Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
I should jump on the change of subject, but I can't pass up the opportunity to tease my best friend. "Flirting would be less painful."
"Who goes?" Damon ignores my question. "Clockwise? Why don't you start, Cass."
She's sitting behind him, so clockwise means Cassie, Damon, Jackson, me.
But then, how would anyone begin to pick this?
Still. It's a safer topic than sex.
Cassie names a song I've never heard of by an artist who I've also never heard of. Of course, Damon does not experience this same struggle. The two of them have an intimate understanding of every song ever written.
He nods his agreement, but he takes mercy on us and picks a song everyone knows. "Sexyback is classic."
The Justin Timberlake song. Of course.
It's a little obvious, but then, a bachelor party in Las Vegas is not a time for subtlety.
Cassie launches into a debate about the merits of the song's theme. Should it be about partying or about marriage? And should it be a romantic angle on marriage or a more realistic one? She loves this one song about a man picturing his marriage in five or ten or fifteen years. He sees all the flaws, but he still wants to be with his paramour. Isn't that romantic?
Jackson turns back to me and raises a brow. See what you've done.
He's right. Once they're on music, they can't discuss anything else. They can connect any subject to music, and music is the sun in their sky. The gravity always brings them to music.
No. That isn't how gravity works.
Whatever. I'm not a writer. I don't need to get metaphors right.
I enjoy the gravitational pull of their passion. I like sitting and listening to them. And I really like sitting and tuning them out. I mean, yes, I love my best friend and my brother, but I can only listen to so many conversations about the most romantic pop song of all time.
This is a good subject to keep my mind off sex.
So I nod along as the lovebirds discuss the merits of love songs. I let my mind wander.
This is how Cass and Damon used to talk when they were kids. We've been best friends since I can remember. She's been there my entire life, the sister I never had.
My father used to work with Cassie's father. They were in a band together. They sold a bajillion albums, toured the world, took over Hollywood. They were still touring when I was a kid. I don't remember a lot of the details, only the feeling of going from place to place, never settling long, never knowing home.
Then, later, when it was just Dad touring, that sense I didn't know where he was or what he was doing.
It was normal, at the time. After all, Cassie was already my best friend, and she went through the same thing, and we all get used to our family dynamics, no matter how strange they seem from the outside.
Eventually, the band stopped touring, and our fathers started their own businesses. Her dad runs an independent record label. Our dad is a songwriter. She and Damon learned from him.
We used to spend every summer together at my parent's summer house (they're that kind of rich). After Cassie and I watched The Matrix, or walked the beach, or did our nails, or attempted to apply perfect eyeliner (she always had to do mine), Cassie sat next to Damon and worked on a song. Dad helped too. He was happy to have a mentee.
Back then, I imagined her and Damon falling in love. I wanted them to get married so she'd legally be my sister. Then my brother started drinking, and he hurt both of us enough she stopped talking to him. (Well, she tried. She was kinda stuck since she's in my life).
A year ago, she tried to make nice. She needed his help for a project. They not only wrote an album together. They also pretended they were a couple because the label loved the idea of a real couple writing real love songs, and, of course, they fell in love in the process.
No. They were always in love. They just had to realize it.
I'm happy for them. I am.
But it's weird. Complicated.
I'm not ten anymore. I don't want my best friend dating my brother.
When they finally told me they were really together, I was hurt by their deception. And I was jealous. I wanted her as my best friend first, not my sister-in-law first.
I wanted to keep the dynamic we had, where I could complain when my brother upset me, and she could nod and say he's so difficult, and she could complain about her boyfriend, and I could nod and say men, huh? And she could laugh yeah, but women aren't really better (she likes men and women), and we could be friends, first, foremost, always.