Page 2 of Besties
Richie squeezed my hand. It wasn’t enough to hurt, but it gave me a connection I desperately needed. “Max, did you ever think maybe your dad is just a douche? I’ve met the man, and I gotta say, he’s not a horrible person, but he isn’t the best father. Tell me, who came to all your soccer games?”
“My mom.” She sat in the stands and rooted for me, screaming at the top of her lungs when I scored.
“And who went to talk to your teachers during their meetings?”
All of his questions flashed through my mind. I got his point. “My mom.”
“Where was your dad during all those?” He squeezed a little tighter. “I know his leaving hurt you, but it seems to me that your mom was a single parent long before he ever hit the road.”
Shit. Dad had never been around after I turned… what? Eight? After that, he was always busy with work and didn’t have time for us even then. How had I forgotten? Or maybe I just didn’t want to see it.
“So it wasn’t my fault?” I knew what he was going to say, but I needed to hear it.
He chuckled and finally turned me loose. Sitting back, he tucked his arms behind his head. “Nope. None of it was your fault. I tried to tell you, but….”
And he had. So many times Richie had made an effort to talk about my father, but I wouldn’t hear it. In fact, several times I snapped at him and told him to mind his own fucking business. If he was smart, he would have dumped me as a friend, but he always smiled and sat there until I calmed down.
“But I was too hurt to listen.” It all made sense, even to my teenage brain. I’d pushed away the people who tried to talk to me. My best friend, my mother, my teachers. I’d blamed myself and thought if my father couldn’t love me, maybe I wasn’t worthy of it.
Those arms wrapped around me again. “It’s okay, you know. You didn’t do anything that can’t be fixed.”
“I’m sorry, Richie.”
“It’s fine, buddy.” He squeezed me. “Everything is fine now.”
I buried my face in his neck, and warmth rushed through me. Even at thirteen, Richie was, by his own admission, a nerd, and a damn cute one. Blond hair, blue-green eyes, and a beefy frame on top of thick legs. Yeah, he towered over me. My age, but a good seven inches taller. But even when you’re huge, dressing in button-down shirts and rolled-up blue jeans, with wire-rimmed glasses, you’re going to be labeled a nerd. Richie was proud of his intelligence. He was going to grow up to be someone special and everyone knew it. That’s why they hated him.
Not me, though. Richie had walked in to Mrs. Marks second grade class like he owned the world. He stood there while she introduced him, and he said hello in three different languages. Then he strode through the rows of desks to find an empty one. There were three of them, one of which was next to me. He took that one.
“Hi, I’m Richie.”
He’d smiled at me, and just like that, we were the best of friends. Life was so much simpler back then.
“Max?” His voice was deep, quiet. “I asked you a question. Do you need a hug?”
His voice pulled me from my memories. “Sorry, I was in another world.”
“It’s fine. Do you need a hug?”
It had become our thing. Whenever I was upset, he offered to make it better with a hug. I never told him, but those days he held me close to him meant the world to me.
“Nah, it’s fine. I just… I just wanted to hear your voice.”
He sighed. “You’re doing it again. Stop holding on to it. You’re better than him, you know that, right?”
Thehimin question was my ex-roommate and sometimes boyfriend, Jesse Maitland, who, apparently, had been dealing drugs out of our place and I’d never known it. Two weeks ago, the cops busted in, arrested us both, and hauled our asses down to the police station. I probably could have cleared it up quickly enough, but Jesse told them it was all my idea, and things got dicey after that.
Only the fact that he’d done most of his “business” while I was out of state for work kept me from following Jesse to jail, which would probably end up being prison. Turns out he had quite the little business going, and according to the cops, he’d raked in more than a bit of money. Which was weird, since I covered a good chunk of his half of the rent pretty damn frequently.
Usually I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. It was one of the holdovers from my teen years. People didn’t like me? Fuck them. The only exceptions to that rule were my mom and Richie. “I swear, I didn’t know he was doing it.”
Richie chuckled. “You think I don’t know that? Who in the world knows you better than me?”
No one. Richie knew my tells, he could figure out when I needed him, and he never disappointed me.
“I’m coming to see you.”
The thought that he’d travel a thousand miles to see me filled me with hope. “You don’t have to.”
