Page 2 of Thick & Thin

“You want me to carry that?” Josh asked, nodding toward the twelve-pack of Budweiser I pulled from the floorboard.

I rolled my eyes, hating when he treated me like I was weak, and let my shades fall over my eyes in answer. He chuckled and shook his head, knowing I would never accept his help. Even if the beer had been heavy, I never would have admitted it.

“Guess that’s a no,” he muttered.

Technically, I couldn’t buy alcohol, none of us could, but Glen, the old man who ran the country corner store in town, was too old to care. Not to mention, even if he did attempt to ID us, everyone in town knew the man couldn’t see for shit.

The tailgate on Josh’s truck squeaked with age when he pulled it down, and the truck bed lowered when he leaped inside to push the small Styrofoam cooler to the edge and grab our towels and floats. Vaughn took the cooler and towels, leaving Josh to carry our two floats. Once we collected our stuff, he locked his truck, and we started toward the path behind the large group of seniors ready to get trashed and celebrate the end of high school.

The Carolina sun blazed, burning our backs as we maneuvered our way down the steep hill to the water. The weight of the twelve-pack of Bud, my contribution to our end of the year shindig, tugged my arm down at my side and knocked against my hip with every step I took. I wouldn’t drink the nasty shit, but the guys liked it. While everyone else got trashed, I was usually the designated driver for Josh. I didn’t mind it. I wasn’t much for drinking, but I did like to make sure my best friend made it home safely.

I pushed my aviator shades back against the bridge of my nose when they began to slip and then looked back to make sure Josh was close behind me. He was walking alongside Brandy, one of the less annoying females in the senior class and the prom queen to Josh’s crown. They had never dated, but it seemed everyone, including the staff at school, liked to link them together.

She wasn’t too bad, I supposed, and the guys liked to look at her. Her highlighted hair was in a messy bun. She was wearing a two-piece, the straps of her top wrapped around her neck, and her flat sun-kissed stomach was on show. Her jean shorts covered her bottoms except for the strings that stuck out at the sides.

She laughed at whatever he was saying, her perfect white teeth blinding me, while she pushed his arm playfully. It was obvious she had a thing for him, but then again, most girls had a thing for him.

Joshua Black.

What could I say about him?

The ladies loved him. The guys wanted to be him, which was the most cliché thing ever, but it was true. Hell, the entire town fawned over him. He was my best friend, and I knew him better than he knew himself, yet Josh was much more than my friend.

He was my first time riding a bike and making mud pies in my backyard. He was summer days fishing and mudding with four-wheelers behind my house and lying in the grass watching the lightning bugs blink in the darkness around us. He was the reason I knew how to ride a horse and spent days playing in the hay on his daddy’s farm. He was video games and candy. He was everything—my childhood and my life for as long as I could remember.

Even though it was exciting to be graduating from high school and growing up, I was terrified of what that meant for Josh and me. Who were we if we weren’t getting into trouble and bogging in the mud? If we weren’t teasing Vaughn about his size or getting crazy at the pep rally?

I didn’t know who I was without Josh, and I didn’t know who he was without me. It was scary, and nothing scared me.

I looked back once more, taking him in from the top of his ball cap, which was turned backward, to his strong feet, covered in a pair of Adidas slides. I couldn’t help myself when I grinned. Josh was beautiful, though I would never tell him that. His head would likely explode if I did. While he was my best friend in the entire world, that hadn’t stopped me from noticing how fine his contribution to the female eye was.

He had taken off his shirt and slung it over his shoulder. He too was wearing aviator shades so I couldn’t see his eyes, but it didn’t matter anyway since he was facing Brandy as she talked animatedly at his side. The bill of his hat was curved in with a thick fisherman’s hook stuck on the side, and while everyone else was already wearing their swim trunks, his were peeking over the waist of his ripped jeans.

His hair was wild and sticking out from beneath his hat from having the windows down on the backcountry roads, and his skin was tan even though we hadn’t reached summer yet. His skin was always a brown tone, no matter the season, but that probably had something to with the fact that he worked on the farm in the sun every day. We didn’t really get winters in South Carolina, which meant sometimes it could get hot enough in December for him to have to take his shirt off while he was working, and it showed.

My eyes slid over his wide shoulders, thickened from weight training during his final season of high school football, before dipping over his chest and washboard abs. Dark hair trailed beneath his navel, dipping into his jeans and the blue and white trunks beneath them. His clothes hung loosely from his hips, showing just enough of the cut outs on his sides. I exhaled, wishing I could rid my mind of the thoughts that filled my head lately.

Thoughts like Josh’s lips on mine.

His hands on my body.

It felt unnatural to think these things about my best friend, yet my body agreed so perfectly with the sins of my mind.

Josh has changed over the years, going from a skinny boy with a bird chest and a gapped smile to a teenager on the brink of manhood. He grew tall, his chest wide and hard. His hair, which has always been unruly, grew darker and his eyes more intense. His voice was deep, rumbling like a dark cloud across my skin every time he spoke to me. It was unbearable, and I found myself thinking about skipping out on our usual activities.

It was a slow change; one I didn’t see coming. I had seen him almost every day for the past twelve years. We had grown up together—meeting in elementary school, the years when we refined our mud pie-making skills, before tackling middle school, the time in our lives when after school meant lounging in his room and playing video games until my daddy called me home. Once we entered high school, our best friend status was known county-wide, and together, we dominated West Ridge High School.

Well, it was more like he dominated, being the hot quarterback and all. I was in by association since I was the best friend. He could have become the golden boy and left me in the dust, but he didn’t. Instead, he pulled me along to every game. Every party. Every event. No matter how much I hated being social.

We were opposites in so many ways but alike at the same time. While he was being the playboy, I was his wing woman, which meant girls only befriended me to be close to Josh. The guys treated me like one of the team, even slapping my ass after a winning game as though I had been on the field with them. It didn’t bother me. Even if I was feminine and the guys saw me as a girl, they still wouldn’t dare come near me. Though none of them would admit it, every one of them was afraid to get on the bad side of my big brother, Devin, who was known around town as lethal.

That had been our life for the past twelve years … school, life, and fun, but always together unless I was working at the garage with Daddy and Devin. On those days, Josh worked the horses on his parents’ farm, which was less than five miles away from my house.

Josh and I had a rhythm, and we were comfortable in that beat until our vibe changed sophomore year. At least, it changed for me. Josh got his first real girlfriend that year, a chick named Amanda who had more boobs than brains. The jealousy and anger of losing my best friend’s attention pushed me into doing something I would have never done before.

I went on my first date with Justin.

Little did I know, my date with Justin was to a house party full of people old enough to drink. Justin was a heavy drinker and passed out on the stairs, leaving me to fend for myself in a house full of drunken men. I ended up in the hospital and almost got my now sister-in-law, Lilly, killed when two guys decided they wanted to try to take from me.

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