CHAPTERONE
Wesley
The viewfrom my apartment was amazing, a thousand times better than any view in the whole of Brixton. Coming from a small town to a huge city like Los Angeles hadn’t been without its pitfalls and hurdles, but there was no way that I’d ever let on about my struggles. Besides, a lot of my issues didn’t have anything to do with location—they could all be traced back to…
That didn’t matter.
He didn’t matter.
At least, not anymore.
“You look like someone pissed in your Cheerios,” my roommate and very good, almost new best friend Grayson said from the couch.
“Was it you?”
“Not my kink.”
I scrunched my nose, turning away from the window to face him. “Is that a real thing people are into?”
Grayson let out a quiet breath, tilting his head to the side, his entire expression turning soft, like he was looking at an adorable baby animal and not a twenty year-old human being. “Remind me to text Miles about that one.”
His best friend, former roommate,andformer lover, was currently involved with my older brother, Hendrix. The two of them had moved in together, which offered a perfect chance for Grayson to move out and me to move across the country.
The course my life had taken over the past six months would sound unbelievable if I tried to talk through it so, instead, I’d buttoned up and not told a soul what happened. The truth of the matter was, while I’d wanted more than anything to come visit my brother, I had never planned on leaving Brixton for good. Until the day came when the opposite coast wasn’t even close to being far enough away for me.
Wild, how times change in the blink of an eye.
“But seriously.” Grayson leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and eyeing me warily. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
We had just moved into the apartment the weekend before, and to call it a mess would be an understatement. I didn’t come with much more than the clothes on my back, a guitar I’d had since I was eleven, and a mattress that almost dissolved into dust on its way here. Grayson, on the other hand, had more than enough, and it was all shiny and new. He was a real estate broker who hadn’t been paying rent for the past six years. He’d built a nest egg the size of a dragon’s hoard and bankrolled both of us getting the hell out of our old living situations and into the most ridiculous LA apartment I’d ever seen.
My mom had offered to send me off with the couch from the garage and an oak side table, but Grayson had bluntly declined, promising all would be well. He’d furnished the whole apartment on a credit card that sounded like it had weight to it when he slapped it down on the counter, and the rest was history. Or, rather, it was about to be the future.
“Do you want to unpack the kitchen with me?” he asked, standing up with a groan. He made a show of stretching, shirt riding up and exposing a strip of tanned skin around his middle.
“Yeah, just…” I trailed off, looking back to the skyline outside his window. My window.Ourwindow.
“Take your time, Wes.” Grayson padded into the kitchen, turning music on his phone and tossing it beside the sink. The first thing he’d done when we got keys was strategically arrange speakers around the common areas, then hook both our phones up to stream straight to them. The rhythmic beats of Faux Tales reverberated through the walls, echoing around the otherwise empty apartment.
Everything was there, just nothing had been unpacked or put away yet. The entertainment table sat in a box, waiting. The TV was mounted. Dining room table, box. Chairs, stacked in the corner. Plates and cups, boxed. It almost felt like witness protection. But in reality it was what I needed most.
A fresh start.
Beyond the floor-to-ceiling window that stretched almost the entire length of the northwest-facing wall in the living room, I could see the outline of skyscrapers that stretched up farther than anything in Brixton had ever dreamed of reaching, and beyond that, snow-topped mountains that faded into the horizon. Street side, there were cars, so many cars. Palm trees, parking meters, all things that seemed like they should have been mundane, but weren’t. Everything about California held a sense of awe for me, and I hoped that wouldn’t wear off.
I snapped a picture of the view, even though I didn’t have anyone to share it with.
Putting a lid on my pity party, I joined Grayson in the kitchen, a sound of disgust leaving my mouth as soon as I caught him with a fork in his hand and the drawer beside the wall open.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Putting…silverware…away?” He watched me with wide eyes, unsure of the problem.
I gestured toward the drawer he’d slid the silverware organizer into. “This isn’t the silverware drawer.”
“No, but it will be. Once I put the silverware in it.”
