Love, Lust & Friendship

by Elizabeth Stevens

  Love, Lust &

  Friendship

  ALSO BY ELIZABETH STEVENS

  unvamped

  Netherfield Prep

  the Trouble with Hate is…

  Accidentally Perfect

  Keeping Up Appearances

  No More Maybes Books

  No More Maybes

  Gray’s Blade

  Love, Lust &

  Friendship

  Elizabeth Stevens

  Sleeping Dragon Books

  Love, Lust & Friendship

  by Elizabeth Stevens

  Print ISBN: 978-0648264880

  Digital ISBN: 978-0648264897

  Cover art by: Izzie Duffield

  Copyright 2018 Elizabeth Stevens

  Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights

  Worldwide English Language Print Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Ellie, to being on fire,

  no extinguishing necessary.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter One

  When you’ve been best friends with someone for what felt like forever, you don’t really need words to communicate. You know what they’re thinking. They know what you’re thinking. There’s so much history between you, it’s hard to remember where one of you started and the other one ended. And, most of the time, you’re sure you can read each other’s mind.

  It was like that with Ander, the love of my life.

  Case in point, he knew exactly what was running through my mind right then. And I would have known he knew even if I hadn’t heard him chuckle and he hadn’t whacked a pool noodle over my head.

  I pulled my eyes away from the very thing I wasn’t supposed to be staring at and frowned at him in a mockery of annoyance.

  “Stop drooling,” he said with a wry smile.

  “I’m not drooling. You’re drooling,” I mumbled and forced myself not to look back.

  “Only because we were talking about Zooper Doopers. You know how I feel about Zooper Doopers, babe.” He groaned, “Ugh, it’s so damned hot!”

  Said the boy in the baggy jeans. But, he wasn’t wrong; it was hot. Because it was January in Australia and we hadn’t seen temperatures under forty Celsius for a week. But, that wasn’t all…

  “Yeah, it is,” popped out of my mouth with all the heavy innuendo of a 90’s movie wanker jock.

  Ander snorted, but I missed anything he might have said because my eyes had roamed back over to his older brother. One Christopher Henderson. Who was currently – and quite unnecessarily, I might add – helping the boys’ Aunt Jelly hang out the washing in nothing but a pair of fitted jeans that would make the Madonna cry. Although, from what I hear she weeps at anything, so Topher’s perfectly chiselled ass on perfect display was probably a given in that department.

  Ander and Topher were so similar they could almost be mistaken for identical twins, despite the two year age gap. They both had dark brown hair and dark blue eyes. They had the same nose, the same lips, the same tilt to those lips when they tried not to laugh at me, the same sparkle to their eyes when they were thinking nothing good – although Ander’s nothing good was usually pelting me with tacky bombs, while Topher’s usually involved removing the closest girl from her dignity. They even almost had the same body types, but where Ander was a little taller than Topher, Topher had more muscle than Ander’s piddly lankiness.

  The difference lay in my reaction to the two boys. Looking into the depths of Ander’s eyes never made my stomach flutter, it never made my mind take an ill-timed vacation. Watching the way Ander’s lips tilted at me in barely contained amusement never made me unfathomably annoyed. Ander had basically no muscle to speak of, and watching his arms move in his oversized t-shirts did nothing for me. I couldn’t care less whether Ander was wearing the jeans that made his ass look awesome or his pyjama pants with the dancing flamingos on them.

  When it came to Topher, though?

  Unfortunately, my common sense still went out the window when I saw the dillweed no matter how much I knew better. And it was a great source of amusement to the love of my life, who had said on multiple occasions I should just kiss Topher and get over it. But, we all knew I wasn’t the sort of girl to kiss Topher. I was the sort of girl who wanted to date – who liked the idea of crushes and dating and romance – but would have run for the hills with a significant amount of Nope had any of my ill-fated crushes actually been interested in dating me.

  I got another pool noodle to the head. “Enough! Pay attention to meeee!” Ander whined in his best five-year-old impression. “Addy!” he snapped with one more flail of the pool noodle.

  I smirked. “Addy isn’t here, man.”

  “Oof,” he huffed. “You just… With the… Pfft,” then left me to my staring.

  But, when he’d been silent for too long, I knew something was amiss. I looked up at him and got a tacky bomb in the face. I spluttered and blinked goo from my face and tried to train a glare on him. But, he looked so proud of himself that I couldn’t be mad at him.

  Ander and I had spent something like seven years perfecting our tacky bombs. What had started out as a simple water bomb had evolved into something designed to stick to you and preferably turn you any colour but your natural. The recipe changed depending on what we thought was best at any given time. Currently it was flour, water-based paint, water, and the signature scent of the maker – I used bergamot oil and Ander used strawberry essence. There was very occasionally a little bit of itching powder added, depending on how annoyed Ander and I were with each other (or Topher) when we made them. Needless to say, Topher got the itching powder a lot.

  “Do you mind?” I asked, spitting tacky mix.

  “Not particularly, no,” he giggled.

  “Dude! I was going to let you beat me at Gladiator later, but I’m so not going easy on you now.” I wiped off as much of the tacky mix as possible, then wiped my hands on my shorts, heedless of the mess and knowing it would wash out anyway.

  “Like you can beat the reigning champion,” he scoffed as he did his muscle-man pose and I snorted.

  “I can totally beat the feigning champion. But, he was supposed to be telling me his grand new idea for this awesome treehouse we’re going to build.”

  Ander hung his head and sighed dramatically. “I was promised Zooper Doopers!”

  “Yes. You were promised Zooper Doopers after I raced you to the big branch,” I said, grabbing hold of th
e first knot and starting to pull myself up the tree.

  “Hey, no fair!” Ander said and he was right behind me.

  We hauled ourselves up the tree – not that it was terribly big – until we were sitting on the branch and looking out over his whole back garden. We’d been planning this treehouse for almost ten years, so the damn thing was going to be totally epic, if we actually ever got it off the ground.

  “I still think it should be boys only,” Ander said.

  I nodded – when it came to things like that, I considered myself one of the boys, so we cut out unnecessary nouns and adjectives and collectively called ourselves ‘boys’. “No brothers either.”

  “That is a given.”

  “Aunt Jelly could come visit sometimes, though.”

  “Oh, yeah. But, she doesn’t count because she’s cool.”

  “Totally.”

  It had become a bit of a thing over the years that we thought girls were stupid; you crushed on them, they laughed at your jokes, then they ended up kissing your brother. Mind you, as I got older, I was starting to think some boys – okay, we were close to all boys but my boys – were stupid for the exact same reasons. Well, boys weren’t kissing any of my brothers. But, I crushed on them, they laughed at my jokes, then they ended up kissing any girl but me.

  I wasn’t sure if it was just Ander and me, or if other people had this much trouble with their crushes as well. But, I was so far zero for (probably) five, and Ander had at least managed a couple of dates with a few before they turned their attentions to the elder Hendo. We still held out hope for my sixth, though.

  Six was Liam, a boy in the year ahead of us. And, the expectation was that all my best flirting would result in something happening at the Henderson boys’ party in a couple of weeks. Aunt Jelly was the coolest person alive and was fine with them having people around almost as often as they wanted. Most of the time, their ‘parties’ weren’t that big. But, this one was a back to school fiesta and promised to be one of the biggest accomplishments of Hendo’s school career. It’s not like Ander and I weren’t helping host, but Topher – or Mr Dillweed esq., as I often liked to call him – thought he was in charge, and we didn’t have to do so much if we let him think that.

  “Do you think we can fit a freezer?” Ander interrupted my thoughts.

  “Maybe. One of those little ones?”

  “Shame we didn’t build this years ago,” he mused. “See, I could just reach over like this and get my Zooper Dooper.”

  I laughed, my mind now off worrisome things like crushes and older brothers. “No. The freezer’s going over there, babe. That’s where my chair’s going.”

  “No! We agreed your chair was going over there.” He pointed.

  “Um, no. You wanted to put the foosball table there.”

  “That was going on the second storey.”

  “I thought the big couch thing was going upstairs?”

  “Wasn’t that going on the rooftop?”

  So, you can maybe see why we hadn’t got around to building it yet…? And, no, we hadn’t – in all our years of planning – stopped to consider what was actually plausible. We were dreamers and we enjoyed dreaming big. That was, after all, half the fun.

  “I thought the bar was going on the roof?”

  “Can’t they both?”

  We tussled, the way we do, and I ended up in a headlock as we were arguing.

  “Can you two be any weirder?” came a voice and we stopped to look down at Topher.

  “We’re not weird. You’re weird!” I told him and he smirked. “Besides, what’s the point of growing up if you can’t be childish sometimes?”

  Topher was not a Whovian by any stretch of the imagination, but he spent enough time around us to know where our favourite quotes came from.

  “Touché, Doctor. But, I’m not the ones wrestling up a tree in my Spongebob PJs.”

  Ander and my matching t-shirts weren’t strictly Spongebob PJs, but still. If they were, we wouldn’t have cared either.

  “What’s wrong with Spongebob PJs?” I asked. Then, “Hang on. You, too, have Spongebob PJs?”

  “Do I look like the kind of guy who wears Spongebob PJs?”

  I looked him over. “No, you look like the kind who wears Elmo PJs. Probably the footsie kind.” I wiggled my foot at him.

  He gave me that gorgeous smirk. “If I was the kind to wear PJs at all, Addison, I wouldn’t pick Elmo.”

  “Ew!” Ander said. “I don’t need to be thinking about your nakedness.”

  “Dude, that’s just nasty.” I shook my head. “Although, I guess it would be hard to contain all that raw manliness,” I said totally sarcastically and Ander snorted. We both reached our hands out and did the short version of our handshake.

  Topher was unimpressed, but humour played at his lips. “Crash in my room some night instead of his and find out.” He gave me a wink.

  “Addy is so not interested in finding out what you keep under your restrictive attire, Toph,” Ander told him, rearranging his baggy jeans for good measure.

  And honestly, it wasn’t strictly true. But, I knew better than to even think about fantasising about it. Topher was an annoying jackass who treated me like his equally annoying little sister. We were far better off exchanging insulting banter and leaving it at that. Besides, I didn’t even really like the guy. Not as a guy, anyway. As a pseudo-brother, he could have been worse. And, I had three real ones, so I should know.

  Topher trained a cocky grin on his brother. “Remind me again how many girls find your ass half-hanging out of your pants sexy these days, Lex?”

  Beside me, Ander huffed, “We can’t all be Hendo the Magnificent.”

  It was a little bit of a sore point for Ander that Topher was Mr Popular Jerk-hole and was the guy every girl – yes, I know, me included *le sigh* – drooled over. Ever since the day I’d met them, Topher had stolen the show and Ander had just let him. But, that was Ander; tough on the outside, marshmallow on the inside, and totally idolising of his older brother. And, I’d like it put on the record that I might have found Christopher Henderson attractive, but Alexander Henderson would be the only boy I ever loved.

  “No, some of us are better than that,” I added. “And, some of us don’t judge our self-worth based on how many people want to hook up with us.”

  Topher’s arrogant self-confidence would not be deterred by any zinger I came up with. “True, we don’t. Because, some of us are just plain awesome.”

  I frowned at him only so I wouldn’t smile. “Awesomely annoying and not as good as they think they are.”

  “Oh,” Topher’s lips dropped into a sarcastic pout. “Come on, Ads. You’re pretty damned great. Nice face, by the way. You’ve got a little…” He brushed his thumb over the side of his nose as he barely contained his smile.

  I stuck my tongue out at him and he just laughed as he walked away.

  “Ugh. Jackass,” Ander muttered, swinging out of the tree.

  I jumped out as well, only ten times less gracefully than him because I was the klutz who should probably have trainer wheels for Life and not just the bike I stopped riding when I was twelve.

  “Let’s get you that Zooper Dooper,” I said, putting my arm around him.

  “You could do with a facewasher.”

  “Whose fault was that?”

  He sniggered. “Yeah… My bad, babe.”

  I shook my head and we walked through the back door to find Aunt Jelly in the kitchen dancing around to her old-school music as she mixed something on the bench.

  “Oh, hey guys,” she said when she looked up and saw us. “Oh, Addy. He got you good, darling.”

  By Henderson standards, she was hella short at only a little taller than me. But, the family resemblance was uncanny. She was just a bit lighter than the boys; her hair was a lighter brown and her eyes a paler blue. But, she had the same damned smirk and twinkle in her eyes and, after Ander, she was the best p
erson I knew.

  She’d had the boys for a little over eight years, ever since their dad died. They’d lost their mum young and Aunt Jelly was the only person to take them. And, even at nineteen, she hadn’t hesitated. She’d done everything she could to make the best life for those boys, even when she thought she was the worst parent in the world. I thought she was amazing, with or without any decent parental comparison of my own.

  “He did. And, yet, he still gets a Zooper Dooper?” I said to her questioningly.

  Aunt Jelly smiled. “Good thing I put more in last night.”

  “What are you making?” Ander asked, sticking his finger in the batter and getting whacked with the spoon for his troubles.

  Although, joke was on Aunt Jelly, because the spoon left a clump of mixture on his hand that he ate with a massive grin on his face.

  “Muffins.”

  “It’s too early for study muffins, isn’t it?” I asked.

  She pointed the spoon at me. “Yes. These are just craving muffins. I’m doing a blueberry lot and a chocolate lot.”

  “Banana!” we heard Topher yell from another room.

  “If you have a request, Christopher, you can lodge it with the proper authorities from a respectable distance!” Aunt Jelly yelled back, throwing us a wink.

  “Cup of tea?” I asked, turning the kettle on.

  “Please!” Aunt Jelly sighed.

  “Got a late one tonight?”

  She nodded. “Might be, yeah.”

  She worked a reception job part-time as well as for a pub so she kept some interesting hours, as well as studying online full-time. But, she also had a good amount of time off for hanging out and we made the most of it.

  “Could you please make some banana ones, Aunt Jel?” Topher asked sweetly, popping his head and naked torso around the doorframe and I totally didn’t imagine for a second he was just totally naked behind it. He batted his eyes at her and she laughed.

  “Fine. But, you can hunt around for the banana bits.” Aunt Jelly was a firm believer in frozen fruit and veg and I’d started to agree.