Open Road (4 page)

“You shut it. What did you order?” she asked, craning her neck to check out Reece’s plate, which had just arrived in front of him.

“Your mom,” Reece muttered. Which was probably the response he would’ve given her when he was fourteen and she was twelve.

Cherry rolled her eyes. “You need better material.”

REECE AND
Angus had been planning the party for months. They’d decided to rent the upstairs balcony of a popular club so there would be plenty of room for the guests, but they could go dance if they got tired of mingling. They’d invited just about everyone—their friends from back in college, family, Reece’s climbing buddies who thought Angus was hilarious, Angus’s friends from work and his club days—even Angus’s friend Lex and his boyfriend Tally who lived near the moms in Astoria had made the two-hour drive just for the occasion. The only one who was conspicuously absent was Brad. Even over an hour into the night.

Reece wanted to murder him with a blunt object.

“The a-hole isn’t here yet, is he?” Cherry asked. She sidled up to where Reece was surveying the crowd. Cherry had a cosmo in her hand but was most likely just carrying it around. She’d been too busy worrying about the lack of Brad and her potentially unhappy brother to get in the party mood herself. Reece knew the feeling. They had both hovered around the edges of the party, making sure everything was going smoothly. Even more so, making sure Angus was distracted by friends and drinks. At least to a point. It was very obvious he was aware of Brad’s absence.

“He’ll be here eventually, right?” Cherry asked. “He wouldn’t ruin Angus’s night like that just because he’s mad Angus slept over at your place, would he?”

“I fucking hope not.” Reece gritted his teeth as usual when Brad came up. “He’d have been mad if we called for him to come pick up Angus, and he’s mad we didn’t call. You know what, though? He didn’t even text or call Ang until the morning.”

“So he was… out all night?”

“Looks like it. Or else he went to bed and didn’t notice our boy missing until he woke up in the morning. Not likely.”

“Asshole.” Cherry scowled.

“You’re telling me.”

“Why is my brother still with him?” Cherry grumbled. “We all hate the bastard, and sometimes I swear even Angus doesn’t like him.”

Reece shrugged. “Probably
because
we hate him. Love him to death, but you know your brother is stubborn as hell.”

“True.” Cherry grunted her displeasure.

Reece saw Angus weaving his way through the crowd to him and Cherry. He didn’t look happy—not like someone should look at a party in their honor. He finally got to Cherry and Reece and gave them a skeptical sort of look before he laid his head on Reece’s shoulder.

“Where’s Brad?” he asked. “You guys didn’t tell him not to come, did you?”

Wow. Nice.
Reece wondered what he’d done to make Angus think he was that much of an asshole.

“No, we didn’t tell him not to come.” Cherry flicked her brother’s ear. Hard.

“Ow!”

“Well, that’s what you get for thinking your best friend and your sister would ruin your birthday party. Thanks a fucking lot.”

“Sorry,” Angus murmured. “Well, where is he, then?”

“I don’t know, babe,” Reece told him. Then he looked over and saw Brad coming up the stairs from the main part of the club. He was gorgeous in the tall dark and Ken-doll perfect kind of way. Reece had thought so for about thirty seconds when they first met until he’d started talking and it became clear what an absolute douche he was. He’d clearly taken the time to make sure he looked perfect for Angus’s party—designer jeans, expensive button-down, blazer tailored to fit, and dark hair gelled in place.

Of course he’d show up right when they were talking about him. Dude had some sort of homing device for appearing when people were discussing his general dickheadness. He’d caught Reece and Cherry on a couple of awkward occasions. Brad had a drink in his hand already, and by the look of him, it wasn’t his first. “He’s here,” Reece told Angus gently.

Angus looked up and saw Brad at the entrance to the balcony area. He grinned at Reece and Cherry and then took off, bounding over to the opposite side of the room. He went to hug Brad, but Brad squirmed out of Angus’s arms and pushed him off. Reece immediately began to charge across the room to see what was going on, but Cherry held on to his arm.

“Let’s not get involved,” she said.

“Why the hell not? We
always
get involved.”

“Yeah, and whenever one of us does, it gets ugly.”

Screw that.
“That already looks pretty ugly to me.”

He gestured to where Brad looked stony and Angus looked like he was about to collapse onto the floor.

Cherry frowned. “What the hell did he do to my brother? It’s only been a minute. Not even.”

“Brad’s evil works in magical ways,” Reece said. “I’m going over there. Ang looks like he’s about to pass out.”

Reece wove his way through the bodies toward the entrance. He felt Cherry behind him. It seemed to take a million years to get to where they were—to where Angus was sliding down the wall, out of Reece’s view. Where Brad was turning to leave, leave Angus at his own damn party on his
birthday
.

By the time he got there, Angus was on the floor and Brad was gone. Angus was a mess—crying, shaking, eyes closed mess.

Reece didn’t hesitate to sink down onto the floor next to him. He wrapped his arm around Angus’s shoulders and pulled him closer. He felt tears soak through his shirt, but Reece couldn’t care less. “What’s the matter, babe?”

Angus made a few sniffling noises and mumbled out a sentence. Reece thought he might have heard the name Brad in there, but other than that, he didn’t have a clue.

He didn’t ask for another few long minutes. The party guests were starting to stare—they must’ve looked like a mess, Angus crying his eyes out on the floor and Reece right next to him. Cherry hovered nearby like some kind of flame-haired guardian angel, and Peyton had taken a spot next to her. It was probably a good thing their mothers had left after the first round of drinks to “let the young folks have a good time” or there would be two more people hovering around Angus, drawing stares.

“Angus, babe, do you want to go home?”

“No,” Angus cried.

“Do you want to go see your mom?” Reece asked.

“
No
.”

“You’ve gotta tell me what’s going on.” Reece had an idea, but he didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. It was obviously Brad related. The rest… well, he could only guess.

“Brad… broke… up with me. He said….” Angus made a noise somewhere between a sob and a hiccup. “He said it’s
over
. Like, I knew things hadn’t been great lately, but
ten
years. We’ve been together ten years.” He broke down into sobs again, and Reece pulled him even closer.

That asshole….

Sure, Reece had been waiting for this day for years, but it didn’t mean he actually liked it, or that he liked it had been Brad to end things on Angus’s
birthday
, of all days. Talk about a douche move. Angus would be better without Brad. Eventually. But it was going to suck to get him to that eventually part. Reece hated watching his best friend cry.

“You sure you don’t want to go home?” Reece said.

“Yeah. What if he’s still there? I don’t want to watch him go.” He shuddered against Reece’s side. “I can’t.”

Reece stood and pulled Angus up. “Then let’s get you drunk, and we’ll dance the whole night and forget about the bastard, okay?”

Angus looked like he didn’t know what to say. He nodded shakily and crowded all close to Reece like he always did when he was upset. “Yeah, okay.”

BY THE
end of the party, Angus was nearly sick drunk, still weepy, and ready to go somewhere and pass out. Anywhere but home. He told Reece that more than once. How he didn’t want to go to the place where he and Brad had been so happy. He didn’t want anything to do with that bedroom when he was thirty and all alone. So Reece bid good night to Cherry and Peyton, told them to tell the moms what had happened, and decided to take Angus to his own house. He dragged Angus to his car and buckled him in. Reece was glad he’d decided it was a good night for him to remain sober.

It took a while to get Angus tucked into his bed, teeth brushed and with a glass of water nearby. Reece did a few things around the house, brushed his own teeth, changed into a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, and crawled into bed beside him. Angus was bound to be a mess in the morning, but Reece figured with some talking things through and a few dozen boys’ nights, he’d be fine. He hoped at least.

He had no idea what he’d do if he were Angus. It had to be daunting to try to pick up and move on from something that had been a huge part of his life for so long. Didn’t mean Reece wasn’t happy for him in the long term. Angus would be better without Brad. He
would
.

Reece plugged in his phone and turned off the lamp before he did his usual nightly social media check. Facebook on the whole wasn’t really his thing, but he liked knowing what was going on with their friends, and sometimes it seemed like that was the only place he could do it. He thumbed open his Facebook app and nearly dropped his phone on the floor. There it sat, the status update equivalent of an atom bomb right there on the top of his newsfeed….

Brad Carrigan is engaged to Eric Taylor

Holy goddamn motherfucking shit.

Reece looked over and saw Angus snoring softly on the other side of the bed. He had no idea—there was no way he would’ve even made it through the night if he did. If it had just been a regular breakup, Angus would’ve been lost in the sadness for a while, then moved on, but this? This was going to kill him.

Reece had no idea what to do.

Three months later….

ANGUS DIDN’T
know what time it was—which had become common in the past few weeks. Months. However long it had been. He also hadn’t been amazing at noticing how many days went by since he’d left the apartment. Showered. Gotten out of bed. The sun shone into his bedroom window, since he’d forgotten to close the curtains the night before. It killed his eyes. Angus wasn’t a big fan of mornings in his best times.

He decided to try getting up. It was probably a day he had work. He thought, at least. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and flinched when he knocked over a bottle. Empty, at least. He didn’t feel like mopping up his wood floors before the liquid warped them. Some clothes were draped over the chair in the corner of his bedroom—once pristine and in perfect Brad condition, now it looked like a tornado had hit, and it smelled, well… it didn’t smell very good.

Which was an understatement.

The fact that Angus didn’t care was also an understatement.

He kicked a pair of jeans away and made a path as he went toward his closet. He hadn’t done laundry in a while. Hadn’t done much of anything other than avoid phone calls and struggle his way into the office to work. Sometimes. He pulled the closet door open and found mostly a bunch of empty hangers. The only things still not dirty and wrinkled on the floor were the designer button-up and trousers Brad had gotten him for his twenty-ninth birthday.

Brad.

Bastard.

Angus still couldn’t get that sick feeling out of his body. The one that had rushed through him the morning after his birthday party and still festered like a rotting corpse in the hole where his stomach used to be.

He tried to drown the nausea with alcohol. It worked sometimes, for a while at least, but the nausea always came back.

Brad was engaged… hell, he could be married, for all Angus knew. He didn’t look at Brad’s pictures. Not after he’d looked that first day and saw the announcement and pictures of
Eric
. Eric who was twenty-two and looked like a younger, fresher version of Angus. Angus hated Eric with a passion. They were probably married. Probably had a perfect marriage in a perfect apartment with perfect designer clothing and matching drapes from Anthropologie or some shit. Angus wrenched the one pair of presentable pants he had off the hanger and wished like hell he’d gotten them anywhere but from Brad.

He pulled the pants on and was surprised when they draped low on his hips. They used to fit perfectly, maybe even a bit snugly after a few days off his diet. Now he needed a belt to keep them on.

He pulled the shirt on, and it fit nearly the same way, loose and most likely unflattering. Angus walked into the bathroom to brush his teeth and try to deal with hair that was probably oily and unkempt. He didn’t feel like getting a shower, so he’d probably just wet it. He did the two easier things rather than bother with a shower, then slipped on a cardigan that had seen better days. Then Angus grabbed his bag and his car keys and left for work. He needed a coffee to get through the day, but when he looked at his car clock, it was a lot later than he’d imagined. Nearly lunch.

Shit.

Angus hadn’t been very good at showing up to work on time in the past few months, when he managed to make it in. He couldn’t even bring himself to care.

He pulled into a spot at the office and dragged himself and his bag out of the car. He didn’t know what projects were in his bag. He hadn’t taken lead on anything since the night of his birthday—mostly did what other people asked him and tried to force himself to care.

HIS WORK
friends stared at him when he walked into the office. Angus realized he probably looked like a mess, and they hadn’t seen him since the day before yesterday… or was it two days since he’d been in? He had been working from home a lot. Again, sort of. There was a Post-it note on his desk telling him to go see his boss as soon as he got in. Angus figured he was going to have to do some sweet-talking to get out of trouble for how poorly he’d been performing lately. People had to understand.

Angus took the note and headed to Paul’s office. Paul was on the phone when he got there, but he gestured for Angus to stay.