Drew had to remind himself that it would be weird to sniff his best friend too deeply, that it wouldn’t be cool to lean his head on Bas’s shoulder, that it was playing with fire to be thisclose.
“I brought you here tonight for altruistic motives, young Andrew!” Bas was saying. “I think we’ve both been under a lot of stress. First, we found out the crash wasn’t an accident, then we found that Uncle Shaw… I mean,SenatorShaw,” Bas corrected himself impatiently, “betrayed his own best friends and engineered the crash. And now we can’t fucking do anything about it because the Shaw kid won’t comeforward…”
“Give Cain a break. He’s a good kid, and he loves his dad, despite his dad being an asshole. Not all of us had perfect fathers,recall.”
Drew wondered if his own father was still in Thailand, where he’d fled after his divorce from Drew’s mother was finalized last summer. One thing was for sure - he hadn’t bothered to leave Drew any contactinformation.
“But I get what you’re saying,” Drew told him. “You want to let offsteam.”
“No! Actually, I wantyouto let offsteam.”
“What?”
“Listen. As you soforcefullydemonstrated, I wallowed for a long while after my parents and Amy died. And meanwhile, there you were, stepping up and helping Cam run things at SeaverTech.”
“It’s my job,” Drew remindedhim.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it was easy for you to do it. Not while you were grieving. I mean, Amy was yoursister.”
Drew nodded, feeling the familiar guilt that hearing Amy’s name always provoked. Losing herhadbeen hard, even though the only thing they’d had in common besides their last name was falling in love with Sebastian Seaver. Drew missed her gentle laugh, the bright-eyed optimism that ran counter to his own sometimes-cynical world view, and the simple knowledge that someone else on earth had come from the same place ashim.
Still, the hardest aspect of her death had been dealing with the emotional fallout as his parents’ marriage imploded, as Cam and Bas floundered, and as he wondered whyhe’dlived to pine for Sebastian, while the woman Sebastian loved had been taken fromhim.
Survivor’s guilt was abitch.
“So, I’m saying tonight is your night to cut loose,” Bas told him. “It’s your turn to lose that iron control and lean on me for achange.”
“Me?”
“Yeah,you! Pretend you’re not an octogenarian whose idea of a good time is NPR and a hot water bottle. Live a little. Get a little messy.” Bas reached over and mussed Drew’s hair, looking frustrated when the silky strands fell right back into place, as always. “If that’spossible.”
Drew shook his head. “I highly doubt it. But listen, I don’t want to drink. Better let me bedesignated…”
“No! Hell no. You’re not driving us home tonight.” Bas shook his head. “Dude, just have fun. Dance, drink, eat fried food of dubious origin from bowls into which dozens of grimy hands have reached. And I will be here to take care ofyou.”
Drew blinked and stopped walking. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Sebastian - in thirty years of friendship, he could count on one hand the number of times Sebastian had disappointed him, and most of those weren’t Bas’s fault anyway. It shouldn’t have mattered to Drew that Bas had kissed him once, back at summer camp, and then promptly lost his virginity to some long-forgotten girl named Rai who worked the movie theater at the mall; or that five years ago he’d abandoned Drew at a charity benefit, so he could go home with Misty Sturmacher, whose breasts grew in proportion to her investment portfolio; or that he’d actuallyproposedto Drew’s sister Amy, even though… eventhough…
Nope.Drew put a mental line under that topic and movedon.
Drew was just used to being the nursemaid, the one who’d make sure his friends got home safely.Captain Control, as one of Drew’s college friends used to call him. And Drew liked it that way justfine.
“I don’t get why it’s important to you that I getdrunk.”
“It’s not about you getting drunk. Drink or don’t, I don’t care. Just don’t worry about it if youdo.Loosen up. De-stress, before you die of a heart-attack.” Bas shook Drew’s shoulder before releasing him, and Drew took one final inhale of Bas-scented air before straightening up, fortifying himself for what would undoubtedly be a long fuckingnight.
They made it to the top of the driveway, and a vaguely-familiar, petite, dark-haired woman wearing a skimpy bunny costume greeted them. “Ohmigod! Sebastian Seaver! I can’t believe it! I haven’t seen you in, like, tenyears!”
Bas smiled and stepped forward to press a kiss to her cheek. “At least! Vanya. It’s great to see you,too.”
Vanya turned to Drew, and she let out a tiny but incredibly high-pitched scream as she launched herself into his arms. “Oh, and oh my god,Drew!You guys are still together! How long has it been now? Fifteen years orsomething?”
Drew blanched. Together? “N-no. No, God. No.No. We aren’t.No.”
Sebastian laughed easily and elbowed Drew in the side as he explained to Vanya, “Lawyer. Makes his living with compelling arguments like that. Defendants quake infear.”
Vanya blinked in confusion, like she was still waiting for someone to answer thequestion.
“We aren’t together,” Drew was finally composed enough to explain. “We’re just friends. We’ve only ever beenfriends.”
