone to text him a joke or ask him a question or get his advice. And every time, the reality that he wasn’t taking my calls would hit me like heartburn, making my chest cramp and my breathing shallow.

  For the first time since I had a cell phone, his number had dropped from my top three most recent calls. Sometimes I wondered if I’d imagined it all: the childhood friendship, the teen bonding, the late night drinking sessions, his tongue between my legs.

  It was like the whole thing was a dream that I wanted to get back to, but I was cursed with chronic insomnia.

  God forbid my mind wandered to what would’ve happened to Frodo without Samwise. He would’ve gone so far off the beaten track, he would’ve turned evil. Being best friendless would’ve been the least of his problems.

  But that would never happen because Samwise was inherently good and unwaveringly faithful, trusting, and loyal to Frodo. Most crucially, though, he was a Hobbit.

  And Aiden was a man, a hot blooded man whose ego I’d bruised and whose pride I’d insulted. He was a man who took people at their word, a man who gave others the benefit of the doubt until they let him down.

  And that’s exactly what I did.

  I knew he had me on a pedestal. It was always that way with childhood friends. That’s why it hurt so bad when one disappointed you. It was as scary as it was uncomfortable, like losing a pair of training wheels you’d thought you could count on forever.

  For a while, I told myself that we had too much history for him to cut me out of his life.

  But then I started to worry that I was wrong. Just like I was wrong about him never finding out that I knew about Chelsea’s deceit.

  And with every day he didn’t call, I swear I could feel the seed of doubt he had in our friendship growing.

  Worst of all, it was totally outside of my control which filled me with all kinds of anxiety. I hated not knowing if he would forgive me. I hated not knowing whether he was going to call and demand an explanation this minute or the next. It was so stressful not being friends with him.

  There was only one other time I’d gone this long without seeing his dimple. It was when he went to Boston one summer for a Rugby training camp. He was gone for three weeks, and he still called me every few days to check in.

  Cause he was a better friend than I was.

  Sure, he’d hurt me dozens of times, but he never hurt me on purpose. He never intentionally said something to hurt my feelings or kept something from me that he thought I should know. No matter how difficult it was for him to tell me.

  I remember when he told me Alex was getting picked on and who was responsible. I went right up to the kid- Jimmy Zircher- and punched him in the face without giving him any warning. I still remember how he laughed at me and my girly excuse for a punch. And before I could wind up and hit him again, Aiden had him on the ground with a mouth full of dirt.

  He said, “If you ever touch Alex Ryan again, I’ll rip your tongue out and put your own shit in its place.”

  He was the big brother Alex never had.

  And now he was the lover I would never have again.

  I sighed, which I was doing a lot of lately. Just sighing all the time, feeling tired and sad.

  Even Tindering didn’t make me feel better. If anything, it made me feel worse. Which was really worrying cause it had always been the perfect distraction when I was down on men. But this time it wasn’t working, probably cause I wasn’t down on men.

  On the contrary, my favorite man was down on me.

  And worst of all, the entire app just kept showing me guys who weren’t Aiden, guys who would never mean as much to me as he still did.

  “Luce!”

  “Yeah?” I called down the hall.

  “Katie and Di are here,” Fiona said.

  “I’ll be out in a second.”

  At least going after Chuck was helping to take my mind off how horribly I’d botched my personal life overnight. As soon as we got Katie and Di on board, we’d have incident reports from every girl at the salon.

  I stood up, using my feet to push the bottoms of my leggings down around my ankles. Then I picked up my phone to text him cause I couldn’t put off asking him anymore.

  “Do you still want me to go to Claire’s wedding with you this weekend?”

  Chapter 2: Aiden

  I shouldn’t have been looking at office plans at work, but I had a few minutes to spare before I was expecting anyone to interrupt me. Plus, I needed to make a decision soon, and my options were neck and neck.

  They were both about the same price, and I could argue why each was a better location until I was blue in the face, but one of the properties was slightly bigger. As a result, I was torn.

  A bigger space would give me more room to grow my business in the future, but it was also more costly to furnish and decorate. On top of that, the sort of business I was in required an intimate environment that wasn’t overly spacious. I always preferred to treat
clients in smaller rooms, for example, as opposed to in gyms or on the field.

  I don’t know why that was. Maybe a lack of surrounding sensory information made people better able to concentrate on the task of describing their pain or focusing on their muscles. Regardless, both properties would need some work once I gave my realtor the go ahead.

  Overall, the decision was really stressing me out. In the beginning it was just a fantasy. So it was pure fun shopping around, picturing where my equipment would go, and imagining where the receptionist might sit while the phone rang off the hook.

  But now that I was so close to pulling the trigger, the decision felt real and heavy.

  I wished I could speak to Lucy about it. She was always the best person for me to talk to when I was trying to work through a big decision, mostly because she just listened and let me work it out for myself. My parents were too opinionated to hear out my concerns. They always brought concerns of their own, things that weren’t even on my radar.

  I knew they meant well, but they didn’t understand the business I was in which made it impossible for them to buy into my vision. In fact, I still got the feeling my Dad thought I was making a huge mistake, like he was waiting for me to call and admit defeat, put on a tie, and go work for him.

  Little did he know that the thought of that only spurred me on. I wanted the way I spent my days to mean something. It’s not like I thought there was anything wrong with him devoting his career to making people richer. That was fine. Somebody had to do that. I could see why it was important work.

  But I wanted to make people better. I wanted to work with muscles, not numbers. With people, not excel. Just the idea of how often he made decisions based on “gut feelings” was enough to fill me with dread.

  I wanted to make decisions that I could back up with science. I wanted my clients to trust me because I was an expert based on years of study and experience, no magic or gut feelings involved.

  I was reaching for my water bottle when I heard a knock on the door. I gathered the floor plans on my desk into a pile and shoved them in my top drawer.

  “Come in,” I said, laying my palms on the desk.

  “Hey Aiden. It’s me.”

  “Tommy. How are you?”

  Tommy stepped inside and closed the door. “Good, thanks. Think you could wrap my shoulder like you did yesterday?”

  “Of course,” I said, pushing my chair back and standing up. “Did it help?”

  “Well, I tried not to push it anyway, but it definitely gave me piece of mind.”

  “Well worth it then.” I raised my arm towards the padded table in the corner. “Have a seat there.” I heard Tommy’s weight come down on the table as I turned towards the cabinets behind my desk.

  “How have you been?” he asked.

  “Fine, thanks,” I said, setting the athletic tape and a pair of scissors down on the counter.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah,” I said, turning around. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ve just been spending less time on the pitch lately.”

  “It’s temporary,” I said, carrying my supplies towards him. “I’ve just had a lot of admin stuff to catch up on lately. You know how it is.” I set the tape and scissors down next to him as a text came through on my phone.

  “Feel free to check that,” Tommy said, pulling his shirt off. “I’m in no hurry. Half the guys aren’t even here yet.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I said, walking around my desk and lifting my cell. Lucy’s face was like a knife in my guts, but I opened her message anyway.

  And there it was, the million dollar question: did I still want her to go to Claire’s wedding with me?

  I sighed. It’s not like I could say no. My sister’s the one that wanted her there. Plus, she was supposed to do Claire’s hair which meant she was probably a more important member of the wedding party than I was.

  “You okay?” Tommy asked.

  I set the phone down. “Yeah, fine.”

  “I’ve never seen you make a face like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Like pissed and sad at the same time.”

  I shrugged. “I just fell out with one of my friends. It’s no big deal.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “It’s fine. Really.”

  “Is your friend a girl?”

  “Yeah, but-”

  “Say no more.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “You don’t have to explain to me. I’m having my own girl problems right now.”

  “Oh?” I pried, infinitely more interested in talking about his relationship problems than mine.

  “My girlfriend got into some financial trouble and didn’t tell me. Now the problem is way bigger than it ever needed to be.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, man.”

  “I don’t even care about the money, ya know? I’m just pissed she wasn’t straight up with me.”

  I nodded and pulled a length of tape from the roll. “But you’re going to work it out?”

  “Of course we’ll work it out,” he said. “We’ve been together for two years… which is basically my longest relationship by a year and eleven months.”

  I smiled.

  “I’m not going to throw it all away just cause she made a stupid mistake.”

  “Right.”

  “I just need some space is all,” he said. “Besides, she knows she fucked up and that’s good enough for me.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Cause all women are crazy. They all lie. They all live in their own fantasy world. They all thrive on drama and blow things out of proportion. It’s a fucking epidemic.”

  I smoothed a piece of tape down on his shoulder and pulled another strip from the roll.

  “So the question isn’t whether or not Kim’s crazy. Cause they’re all crazy. The question is, am I willing to put up with her crazy to be with her?”

  “Makes sense,” I said, smoothing another piece of tape down.

  “At the end of the day, if we broke up and I found someone new, she’d be a nutter, too. Guaranteed.”

  “Probably.”

  “So I’m going to let her stew so she knows I’m pissed and doesn’t do it again, and then I’m going to forgive her and we’ll be fine.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Because her brand of crazy is one I can’t live without.”

  “Does she know this?”

  “Fuck no. She’s in the dog house.”

  “I see. Well, your secret is safe with me.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How’s that feel?” I asked, patting his shoulder.

  He stretched it out in front of him and then to the side. “That’s great, Aiden, thanks. I really appreciate it.”

  “Anytime,” I said, walking back around my desk.

  Tommy pulled his shirt on over his head.

  “Have a good practice,” I said, taking a seat.

  “You coming out to watch?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be out in a bit. Just need to wrap up a few things here first.”

  “You mean text your lady friend back?”

  “If she’s lucky.”

  Tommy smiled. “Good luck with that, man.” He reached for the door. “I hope it works out for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Me too.”

  Chapter 3: Lucy

  My hand was shaking so bad I could barely do my eyeliner.

  “You okay?”

  I looked up to see Fiona standing in the doorway of my bedroom. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m just a little nervous since I haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “I know, but you shouldn’t be. You look beautiful.”

  I rolled my eyes and leaned away from the mirror. “Maybe I should just wear this then?” I said, stretching my arms out to flaunt my robe. “If it looks so good.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said, folding her arms. “So far so good.”
<
br />   I sighed. “I just hope my hand stops shaking before I get there. If I fuck up Claire’s hair, the whole family will want to kill me.”

  “You won’t fuck it up,” she said. “You could do an updo in your sleep.”

  I forced a smile.

  “Isn’t that what she wants? Something simple?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you have nothing to worry about.”

  I nodded, wanting to believe her.

  “What can I do to help you get ready?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Everything is pretty much under control.”

  She walked behind me and sat on my bed.

  “Thanks again for helping me with my hair,” I said into the mirror.

  “No problem.”

  “I’ll definitely feel more comfortable around his family without the purple streaks.”

  “I’m glad I could help,” she said. “What else can I do?”

  “Actually, I already put everything I need to style Claire’s hair in that bag by the closet.” I turned and pointed with my eye pencil. “But if you want to have a root through it and make sure I’m not missing anything, I would really appreciate it.”

  “Sure,” she said, sliding off my bed and kneeling down by the bag.

  I put the cap back on my eyeliner and picked up my eyelash curler.

  “He still hasn’t called, huh?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the bag.

  “Nope.” I clamped the curler down on the lashes of my right eye. “Just the text saying when he would pick me up today.”

  She shook her head. “That’s cold.”

  “He’s embarrassed and ticked off with me,” I said, grabbing my mascara. “I get it.”

  “Yeah, but he hasn’t even given you a chance to explain.”

  “I know, Fi, but what am I going to say when I have that chance today?” I leaned forward and laid the mascara on thick, wiggling it from the base of my lashes to the tips.

  “Blame it on me,” she said. “Say I told you not to tell him.”

  “That’s nice of you,” I said, picking up the curler and shifting my focus to my left eye. “And trust me, the thought crossed my mind, but that won’t cut it. He deserves an explanation.”