Unfortunate Friends 3: Heavy Metal

Stevie McGabe

“Please be nice today, okay, sweetie?” My mom twists in her seat to look over at me, and I roll my eyes.

“From everything Jake has told me, Darryl has been having a…difficult time lately.” I resist the urge to roll my eyes again as my mom frowns at me before returning her attention to the road.

Darryl Nelson.

My one-time best friend. The guy I had imagined spending the rest of my life with at one misguided time in my life.

If a difficult time meant going out and getting loaded every night, then yeah, he was having a difficult time. But looking at his Instagram posts, he was just embracing the rock star lifestyle as best he could as an eighteen-year-old.

Yeah, okay. So just because we weren’t friends anymore didn’t mean I had to stop keeping tabs on him, right? Right?! He seemed happy enough wrapped around all those hot emo chicks, anyway. Couldn’t be suffering that much.

By the time we had parked and trudged into the airport, my mom was practically vibrating with the excitement of seeing her best friends. Her and Jake—Darryl’s dad—were practically brother and sister they were so close. We even called him and Abi, aunt and uncle.

At the sound of her voice being called, my mom takes off at a near sprint to get to where Jake was standing, holding the shitty old handmade sign they’d always used. My dad chuckles next to me with a shake of his head. “Those two are going to get banned from the airport one day.”

“I think it’s sweet how close they still are.” I shrug as we make our way over to where they are wrapped around each other. “At least it means your real dad is still in the picture, right, Gray?”

My little brother rolls his eyes and bumps me with his shoulder.

Our mom had hair as red as mine, and both our dad and our older sister, Carrie, had black hair, but Grayson had come out with more of a reddish-brown tone, not really taking after either of our parents in the looks department, and I loved to tease him about it.

“I’d rather look like myself than a carbon copy of someone.”

I laugh along with him. I was the spitting image of my mom—right down to the weird eye color which apparently her mom had too.

I look up and find Darryl standing on the other side of our parents’ reunion, a strange look on his achingly handsome face while he chews on his bottom lip.

Wait a second! He’d gained a lip piercing since the last time I’d seen him. Every time I saw him, he’d changed his appearance somehow.

First, it was shaving off all his long dark brown hair—which he’d spent so many years growing out so he could look like his dad—leaving a long fringe which usually hung down over his once sparkling green eyes.

Then it was the nose piercing, and the tattoos I’d seen on his arms when he’d been photographed in his sleeveless tops while he’d been drumming.

It hurt more than I wanted to admit that I wasn’t part of him making those changes; that I wasn’t there to hold his hand through the pain of those needles going through his skin.

My dad speaks to him, giving him a quick hug before Darryl swings his bag over his shoulder and starts walking towards me, still pulling the silver hoop on the side of his bottom lip through his teeth.

I can almost hear the metal clashing on his teeth as he approaches, his eyes glossed over slightly. His shoulder clashes with mine, and his eyes glance down at me, full of annoyance.

“Hey, Darryl.” My voice comes out as a weak almost whisper, not the strong one I’d wanted the first time I spoke to him. He gives me a slight smirk and carries straight on past me without a second glance.

“Ignore my idiot son,” Aunt Abi pulls me in for a hug, her sharp inverted bob swinging around her face like a perfect frame of elegant silver when she steps back. “He’s pissed with us, not you.”

“I wish that was true,” I sigh, turning my head to watch him stop and talk to Gray.

***

Luckily, Darryl had gone in the car with Vinnie, Grayson, and my dad. Unluckily, that meant I was stuck in the car with my mom and her two best friends.

I’d stuck my earphones in almost as soon as the doors had closed, but I obviously hadn’t turned the volume up loud enough, because as much as I tried, I overheard exactly what they were talking about.

“I know we should have told the boys before we moved, but I just thought they would benefit from having a support network around them.”

Aunt Abi slides her sunglasses up on top of her head and leans her head back against the headrest of the passenger seat with a tired sigh, and Uncle Jake’s hand rests on her shoulder.

“I was more worried about Darryl going off the deep end. At least here he won’t be able to get his hands on anything too dangerous.” I feel my back straighten at Jake’s words. Too dangerous?

I thought Darryl was only dabbling in weed and alcohol. His folks hadn’t been that worried previously, I mean Jake was a pothead himself, that had never been hidden from us.

“So, when do you have to go for the tests?” My mom sniffs, reaching across the console and squeezing Abi’s hand. Tests?! Tests for what? “When do you think you’ll tell the kids?” Whatever the fuck was going on, Darryl and Vinnie don’t know?!

“We were going to give them a day or two to unpack, get settled…then we’ll sit everyone down and tell them the results at the same time.” Jake glances over at me, and I fix a happy smile on my face, hoping he can’t tell I can hear everything they’re saying.

It obviously works because he gives me a quick smile back before he turns his attention back to the front seat.

“I’m hoping that we will have found a therapist by then. Darryl’s last one gave us a reference; we just have to get him registered.”

My mind races at the overload of information. Something serious was going on with Darryl’s mom—serious enough that they decided they needed to relocate to be with family.

Darryl obviously had more problems than it seemed on the surface. I wondered what had been going on with my former friend.

There was a time when I was utterly convinced that our friendship would be as strong as our parents’—that nothing would come between us—but at the first sign of a girl paying him any attention, he dumped me.

I’d never forget it. It was another of our family holidays; we were fourteen, and still as close as ever.

Still insisting on sharing a bed even though I was starting to become very aware of the changes in both our bodies.

Darryl had always been a cute boy, but in those last twelve months some of the boyish softness of his face had fallen away to reveal the beginnings of a chiseled jawline which sported a soft peach fuzz of facial hair.

His green eyes still held a light amusement like they always had, but I thought I noticed a bit of heat in them when he looked at me now.

I had started to develop more than the two little bee stings my chest had been for the last couple of years, my hips rounding out a little too, making my bikini look much more appealing than it had done the last summer, and I had felt the tingle of excitement in my bottom at him seeing me for the first time wearing it.

The first few days had been full of us running off and exploring, just the two of us like always.

But then his attention wandered to some girl with bigger boobs, and no metalwork marring her teeth like I had.

I was embarrassed to say I had followed the two of them when they had snuck away from our families one evening—trying to convince myself it was just to make sure they weren’t going to accidentally drown in the sea because they were unsupervised, but really it was pure jealousy that spurred me on.

Watching their lips touch, and his hand hover over her boob, was more than enough for me, and I turned tail and ran back to our hotel room, shoving my things haphazardly back in my bag and decamping to Cassie’s room.

Through hot tears and more snot than I thought I could sniff back, I confessed everything to my big sister.

All the feelings I was having about my best friend, all the things which I thought pointed to him feeling the same way about me, all the conversations our parents had had over the years which made it seem inevitable that we would be boyfriend and girlfriend.

He’d never apologized, never explained, didn’t even seem to care that I had moved out of our room or avoided him for the rest of the holiday.

From then on, me and Darryl had not exchanged more than two words. After lots of questions, our parents had given up trying to make us reconcile, and all our family had just accepted the frostiness between us.

I pause by the car as I watch Darryl lean over and grab something from inside, unable to stop my eyes falling on his sexy ass, which was squeezed into tight black jeans. Goddamn!

Embarrassingly, he catches me scoping him out in the wing mirror and flashes me a panty-wetting smirk. I feel my face burn as I quickly make a beeline for the relative sanctity of my bedroom.