Page 25 of Not a Friend (Crescent Light #1)

Now

The best part about friends? They see you clearly for who you are, no bullshit. The worst part about friends? They see you clearly for who you are, no bullshit.

“ T hat game took so long,” Kieran whined for the third time as we opened the door to our suite.

I nodded, balancing a hand on his shoulder to unclasp the buckles on my heels. He held me steady with a hand at my hip.

“If I knew it would take that long, I wouldn’t have told you to play.” He undressed swiftly as I gathered my pajamas and padded to the bathroom.

“Oh, come on. I had fun. It was nice to see everyone. We used to sit around and play cards all the time.”

“Hmm,” he hummed, unimpressed.

I laughed off the whisper of irritation niggling under my skin, setting to work on removing my makeup. “I didn’t know you had such a dislike of games.”

“I didn’t know you had such a like for them.”

“Is there a reason why you don’t like them? ”

“I don’t have the patience,” he called from the bedroom.

Or you don’t want to play something you won’t win.

“Help me with my ties?”

His muscled frame took up all the space in the bathroom doorway as he twisted a finger for me to turn around so he could undo the corseted back of my dress.

I gave him a small smile over my shoulder. “Thanks for hanging out with everyone tonight. Even if you didn’t have the best time.”

“Of course,” he said with a kiss to my shoulder, and my smile lingered. He knew tenderness was my weakness.

So what if tonight was a little bumpy? So what if Kieran isn’t a perfect fit with the rest of my friends? Does it really matter? No, I thought, I don’t think it does.

“I also had no idea your friend group was entirely dudes,” he said with a chuckle, retreating back into the bedroom.

I guess I’d never thought of it like that before.

I was friends with Gemma, Gemma was with Grant, Grant and Jared grew up with Nate, and Miles and Leo were in their band.

Martinez was the only oddball, but he’d lived with both Grant and Jared at one point or another throughout college, so he was always part of the crew. The ratio was never intentional.

“And who’s that guy again? The one who kept shuffling for you?”

My hands paused on my bottle of face wash. I screwed my eyes shut even as I put on my most convincing casual voice. “Who, Nate?”

“Yeah, the one who looks too cool to be here.”

I scoffed. Partially to laugh off Kieran’s unwarranted jab at someone he didn’t know and partially because of the ridiculousness of the jab itself. Nate would never think he was too cool to be anywhere. It wasn’t his style .

Kieran was quiet as I lathered and scrubbed at my face. I hoped that was the end of his probing, but as I rinsed the frothy suds off my hands and patted my face dry, he was in the doorway of the bathroom again, leaning against the frame.

“Is he the one you said was in the band?”

Working in the music industry meant I kept up with all the trends, no matter who was the face of them.

Though I made a point not to mention Crescent Light by name unless it was strictly work-related, I did mention that Jared, Nate, Leo, and Miles were in a band when I was giving some context of the old friend group to Kieran.

If I left out the small fact that they were one of the best artists on the indie and alternative charts, it was pure coincidence.

“Yeah,” I said, squeezing toothpaste onto my toothbrush. Kieran shuffled past, pulling his own toothbrush from his toiletry bag. “He’s in the band with Grant’s brother, remember?”

“Hmm.”

I finished brushing my teeth and left him in the bathroom, allowing myself an eye roll as soon as I was out of his view. I climbed onto the giant bed, not bothering to pull back the covers, and took a long, cleansing breath.

“Why did he keep calling you Oli?”

My head lolled to the side to look at him. His athletic shorts hung low on his hips, abs looking like they were chiseled from a marble slab, and yet I wanted to close my eyes.

“It’s just a nickname.”

Kieran shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah, but I’ve never heard it.”

I twisted until I was sitting on my knees. “I don’t use it much anymore. Haven’t used it since school, actually. ”

“Hmm,” he said again. He closed the distance to the bed and bent, fists resting on either side of my folded legs. I leaned into him, willing for him to drop the subject altogether. He kissed me on the lips. “Nobody else used it, though,” he said and kissed me again. “Only him.”

I rolled my eyes openly. “It’s just a nickname,” I repeated, laying on my side.

He climbed onto the bed and moved to hover over me, keeping his balance on his hands and knees. He leaned down, scruff pressing against my skin, to kiss me again. I sighed into the kiss, easing him to rest more of his weight over me.

“You didn’t, like, date him, did you?” he said it like he was asking about a dead animal on the side of the road.

Jesus Christ.

I sighed again, exasperated this time. “Kieran.” We didn’t talk about things like this.

We never had. It was exactly the reason why I never made a point of talking about Nate, or any of my actual ex-boyfriends, with him.

I knew nothing about Kieran’s exes, not even their names—except for one.

I’d debated on telling Kieran about the whole Nate thing before we came to California, spurred by residual guilt of ever having been with someone else, or some other patriarchal bullshit like that.

But I hadn’t, because what good would it have done?

What was the point of dredging up the past when it had never mattered to us?

Especially now, when Gemma and Grant were the focus of the weekend, why would I draw attention to anything else?

“What?” He grinned down at me. I could tell by the glossy look in his green eyes that he still had a decent buzz from the open bar.

I wished again that he had eaten more before drinking so much.

Calories be damned. He leaned in farther, gently pressing me into the bed to kiss my neck.

“All I’m saying is I think he wants my girl. ”

Not the words I wanted to hear. Not only because it was comically untrue but because I needed to snuff out any tiny candle still inside of me that hoped I would ever be what Nate fucking Cassidy wanted.

That ship had sailed.

“Yeah, okay,” I said sarcastically. “Can we please move on now?”

“Why?” Kieran asked, kissing down my neck. He hooked a knee between my thighs and settled between them. “You don’t want to talk about the bad boy?” he teased.

I laughed because I was supposed to laugh at that. “Because I’m not entertaining this conversation.”

“Do you think he has a real job? Or do you think he just plays in coffee shops every day and sleeps at groupie’s houses when he needs a place to crash?

Do you think he’s living the wannabe rockstar dream of ‘making it big’ someday?

” He crooked the fingers of one hand in air quotations.

Leave it to Kieran to hear that someone was in a band and assume it also meant they were going nowhere in life, despite my line of work.

There was no point in revealing to him that he knew Nate’s band.

Most people in New England have at least heard of Crescent Light; I even caught Kieran humming to one of their songs once.

They’d been steadily climbing in all the ways that mattered for a band, from opening at Madison Square Garden to joining the Bonnaroo lineup last year.

I also bit back the urge to point out that—despite Kieran’s assumption that musicians were likely low-lives—all the members of Crescent Light had degrees.

Nate and Leo both had their master’s degrees, in fact.

I never went out of my way to spell out my connection to Crescent Light to Kieran.

Defending them would be suspicious at best and would incite a conversation I wasn’t interested in having.

No reason to start a pissing match that Kieran probably wouldn’t win .

“I don’t know, Kier. Can we drop it?”

He let his hips drop more, pressing into me. “You looked so hot tonight.”

I unhooked my arms from around his neck, suddenly wanting breathing room. “Thank you.”

His affection felt good. Great, even. But as much as I tried to get in the mood, he was drunk, and I wasn’t in the right headspace. His weird comments didn’t help.

“Kieran, I’m so tired. Can we just go to bed tonight?”

He sloppily kissed down my chest to the tops of my breasts.

“I’ll go down on you, baby.” The magic words to convince me to change my mind.

Not that it hadn’t worked before—many times—but there was no way it was happening.

He was tipsy, horny, and wanted to mess around.

That much was evident from his stiff cock against my hip, but my answer was no.

“Thank you for the offer,” I huffed a laugh, “but not tonight. I think my social battery is spent. I’m so sleepy.”

He paused for a beat before lifting. “Okay, babe.” He slid an arm around my waist as he settled next to me.

I’d told a white lie. The comedown after a day of anxiety and socializing left me feeling heavy and wrung out, but I wasn’t going to get sleep any time soon.

Despite my exhaustion, I lay awake for a long while.

Even after Kieran’s breathing slowed and deepened as he drifted to sleep, I lay there, replaying the night over and over.

Every word, every thought, every flickering, lingering glance.

Like a virus invading my mind, I thought of Nate.

His voice, smooth and even. His proximity as he leaned against the brick next to me, so close I could have reached out and touched the hair hanging over his eye.

The taste of whiskey on the butt of his cigarette.

His eyes, dark and perceptive, dipping to my lips.

I thought of what was—memories of what we had been.

When we fell out, I didn’t just lose something as silly as a fling, or a fuck buddy, or whatever we were. I’d lost a friend, too.

"I’ve never been your fucking friend."

All my ire from earlier faded to nothing as I closed my eyes. What was left behind was the true root of my feelings, hiding underneath layers and layers of anger all along.

A deep-seated, gaping, unrelenting sadness at what had become of us.

And what could have been.