No matter what I tried, the tears welled in my eyes. “I’m making myself cry.”
We clung to each other and balled our guts out onto our respective shoulders.
“You’re my best friend in the whole world, Louisa. No one gets me like you do, no one.”
“You’re mine, Sienna. You kept me strong through the darkest times.”
She pulled back slightly and smoothed over my blonde hair. “We will always be here for each other. Regular video calls. I demand it. Also, email, postcards, and what the heck? Send me damn love letters too.”
We giggled.
“Because no matter what, I will not let life get in the way of us. You damn well better get in that private jet of theirs and come visit at least once a year. I’ll do the same. Vacations too. We must do those.” My best friend rambled as she squeezed my hands.
I laughed again. “I think we’ll have to make up a list.”
She nodded her head. “A contract that we must sign and abide by.”
As crazy as it sounded, I thought it was a fabulous idea. “I’m down. I could even get Tate to draw something up tonight. Augustus has a home office here, right?”
“Of course. Aug does a lot of work from here. Let’s sign it by midnight, right before the fireworks.”
“There are going to be fireworks?” My mouth dropped open. I was still getting used to this rich-guy extravagance, where one owned private planes and could hire fireworks for their private party.
Sienna lifted one shoulder. “Augustus knows a guy.”
Of course, he did.
She grasped my hand. “BFFs, right?”
“Damn right.”
“Let’s do this contract thing.”
Were we honestly doing this contract thing?
We wiped our tears and went in search of Tate and Augustus.
Tate looked at us women like we’d lost our minds as he set the pen beside the contract sitting on Augustus’ desk. We’d spent the last hour with him making sure he wrote down everything we wanted in it and making it look as official as possible.
“I can’t believe you two want a friendship contract.” Tate shook his head.
“You’re both positively bonkers.” Augustus leaned casually against the bookshelf off to the side and drained the last of his red wine. “Possibly more so than Tate bringing Blaise Rawlins to my New Year’s Eve party.”
Sienna twisted up her face. “What the hell does that matter?”
“It’s a school rivalry thing. You wouldn’t understand.”
“What, did his high school football team beat your high school football team or something?” It was an offhand comment from me, but it had Augustus balking at me.
“Close. But it was university.”
“Nailed it,” I sang.
Augustus looked back at the paper on his desk. “A friendship contract.” He scoffed, setting the glass on the corner of the desk with a shake of his head.
Augustus may have shared Tate’s sentiments regarding our friendship contract, but they’d both bent to our will and taken time out from partying to give us what we wanted.
I tucked my feet under myself and leaned back in the dark leather Chesterfield couch. “This is important to us. We don’t want to drift apart. We want to make a conscious effort to stay best friends our whole lives and that requires work. Especially when we will be living so far away from one another.”