Hiding from Hope (Central Sparks #2)

1 – Reminder Off Limits Sister’s Best Friend

Jessie

“Shoosh! Everyone shut the fuck up!” Rosie whisper-shouts to the sixty-odd people currently filling the function area of Bozzelli’s Bar. Addison, one of my younger sisters, has thrown a surprise birthday party for her boyfriend, Noah, roping in Casey and Rosie to help. Hence the angry whisper-shouting Rosie pairs perfectly with her trademark death stare, that essentially says, ‘ I’ll murder you if you disobey me .’ Except, it only makes me roll my eyes at her.

Rosie and Casey have been good friends with Addison since pre-K, back when we all lived in Great Falls, Virginia, so I’ve known them for pretty much their entire lives, and as a result, her scare act doesn’t work on me. Not to mention, Casey is like a dose of sugar to Rosie’s spice. With her radiant smile and permanent glow of sunshine standing right next to Rosie, I don’t think anyone is listening.

“They’re here! Places!” Casey’s commanding ‘mothering voice’, as Addy calls it, carries over the room like a spell and everyone hushes and bundles together in anticipation for the guests of honor to arrive.

“You Addison’s brother?” I turn to my right from my position in the back, leaning against the bar, and see a tall guy with an almost smile looking at me like he is ready to have a great conversation. Oh, perfect.

I nod and sip my beer, but instead of taking the hint, he throws his hand out. “Caleb. I’m one of Noah’s friends. From college. We also work together,” he supplies, despite not being asked. I look at his hand and then release the tension in my shoulders, reminding myself of the warning Addy gave me. ‘Be nice. They are my friends, too. It wouldn’t hurt you to socialize and make some friends, you social pariah.’ Addison’s teasing isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s not like I’m alone by accident. I deliberately chose this life.

Friends require commitment, consistency, and caring. I’m shit out of all of that.

I reluctantly shake Caleb’s hand and give him a pleasant enough smile before I direct my attention back to the entry, waiting for Addison to hurry up and drag her boyfriend through that door so I can say the obligatory ‘ Happy Birthday’ , and ‘ Good job, Ads ’, and then get the fuck out of here. He seems to take the hint, awkwardly nodding his head before he pretends to hear someone call his name and scurries away.

I love my sisters, all three of them, but really, this is not my scene, and they know that. Addison is the one I was closest with growing up. Despite the six-year age gap, she was the closest to me in personality, and we used to have a great time causing havoc for the sister between us, Ava. She was a prim princess and so fucking easy to rile up. I suppose because Ads and I only really made up properly about eight months ago, when all the drama with our family went down (dad arrested, family trust funds evaporated, parents divorced, Addison clocked dad in the jaw–the usual), I felt obliged to come when she asked. Eager to make up for the last two years that I’d been a shit absent big brother, add in her big sad green eyes that usually nail me in the gut, and I caved. It was the same look she’d give me when we would get into trouble for picking on Ava. She’d throw me the sad eyes, and I’d take the fall for the lot.

Anyway, that’s why I’m out on a Saturday night socializing and not holed away in my tiny Upper East Side apartment. That is why I’m here and putting up with people trying to make small talk, anxiously twisting the ring I inherited from my grandfather that warms my pinkie, instead of sipping a whisky and finishing The Brothers Karamazov.

I was trying to get through my Top-Ten-Always-Wanted-to-Read list; I’m at number four. It’s pathetic, especially for someone who owns a fucking bookshop.

“Surprise!” The room erupts at a stupid volume as all of Addison and Noah’s closest friends and family chant to Noah walking through the door, a big grin on his face before he turns and levels Addison with a look I can only label as adoration. As much as I wasn’t really on board with this relationship–with Noah’s dating history–I’m glad she has someone who cares for her the way he does. I’m glad she found her happiness. At least one of us gets to.

I shake off the nervous fidgeting, straighten from my lean on the bar, and make my way to the guests of honor. As everyone embraces Noah and gives him well-wishes, Addison makes her way through the crowd to me.

“You came!” Her smile beams up at me, the short ass barely reaching my shoulders, and I pull her into an embrace.

“You asked. Of course I came.” She returns the hug and then pulls back.

“Yeah, but I fully expected you to bail at the last minute.” She giggles softly, the version of her I haven’t seen since she was a kid staring back at me. It warms me at the same time as it sends a pang of guilt straight to my heart. I hate that she didn’t expect anything but disappointment from me.

She looks a bit over her shoulder before continuing in a lower voice. “Really, though, I know how much all this bullshit makes you uncomfortable. I appreciate you coming, really.” She gives me her honest smile, and it feels a little like my frozen soul defrosts. Only a little.

I toss the mop of blonde hair she has down around her face and roll my eyes. “Alright, rascal. I know you’re dating a Greek, but you don’t have to get all fucking sappy on me.”

“Is that where Ads gets her potty mouth from?” Speak of the Greek.

“I don’t have a potty mouth, you’re just delicate. My gentle giant.” Addison swats at Noah’s chest, and the affection in which they stare at each other threatens to make my dinner escape. Whether it’s twisting from the sickening thought of these two in love, or the jealousy of the love and hope they seem to beam at each other. Hope for the future, for happy things that will, no doubt, now fall into their laps.

Hope. Love. Adoration. All very foreign. At least that’s how it feels now.

“Okay, I’ll leave you love birds to it, then. Happy Birthday, Karvelas.” I shake my thoughts, refusing to bring any of it to the surface as I nod at Noah. He returns it before I head toward the bar. A weird friendly-not-friend thing we have going on. Despite me being happy for Addison, I still think she can do better. Ava could, too.

“Hey, JJ! You came!” Casey sidles up next to me at the bar, pulling me from my thoughts.

“I was invited,” I give by way of greeting to the ray of sunshine, and she laughs softly to herself.

“I haven’t been to your neck of the woods in a while. I forgot how surly you were.” She says it, and like always, her words sting, but her tone is kind. I honestly don’t know how she manages that delicate balance.

“You too good for the boutique bookshops now, Case?”

“I could never be too good for the coffee you brew. That stuff is elite.” She all but moans. This woman has never understood her presence around the opposite sex. I’ll never forget the first time I escorted her, Rosie, and Addison to a bar when they all turned twenty-one. She wore a tiny piece of material people call a dress, twirled, and shook that perky ass around like it was nobody’s business. I stood there on the corner of the dance floor, essentially playing bodyguard, while she gave almost every guy in there a fucking stroke from lack of blood in their brains.

Myself included.

“You drinking?” I ask as I wave the bartender over.

She nods, and her smile grows, shining as bright as a million suns. “Yes! I’ll have a gin please!”

“G they destroy things. I learned a long time ago to bury those. I don’t want anything to do with them.

“Oh, please, don’t be. He was a child, I’m better off. Literally better at getting off–without him.” I turn my head slowly, unsure if I just heard her correctly. She skulls the rest of her drink and throws her hands in the air in a ‘ woo!’ before she turns back to me, conversation forgotten. “Want to go dance?” she asks in a husky voice that shouldn’t have any effect on me. Except, I’m a man, and she is a stunning woman, who’s apparently now single and talking about getting off.

It does affect me.

Sister’s best-friend.

Sister’s. Best. Friend.

I silently chant the reminder as I mentally list poets and authors to reduce the swelling below the belt.

It doesn’t work. Instead, I fixate. Connor really couldn’t get her off? Surely, I didn’t hear that right. Was he blindfolded, with tape over his mouth and hands tied behind his back? Literally so many ways to do it, and he just couldn’t? What a fucking child.

I realize she is beaming up at me and waiting for an answer, and I shake my head at her.

“No. I don’t dance.” She scoffs and rolls her eyes.

“Boring! Fine, I will dance by myself.”

She drags herself from the chair, and spins toward the dance floor, practically skipping as she goes.

I can’t tear my eyes from her. She practically glows from where she spins and dances on the dance floor, the tiny spot of sunlight in the darkest room.

“Hey, man,” Noah greets as he makes himself at home at my table. I nod at him in greeting and sip my drink. “Thanks for coming. And for just making an effort in general. It means a lot.” I side-eye him cautiously because that was a lot of thank-you’s for simply turning up at a party.

“Uhh… you’re welcome?”

“I’m serious. And I don’t just mean me.” He holds up a hand. I normally am not one to trust this level of kindness, but the look in his eyes tells me he is sincere. “I mean for Addy. You trying, being around and filling in the big-brother shoes again, makes her happy. She missed you, and it’s nice to see her get excited. Any day that she smiles and is happy is a win.”

“Alright, man.” I roll my eyes. “I told you I liked you. You don’t need to suck up with all this sappy bullshit.” He chuckles and we sip our drinks in silence. Uncomfortable emotions I can’t work out sit like prickly canvas on my skin, that rolling my shoulders and kinking my neck hasn’t fixed.

“I know she is your sister, and you don’t want to hear about it, but she’s everything to me. You’ll find your reason one day, too.” He sighs, all poetic and shit.

“Reason for what?” I ask the question, looking over to him. He seems like he looks off at a distance before he makes eye contact with me, and I can’t help but be envious of the adoration I see in them. Happy about it in any event because he seems to make my sister happier than I’ve ever seen her.

“All of it,” he throws a hand around the room, “A reason for everything.”

“Do I need a reason?”

“I was trying to be poetic. I mean a girl. You’ll find a girl, and you’ll fall in love and all that.” He rolls his eyes at me and I have to scoff. I don’t dignify his stupidity with a response. Instead, we settle back into the silence, leaning on the table and sipping our respective drinks, when my eyes find their way back to the girls on the dance floor.

Mulling over Noah’s words, I don’t know that a girl and falling in love are in the cards for me, not sure that I even want to consider being open to it again. But I can’t seem to take my eyes off Casey and wishing I could feel some of that . That brightness she has leaking from her. It must be nice to feel so warm all the time. The three of them dance, free and loose, like not a thing in the world matters other than that dance floor.