FicWad

Shannon was waiting in the restaurant for me, a beer already half consumed and glee in his eyes.

“Oh, you look mad, sister,” he greets me playfully, dropping a kiss to my cheek and flagging the waitress down.

After I’d seated myself and we’d ordered our dinner, I slumped in my seat, defeated.

“Your brother...”

“Found you in his room and you seduced him into signing your little ‘problem’ away?”

I roll my eyes, “...is an idiot.”

Shannon sighs, tapping his fingers excitedly against the table. “You can’t just expect him to turn around and say ‘Hey, Adeline, that’s a wonderful idea. Our three year marriage of convenience wasn’t really working out anyway!’.”

“Well, it’d be nice...” I grumble as our dinner is placed in front of us, I open my mouth to speak again but I can see the waitress has spotted my best friend.

“Um, Mr. Leto, I’m really sorry for interrupting but I was wondering...”

Shannon smiles at her warmly, shooting me an apologetic glance and taking a napkin from her to sign.

It never stops getting weird, knowing famous people. It also never stopped being surreal, having your best friend looked up to by hundreds of thousands of people across the universe. Especially when you’d always knew they’d be special one day.

The young girl apologises like crazy, and thanks Shannon for the signed napkin, scuttling away like an excited kid. I guess she was.

I grin like a maniac; “oh man, she was adorable. Mr hot-shot.”

Shan shakes his head and starts eating “don’t change the subject.”

“But she was so cute!”

He rolls his eyes and points his fork at me “how long are you staying?”

I poke my own fork into my pasta “well, as long as it takes me to convince him to sign the damn papers, but I can now see that it was a mistake to think it was going to be a short trip.”

“He doesn’t like Greg.”

I sigh. My head was still spinning from the conversation with Jared. Or maybe it was jetlag. Yeah, probably jetlag.

“He’s only met Greg a handful of times, and every single time he made some ridiculous comment about my boobs, or how I didn’t usually go for ‘guys like Greg.’ I mean, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Shannon smirked at the boobs comment. “Don’t forget last Christmas where he almost told him you guys were still married.”

I put my head in my hands. “Why the fuck didn’t I just get an annulment like normal human beings that have a crazy stupid Vegas wedding?”

“Because Jared is your safeguard,” he says promptly “he’s always been your backup plan in case you suddenly found out you couldn’t be lonely for the rest of your life. Mind you, he never thought of you that way.”

I look up, confused. Jared and I had always been each other’s backup plan. He’d been my second choice since Shannon had fallen in love with Alicia long ago and married her. And I was more attracted to Jared anyway, I’d always felt nothing other than friendship love for Shannon, for which I was so very grateful for.

“Ad,” Shannon puts on his stern voice, the one he always uses when I’m tiring him out with my Jared talks. “you’ve always been his number one. If you didn’t have your stupid musician hang-ups, I’m pretty sure he would have asked you out on a real life actual normal human date years ago.”

I roll my eyes at my best friend. “You’re being ridiculous, he only likes me because he doesn’t have to try with me, I’m not impressed by his long winded speeches or his fancy movies, of which, I am very supportive.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

Later that night I retired to my hotel room, exhausted from playing several rounds of poker in Shannon’s room with him and Tomo and losing more money than necessary. I’d also had a few glasses of wine, so my head was feeling a bit more fancy-free than normal.

Slumping down on my hotel bed, I stare at the ceiling, wondering what the hell I was doing here. I could have just sent the papers to him through my lawyer, I could have chosen not to make up a long winded excuse to come to Paris the day after Greg proposed to me, claiming that Shannon had caught pneumonia. Greg had always been understanding when I needed to jet off to be with Shannon, knowing that our friendship was more important to me than anything.

A quiet knock on my door paused my wine induced thoughts of guilt.

Slipping off my bed in my nightgown I opened the door, figuring it was Shannon coming to talk about how miserable he was without his wife.

But it wasn’t.

Crystal blue eyes stared back at me, absolutely way too long hair flipped messily over them, making me want to push it back from his beautiful face.

“Hi.” I breathe, over thinking how my legs were going to support me if he kept looking at me like that.

Jared doesn’t say anything, just reaches over and touches my shoulder, slipping the tiny silk strap over my skin easily so it hangs limply over my arm, held only to my body for the fact that the other side was still up.

“Hi.”

“You need a haircut.”

His eyes dance with humor as he watches my chest rise and fall with every shaky breath.

“You’re kinda drunk.”

He lets himself into my room, snapping the door gently behind him. I stand motionless, not sure what to do or where to go.

My back presses against the wall as he pushes up against me and leans down to place a gentle kiss to where my strap was on my shoulder.

“Jared...” I begin, but he silences me with another kiss placed just below my earlobe.

“Just,” he breathes into my neck huskily “just give me tonight.”

A hand circles from my knee to the back of my thigh, and I all but lose my mind as he hitches my leg up against his hip. I can feel him underneath his jeans. Why do musicians always wear such tight jeans?

I didn’t need to say yes as I melted to him, his hand reaching further up my thigh to tug my thong downwards.

“Let me be your husband for just a little while longer.”

I look up then, my eyes glassy from the desire drowning all logical thought from my brain. It was one night, one night for us to say goodbye to one another.

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, we had been in a relationship this whole time. We had fucked, we had fought, and we had spent the last fifteen years realizing that we were attracted to each other way beyond the pent up sexual frustration.

This one night was what I could do to thank him for being there, for making me feel more than I’d ever felt with anybody else.

So we made love that night, for hours until the sun rose again the next morning.

And I was marrying somebody else.