Friends & Forever (2 page)

Carmine gripped tightly to the handles,
determined, as he raced straight at Nicholas. He wouldn't balk. Nope. Nicholas
would have to.

Mere feet separated them, the distance
closing rapidly, when Nicholas finally swung away, barely missing a head-on
collision. The front of Nicholas's jet ski skimmed Carmine's, jolting him
roughly forward and over the front of it as it skidded to an abrupt stop. His
head slammed against the Jet Ski as he hit the water, pain tearing through his
skull.

He treaded water, floating, ignoring the
pain as he watched his friend crash straight into the dock, leaping off at the
last second and flailing before he hit the water. Laughing, Carmine swam toward
the shore as Nicholas did the same.

Nicholas grimaced as climbed out of the
water, hobbling as he tried to put pressure on his right foot. "Fuck, I
think I broke my ankle."

Carmine glanced down toward his friend's
feet. "Looks fine to me."

Nicholas shot him a foul look, his
expression contorting nearly instantly from annoyance to amusement. "Ha!
You're bleeding, douchebag."

Carmine reached toward the throbbing along
his brow, wincing when he felt the gash. "Hurts like a son of a
bitch."

"Looks fine to me."

Carmine rolled his eyes, shoving his
friend so hard he stumbled and fell onto the sand. Nicholas grimaced, all humor
gone from his expression. "Seriously, DeMarco? Ankle?
Remember
?"

Reaching down, Carmine grabbed his hand
and pulled him to his feet. "Whatever, pussy. Let's go get it checked
out."

"Your dad working?"

Carmine shrugged. "Is he ever
not
working?"

They drove Nicholas's Chevy pickup truck
to the hospital, mainly because Carmine said he wasn't letting Nicholas's wet
ass soil the seats in his brand new Mazda RX-8. A gift for his sixteenth
birthday just a few months earlier that felt a lot like a guilt-assuaging bribe
from a failure of a father. Regardless, Carmine cherished the car. Nicholas,
too, seemed to have an unhealthy attachment to his vehicle, but he didn't put
up an argument when Carmine grabbed the keys and climbed behind the wheel of
the truck.

They strolled—or
limped
—past
the waiting crowd in the ER in Durante, straight to the lady working the
check-in desk. She cast them a look but said nothing, motioning for the two of
them to follow her straight back to an exam room.

"Ankle," Carmine told the woman,
motioning toward Nicholas's foot, before pointing at his own forehead.

"Eyebrow, got it," the woman
said, shaking her head. "I'll let Dr. DeMarco know."

Nicholas climbed up on one of the white
hospital beds as Carmine strolled around the room, nosily looking in drawers
and searching through cabinets. He found a container of lollipops on the
counter and snatched a handful, shoving a few in his pockets before tossing a
green one toward Nicholas.

Carmine tore the wrapper off an orange one
and stuck it in his mouth, sucking on it as he continued to explore. In a
drawer along the side, he found a pile of rubber bands. Plucking two out, he
pulled one back and shot it toward his friend. Nicholas ducked, the rubber band
flying right by him just as the door opened.

Shit
.

Vincent DeMarco stepped inside, words on
the tip of his tongue, when the rubber band struck him straight in the chest.
Vincent's brow furrowed as he halted mid-sentence, glancing down at the rubber
band when it hit the floor before his eyes darted toward his son. "Sit
down, Carmine."

Carmine mock saluted his father, cringing
when he struck his wound. Damn, it hurt. He hopped up on the second hospital
bed in the exam room when his father approached, grasping his chin to survey
his face. "This is bleeding a lot, son."

"Head wounds bleed a lot." Man,
how many times had Carmine heard those words spoken to him before right in this
fucking hospital?
Too many times to count.

"Yes, but this is more than
normal," Vincent said, pulling out his small flashlight and shining it
straight in Carmine's eyes as he nonchalantly toyed with the second rubber
band.

Before Carmine could respond, Nicholas chimed
in. "I'm sorry, Doc, but nothing about your kid is really
normal
."

Vincent turned to Nicholas, eyeing him
peculiarly before shining the flashlight in his eyes, too. He said nothing,
glancing between the two of them suspiciously.

Alcohol thins the blood. Carmine knew it.
Hell, every one of them in the exam room knew it. There was certainly a reason
his head wound was bleeding a lot.

"So, uh, you gonna fix us up?"
Nicholas asked finally. "Or are you gonna, well… you know… just look at
us?"

Vincent continued to just look at them for
a moment before letting out an exasperated sigh. "I don't know what I'm
gonna do about you boys."

"Fix us up," Nicholas said
again, laughing. "I think I broke my ankle and Carmine, well… he looks
like he stuck his head in a blender, but that's nothing new. He's always been
an ugly bastard."

"Fuck you," Carmine said,
shooting the other rubber band at Nicholas, this time hitting him straight in
the face.

"All right, enough," Vincent
said, shaking his head as he set down the charts he had been carrying. He
pulled up a stool and checked Nicholas's ankle. "Just a mild sprain, I'd
say. Stay off of it and you should be fine."

"Thanks, Doc."

Vincent stood back up, nodding in
acknowledgement, and turned back to his son. "You, on the other hand, are
going to need stitches.
Right on the eyebrow, too.
That's going to leave an ugly scar."

"Nice."

Vincent said nothing else as he walked
out. It was only a minute later when he returned, a nurse in tow. Vincent went
to work stitching up Carmine's eyebrow while the nurse wrapped Nicholas's
ankle. Carmine watched her as she worked, purposely avoiding his father's
intense glare.

Jenn was her name. Carmine knew her well,
considering his father was screwing around with her.

It was ridiculous, Carmine knew, but he
couldn't help the bitterness he felt at that fact, the sense of betrayal that
stirred up inside of him at the thought of his father being intimate with
anyone
.
It wasn't right. All these years later and he still felt like his father even
looking
at another woman was a disloyalty to his mother, like he was cheating on her,
shamefully pissing on her memory.

And for a
girl like Jenn?
A girl who spread her legs for half the
town?

Yeah, Carmine was
bitter
.

Jenn left a moment later and Vincent
stepped back, surveying his handiwork, before snatching discharge papers from
the charts. Carmine hopped down off the bed, side-stepping his father, but
Vincent caught his arm before he could leave. "Which one of you is
driving?"

Carmine yanked his arm away. "Me."

"How much have you had to
drink?"

Carmine rolled his eyes, handing his
discharge paper to Nicholas before dramatically, theatrically, extending his
arms straight out and tipping his head back. Without any hesitation, he swiftly
touched his nose with his fingertips.

"You don't have to be a smart ass,
son. It's just a question... a valid one, at that."

Carmine threw his lollipop away. "I'm
not drunk."

Vincent didn't appear convinced, but he
didn't stop them from walking out. The two strolled back through the ER, past
the crowd still waiting to be seen. Jenn stood at the check-in desk, chatting
with another nurse, and waved at them as they passed.

"She's kinda hot, huh?" Nicholas
said, eyeing her. "Doc could do worse."

Carmine shuddered. "That's my father
you're talking about."

"So? Come on, DeMarco. You can't
really blame the man. You can't tell me you wouldn't hit that if you
could."

"I could hit it," Carmine said,
"but I wouldn't."

"Yeah, right."

"I'm serious. You think you could do
it? Then do it. Fuck, I
dare
you to do it."

Nicholas's expression turned serious. He
didn't balk at a challenge. "You're on."

* * *

"Going into halftime, the score is
tied, fourteen to fourteen."

"You think we're gonna win?"
Nicholas asked, slouching back and propping himself up on his elbows on the
massive oversize stadium bleachers.

"Doubtful," Carmine muttered,
taking a sip from his shiny metal flask. He grimaced, the warm liquor burning
his throat. The trip to the hospital had sobered him up real quick.
"Varsity team fucking sucks this year. They'd have better luck letting
us
play tonight."

"Next year," Nicholas said.
"We'll show them how it's done."

"Goddamn right."

The crowd shifted all around them, people
filtering out for concessions while others made their way to huddle in the
bleachers for halftime.
Homecoming
. The one game of the year it seemed
nobody in Durante missed. Glancing around, Carmine saw everybody who was
everybody.

Everybody, of course, except his father,
but that was no surprise to anybody. Vincent never even made it to Carmine's
football games. Why would he come to these?

A group of their friends climbed the
steps, led by Carmine's brother, Dominic. Dom greeted them warmly, bumping
fists with Nicholas before plopping down beside Carmine. The rest filled the
empty spaces around them, mostly girls, some Carmine knew intimately, others he
had plans to get to know that way before it was all said and done. Tess Harper
weaseled her way through the group, forcing herself down in a spot right in
front of Dom.

"Boys," she said coldly, casting
the two of them—Carmine and Nicholas—looks of wariness.

"Girl," Nicholas said
sarcastically, the same time Carmine tipped his flask and muttered,
"Bitch."

Tess rolled her eyes, turning to Dom.
"Dominic."

Dom nudged her chin playfully, greeting
her warmer than the others. "Hey, Tess."

"Your
sister not
come
?" Carmine asked, drawing Tess's attention back to him and away
from his brother. Those two freaked him out sometimes with the way they looked
at each other. He didn't get it, and hoped like hell they'd get over their
flirtationship
. It made things awkward whenever they
all hung out together.

"Of course not," Tess said.
"Dia doesn't do football games."

"She came last night," Nicholas
said. "You know, to the JV game."

Huh
. Had she?
Carmine still couldn't remember. He made a mental note to thank her later.

"Aw, good for you," Tess said
dismissively. "You boys actually had someone there to watch for
once."

Nicholas flipped her off, but Tess didn't
notice, her attention going right back to Dom. Rolling his eyes, Carmine took
another drink from his flask. Okay, he'd been wrong earlier. Amy Barlow wasn't
the
only
girl off limits to him. The Harper twins needed added to that
list of his
could-never-have
.
Because Dia was the sister-he-never-had, while Tess was frankly the
sister-he-never-wanted.
He shuddered at the mere thought of
seeing either of them naked.

Good thing Dia swung the other.

The announcer's voice rattled from the
loudspeaker as the crowd grew thicker, more bodies huddling in the bleachers.
The homecoming court descended upon the field. Seniors, dressed in their
finest, announced one-by-one as the crowd cheered. Carmine found it all quite
ridiculous and barely paid attention to the bullshit charade.

Nicholas reached over and smacked Carmine
on the arm as he leaned toward him. "Got a bet for you."

"I'm listening."

"Twenty bucks to whoever nails the
homecoming queen first."

Carmine chuckled, hearing Tess groan
nearby. She'd overheard. "You're on."

"You in, Dom?" Nicholas asked.

"What's that?" Dom glanced back
at them, raising his eyebrows. "Am I in
what
?"

"Twenty bucks to nail the homecoming
queen."

Dom scoffed, waving them off. "Hell
to the no."

"Why not?" Nicholas asked.
"Know you'll lose?"

"He has more respect that that,"
Tess chimed in, her eyes narrowed as she glared back at them.

"Yeah, and besides," Dominic
said, motioning out toward the field. "Between the two of you, you've
already nailed almost all of them. Chances are one of you already won."

Nicholas shrugged, while Carmine smirked.
He was counting on that.

The announcer finished introducing the
homecoming court, the crowd going wild with anticipation as they were narrowed
down, the runners up announced. Carmine took another sip from his flask,
relaxing as the voice boomed from the speaker. "Your 2003 homecoming
queen… Miss Amy Barlow!"