Read Online The Perfect Third by Morticia Knight - Free Book Online

becoming close friends during middle school. Damien and Natalie, brother and sister, had moved to town in our junior year of high school and had somehow fallen in sync with our group. Corey and Natalie had hit it off and dated until halfway through senior year, while Damien had spent a lot of time skipping school and smoking weed with his stoner buddy, Parker, at either of their parents’ homes. I might have been there with them a time or three. Amazingly, when we all took the SAT, Damien’s scores had been through the roof and, thanks to the college funds left to him and Natalie by their grandparents, he had been able to join us when we had gone off to college.
    Natalie and Mark had eventually hooked up and, with college over and real life looming, were now looking at getting an apartment together. Tasha and Corey were finally making a move on their connection that had for years been obvious to everyone but them. Damien and I were the odd ones out, and had become pretty tight over the course of our college years as a result. We’d even double-dated occasionally; me with Jarrod, who I’d been seeing for a little over a year, and Damien with whomever he was dating that particular week. I’d often kidded with him about his inability to retain a girlfriend for longer than a three-week stretch, but he’d just flash me those pearly whites and say ‘the ones worth keepin’ seem to be spoken for; I gotta make do with what’s available’. Lately, though, I’d begun to envy his freedom.
    Jarrod had opted not to come on this camping trip. He got along okay with my friends, but had never made a real attempt to get to know them. His attitude towards them, and me, had worsened lately, so I was more than fine with his decision not to come. I could relax and have fun with my friends without having to worry about whether or not Jarrod was having a good time, something I seemed to spend more and more of my time doing these days.
    “Hey, are you gonna eat those or are you just giving an offering to the campfire gods?”
    Damien’s voice brought me back to the present just in time to see my swollen, burnt marshmallows burst into flames. I pulled the roasting stick out of the fire and blew them out, then gingerly peeled the charred layer off one and popped it into my mouth. “Mmm.” It was just right.
    “That’s disgusting. How can you eat charcoal like that?”
    “Because it is sticky, delicious charcoal, and that’s how I like it,” I replied as I slid the blackened skin off the other marshmallow. I shoved it in my mouth and then put the roasting stick back in the fire to burn the gooey lumps again.
    Damien shook his head as he reached into his knapsack beside his feet and hauled out a bottle. “Want some?” He held the bottle out to me.
     
    “Mmm, marshmallow and JD, my favourite camping treats. Give me a second, I wanna eat these first.”
    He nodded, unscrewed the cap, and took a swig straight from the bottle while I carefully slid each of my re-roasted marshmallows off the stake and put them in my mouth.
    “Mmm, so good,” I moaned with my mouth full, and then began licking the sticky goo from my fingers. I noticed it had suddenly become quiet and I looked up to see Damien staring at me with an odd look on his face. “What?” I asked self-consciously, my thumb still resting against my lower lip.
    He shook his head once. “Nothin’. You still want some?” He held out the bottle again.
    “Mm-hmm,” I said and took the bottle. I knocked back a hearty swig of my own, fighting the ‘whisky grimace’. “Wow, that’ll warm me up,” I rasped as I handed back the bottle. “Hell, I’m still feeling pretty good from Natalie’s Buttershots.”
    “I don’t know how you girls drink that shit; Pucker, Buttershots, it’s like drinking goddamn syrup,” Damien muttered, taking another swig from his bottle.
    My phone suddenly buzzed. I pulled it out of my sweatshirt pocket to see it was a text from Jarrod. Try not