Best Friend's Brother (6 page)

I laughed too. “That’s so true. Sometimes we’d be
walking and she’d trip over nothing at all.”

“She was tripping over something…her abnormally
large feet,” he said, still smiling. “I used to tease her about them all the
time. They were huge.”

“Yeah, they were. She was self-conscious about them.
Maybe because you teased her.”

“They were like skis. How could I not tease her?”

By the time our food came, I was feeling more
comfortable than I had in a while. It was good to talk about Emma without
anyone mentioning the fact that she was dead. We shared some more stories about
her while we ate and then after we finished, we ordered a tiramisu to share, in
honor of Emma. While we ate that, Ian said, “So what are you going to school
for?”

“I’m majoring in biology for now. I’m not sure what
I plan to do with it just yet. I have been thinking about transferring to a
University where they have a good veterinary program…I might like that.”

“Do you have pets?”

“No. I used to have a dog, but she died right after
I left for college. She was really old though and she had a lot of medical
problems by that time. That was hard because I had her since she was a pup, but
I was glad she wasn’t suffering any longer. I worked a few summers for the SPCA
though. I really liked it. I’m good with animals.”

“I prefer them over most people,” he said with a
grin. “We used to have a border collie.”

“I remember! His name was
Bodie
,
right?”

“Yeah, I loved
Bodie
. He
was just a really laid back, cool dog. He would get aggressive though if he
thought someone was trying to hurt any of us. Emma and I couldn’t even joke
around about fighting or he’d try and tear me apart. He always took her side.
Him and the parents.”
He looked sad again, lost in his
thought of his sister.

“Did you really feel like that?”

“Like they liked her better?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged, “I guess…sometimes. It really wasn’t a
big deal to me though. I always knew that if I had me for a kid and then she
came along…I’d probably like her better too.”

“Emma was just always so easy to get along with,
maybe that was part of it.”

“Yeah, like I said no big deal.” I could tell he
wanted to change the subject so I said, “So did you go to college?” I asked
him.

“Nah, I barely made it to high school,” he said. I
did remember that now that he brought it up. Emma used to talk about how he
just stopped going to school in his sophomore year and no matter what his
parents did, he refused to go back. At the time, I remember being impressed and
wishing I had the nerve to do something like that. Not school though. School
always came easy to me and it got me away from my house where I didn’t want to
be. “I don’t really need a college degree to do what I want to do,” he said.

“Fight?”
I said.

He grinned again and said, “Win.”

“So what do you do when you get hurt or too old to
fight?”

“Live off of all the money you made in the
meantime,” he said with a grin. It was easy to see that he loved what he did. I
had a feeling it wasn’t at all about the money.

After we finished dessert, we argued a little over
who
was going to pay the bill. Since it wasn’t really a
date, I thought I should at least pay my part. He said that since it was his
idea we come out, he should pay. He finally slipped it to the waiter under the
table while he was distracting me, asking
me more about
school and my classes
.

“Do you like the dorms? Emma seemed to like it
there.”

“Yeah, it gets a little nerve-wracking sometimes,
living with all of those women. But it’s
alright
. When
I go back, I might have to look for an apartment though. I took the rest of
this semester off.”

“Because of Emma?” he asked.

“Yeah.
I just need some time…you know? I need to be able to wake up just one morning
and not…”

“Remind yourself that she’s gone?”

“Exactly.
I don’t want to forget her…don’t get me wrong. It’s just that it feels like…”

“Losing her all over again?” He really did
understand.

“Yeah.
I have to remind myself every morning and I hate it. I also realized when I
came home that this was where I needed to be right now. I think it helps me
heal, being around people who really knew her. It’s helped me a lot talking to
you. People at school had only known her for a while and they knew “College
Emma” and not the real Emma we know.”

“Well, I hope it doesn’t mess you up with school,
but I’m glad you’ll be around for a while,” he said with a smile. When the
waiter came back he signed the tag and put his card back in his wallet. Then he
said, “It’s still early. You want to come by my apartment and hang out for a
while?”

“Yeah, okay.” I wasn’t sure that going to his
apartment was my best idea ever…but I was sure that I wasn’t ready for the
evening with him to end. I meant what I said; it did help me a lot to deal with
Emma being gone to talk to him. Besides, if I said no I would just go home and
spend hours trying to quiet my thoughts so that I could go to sleep and wake up
tomorrow to remind myself one more time that my best friend was dead.

CHAPTER
SIX

ALEXA

Ian’s apartment was a few miles from his parent’s
house. We drove in silence mostly, but it was a comfortable silence which if I
thought about it would really be weird. Why was I so comfortable with him
already? Was it because he reminded me so much of Emma, or because I was also realizing
that I was attracted to him. When we drove up into the carport in the front I
asked him, “Do you have a roommate?”

“Nope just me.
I would make a crappy ass roommate.”

I laughed. “I doubt that you’re that bad,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” he said, as we walked up to the
door. “I think I’m a great guy.” He grinned and then he said, “But, I can see
how my need for things to be done my way would annoy someone else I suppose.”
He slid the key in the door and said, “Someone that is who doesn’t realize that
my way is the best way.”

He held the door open for me and reached in to
switch the light on. The apartment was small, but it was nice and really clean
for a guy who lived alone. My dad wasn’t a slob and I had to spend two days
cleaning up after him when I came home this time. Ian’s apartment looked like
you could eat off the floors. I wondered if he maybe was a little bit O.C.D.
and that was one of the reasons why he thought he’d be hard to live with.

He gestured towards the little suede sofa in the
living room and said, “Have a seat. Do you want a beer?” I knew I
shouldn’t since I would be driving myself home
…but I said
yes anyways. It was peer pressure at its finest. He went into the kitchen and I
looked around while he was gone. He had a couple of framed UFC posters on the
walls of guys I’d never heard of, but nothing else. He had a big TV that was
really too big for the small apartment and I saw an Xbox and a stack of
wrestling and fighting and UFC games next to it.

He came back a few minutes later with two bottled
beers. He’d taken the caps off already and he handed one to me and sat down
next to me on the little couch.

“So when did you decide you wanted to be fighter?” I
asked him.

“I’d have to say when I was about sixteen. My
friend’s dad was a fighter and I hung around there all the time watching him
train these big, tough guys. I wanted to look like them and I wanted to be
tough like them. I bugged the shit out of him until he agreed to train me. At
first my friend and I both trained with him, but my friend wasn’t really into
it. I loved it. I hadn’t realized up to that point how much aggression I really
had inside of me. This way I could get it out…legally,” he said with a grin.

Actually wanting to fight was a foreign concept to
me. “I just can’t imagine standing there and letting someone beat on you.”

He laughed and took a swig of his beer. “See that’s
where you would be going wrong. You’re not supposed to just stand there and let
them beat on you. You have to keep moving. Part of learning how to fight…a big
part of it is learning how to protect
yourself
.”

“Yeah, but sometimes they get in some good licks no
matter what. That guy socked you upside your head a few times tonight…even
though you’re really fast and you still won. I think I flinched more than you
did.”

He shrugged, “Maybe that’s why my head is empty.
I’ve gotten the brains beat out of it. Did you like it though…the fight?”

“I doubt that your head is empty,” I said. “Emma
told me that you were really smart. She said that even though you refused to go
to school, you could still help her with her homework…how do you know things
like that, if you didn’t go to school to learn them?”

“If I want to know something, I look it up
somewhere.
The internet, a book, whatever.
There’s
information out there everywhere. I just don’t see packing your head with a
bunch of crap you’re not ever going to need to know. I also learn better on my
own rather than in a group setting. I’m a little bit anti-social,” he said.

“No! I would have never guessed,” in a mock, shocked
tone.

“I know,” he said with a smile, “Shocking.
Especially considering you spent…how much time at my house over the years and
I’m just now getting to know you?”

“Right, most of the time when I was there I never
saw you. Did you hide in your room?”

“Nah, I usually wasn’t there,” he said. I hadn’t
been interested then, but now I wondered where it was that he
was at.
He was only a few years older than
us
, and his parents always knew where Emma was. Maybe it was
the male vs female thing. “You didn’t answer me though,” he said. “Did you like
the fight?”

“I actually did,” I said, honestly. “I didn’t think
I would, but it was fun. I may not have liked it as much if you didn’t win.”

“Good, thing I rarely lose,” he said with another
cocky grin. “So you’ll come to another one sometime since you’ll be in town for
a while?”

“Yeah, I’d like that,” I told him. I liked the idea
of spending more time with him.

He looked far away all of a sudden. I just sat
quietly and waited for him to come back. I figured he was thinking about Emma
again. His eyes were sad as he said, “I’m going to win a title someday. I wish
that Emma would have been here to see that.”

I wanted to touch him, and comfort him but that felt
weird so I said, “I like to think that there is an afterlife so that I can
imagine her looking down on us.”

“I hope so,” he said. He didn’t sound convinced of
it. He seemed to physically shake himself, like trying to shake off the bad
thoughts and then he said, “You want another beer?”

I really knew I should say no, but I heard myself
say, “Sure.” What I wanted was to just keep finding reasons to stay here with
him. Another beer was good enough for now.

He went and got them and when he came back he acted
like he had never brought Emma up and instead he said, “I guess I was a handful
to my parents. I wasn’t a bad kid…but I just always hated following the same
rules that everyone else did. I imagine that would drive a parent a little bit
crazy.”

“It seems like you have a good relationship with
them now,” I said.

“Yeah, we have a decent relationship. Mostly, it was
because no matter how headstrong and annoying I was, they never gave up on me.
What about you? What kind of relationship do you have with yours?”

“Well need a few more beers for that conversation,”
I told him. Talking about my family was one of the things I liked to do the
least. Thankfully, he laughed and said, “Alright, we’ll leave that alone for
now. You want to watch a movie?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

“What kind of movies do you like?”

“I like just about everything,” I told him.
“Whatever you want is fine.”

Ian got up to put on the movie and I had a minute
while he wasn’t looking to study him. He wasn’t just nice looking, he was
gorgeous. I had a hard time believing that when I was going through puberty I’d
never really noticed him. I went through a time there when I could almost smell
a hot guy. He really must not have been around much.

He put on some mindless comedy and went and brought
back two more beers before he sat down. I had only drunk half of the one I
already had…so I downed the rest. I was already starting to get a light buzz
and it felt good. Everything about being here with him felt good and I had felt
bad for so long that I didn’t want this to end.

We watched the movie quietly for a while each of us
sitting on our own little couch cushion. It was a small couch so we were still
pretty much side by side, but not touching at all. There was a pretty graphic
sex scene at one part in the movie and I found myself trying not to look directly
at it. I was already feeling hot and flushed sitting this close to this hot
guy…and maybe the three beers had something to do with it as well, I don’t
know. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he attracted to me at all? He
answered my question a few seconds later. I felt his right arm go around me and
pull me into his side. Suddenly I was on his cushion. My arm and leg were
pressing into his warm, hard body and I settled back into him and enjoyed the
sensations it was sending rushing through me. I didn’t let myself over think
this, I simply told myself that it was okay because this is as far as it was
going to go. We both needed someone to lean on right now, and I think that Emma
would be really glad we found each other. So far, I was.