Friends & Forever Read Online Free PDF

made Carmine feel two feet
tall and ten years younger. Fuck that .
    "He's your best friend, son,"
Vincent said gently.
    "Not anymore."
    Saying those words out loud stung Carmine,
like the verbal acknowledgement made them real. Nicholas wasn't his best friend
anymore.
    "Why not?"
    Carmine glared at his father. "Why do
you care?"
    "I always care about what's going on
with you," he said. "You're my son."
    Laughing dryly, Carmine jumped down from the hospital bed.
"Don't try that fatherly bullshit out on me now, Dr. DeMarco ."
He purposely sneered the name as he shook his head. "You can play that
game around everyone else, but I know you. I live with you. That ship sailed a
long, long time ago."

 
    * * *

 
    Thumping bass vibrated the school gymnasium as hip-hop blared
from the speakers flanking a DJ. Colored lights swirled around the makeshift
dance floor with bodies amassed in the center, laughing and dancing the night
away.
    Carmine stood along the side, his back to
the crowd as he poured himself a glass of punch. A quick glance around ensured
nobody was watching as he slipped his flask from his pocket and poured a bit of
the liquor into his small cup. After putting the flask away, he turned around
and leaned back against the table, taking a sip.
    The subtle burn soothed his nerves.
    Why was he here? He didn't know. He didn't want to be. School dances weren't his idea of a good time, but he had
made plans to come weeks ago… plans he just seemed to instinctively follow
through with, despite what had happened the night before.
    His muscles ached and his head pounded
viciously along to the beat of the music… last night's fight with Nicholas had
taken a toll on his body. He knew he looked like hell, too, cuts and bruises
marring his tanned skin.
    He looked about as good as the
motherfucker across the gymnasium.
    Nicholas stood along the other side of the
room, laughing along with a group of friends. Their friends, or more so
Nicholas's friends, it seemed. Even Carmine's own brother was over there,
laughing and joking along with him.
    Seems they chose their side, and it wasn't
with him .
    Carmine's gaze drifted from them to Amy
out on the dance floor. Amy, who had helped create this fucking mess, yet she
looked as if she had not a care in the world, wearing her homecoming crown and
dancing with the starting quarterback of the varsity squad. Bullshit .
    Guzzling the rest of the punch, Carmine
tossed the plastic cup in the closest trashcan as he strode through the crowd,
toward the exit on the other side of the gymnasium. He could be miserable
elsewhere… somewhere quiet, that didn't make his head pound so fucking hard.
Pulling his keys from his pocket, he nodded goodbyes to a few people who caught
his eye, keeping his head down as he approached the crowd with Nicholas. He
wasn't in the mood for the shit tonight. Maybe if he kept his distance and gave
him time to cool down, it would all blow over.
    The sound of his friend's laughter made
his hair bristle as it frazzled his nerves yet again. How the hell could he be
so happy ? Carmine nearly made it to the door when he heard Nicholas's
voice, purposely raised.
    "What's the best sex position to make
an ugly baby?"
    Carmine rolled his eyes. A joke .
    "I don't know," someone said.
"What?"
    "Don't know either," Nicholas
said. "Too bad Carmine's mom's dead or we'd ask her."
    A low murmur rolled through the group
before strained silence fell over everything. Carmine felt like he'd been
plunged in a bucket of ice water. A sickeningly painful numbness slowly coated
every inch of him, pins and needles on his flesh, as his heart rate
skyrocketed. Mere seconds passed, barely a blink of an eye, but it felt like an
eternity inside of Carmine. An eternity of indecision. An eternity of devastation. An
eternity of disbelief.
    There's no way he just said that.
    No way.
    But when the second passed, all indecision
was gone. The devastation manifested into rage, the disbelief pure