Happily Ever After: A Romance Collection

by Amelia Wilde

  “Fine, fine,” Brandon conceded. He drummed his fingers absently on the surface of the sofa, thinking. “Okay, Kieran. Kieran is definitely my friend. We talk on the phone about stuff that’s not related to work, plus she’s known me since I was a kid. So there!”

  I nodded. “Okay, I’ll give you that. Kieran is your friend. That’s one.”

  Brandon ran through a few more names that I quickly disqualified on the basis that he barely knew them or that they were only work or charity associates. One he even made up––I refused to believe that Joe Smith was a real name. But the joke soon faded when it became clear that Brandon lived in a bubble, a giant ivory tower of his own making.

  “What about your other friends from Dorchester?” I asked, trying to help him out. I no longer cared about winning. “You said you see them sometimes…”

  “My mother’s friends. The others...I didn’t really keep in touch with any of them.”

  We sat in silence for a moment. And a thought occurred to me that I really didn’t like.

  “You don’t...you’re not ashamed of me or anything, are you?”

  I hated the question as soon as it came out, but there it was. I had to ask.

  Brandon looked at me, clearly shocked. “What?” he asked. “What?”

  I shrugged, avoiding his gaze. “I just...I am kind of young, and inexperienced, and––”

  “Stop right there,” Brandon said. “I’m serious, Red. It’s not your fault that I’m an antisocial workaholic. Got it?”

  I nodded, relieved. “Then what is all this”—I gestured to the bachelor-pad decor surrounding us—“for? Because as comfortable as this couch is, you said yourself you barely come up here. You don’t even like shitty beer.”

  Brandon followed my hand gesture toward the PBR sign, then shrugged, slightly red-faced again. “I used to have some buddies from back home, but we sort of had a falling out. It’s…a long story. I had all of this stuff put in here when I first bought the place. I should probably have it redone.”

  I glanced around at the paraphernalia. It was a little juvenile, I thought, but there was obviously something more here than just wishful thinking.

  I turned back to Brandon. “I don’t know. I think a lot of guys would probably like watching the Sox here.”

  “Well, the TV does get a pretty good picture.” Brandon gave me a shy grin that had my heart thrumming in response. “What about your friends, Red? What are they up to tonight, since you’re feeling social? I haven’t met any of them either.”

  I smacked a quick kiss on his mouth, quickly pulling away when he tried to turn it into something more. “I don’t know. Let’s see.”

  I snagged my phone off the coffee table and snuggled into the crook of his arm while I flipped through my text messages. There weren’t many; I probably had only a few more real friends than Brandon.

  “Jane says she and her latest hottie are going to trivia night at Cleo’s,” I said, referencing the spot by HLS many of the law students frequented. “It’s a bar that—”

  “I know what Cleo’s is, Red,” Brandon chafed. “I went to Harvard too, remember?” He looked at me in faux horror. “Just how old do you think I am?”

  I pulled my face into as serious an expression as I could muster. “I don’t know. It was pre-internet that you were there, right? Isn’t your fiftieth reunion a-coming, Grandpa?”

  “That’s it!”

  Without further admonition, Brandon tackled me into the sofa, tickling my sides mercilessly and making me laugh and cry for mercy all at once. Predictably, it ended with me pressed into the soft cushions while he clasped my face and pummeled my mouth with short, vicious kisses that eventually turned into much longer, sensuous ones.

  “Mmm,” I hummed into his mouth. “We don’t have to go out, you know…”

  “Don’t tempt me…” he said as he nibbled a path down my neck until he was thwarted by the collar of my sweatshirt.

  His hands drifted down my sides until they clasped under my legs, and with a swift movement, he stood up and flipped me over his shoulder.

  “Ah!” I yelped as I was suddenly hoofed out of the room and down to the bedroom.

  “Come on, Red,” he said, giving me another quick smack on the butt. “We’re going against our natural instincts toward hermitry.”

  “Hermitry?”

  He smirked and pinched me on the waist, making me yelp again before dropping me on the bed. “Smart mouth,” he murmured with another kiss that almost had me begging to stay in for the night. “It’s a word. Let’s go win trivia night at Cleo’s.”

  It took more time than originally planned, but after a quickie in the shower, we finally managed to get to Cleo’s. Despite my teasing, Brandon had flatly refused to take the train, saying that if he was going to spend the evening drinking shitty beer, he could at least ride home drunk in his own car.

  “Poor David,” I remarked as the Mercedes pulled away from the curb. “Does he ever get a day off?”

  “Every Sunday plus overtime and three weeks’ vacation a year,” Brandon replied as he straightened his bomber jacket.

  He still looked more like a student than a CEO, dressed in stone-washed jeans, a gray Henley shirt that hugged all the right places, and the frayed bill of his Sox hat now curled around his handsome face.

  Brandon smiled. “Don’t worry about him, Red. I pay him very well to keep the car up and drive me around for about an hour total most days. The rest of the time, David gets paid to read detective novels and Skype with his grandkids. He’s pretty happy doing what he does.” He slung an arm around my shoulders and steered me toward the entrance of the bar. “All right. Into the lion’s den.”

  A subterranean place tucked under an old brick building, Cleo’s was a quintessential Boston bar, full of dark wood, cheap drinks, and too many Red Sox pennants. There were a few faux-Egyptian posters scattered around, and it was common to hear The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” blast from the jukebox at least a few times each night, but other than that, the name seemed to be completely separate from its actual vibe.

  As we entered, Brandon took an uncharacteristic step behind me while I looked for Jane. He took my hand in his, and there was a slight dampness on his palm. Oh, I realized. Brandon was nervous.

  Jane sat by herself at one of the tall, circular bar tables, on top of which was a half-full pitcher and three pint glasses. She waved at me, and I led Brandon through the crowd.

  “You’re late,” Jane stated bluntly, reaching out to shake Brandon’s hand. “Trivia’s over. I lost, no thanks to you rabbits, and my date left when he figured out I was smarter than him.” She shrugged. “Dumb guys are shit in the sack anyway. So, you must be Brandon. You clean up nice for a corporate bloodsucker.”

  Brandon took a seat at the table with a raised brow at me. “Is she always like this?”

  “I am,” Jane confirmed as she poured both of us a pint of whatever was in the pitcher. “I’m also here, so you don’t need to talk about me like I’m not. I hate that almost as much as your girl here.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Brandon replied wryly as he accepted a glass. He took a very long drink until more than half of the glass was empty. “Thanks for the beer,” he said. “Next round’s on me.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Jane said, clinking her glass with ours. “I hear you can afford it.”

  “Jane!” I knew that she was only joking, but Brandon didn’t know her like I did.

  “Oh, Sky, relax,” she said with a faux-shove of my shoulder. “I’m just teasing. Big guy can take a joke, can’t you, big guy?”

  Brandon bared his teeth in another grim smile and took another long drink. When he finished, his glass was empty.

  “This helps,” he said as he set the glass down. “Why don’t I go get that round?”

  He took the pitcher back to the bar, and we both followed his handsome form until Jane turned to me with eager eyes.

  “Oh, girl,” she said. “That�
�s not just a sundae. That right there is a triple-tiered chocolate cake with velvety ganache filling. He is beyond hot. No wonder you had a hard time getting out of the house.”

  “Shh!” I hushed her, even with the grin on my face. “He’ll hear you!”

  “Oh my God, Sky, you are such a prude,” Jane scoffed. “I promise, he’ll like it if he knows you think he’s good in bed.”

  I took a sip of my beer, then turned to my friend with my very best “cat who ate the canary” face. “I’ll put it this way: so far, so good. Very good. Phenomenal, in fact. Like, best ever.”

  “What’s the best ever?”

  Brandon set the new pitcher on the table, then refilled his glass before he sat next to me. His arm slipped around to rest his hand at the base of my seat while his thumb gently massaged my lower back. Without even thinking, I leaned into his touch, which had come to feel so natural.

  Jane looked at me, then grinned at Brandon. “Skylar was just telling me more about the clinic she’s been doing.”

  “Er, yes. Kieran’s a good boss,” I said.

  Brandon raised his eyebrows in a way that told me he knew I was full of it, but turned to Jane instead.

  “And you two have been roommates since you started HLS, right?” he asked. “Were you friends immediately?”

  Jane and I glanced at each other, considering the question.

  “Not…not really,” she replied slowly. “I mean, we got along all right, but for the first several months, Sky wasn’t really around much. Aside from the fact that the first year of law school makes you want to kill yourself, she was always in New York. We didn’t really get close until the costume party, right?” She braced herself against the table in that way that indicated a serious story was about to be told. “I convinced her to go with me to this costume party the weekend after spring midterms.”

  I groaned, leaning my head into my hands at the memory. “More like you blackmailed me.”

  Brandon just watched our interactions with plain interest over the rim of his pint glass. After a few drinks, Jane and I morphed into a female version of Laurel and Hardy. I was curious what he’d think; our particular brand of mind-reading humor wasn’t for everyone.

  “I wasn’t going to go,” I continued. “I was heartbroken, you know, because of Patrick”—Jane’s eyebrows raised at the casual name drop and Brandon’s familiar nod, but I kept talking—“but Jane got me shit-faced the night before the party, then bet me I couldn’t recite the Preamble without any mistakes.” I point a finger down on the table for emphasis. “Which, by the way, I know cold. Top of the class in Con Law.”

  “I don’t know if you know this yet, Brandon, but Raggedy Ann here can’t say no to a bet,” Jane added. “It’s a genetic trait.”

  Brandon’s eyes flickered curiously at the mention of gambling, but he didn’t say anything. “Yeah, I’ve noticed something like that.”

  I stuck my tongue out, and he laughed. He had challenged me to a few more runs since our first, and while my legs didn’t cramp as badly as they did that first time, I still had yet to win any wagers.

  “Well, this was definitely one of those times,” Jane continued before tossing back the rest of her beer. She raised a hand to signal for another round before continuing.

  “So, let me guess. You guys dressed up as…Playboy Bunnies. With ears and tails and the whole nine yards? Am I close?”

  Since Brandon was almost finished with his second beer, “yards” came out sounding like “yahds,” and I couldn’t help but grin. He sounded both adorable and sexy when his accent came out.

  “God, men are such amateurs,” Jane scoffed. “No, that’s only embarrassing because it’s objectifying, and I, my Ken Doll-looking friend, am way better than that. You see, this was a Dylan party. As in, you had to come dressed up as your favorite Dylan song. Now, did you also happen to know that our redheaded Horowitz can’t stand Bob Dylan?”

  “His chord structures are all exactly the same, and he sounds like a tone-deaf asthmatic,” I protested with a slam of my hand on the table. I had had this debate with Jane, a die-hard Dylan fanatic, many times over; she knew exactly how to push my buttons. “Sure, he writes some decent verses, but I swear to God, I could play every single one of his early songs at the same exact time, and it would sound like one track.” I turned to Brandon. “Please tell me you’re not a fan. I don’t think I could take it if you were.”

  Brandon shrugged. “I’m more of a Springsteen guy myself.”

  I breathed out an exaggerated sigh. “Whew! Crisis averted.”

  “So, because she lost the bet,” Jane continued as she topped off everyone’s glasses, “not only did she have to attend this party that would only feature the musical stylings of a one Mr. Zimmerman, but she also had to dress up with me as a song of my choosing.”

  “Which one did you choose?” Brandon asked.

  “The worst, most overrated song he ever wrote,” I said bitterly. “Not to mention the worst costume in the world.”

  Jane grinned over her beer. “Tambourine Man.”

  “What’s wrong with that one?” Brandon asked me. “I think it’s kind of catchy.”

  I threw my hands up in the air. “Ugh, where do I begin? First of all, it’s about six…verses…too…long. It has no variation in phrasing. The Byrds did a decent cover, but Dylan’s changes are terrible. I could go on.”

  “She really could,” Jane chimed in. “I’ve heard her.”

  “So, don’t tell me,” Brandon said. “You were the man,” he said, pointing at Jane, “and you had to be the…”

  “Tambourine,” I concluded with a groan.

  He chuckled. “How do you even dress up as a tambourine?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t actually that hard,” Jane told him, standing up to pantomime the costume with both hands. “I’d been planning it for weeks, you see, and I had the costume ready to go. I cut out two five-foot circles out of cardboard boxes and painted them white. Then we grabbed the spare cymbals I had from my old drum kit in storage.” She stopped, to inform Brandon quickly: “I tried to be in a band once. It didn’t really take.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” he said with a nod. “Then what?”

  I grinned in spite of myself. Now that the ice had been broken and Jane had stopped heckling him, Brandon was playing the new boyfriend really well. He was attentive and patient with my friend, asking the right questions at the right times. Maybe it was just the beer, but I didn’t think he was so nervous anymore.

  “It wasn’t really that hard from there,” Jane said. “Chopsticks and duct tape pretty much took care of the basic engineering. Sky actually followed through on the bet, even though she complained literally the entire time.”

  “Um, you weren’t the one who had to wear it,” I put in. “I couldn’t wear anything besides spandex underneath so I could fit in between the pieces. It had a diameter of five feet. I could barely walk.”

  Brandon chuckled at the image, looking back and forth between us in amusement.

  “It wasn’t that bad, you big baby,” Jane said, sitting down again. “The hardest part was getting you through the doorways. You did get stuck a few times.”

  Brandon snorted. “Really?”

  “I also had to hold my pee the entire night because I couldn’t use the bathroom,” I added.

  “And had to turn your entire body around to talk to people,” said Jane. “You knocked a lot of things over.”

  “And got whacked in the belly every time someone wanted to ‘play’ me. One guy actually tried to grab my tits that way.”

  “Oh, plus you got knocked over four times!” Jane crowed. “Every time you crashed, the cymbals just made the loudest, most god-awful sound, and everyone would stop and stare. The first time someone even turned off the music because everyone thought you were trying to do some kind of performance art.”

  By this point, Brandon was laughing so hard he was practically wheezing, and tears were starting to shine in the corner of his
eyes.

  “Shit!” he cried, holding his stomach. “I can’t take it.”

  But every time he caught his breath, he looked at me and started shaking all over again as he imagined me in my tambourine costume.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, get it out,” I said. I couldn’t be mad, though. I was thrilled my best friend and my boyfriend were getting along so well.

  “But in the end, as mad as she was, we were friends forever after,” Jane said. She slung a thin arm over my shoulders. “There’s a certain loyalty that arises when you have to help your roommate peel off beer-soaked cardboard and then shield her with it so she can pee in a bush in the middle of Harvard Yard because she can’t hold it until you get her home.”

  I laid my head on Jane’s shoulder. “There certainly is.”

  Brandon sipped his beer as he surveyed us with a reflective smile. I thought I saw a flash of envy there, but mostly he just chuckled.

  “And on that note,” I said as I pushed myself up from the table. “The ladies’ room calls, no Jane required. Back in a moment.”

  After I made my way to the other side of the bar, I glanced back. Jane and Brandon were leaning over the small round table, her dark head bent towards his cap in deep conversation. I smiled. The night couldn’t be going better if I’d scripted it myself.

  “So, Jane’s…a character.”

  After a few more drinks, Jane had begged off to make herself available at the bar. She wasn’t shy about how sexually open she was, and I could tell that Brandon was entertained, if slightly shocked, by her candor. We had watched with some amusement while she hit on several members of the Harvard crew team before Brandon had whispered a few things in my ear that suddenly make me equally ready to escape.

  Now on our way back to the apartment, we were forced to behave in the presence of David, though it was hard not to encourage the hand currently massaging my leg a bit higher than was completely decent.

  I flipped my gaze toward Brandon, trying to ignore the fingers on my inner thigh. “What’d she say?”