by Sarah Sutton
What Are Friends For?
Who ever said falling in love with your best friend was a good thing?
Sarah Sutton
Golden Crown Publishing, LLC
Contents
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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 Twenty-Five
Epilogue
Thank you so much for reading!
Chapter One
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
WHAT ARE FRIENDS FOR?
Copyright © 2020 Golden Crown Publishing, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents portrayed in it are either the work of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.
Contact info:
http://www.sarah-sutton.com
Editor: Rachel Solomon
ISBN print: 978-1-7342322-1-9
ISBN ebook: 978-1-7342322-0-2
First Edition: January 2020
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Chapter One
I squinted at the crooked display of underwear in front of me, the colors and patterns making my eyes ache. The tier had been picked over by the hordes of people milling about, the midwinter half-off sale drawing in the crazies desperate for a good deal. Crazies like me, apparently.
I lifted two pairs of panties in each hand, holding them side by side and inspecting them closely. They were the same price, both floral, both the cotton boyshort style that I loved. However, one pair was blue with daisies, the other purple with lace accents and sunflowers, and I couldn’t decide which I liked best.
Life-or-death decisions were made in the underwear store.
“Okay, you choose.” I turned around to face the boy behind me and lifted the pairs of underwear, shaking them to catch his attention. His gaze, however, looked over my shoulder at the wall, unfocused. “Earth to Eli.”
His dark eyes snapped to mine. They were brown—not hazel, not chocolate, just brown. As dark as the morning coffee he drank, but depthless. “What?”
“Pick: blue daisies or purple sunflowers with a lace band?”
“Oh.” Elijah looked between the two panties, analyzing them. “Isn’t the lace itchy?”
I smiled, placing the purple pair back. “See, this is why I bring you. You think about the logistics of shopping more than Eloise. She just goes ‘oh, that’s cute’ and adds it to her pile.”
Elijah’s eyes roamed over the tiers of lacy clothing items without fixating on one place for more than a few seconds. Our winter jackets were thrown over his arm, my puffy red mixing with his denim, allowing me an unobstructed shopping experience. What a gentleman. “Please do not try to tell me I have better taste in women’s underwear than your best friend.”
“You do. You should put it on your résumé. And anyway, you are my best friend,” I told him seriously, nudging his shoulder. “My list goes chronologically. I’ve known you way longer than her.”
Elijah Greybeck and I had been best friends since third grade when his parents packed him and his brother up and hauled them nearly 200 miles across the country. The best decision of the Greybecks’ lives. It was, at least, the best thing that had happened to mine.
Cue the aww sound effect.
“And you need to say it,” I said, lifting my eyes to his. “Panties.”
“Never. I’m never going to say it.” He mock-shuddered, following me as I moved to the next tier of clothing. I opened one of the drawers that held bralettes and sifted through the different patterns. One had a smattering of pink polka dots on a white background, and I added it to the pile I’d started, balanced in one hand. “You know, it was fine walking around with you when we were in the activewear section. But looking at underwear with you is a little freaky, Remi.”
“It’s not freaky,” I told him, tilting my head at the tier. “Just pretend that I’m looking at bathing suits. Or just close your eyes.”
In all honesty, I couldn’t explain why I liked it when Elijah came with me to the store. Maybe because I liked torturing him, my best friend since childhood. I liked watching him squirm. Or hey, maybe because carting him around with me made it seem like I had a boyfriend, even though I was as single as the last cookie in the cookie jar.
What did my mom say that was again? Oh yeah: picky. I was picky.
I’d started to move to the next display when Elijah’s voice stopped me. “That’s not your size.”
“Uh, what?”
He gestured to my pile, and even from here, I could see grayish smudges of clay stuck underneath his fingernails, a chalky dust near his cuticles. “You grabbed that from the B shelf and you…you usually grab the C.”
I glanced at the tag and, sure enough, it read B instead of my normal C. I pressed a hand over my heart, unable to fight a grin. “Elijah Greybeck, after all these years of friendship and mall trips, did you actually memorize my bra size?”
Elijah couldn’t keep his gaze neutral either, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Sav would have a heart attack.”
Sav, or Savannah, and Elijah had been dating for the past month and a half, but hearing her name fall from his lips still surprised me. She seemed fine enough, but we weren’t really around each other for me to know otherwise. Elijah said I’d like her more when I got to know her, but as far as initial reactions went, I wasn’t too impressed.
As of late, there weren’t many opportunities for us to hang out together. Too much had gone on in Elijah’s life this past week and a half.
I instantly sobered as I thought of what happened, cutting a glance his way. He seemed normal enough. One hand was in his pocket, and his gaze settled on me.
Elijah raised an eyebrow. “What’s that face for?”
“How’s your mom been?” I asked, feeling like I needed to mind my own business, but I couldn’t not ask. “My mom’s been trying to call her so the
y can get lunch.”
“Oh, that’s what the face is for,” he said with a sigh. “She’s fine. Dad’s fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine.”
“And how’s Terry?”
Elijah looked away from me, but I caught his scowl.
The fabric of the underwear in my hand slid as I curled my fingers, trying to stare at him as seriously as I could. “You can’t pretend like it didn’t happen.”
“I know I can’t,” he snapped, “because everyone brings it up all the time. ‘Hey, was it your brother that robbed those gas stations last week? Did he shoot anybody? How long is he in jail for?’”
I winced, an icy feeling spreading through my stomach. Almost a week and a half ago now, on New Year’s Day, the Greybeck family had received a phone call from the Greenville County Police Department at 12:45 in the morning. Five minutes after that, my cell phone rang, Elijah’s name flashing on the screen. I got to his house and found him in his room, surrounded by broken bits of clay.
The newspaper reported the crime as an armed robbery at one of the 24-hour drug stores over in Bayview, almost an hour away from where we lived, as well as a gas station. The article listed four people as culprits—one of them being Terrance Greybeck, Elijah’s older brother.
Biting my tongue, I made my way to the perfume section, stepping around a girl with her arms full. This wasn’t a fancy store by any means, so the bottles of perfume weren’t name-brand, but their glass containers were still pretty. I reached for one.
“Remi,” Elijah said quietly, trailing after me. “Beanie, I’m sorry. I just don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
Beanie. My childhood nickname, since I used to collect those bean-filled dolls. I didn’t have a creative nickname for him, just Eli. But he didn’t let anyone else call him that. Only me.
Though it was hard for me to accept, I understood where he was coming from. With everyone bugging him about his brother, he probably hoped he could find peace with his best friend.
His very curious best friend. Because though he’d called me the night Terry was arrested, I never got the full details. Like my classmates, I was in the dark. And since I was a super curious girl, I hated being in the dark.
“It’s okay, Eli,” I told him, reaching around and squeezing the arm that held our coats. “But when you do want to talk about it, know that I’m here, okay?”
Elijah didn’t smile, but his face did soften, the lines around his mouth looking less pronounced. “I know.”
I turned back to the clearance display, swiping up a glass bottle in the shape of an ice cream cone, the amber liquid swirling inside. The scent was sharp and fruity, enough to make me cough. “What do you think of this one?”
“You literally just gagged sniffing it,” Elijah said, but humored me, leaning in so that I could hover the bottle underneath his nose. “It’s nice. Wait, why do you need a new perfume anyway?” I sniffed yet another glass bottle. This one was shaped more like a flower, with a curved glass petal. This one smelled sugary-sweet, one of my favorite scents. “Didn’t Eloise just buy you one the last time we were out? In that amber-colored bottle?”
“You never smelled it,” I told him, spritzing the liquid onto my neck, the scent immediately strengthening. “The one she bought literally smells like I bathed myself in oregano. It’s disgusting. I need something new. Here, sniff me.”
“What? No. I’m not sniffing you, Rem.”
I angled my neck closer to his face, and I had to stand on my tiptoes to even reach halfway. “Sniff me. Perfumes always smell different when mixing with people’s body chemistry—or whatever. Sniff me. Tell me what you think.”
His lips parted as another tortured sigh came from him, and he leaned close enough that I could feel his breath tickle my skin. Our jackets crinkled with the movement. “Smells good, but I liked the other one better.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with him on that but set the flower bottle back regardless. “I’m sorry for dragging you along to this. I know it’s not your favorite thing in the world, shopping with me. If I had a car—”
He gently cut me off. “Stop. I know I’m being a pain, but what are best friends for? And it’s not that I absolutely hate it or anything—it can just be weird.”
I raised an eyebrow at the perfume. “Weird?”
“You know, the shopping for underwear part. Shopping for that stuff with a girl that I’m not dating is…weird.”
Ooh, this is a cute bottle, I thought, swiping up a rainbow-colored perfume in the shape of a hair-bow. It had a fainter fruity scent than the other one, but enough to remind me of those gummy candies. Or maybe the smell was mixing with the fragrance I’d sprayed a second ago. Not a clue.
“No offense,” Elijah hurried to add, misunderstanding my silence. “I mean, I’m sure you look great in panties—ugh, I mean underwear—who the heck says panties anymore?”
I tried to fight a laugh. “You’ve said it twice now.”
“Anyway, I just don’t like imagining you…you know…”
“Butt-naked?”
Elijah squeezed his eyes shut, as if trying to chase away that image. “You’re terrible. Terrible.”
I snorted a little. Why did a little part of me feel offended that he couldn’t imagine me naked? Honestly, I should’ve been relieved. This was Elijah. I’d seen him go through puberty, the strange phase when he only wore blue clothes, and even the time he tried to grow a mustache. We still had nicknames for each other. It’d be weird if he could imagine me naked. I mean, I didn’t go around imagining him naked.
Elijah groaned, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “See, this is why I can’t come here with you. All the girly perfumes and bright patterns completely kill my brain cells.”
I decided to save him from his stupidity. “Careful, dude,” I said, punching him in the arm. “You don’t have many brain cells left to be wasting them on girly perfume and panties.”
“Yeah,” he scoffed, tugging our jackets closer to his chest as we made our way to the cash register. “No kidding.”
Chapter Two
Greenville High wasn’t the biggest school in the county—it didn’t compare to Bayview or Northside Prep by any means—so even though everyone was buddy-buddy for the most part, Elijah and I were closer than most. Partners in crime, two peas in a pod. All that cliché crap. We even made friendship bracelets with each other’s names once. He still kept his on his key ring, though mine had broken years ago.
A lot of girls at school thought Elijah was “sweet cute.” Cute without being a jerk about it. In an objective way, I guess he was sort of cute, if you were into the whole wavy-haired, narrow-boned, artsy kind of thing. His eyebrows were several shades darker than his blond hair, which almost looked bleached. His features were fine, apart from the slight curve that bent his nose from when I’d accidentally broken it in fifth grade.
I’d tried to pressure him into playing softball with me, tossing the ball at him and solidly connecting with his nose. We learned then that hand-eye coordination wasn’t exactly his thing. But art was. Give him a pencil and he could draw the entire map of the world, line for line, from memory. He was currently working on an art project to enter it into a county-hosted art contest in a couple weeks with the theme “Family.” Though he refused to tell me what exactly he was going to enter—painting, drawing, sculpture—I wondered if it had something to do with his brother.
But I knew one thing—Elijah was a pottery guy at heart. No doubt his project would be made of clay.
“So what happened today that made you want to go shopping?” Elijah asked around his chocolate ice cream cone, periodically licking any drips. Elijah had this thing. Everyone has a thing that makes them unique, and Elijah had this. Thirty-three degrees outside, snowing like mad, and he had to have ice cream. I teased him all the time that he’s probably the reason why Freezing Fred’s opens in winter, the only ice cream parlor in the county that does so. “I know you. You only ever like to shop when something bad happens. What�
��s wrong?”
I slouched a little in my seat, goosebumps covering my skin as I stirred the vanilla and blue raspberry ice cream. “Nothing. I was just in the mood for a good sale.”
“Liar.”
Fine, I was lying, but I also wasn’t admitting anything. I reached up and rubbed my hand over my mouth, feeling the stickiness of the blue raspberry syrup.
Elijah fanned a napkin in front of me, seeming to pull it from nowhere. “You do this every time. You never get a napkin, but always need one.”
I snatched it from his grasp, sticking my tongue out. “You should start reminding me.”
“Did you finish the assignment for art yet?”
Ugh, I didn’t want to be reminded about that. Didn’t want to think about art or about Mrs. Keller, our art teacher and, as of a few hours ago, my mortal enemy. I could still hear her voice echoing in my head, like a villain in some bad movie. You have a fifty-six in my class, Remi.
I shoved the words down, pushing a huge bite of ice cream into my mouth.
“It’s due tomorrow,” Elijah said in his prodding, fatherly voice. “A papier-mâché of any object in your home. Pretty easy stuff.”
Sure, easy-peasy if you were an art god like Mr. Pottery Hands over here. “I can start it tonight.”
Elijah blinked, lowering his cone. “Wait, wait, back it up—you haven’t even started it?”