My Brother’s Best Friend

My Brother’s Best Friend

By J.T. Marie

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ISBN 9781611524512

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America. Queerteen Press is an imprint of JMS Books LLC.

* * * *

My Brother’s Best Friend

By J.M. Snyder

My mom swears I can’t date until I turn sixteen, but I already have my first boyfriend picked out. Nate Bartlett is three years older than me and so cute. He’s my brother Bryan’s best friend—they’ve been buddies since kindergarten, and in all my memories growing up, Nate’s right there alongside Bryan. The two are inseparable. “Here comes trouble,” my dad says whenever the boys race into the house. If Nate isn’t spending the night over our place, then Bryan’s over his. Seriously, they’re always together.

I almost didn’t notice Nate at first. I mean, he’s practically family, you know? Like a cousin or something, always underfoot, eating at our place or watching TV in the den, or hanging out in our backyard with Bryan, up in the treehouse my dad built or on the skate ramp the boys set up when they got into boarding. Then I claimed the treehouse as mine, and I’d play dolls up there while listening to the constant hum of wheels on the ramp below. Once or twice I’d peek over the edge of the floor and look down at them, but really, what’s so fun about skateboarding? Most of the time, they fall off the things and laugh about it. I don’t get it.

But once, when I was nine years old, I was coming down out of the treehouse and one of the wooden slats my dad had hammered into the trunk like rungs on a ladder broke. It was near the bottom, so I didn’t fall far, but I landed on my butt with a hard thump! and knocked the wind out of me. For a moment I sat there, heart racing, unsure what had happened or what I should do next. Then I tried to breathe in and couldn’t.

I couldn’t.

Fear filled me and I looked around, terrified. My brother and Nate were nearby, but Bryan hadn’t noticed me—he was too busy popping wheels on his ramp. Nate glanced over and must’ve seen something in my face because he dropped his skateboard and hurried to my side. “Hey, Amber, you okay?”

I tried to hitch in a breath and couldn’t. Would I ever breathe again? Would I die like this, out here, gasping for air like a fish out of water? “Nate.”

He came closer, calling over his shoulder to my brother. “Bry, I think something’s wrong…”

Then his hand touched my arm and, for whatever reason, I felt my lungs expand. I gulped in sweet, cool autumn air. Even though I didn’t want to cry in front of Bryan—he’d laugh, I knew he would, he was twelve and way too big for crying, so he thought I should be, too—I couldn’t help it. The next breath I took came out in a loud wail. Nate’s hand tightened on my arm as he helped me stand, and in that instant, I loved him.

From a distance, I heard the screen door open and my mother call out, “What are you boys doing to her? Why’s she crying?”

Bryan told her I fell—thanks for helping me out, I thought bitterly, but it didn’t matter. Nate was there, his arm around my shoulders, and when I looked up at him through my tears, I swore to myself he’d be the first guy I dated when my mother said I could.

* * * *

Now I’m practically sixteen—okay, fifteen in a week, but still. It’s close enough. All the girls at school think my brother’s the hot one. I just don’t get it. “It’s his hair,” my best friend Shelley says, sighing whenever she sees Bryan in the hall between classes. “You just want to run your hands through it and pull.”

Funny—to me, it looks unwashed, but then again, I’ve seen Bryan roll out of bed in the mornings, so I know how little time he actually spends on his appearance. Besides, he’s my brother. Now Nate, on the other hand…

“Oh, he’s cute, too,” Shelley agrees. Now she’s talking sense. “You’re so lucky, Amber. You have two of the hottest seniors in school hanging around your house all the time. It’s like Hunk Central. You should, like, introduce me to Bryan, and we could double-date, you know?”

“He already knows you,” I remind her. Hello? She’s my BFF, of course he knows who she is. “Besides, my mom says I can’t date yet.”

“She also says you can’t wear makeup and you do,” Shelley points out.

True, but somehow I think hiding a living, breathing boyfriend would be a bit harder than hiding a tube of lipstick from the dollar store in my purse.

“We should totally hang out with them,” Shelley says. As if Bryan will go for that. “Neither of them has a girlfriend, right? So what’s the problem?”

The problem is Bryan isn’t about to pal around with his little sister. I know—it’s like pulling teeth to get him to take me anywhere if Nate’s around. And I’m not even talking about for fun, either. One day over the summer I ran out of maxi pads and I couldn’t wait until my mom came home to get more—I needed them now. I’m too young to drive, but Bryan’s eighteen and has a battered old pickup truck he bought with money he earned working for our dad. He likes to take it to the mall parking lot, where he and Nate take turns skateboarding off the bed of the truck. So I knew if they were going to go out later, I could bum a ride.

When I knocked on the door to my brother’s bedroom, it was Nate who said, “Yo.”

I took that to mean come in and pushed open the door. Nate was stretched out on Bryan’s bed, thumbing through a skating magazine, and though the room looked like a disaster area, it didn’t take me long to realize my brother wasn’t around.

“Where is he?” I asked. Nate makes me more than a little nervous because he’s so darn cute, but I was in a crisis here.

Nate didn’t glance up from the magazine, but then again, why should he? He knew it was me. “Shower.”

As if on cue, the bathroom door opened down the hall and my brother came out, dripping wet, with only my beach towel wrapped around his waist for cover. His hair stood up in damp spikes all over his head, and he reeked of aftershave. When he pushed past me into his room, I poked his hip. “Hey, this is mine.”

“It was in the bathroom,” he said, trying to shut the door on me. I stopped it with one foot. “Fair game, Am. You leave it in there, I can use it. Get out.”

Forgetting about the towel for a moment, I said, “I need to go to the store.”

“So? Go.”

He tried closing the door again, but again I held it open. “I can’t just go,” I reminded him. “I don’t have a car. Even if I did, I don’t know how to drive.”

With a shrug, Bryan began picking through the clothing strewn about the floor as if looking for something clean enough to wear. “Then wait for Mom. She’ll be home by four.”

“I need to go now.” I saw Nate look over the top of his magazine at me and felt my face begin to heat up. “Bryan, please. I know you two are going to the mall in a little bit. Let me come, too.”

“No.” Bryan picked out a pair of long Bermuda shorts and a tank top and tossed them onto the bed. Well, onto Nate, who pushed them off his stomach and onto the mattress beside him. “Get out, will you? I need to get dressed.”

I planted my feet wide in his doorway and crossed my arms for good measure. “And I need to go to the store.”

With a heavy sigh, Bryan turned to glare at me. “What do you need? We’ll pick it up for you, how’s that? What is it?”

Nate was right there and I didn’t want to say anything in front of him, but my only consolation was that Bryan would be more embarrassed about buying feminine products than I was about needing them. I mean, seriously—both these guys knew girls got periods, right? I felt my jaw clench as I told my brother, “I need pads, okay? You want to buy them for me? I get the Always in the green pack—“

“All right, fine,” he said, interrupting me. His face flushed bright red, and behind him, Nate was buried in the magazine, snickering. “God. You can come, okay? Just get out already, will you? I have to get dressed.”

When I didn’t move immediately, he tugged at the front of the beach towel, threatening to drop it in front of me. I closed my eyes and turned, grinning in triumph. As he shut the door behind me, I heard him mutter to Nate, “Can you see me buying those things? Christ.”

“One day you’ll have to,” I hollered. “When your wife asks!”

From behind the shut door, I heard the boys break into gales of laughter. One day!

* * * *

A few days before my fifteenth birthday, I decide to put some feelers out, see if I can maybe somehow jumpstart the whole boyfriend thing by getting Nate to ask me out. Since I’d never actually dare to talk to Nate directly, I focus on Bryan instead. One night after dinner, a rare evening when Nate isn’t around because his family’s Baptist and make him go to church service on Wednesday night, I find my brother at the kitchen table taking a practice SAT. Pulling out the chair across from him, I sit down in it and watch him bubble in the circles with his pencil. An eternity seems to pass before he decides I’m not going away and mutters, “What?”

As nonchalantly as I can, I start, “Shelley wants to know why you don’t have a girlfriend.”

Bryan glances up from the test, his brows furrowed into one long unibrow across his forehead. “Who the hell’s Shelley?”

“OMG, she’s only my BFF!” Is he for real? Shelley’s been hanging out with me since the fourth grade. “You’ve seen her, I know you have.”

Bryan sticks out his lower lip and blows his bangs out of his eyes. “Why’s she care if I’m dating someone or not?”

I sort of shrug and roll my eyes, not wanting to come right out and say anything, but another long moment passes before I realize either my brother isn’t paying attention to me or he’s the thickest boy I’ve ever met. Probably some combination of the two. “She just asked…”

Suddenly, it clicks. “I’m not going out with her, if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

“Why not?” I ask. “She’s a great girl. She’s—“

“Fifteen,” Bryan points out. “And your best friend. So no.”

I hurry on. “But wouldn’t it be cool if you two got together? Then maybe Nate and I could—“

“Nate!” The tip of Bryan’s pencil snaps off. “Oh, no. We’re not having this conversation. Mom! Amber’s trying to get me to get Nate to ask her out!”

“Shut up, will you?” I lower my voice to try to get him to lower his, too. Fortunately Mom’s down in the laundry room and doesn’t hear him. “I’m not trying to get you to get Nate to do anything.”

Bryan digs another pencil, already sharpened, out of his bookbag, which rests on the floor by his feet. “Damn straight,” he mutters. “Aren’t you too young to go out on dates, anyway?”

“I’m fifteen,” I tell him. “In another year, Mom says—“

“Well, cross Nate off your list,” Bryan says, bending back over his test again. “He’s my friend, he’s too old for you, and besides, he isn’t interested, anyway.”

Suspicious, I ask, “How do you know? Maybe he likes me.”

Bryan scoffs and doesn’t bother with a response.

“Maybe he does,” I press. “If you don’t ask him about me, you won’t know what he thinks, will you? He doesn’t have a girlfriend, does he?”

“No,” Bryan admits.

“There, see? Maybe…“

With an exasperated sigh, Bryan bunches the test paper into his fists as if he wants to tear it in half. Then he forces himself to take a deep breath and glares at me across the table. “Amber, stop. Nate is not interested in going out with you, or Shelley, or any other girl at our school, okay? Trust me.”

“I never said Shelley,” I clarify. Hello? I said me.

My brother shakes his head as he smoothes out his test. “Seriously, stop.”

I open my mouth to try something different, but the sound of my mother’s footsteps on the basement stairs changes my mind. I still have time to break him down to the idea of me dating Nate. It will happen, I promise myself. Whether Bryan likes it or not.

* * * *

For my birthday, I stay the night at Shelley’s. We hardly get any sleep—we’re too busy flipping through Seventeen magazine and giggling over the guys from One Direction on an all-night MTV special promoting their upcoming tour. My mother gave me a box of cosmetics, which Shelley says is proof she’ll let me date before the next year is out. I still have my sights set on Nate, and if I want to wear his ring before I turn sixteen, I have my work cut out for me.

Shelley’s mother drops me off at my house on her way to work at the mall. It’s an early Saturday afternoon—my parents went antiquing, which they like to do on the weekends, so the only person I expect to be home is Bryan, with Nate, of course. I feel pretty in the glittery eyeshadow and glistening lipgloss Shelley helped me apply before I left her place. If I’m ever going to wow Nate, it’ll be today.

On my way to the front step, I hear the ever-present sound of skateboards off the ramp in the back yard, so I switch direction and head for the side gate. The yard is hemmed in by a ten-foot tall, wooden privacy fence that really comes in handy when I’m trying to work on my tan, but it’s too high for me to try to look over so I stand outside the gate and listen. I hear the skateboards, of course, the sounds of their wheels punctuated by Bryan’s braying laugh and Nate cursing when he lands badly. My hand drifts to the gate’s latch. I try to imagine the scene on the other side—my brother with one foot on his skateboard, waiting for Nate to clear off the ramp so he can have a go. Nate’s hair windblown and careless, just the way I like it.

While I’m at it, might as well envision him lifting up the hem of his shirt to wipe sweat away from his face and exposing the smooth, flat muscles of his belly. I mean, a girl can dream, right?

When there’s a lull in the boarding sounds, I take a deep breath to calm my racing heart and ease open the latch. The door swings open ahead of me and I follow it into the back yard. My sneakers are silent on the concrete path, and I get the idea of surprising them with my new look. Bryan will be so amazed at how grown-up I look, he’ll beg me to go out with Nate. He’ll have to—Nate won’t take no for an answer.

I shut the gate behind me, just as quietly, then straighten my tank top and mini-skirt and fluff my hair with one hand before I come around the side of the house.

What I see stops me in mid-step.

Nate leans back against the side of the skate ramp, his skateboard propped against his leg. Bryan’s in front of him, so close I can’t see any space between them from where I stand. He has one hand against the ramp by Nate’s head, and the other brushes over Nate’s cheek gently. Even at fifteen, I recognize that for what it is.

A lover’s touch.

Nate grins at something Bryan says so softly, I can’t overhear. Bryan sweeps back the hair from Nate’s brow—I wanted to do that, me—then leans down to cover Nate’s mouth with his.

Oh. My. God.

I take a step back and stumble over a collection of empty planting pots my mother left to one side of the path. The noise they make causes Nate and Bryan to fly apart, hands running through their hair or shoving deep into their pockets. If I hadn’t just seen what I know I saw, I’d be hard-pressed to say they’d even been standing close together a moment ago.

“Amber,” Bryan says, a little breathless. “What are you doing here?”

I steady myself amid the pots and try not to look at either of them. I didn’t see it, I tell myself. I didn’t…but I did. I know I did. This changes everything.

Then I remember this is Bryan. Not some stranger on TV or in the newspaper, but my brother. I know him. At least, I think I do. My response is a snarky sister-answer if ever there was one. “I live here, remember?”

For a moment, I want him to ask me what I saw. I want him to tell me it wasn’t anything, I misinterpreted it, and I’ll believe him. But when I glance over at Nate, I see the way he looks at Bryan and I know how it is between them. How it’s probably always been. Why didn’t I notice it before?

I didn’t want to, simple as that.

Then Bryan says the one thing that could still manage to shock me after this. “You look nice. Is that make-up you’re wearing?”

My eyes fill with tears and I stumble up the porch steps to the screen door. “Amber!” he calls out, but I ignore him. I want to get inside, to the safety of my bedroom, where I can cry my eyes out.

* * * *

Tears blur my vision as I race upstairs and slam my bedroom door shut behind me. I collapse on the bed, blubbering. I wanted Nate. It isn’t fair! I wanted to go out with him, to kiss him, to hold him, me. Ever since I was nine…

Bryan knew him first, a small voice inside my head whispers.

So? He’s a boy. He isn’t supposed to be with another boy. Nate’s supposed to be interested in me.

By the time I’m all cried out, my make-up’s run and my pillow looks like Tinkerbelle exploded on it. I take deep breaths, trying to calm myself, trying to think, but I keep seeing that kiss, an uncommon tenderness in my brother’s touch, a look of love shining clearly on Nate’s face.

Who am I kidding? I never stood a chance.

Part of me wants to call Shelley immediately and tell her everything, but I know my BFF well enough to realize that whatever I tell her in confidence would spread around the entire high school in no time flat. This is something I can’t blab about—something Bryan’s kept a secret for I don’t know how long, so I have to keep quiet about it, too. If the kids at school knew, he and Nate would get ragged on about it. And if Mom and Dad knew, they’d never let Nate spend the night again, or even come over when they’re not home.

I can’t tell anybody.

After a few minutes, I hear footsteps in the hallway, then a tentative knock on my door. “Amber?” Bryan calls.

“Go away,” I mutter. Nate’s out there with him, I just know it, so I run a finger under my eyes and pray to God I don’t look as scary as I think I do. Thankfully I didn’t let Shelley talk me into wearing mascara, or I could pass for a raccoon right about now.

The door knob turns—just because Bryan’s suddenly gay doesn’t make him considerate. The door opens a crack and he peeks inside. “Can I come in a minute?”

Sitting up on my bed, I hug my pillow to my chest and sigh. “If you must.”

He opens the door to slip inside, and sure enough, I see Nate leaning against the wall out in the hallway, waiting. But Bryan comes in alone and shuts the door behind him. He looks impossibly young at the moment—his eyes wide and frightened, his skin pale. It occurs to me the three years’ difference in age between us isn’t really all that much in the grand scheme of things.

Carefully, he sits on the edge of my bed. I glare at him, trying to stay mad, but who am I kidding? I know this isn’t his fault. If anything, it’s my own for getting my hopes up. Why should a hot guy like Nate want anything to do with an average girl like me?

Bryan clasps his hands and stares at them together in his lap. “Look, I didn’t know you were home—“

“How long has this been going on?” I ask.

“Since eighth grade.” Bryan squeezes his fingers until the skin turns an impossible shade of white, then relaxes so the color rushes back into the tips. “I sort of always knew there was something different about us, but I didn’t realize what it was until the junior high dance I went to with Mindy Adams. Remember her?”

I wrinkle my nose in distaste. “Oh God, I forgot you ever dated her! She was so gross!”

“She was not!” Bryan grins. “Besides, I didn’t ask her out, she asked me. I said Nate had to come along, so it was me, her, him, and her cousin Tina, who goes to Thomas Dale. We got all dressed up and I thought it was horribly boring. All the girls wanted to do was dance, and I was like, what for? We weren’t even there an hour before Nate’s like, let’s go skate off the auditorium steps.”

“You took your skateboards to a school dance?” I ask, incredulous. Talk about a one-track mind.

Bryan shrugs. “Well, they were in our lockers. So we’re skating on the steps in the dark, just me and him, and at one point he stops and waits for me to come down to where he’s standing. I’m all like, what? And he goes, do you like her? And I’m like, Mindy? She’s okay. So he goes, no, I mean, do you really like her? Like that? And I was like, no.”

Like, like, like. Now I know why my mom says I sound stupid when I use the word too much. But I keep quiet.

“So he asks me who do I like and I’m all, I don’t know, you know?” Bryan shrugs, and his hands twist in his lap. “But he kept on asking, so finally I go, you, okay? I like you. And he stops skating and I can feel him looking at me, even though it was dark and I couldn’t see a thing. And he goes, me, really? By now I’m a bit pissed so I’m like yeah, you, what of it? And the next thing I know, he kisses me.”

I let out a sigh I didn’t know I was holding in. Nate boarding in the dark sounds impossibly romantic. “So you’ve been a couple since then?”

Bryan nods. “I didn’t want to tell anyone because they wouldn’t understand. I mean, the kids at school would be assholes about it, you know? And Mom would be all, Nate can’t spend the night any more, and you have to keep your door open when he comes over, and he can’t be here when we’re not here.”

I nod—that’s exactly how she’ll be, I know it, too. “What do you think Dad would do?”

“Probably not much,” Bryan admits. “I don’t think they’d be upset really, but I don’t…there’s worse stuff to worry about at the moment, I think. Like graduation coming up in a few months, and where I’m going to go for college, and how I’m going to pay for it, stuff like that. I don’t want them worrying about gay bashing and hate crimes and AIDS on top of it all. They’d make me spend less time with Nate, and I don’t want to do that.”

For a moment we sit quietly together, the first time we’ve managed to do so without fighting in quite a while. I see his point. Nate’s been a fixture in my own life forever, it seems, so if he were suddenly no longer able to hang around so much, I’d miss him, I know I would. I can’t begin to imagine how Bryan would feel about it.

Finally he looks up at me and asks, “You aren’t going to tell them, are you?”

I take a deep breath, and when I release it, I feel like a deflated balloon. “No, I won’t. Your secret’s safe with me.”

He grins and wraps an arm around my shoulders to give me a quick half-hug. “You’re the best, Amber. Are you okay with this? I mean, I know you like Nate…”

I shrug off his arm and hope I sound tougher than I feel. “It’s cool. Who am I kidding? I never really had a chance with him, anyway. Too bad you don’t have any non-gay skater friends you could introduce me to.”

Bryan’s grin turns devilish. “You know Kevin Daly? He’s in your grade.”

Kevin Daly…I shake my head. “Which one is he?”

“Tall, skinny, with shaggy black hair?” Bryan watches me, waiting to see my reaction when the description clicks, but I don’t think I’ve seen Kevin Daly before. If I have, I don’t know who he is… “He pulls it back in a ponytail when he skates. He shaved the underside off last year so it’s only long on top?”

Now it clicks. “He has the Joker skateboard,” I say. “That guy from the Batman movie. What about him?”

“Do you think he’s cute?”

I shrug. To be honest, I never thought of Kevin in that way before. He was in my study hall last year, and spent the entire period with his arms folded on his desk, head tucked down in them, sleeping. “He’s okay…”

“He asked me about you yesterday,” Bryan says.

A flash of heat zips down my spine. “He did? Nuh-uh. When?”

Bryan nods. “Uh-huh. He came over to skate yesterday and was all like, is your sister here?”

Unconsciously, my hand strays to my hair to make sure it isn’t too messy. I suddenly can’t stop smiling. “Really? Kevin Daly asked about me?”

Bryan gives me an arch look. “I can have him come on over, if you want to watch us skate. You might want to fix your make-up first, though.”

“God, I must look awful.” I rub my eyes and glitter streaks my fingers. Good thing my mother’s gift came with a package of pre-moistened make-up removal wipes. I’ll just clean everything off and start all over again.

Kevin Daly. The more I think about it, the cuter he gets. “Go on, you can call him. I’ll be down as soon as I can.”

THE END

ABOUT J.T. MARIE

J.T. Marie is a pseudonym for author J.M. Snyder, who publishes gay erotic and romantic fiction under her full name. A graduate of George Mason University, Marie worked as Fantasy Editor of the school’s sci-fi and fantasy journal, The Fractal, for two years. After college, she created and maintained an online webzine, Disenchanted, to further a love of fantasy fiction. For more information on her non-gay fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, please visit jtmarie.com.

ABOUT QUEERTEEN PRESS

Queerteen Press is the young adult imprint of JMS Books LLC, a small press specializing in queer fiction, non-fiction, and poetry owned and operated by author J.M. Snyder. Visit us at queerteen-press.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!