UP FOR FOREVER
Heather Young-Nichols
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.
Copyright © 2015 by Heather Young-Nichols
UP FOR FOREVER by Heather Young-Nichols
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Swoon Romance. Swoon Romance and its related logo are registered trademarks of Georgia McBride Media Group, LLC.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Published by Swoon Romance
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To everyone that lets themselves fall at least once.
And to those that sometimes need a push.
UP FOR FOREVER
Heather Young-Nichols
Chapter One
My best friend was getting married. I’d known it was coming, helped plan the whole proposal, but still. It was done. Flannery Tate was marrying Cain Dorsey. It was all very grown up. But I wasn’t jealous. Kendra Roberts doesn’t do jealous. Besides, marriage wasn’t something I ever wanted anyway. We’d just graduated. Like literally two days ago and there she was planning her future. Me? I was headed to law school in Lansing. A decision made partly because I’m an excellent debater and partly because I just wasn’t ready for the real world yet. I wanted to be safely ensconced in a school environment a little while longer.
First things first. We needed to move.
When the landlord told my best friend Flannery and me that we would only have a week to clear out after we graduated we freaked. I’d known all of the last semester that Cain planned on proposing at commencement but since I couldn’t tell her, she worried right along with me. I only needed a place for the summer because we assumed she’d move in with Cain, even before she knew he was popping the question. Still, we went through every option. I could either find some place for three months or move to Lansing right away. Neither was overly appealing, but I didn’t want to leave before I had to. My best friend and I had to be together for one last summer before true adulthood and I didn’t know anyone in Lansing yet so where’s the fun in that?
In the end, after someone (Cain) suggested I live with Adam in the glorified frat house with four roommates, Flannery decided I’d spend the summer with them. Cain lived alone in a great two-bedroom apartment so he had the space. She’d be there, I’d be there, and Flan assumed Adam would be there. I didn’t know about that last one. Things were still up in the air.
Yeah, we’d been hanging out for two years and everything but it’s not like we had anything permanent. I wasn’t exactly ready to move on but it wasn’t something we talked about.
One thing that didn’t surprise me was that Cain didn’t exactly seem excited at the prospect of me being around all the time, whether it was because he really wanted Flannery all to himself or it was me that was the issue.
When everything hit the fan two years ago, everything being Cain finding out Flannery was selling her virginity to stay in school, he’d been pretty pissed at me for being a part of it. But I was just being a good friend and I told him as much later. Eventually he said he forgave me, actually that he was grateful she’d had someone to help her through that time since he wasn’t around, but still sometimes I wonder. In the end, he agreed to the summer visitor because, honestly, that man couldn’t say no to Flannery.
“You know, you could actually lift a box here or there.” Adam Burger, the ever-chivalrous man of mine strained under the pressure of two boxes of books that he’d brought out of my room.
“I can’t.” It came out as a whine. I wasn’t proud. “I’m still hung over.” Two nights ago we’d drank a lot of alcohol in celebration of both graduation and the engagement. I mean a lot. More than I’d seen Flannery consume in the entire four years prior. I still hadn’t recovered. My head had that annoying throb right between my eyes and I’m pretty sure I could use an IV for hydration.
“That was two days ago. Light weight.” Flannery brought a box from the kitchen. Though I knew she wasn’t fully recovered from our generous libations, either, she was just better at faking it. She hadn’t even had enough to get drunk because while she’d relaxed her never drinking rule, she didn’t go at it full force like the rest of us. So three drinks would leave her feeling hung over.
We didn’t have much to pack because the apartment wasn’t that big. Ok, Flannery didn’t have much to pack. I had a lot of clothes and enough shoes to outfit an entire third world. It was my one vice. The nasty old furniture that came with the place was promptly thrown in storage when we moved in, in deference to things we picked up along the way. Even though I could’ve afforded something bigger with the money my father sent instead of dishing out actual love, Flannery insisted on pulling her own weight, which wasn’t always easy. So, we had to get something she could afford half of.
I didn’t mind even if I had once been used to living a more luxurious lifestyle. That was part of moving to Michigan for school. I didn’t know I’d discover that it was my home and I had no intention of ever moving back to New York. That life needed to be left behind. Forgotten.
There were a lot of good memories within those walls that I was sad to see it go even though Cain’s apartment was beautiful, it reminded me so much of the life I left behind. My parents were all about appearances to the point that I wondered if they ever actually loved each other or if they just thought they’d look great together. Course the fact that my brother and I were around was proof enough that there was something between them at one point that I didn’t want to think about.
I drove my car, a silver BWM that was a gift for graduation, while Flannery rode with Cain and Adam with Sam in the truck. Everything fit in to those three cars nicely. Adam and Sam were headed for a storage unit a few miles from Cain’s with all the furniture type stuff that I wouldn’t need until I found a place closer to school. The rest of us were off to get settled in the new apartment.
This time I put my back into it. Each trip I made felt pretty good because honestly, I wasn’t used to any kind of manual labor. Back home there was someone to hire for every single job. But my boxes made it into my room and Flannery’s into theirs.
Cain had excellent taste when picking out this place, course Flannery helped. Everything was new and modern with clean lines but still looked like a single guy lived there. Pretty sure two girls were about to change that.
My room was big, theirs was huge, and we each had our own bathrooms for which I was incredibly grateful. I wanted no part of walking in on them doing the deed in our shower or something. There was a third small “powder room” for guests. I couldn’t imagine how much he was paying for it and had originally wondered why he didn’t just buy a house. He’d said he wanted to wait until he and Flannery picked something out together. It was so sweet I wanted to puke. But it was also so them.
“So what’s the summer plan?” I asked, standing in their bedroom doorway while Cain helped her put her things away. He worked on hanging clothes in the closet while she piled things into the dresser. In all the years I’d known her, she never bothered to fold most of the things that went into drawers.
“Um … finding employment?” she squeaked out. The closer to graduation we got, the more obsessed Flannery became with finding
a job. But Michigan’s economy wasn’t the best and she wasn’t about to leave especially now that she had a fiancée. Actually, she’d almost taken a part-time job in a bookstore senior year just to start making a little money to start paying Cain back the twenty thousand dollars he’d given her so she wouldn’t have sell her virginity. He’d quickly talked her out of it saying it was ridiculous to think she even needed to pay him back.
The thing about Flannery was that she had never taken anything without earning it. Even her scholarship she earned through hard work in high school. She earned money as a teenager to help pay the bills at home so she didn’t have to rely on her mother to fully support her. That girl had taken care of herself most of her life, or at least helped. So the idea of taking such a large sum of money didn’t sit well with her. I told her, with a wink, that she was earning it in other ways. She threw a book at me.
“There’s no rush,” Cain called from the closet. We couldn’t see him he was so completely inside.
“Uh, there kind of is. What am I going to do, sit around here all summer?” She said it like it was a fate worse than getting a bikini wax.
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “It’s not going to be long before I’m gone, never to be seen or heard from again.”
“That a promise?” Cain came out with a smile.
“Bite me,” I sighed. This was our normal playful banter. It was comfortable because we both loved the same girl in very different ways. That’s what got us to mend any broken fences we had. “Seriously, Flan, we have tons to keep us busy.”
“Like?”
“Oh, I don’t know … I have to find a place to live in Lansing and you’re nuts if you think I’m doing that without your help. And there’s a little thing called a wedding that isn’t planning itself.”
“That’s true,” Cain agreed, tugging the brown braid that hung down her back.
“Besides, lover-boy’s going to be at work all the time and it’s not like guys are ever useful when it comes to this kind of thing.”
“Plus,” Cain started, “you’d just have to take time off for the wedding, honeymoon, and recovery because trust me … the honeymoon is going to be exhausting.”
“Gross.” I rolled my eyes but felt the stupid smile plastered on my face. Those two really did belong together and I never believed in any of that crap. I chalk it up to the fact that while my parents are married to each other, after the bomb dropped, the explosion that I don’t like to talk about and hadn’t told anyone about, they each had a string of affairs that weren’t so secret. It was so embarrassing to have your married parents show up to a high school function with dates that weren’t each other. I guess those types of appearances didn’t matter, just the ones that proved you were rich and powerful.
“You guys don’t get it.” She dropped onto the edge of the bed. “I’ve never not worked except while I was in school. And I worked my ass off all summer to be able to not work during school. I’m the girl it took two summers to save up for a laptop.”
“I understand that, Flannery.” Cain took over because seriously, that was his job now. “All the more reason you deserve to let someone take care of you for a change. I’m going to do that so you don’t have to worry about anything.”
“What if I don’t want to be taken care of?” What surprised me with that question was that she sounded completely serious.
“Please,” I laughed. “What girl doesn’t want to be taken care of?”
“You?” She smiled back.
“True, but I’ve always been taken care of. Totally not the same thing.”
“Fine,” she sighed and rolled her eyes. “But only because I’m supposed to get married really soon as a bribe to reduce my debt.”
We all started laughing. If someone would’ve told me two years ago that we’d joke about what Flannery had almost done I wouldn’t have believed it. And I don’t know if Flannery noticed or not but Cain’s jaw ticked just the slightest at any mention of it. He’d claimed her virginity and all was right with the world but it still pissed him off at the thought of someone else with their hands on his girl.
The bad shit lingered forever apparently, which was why I was incredibly happy to stay a single unit my entire life. If you don’t care too deeply or get too involved then you didn’t get hurt. Yes, Adam and I had been hanging out for a couple of years now but it totally wasn’t the same thing. At all. We weren’t in love, even if he said he was; we were just having fun until it was time to move on.
Chapter Two
Taking it upon himself, Cain provided us all dinner in the form of pizza he ordered from their favorite place as a thank you to Sam and Adam for helping us move. With Sam only being home for a few days before heading back to California it was a given the five of us would be hanging out as much as possible.
Sam Allen, Cain’s best friend from childhood and the guy I sort of teamed up with during “The Dark Days” as we referred to it. We had a free exchange of information because seriously, everyone wanted Cain and Flannery to find their way back to each other no matter what happened. But he graduated with Cain a year before us and shipped off to a job in California leaving a gaping hole in our group where he used to be. We all hated it but pretended things were fine.
“When do you move?” Sam asked Adam with a mouthful of pizza. I’m not sure if everyone could see it but he had a string of mozzarella hanging from his mouth. He gave me a wink as if to say he knew it and was totally rocking it. Because that was Sam.
“Friday. Start the new job a week from today.”
“So, Monday morning you’re a full grown-up?” Flannery smiled at him. “I wonder what that would be like. I’m going to stay twenty-two forever.”
“That works for me,” Cain piped in, wriggling his eyebrows suggestively.
I hated that things were about to change, already were changing really. Why couldn’t we just hit the pause button once in a while? I’m not one of those Peter Pan types that refuse to grow up, I just liked the comfort college afforded me. Four years away from my nut job of a family clearly wasn’t enough. That was reason number three I decided on law school. Another three years of a perfectly good excuse not to visit home.
Although after the last visit, I told my mom I wouldn’t be back any time soon.
“Yeah, I took the day off so we can get everything moved. We’ll make sure your truck gets back to your parents’ house,” Cain said, patting Sam on the shoulder roughly.
“And when do I need to be back for the wedding?” Sam asked.
“Ugh, please, we’ve been engaged for two days.” Flannery tried to fake the sound of annoyance but Cain gave her the smirk she loved so much. “Ok, fine, end of summer good enough? Like August before Kendra starts school?”
“Works for me,” I agreed. Which gave us about three and a half months to get our shit together because if anyone deserved a beautiful wedding it was Flannery.
We spent the rest of the night catching up. Sam didn’t love California but he didn’t hate it. It was still weird not having him around all the time, even after a year. He didn’t have a girl. He stressed the singular nature of that word. Meaning there was multiple because that’s what guys do.
Working at his dad’s company had Cain pretty set. He had his job and his girl so he couldn’t be happier even if the hours were sometimes long. Ok, maybe once I’m out of the apartment he’ll be happier. For Adam, starting his new job had him jumping with energy. Some of it nervous, some of it not, but I didn’t mind all the ways he wanted to work that energy off. I was a more than willing participant.
I did worry how often I’d get to hang out with Flannery once school started. Law school would be a lot of work, which didn’t leave a lot of time for friends. But I’d make it work. I had to.
Our little get together turned into a slumber party that went into the early morning. And poor Cain had to leave early for work. Luckily, he wasn’t a complainer. It was my favorite of his qualities.
I heard him tryin
g to be quiet as he got ready because I hadn’t fallen asleep yet. My brain was in overdrive thinking about the things that needed to be taken care of over the summer. The wedding for one and finding me a place to live near school were at the top of the list. It should keep me and my best friend very busy to say the least.
The curse that came from the kitchen made me giggle from my spot on one end of the dark leather couch. Adam was at the other end and Sam had fallen asleep on the floor near the television. Apparently, Adam didn’t even care when my feet were in his face because I tweaked his nose with my big toe and he didn’t move. His too long blond hair fell into his ocean blue eyes when he slept making him resemble a little kid in his adorableness. Even I couldn’t believe he’d been able to hold my attention as long as he had. That wasn’t my style but his sense of humor kept me on my toes and he’d been invaluable during the dark days. And he loved Flannery as much as I did.
But we were totally wrong for each other, which I told her and him on numerous occasions. The list was too long so I had to tell them in shifts. The number one thing being that he believed in forever and I believed in for now.
“Pinch your nuts in a drawer?” I asked when Cain crept out of the kitchen trying to be quiet.
“Burned my damn finger on the coffee pot.”
“Nice. Have fun at work.”
With the flip of his middle finger, he headed out the door locking it up behind him. A silent giggle took me over for a quick second. That’s how we were. We didn’t have to hug or love on each other to show that we cared. Hell, Flannery’s favorite thing to do was a love tap to the shins. Sometimes it wasn’t out of love. And sometimes it wasn’t a tap. We tried to steer clear when she wore pointy-toed shoes.
The plan was that we’d all take Sam to the airport later that evening. Cain would have plenty of time to get home, change, and head out with us. We would be quite the little group. But first, I had to unpack.
Up for Forever Page 1