Beautiful Together
Read Beautiful Together Online
Authors: Andrea Wolfe
Beautiful Together
By Andrea Wolfe
Copyright © 2015 by Andrea Wolfe
All rights reserved.
Cover art by EroCovers
Edited by Veronica Hardy
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental. All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.
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Contents
Special thanks to my beta readers, Kimberly and Mary Jo—your feedback was incredible and beyond useful. Sometimes you get so stuck inside your own book that you don't know where you are or what it means anymore. Without them, I never would have gotten unstuck!
Also, a huge thank you to my editor, Veronica Hardy, EroCovers for a beautiful cover as always, and to anyone who bought Haze, Be Here Now, or Two Weeks. You gave up some of your time to read something I wrote, and that's awesome. I can't thank you enough!
If you enjoy this book, please don't hesitate to leave a REVIEW. Not only does it mean a lot to me as an independent author, it also helps other readers figure out if this book is for them. Thank you!
-Andrea
Part 1
The Past
I felt dull and listless. No matter where I turned my head, something reminded me of
him
, memories that felt like ghosts. My vulnerable, tired brain kept insisting that we'd been there together, that we'd done things in those places. My head throbbed like a jackhammer, even after way too much aspirin.
Some memories were real, others were not. Still, they came.
I sat on my family's front porch for the first time in months, legs sprawled out down the steps, the sharp angles of the wood biting into my thighs and calves.
He was
dead
, and I couldn't make any sense of it. I couldn't make sense of anything. I wanted answers, and I wanted truth. I wanted Mason to be alive again—but tomorrow, we would bury him for good and I would know beyond a doubt that he was really gone.
I couldn't even cry anymore. My eyes felt so dry, so depleted, like I'd already exhausted my lifetime supply of tears.
I needed answers, not more agony.
I hadn't been there the night he died because I couldn't handle it. Eight months of extended misery was just too much for me. When Mason gave me an out, I took it because I couldn't go through the same gloomy routine anymore.
Now it was a decision I had to live with.
As I stared out into the endless horizon, that familiar red pickup truck came into view, casually grunting and sputtering as it came up our driveway. It was Jesse Evans, coming to bring me the final draft of the program for the funeral. I knew he was coming, yet his appearance still surprised me.
He climbed out of the cab and glanced at me, immediately dropping his head to the ground after making brief, negligible eye contact.
It was nearly the end of our senior year of high school, and graduation was just around the corner. Then came the rest of our lives. Mason would never have that opportunity.
"Hey," Jesse said weakly, dragging his feet as he approached me. It was basically the first word he'd spoken to me in almost two years.
Jesse was tall and handsome, an athlete and former best friend of both Mason and me. His muscles were taut and toned, and he always wore tight, clingy shirts that made them more pronounced. His hair was disheveled, like he had just woken from a nap.
"Hi, Jesse," I said, trying to make eye contact but failing due to his head being down. "How are you... holding up?"
Jesse and I were very close friends for years, initially out of obligation, but eventually due to remarkable chemistry. Our parents had been in the same social circles, and we went to the same church. By default, we were often placed together when we weren't old enough to have a choice. That didn't mean we hadn't grown legitimately close, however. And then, we were basically inseparable.
There were plenty of fond memories of growing up—swimming in the pond, playing in sandboxes, learning how to ride bikes together, buying candy from the gas station even though we weren't supposed to—but those warm memories couldn't keep us together once we got older.
Everything had crumbled after we began the awkward process of teen dating. I still didn't totally understand our downward spiral.
"I'm okay, I guess," he mumbled. "Here's the program, Naomi," he said tersely. "Can you look it over? Donna wanted you to see it before they started making copies."
Finally, he looked up. His green eyes were so reddened, worn like he had been crying the whole drive here. It made my own misery feel more real, and less oppressive. It was something unpleasant we shared.
I took the program and gave it a cursory glance. It was simple and minimal. Blocks of text and a schedule.
Mason
was the only word I recognized. The rest looked like Greek to me. Even if anything had been wrong, I wasn't feeling well enough to critique it.
I was to give a speech, second to last, right before the pastor's closing words. I had been trying to write it for days, always getting stuck after the first sentence, one that I had already rewritten more than a hundred times.
There were too many ideas spiraling in my brain, and I just couldn't make any sense of them. I felt far too young and inexperienced to write a speech about
death
.
"Looks fine," I murmured blankly, my eyes still lost in the folded sheets of paper.
"How are you feeling?" Jesse asked slowly, mechanically.
I could feel his eyes against me now, and I lifted my head to meet them. "I'm doing okay. I mean, I don't
feel
very good. He's... never coming back." I swallowed the dry lump in my throat. "I loved him." The words felt tacky, but I couldn't stop them from coming out.
"What do
you
know about that?" he hissed, eyes burning orbs now, the hostile flourish so sudden and jarring. "You weren't even there on the night he died. He was
my
best friend."
I felt adrenaline and misery rushing through my veins. His words felt like freshly-sharpened blades.
Why was he attacking
me
?
Other than the fact that he was grieving, I didn't have a clue. And since I was
also
grieving, I wasn't about to be rational either.
"I was there on Wednesday night, Jesse. The last night he was awake! I could only take so much. And
you
didn't even show up until the end, after he
begged
for you to come because he knew he was going to die." I pressed my back hard into the stairs, the discomfort feeding into my words. "Wasting away in that shitty hospital bed, day and night, wishing you were there. Some
best friend
you were."
He stared back, his eyes icy and cold. "Yeah, well, if you loved him so damn much, you would have actually been there when it mattered the most." He scoffed at his own remark and stared off into the distance. "You just don't get it, do you?"
"He was my boyfriend for two years, Jesse!" I shouted, feeling the ability to cry returning with a vengeance. "Of course I get it! He was my first
everything
!"
My words seemed to make him cringe. "You dated him for two years. Well, I knew him my whole life! You don't have a fucking clue how I feel."
"I have a pretty damn good idea," I hissed, almost under my breath. He looked like he was about to respond, but he stopped.
I felt totally sickened by his remarks. We both had reason to be upset, not to argue about who was hurting more. It didn't make any sense. It was totally irrational.
Still, it got to me.
Still, it reminded me that I still couldn't shake the feeling that
I
was somehow responsible for this tragedy.
I bit my lip until I tasted blood. "And you abandoned him, Jesse. Two years ago,
you abandoned him
!" I dug my fingers into the flesh of my thighs, clenching, squeezing. "You abandoned both of us!"
"Whatever," he said.
My heart felt like a bomb ready to explode. "After the funeral, I hope I never speak to you again. I don't care what excuse you're gonna give me, but—"
"Well, fine then," he said sharply, turning around. "That won't be hard."
"You have no right to talk to me like this!" I screamed at his back. "Why would you do this, Jesse? Why
now
?"
"I don't
know
," he shouted, annoyed. "Maybe I just wish things had turned out differently." He yanked open his truck door so hard he almost fell over and then jumped inside, slamming it so loudly it sounded like a gunshot. And then the engine roared to life and his truck disappeared down the street.
A gust of wind picked up right as he left, knocking the program out of my hands. It blew into the yard and disappeared. I watched, frozen and transfixed, until it was out of view.
Even though I was totally riled up, I still needed to finish the speech. I went inside to try.
And I knew I was finally ready.