Cue Aaron Lanier.
High school was the fresh start he’d been waiting for after a less-than-stellar stint in middle school. His high hopes lasted approximately twelve seconds before he was labeled as the gay kid—again. Back then, Aaron was the type of guy who never truly seemed comfortable in his own skin. It didn’t help his case that he preferred khakis over basketball shorts and meticulously styled his hair every morning while the rest of the ninth-grade boys were lucky if they had showered and put on deodorant.
As I’d learned earlier that year, it didn’t take much to find yourself on the wrong side of the high school gossip train. But poor, sweet Aaron might as well have been tied to the tracks. His locker had been decorated with condoms and free HIV testing fliers on the regular, and by the end of the year, he’d been locked inside so many closets that the janitorial staff had given him his own set of keys to get out. His luck should have changed when David Scott, star defensive lineman of the football team, came out in front of the entire school by asking Aaron to homecoming.
Come on. That was the stuff high school romances were made of.
One problem. Despite a million rumors that said otherwise, Aaron wasn’t gay.
The words “I’m sorry, but I’m straight,” had barely cleared his lips before they were echoed around the entire school, leaving brave David the victim and Aaron the ultimate villain.
All too familiar with how quickly a thousand-plus students could turn on you, I dragged Aaron out of the lunchroom, horror showing on his bright-red face. He didn’t know me, but there was something to be said about having a person who understood what you were going through.
After that, the two of us became inseparable. He walked me to class every morning, ate lunch with me behind the gym every day, and did his homework with me at The Wave every afternoon. It wasn’t long before the school thought we were dating. Aaron was so grateful for the confirmation of his sexuality that we never corrected the assumptions.
On the first day of junior year, Mark Friedman entered our lives and completed our misfit throuple. He was new to school, and I nearly had a heart attack when I saw all six-foot-five of him dressed in Unabomber chic, sitting in Aaron’s spot behind the gym. I mean, it wasn’t like we had reserved seating or anything, but after two years of wearing down the grass into a patch of dirt, we liked to think we’d staked our claim.
So I took a chance and asked the giant if he was lost.
He told me to fuck off.
I told him he didn’t have to be such an asshole.
He told me to fuck off again.
Aaron jumped in and told him to shut the fuck up, but in true Aaron fashion, he tacked on a please at the end of it.
There was a beat where I was fearful for Aaron’s life, but a wide smile split Mark’s mouth. He lifted his hands in surrender, muttered an, “Easy there, killer,” and then scooted over exactly six inches.
And that was how Mark joined our group.
Compared to Aaron’s rich and pretentious parents and my say-anything single dad, Mark’s home life was rough. His father was a drunk who never left the couch, and his mother was addicted to painkillers and rarely left the bed. They survived on turmoil, arguments, and staying off social services’ radar. For a teenager with a stomach as big as his heart, Mark couldn’t get by with an empty fridge and bare cupboards. But I had free fries, which my father quickly upgraded to all-you-can-eat burgers, chicken fingers, and anything else on the menu and Aaron had a guest room where Mark stayed more often than he did his own home.
After high school, we all drifted off to separate colleges. But when we came home for holidays and summer vacations, it was as if nothing had changed. I didn’t even search for an apartment when I moved back to Atlanta; living with my guys was the logical choice. I’d cussed my choice in roommates under my breath more times than I could count, but I had never regretted it.
All our financial situations had changed over the years. Mark’s bar, The Rusty Nail, was thriving. Aaron was computer engineering at a large company downtown, and as of recently, I had earned my brokerage license and opened my own real estate company. We could all afford our own places now, and each one would have been bigger than the eighteen-hundred-square-foot rental we shared. But there was something unbelievably comfortable about our arrangement that made us all stay.
Well, that and Mark’s eternal bachelor status, Aaron’s fear of commitment, and my inability to meet a man who even remotely piqued my interest.
Okay, maybe comfortable and sad was a better description of our living arrangement. It worked for us though.
Most of the time.
I snatched the bowl from Mark and carried it to the drawer where I dug out a spoon. Leaning against the counter, I gave him a pointed smile before shoveling a huge bite into my mouth.
Crossing his arms over his chest, he sank back into his chair and shot me a glare that held no heat. “Savage.”
I shrugged, chewing as loud as I could—all too aware of how much it annoyed him.
Bite after bite, our stare off continued until Aaron suddenly ruined breakfast for both of us.
“Remi!”
I jumped, sloshing all but a few bites of the Frosted Flakes onto the floor.
Mark let out a loud laugh.
I leveled my glare on Aaron. “What the hell? Why are you yelling?”
He put his hand in the air and mimicked strangling me, his navy blazer opening to reveal a tailored vest beneath it. “Better question: What the hell are you still doing in a towel?”
I looked at the mess on the floor. “Well, I was eating. Now, it looks like I’m cleaning.”
“We don’t have time for this.” He marched over, carefully avoiding the milk puddle that would have made Tony the Tiger cry. After snagging the bowl from my hands, he unceremoniously dropped it into the sink. “We have to leave in five minutes, and you aren’t even dressed yet. We can’t be late today, Remi.” He let out a huff and started to brush his blond hair off his forehead before remembering that his unruly locks were already sealed in place with a rather obnoxious amount of gel. Instead, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “We just…can’t.”
Mark and I exchanged knowing glances.
Six months earlier, Aaron and I had been on a flight home from Colorado when, due to improper balance and faulty landing gear that never should have been approved for takeoff, our plane broke apart upon landing. Twenty-seven people survived, but even without physical scars, no one was immune to the catastrophic trauma of a disaster like the one we’d experienced.
Aaron was no longer the soft-spoken kid who had been bullied in high school. He was over six feet tall, and four mornings a week, he could be found at the gym with Mark. Women stopped dead in their tracks on the sidewalk when he passed, and there wasn’t a woman at his office who didn’t openly gape at him. He was one of the strongest men I’d ever met, but since the accident, he’d been struggling.
He had nightmares—a lot.
Anxiety that crept up on him from out of nowhere.
And sometimes, he just got overwhelmed with life in general.
I shifted my gaze to Mark and all humor over our breakfast exchange vanished.
Standing from his chair, he locked his gaze on our best friend. “You hanging in there, man?”
Aaron rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “We don’t have time for this. You know how I hate being late.”