27. Chapter 27 #2
“It was implied. But thank you.” Aya smiled.
If she could forgive him for today, maybe things weren’t quite so unsalvageable.
Knock knock.
Baz shot upright, sending the crumbs on his chest flying to the floor. Sami? Would he come here to confront Baz about being stupid earlier? Would he take back that he didn’t want to see Baz again?
Aya beat him to jumping up. Baz shifted to his knees, twirling his wrists.
Even if Sami only came by to tell Baz it truly was over, to lose his number, he’d take it for the chance to apologize in person and tell him what their time together had meant—Eevee stormed inside with a face as though she had stepped on a cat’s tail. Her mouth grew pouty when she saw him.
“Hey, superstar.”
Baz grimaced. He didn’t deserve that title anymore.
“Aya told me what happened. I can’t believe they kicked you off the case.”
He could, now that he was thinking clearly again. It would have been shocking if Erika had allowed him to carry on besmirching the name of her firm after the allegations Ian had raised against him.
Besides, “Arguably the least terrible thing that happened today.”
Eevee sank onto the spot on the couch Aya had warmed while Aya disappeared into the kitchen. Baz threw himself into Eevee’s arms. Her familiar vanilla smell pushed more tears out of his leaking eyes.
“Oh, Baz!” Her fingers glided along his scalp. The same way he loved doing to Sami. A sob shook through him.
“It’s okay. I’m here,” she soothed. Baz wished he could believe her. “Tell me everything.”
That simple request opened the floodgates. What had happened at court, his fear of having fallen much deeper than Sami had, how he had chosen the worst possible moment to bring it up, the fallout, it all poured out of him.
He could feel the questions brimming under her skin, the judgment she’d never vocalize because she was a goddamn angel who was always there for Baz, and Baz had not once thanked her for that. Not recently. Not enough.
He wrapped his monologue up with an “I’m sorry” and wiped the trails of tears away. Embarrassing how much he was crying these days. He had never been a crier. That was Sami’s fault for knocking his walls down and leaving him without defenses.
“What for?”
“Everything. I’ve been nothing but a burden to you your entire adult life, and I couldn’t even make your sacrifices worth it.”
Eevee pulled away enough for Baz to see her frown. “What the hell are you talking about?” It was the harshest he had heard her voice in years. Great, now he’d managed to upset her too.
“Baz!” Eevee exclaimed and squeezed him tight, suffocating him with her love and probably not giving a damn about it. “That is so dumb.”
“Theme of the day,” Baz mumbled, freeing his face from her chest to breathe again.
“I love you. Joel loves you. You were never a burden to us.”
“I made your life a hell of a lot harder when you had enough going on already, and that is a fact.”
“Without you, I wouldn’t have a life at all anymore.”
“Don’t say that!” Life without Eevee was unfathomable. She had built it all herself with a courage and strength Baz could only dream of. That was her achievement and hers alone.
“It’s true! Don’t you remember all the nights I just wanted it all to end and you were there for me? You researched therapists and specialists, and you always supported me. You even stayed up all night before my surgery despite your huge exam the next day!”
“Of course I did. You would have done the same.” Offering a few rides and some encouraging words didn’t compare to the strain of taking guardianship over a teenager.
“Does that make it any less significant? You always believed in me and kept me going. You’re the best brother I could have asked for.”
“Eve…”
“I mean it, and I’m the big sister, so you have to listen to me.”
Well, if she played the sister card. Baz smiled through his sob. He buried his face in her shoulder, the same way he had done with Sami last Friday night. It seemed years ago.
“I love you too,” he whispered.
“Why do you only have bread?” Aya asked from the doorway to the kitchen. Eevee glared at her with her are-you-serious stare Baz was all too familiar with, though usually aimed at him or Joel when they were in trouble.
“Sami asked that too.” So amused by Baz’s ridiculous priorities: looking expensive, saving money to buy into a firm that was about to let him go…
“Aw.” Eevee stroked over his hair. Baz closed his eyes. “Maybe it’s not over yet?”
If only. “He told me it was.”
“He was distressed.”
“Which was also my fault.”
“If one mistake is a deal-breaker, he was never the one for you.”
That depended entirely on the size of that mistake.
There was only so much anyone could forgive.
The fury Ian had unleashed on him… Sami had seemed so small when he was everything but.
It was obvious he had drawn the short end of the stick of their deal, and now Baz had forfeited his right to help—if he ever had it in the first place.
“Maybe,” Baz muttered.
“It’s gonna be okay. I’ve been waiting for my chance to support you through heartbreak for nearly thirty years. We’ll get through this together.”
Baz huffed. What did Eevee know about heartbreaks? All she’d ever had was a fairytale romance.
“Really?” Aya asked and sat on the table. “He’s your first love? No wonder you acted like a hormonal teenager.”
“Yes,” Eevee said before he could. “He always refused every notion of romance. I remember our first Pride in the city. We lost each other. I was so worried about you. Joel and I were looking everywhere, and when I finally found you, you were making out with that old guy in that disgusting alley.”
The guy hadn’t been that old, and they had done much more than make out, but sure. “And you yelled at me.”
“Because I wanted better for you! But you told me right there and then you would never have a relationship, and I needed to accept that. I was so heartbroken to hear that from a seventeen-year-old kid.”
Seventeen-year-old him had been onto something.
“I was right. I can never live up to you and Joel.”
Eevee frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Like you don’t know. Things have always been easy between you two. You guys are the perfect match.”
“I mean, I like to think so, but that doesn’t mean we never have any issues. We fight too.”
Baz scoffed. “Yeah, I’ve seen how you fight.” Tense silence and angry hand holding to comfort each other through a disagreement hardly qualified as a fight in his books.
“No, you don’t, because we keep that away from you to not put you into an awkward position.
Joel and I are business partners and we live together.
Of course we’re gonna rub each other the wrong way sometimes.
That’s only human. But we love each other and we respect each other, and so we get through it. ”
Everything he knew about them was based on lies too? God, he was worse at reading people than he had thought.
He dragged a hand down his face. “Great. If even you guys have issues, what chance do the rest of us stand?”
“There’s no such thing as a conflict-free relationship, Baz. Honestly, I don’t think there should be. And just because it didn’t work out this time doesn’t mean it never will.”
Others might get a second chance at love. But not him. There’d never be another Sami.
“All right,” Aya said. “Enough sulking.”
A banjo played an upbeat melody over the quick beats of a kick drum—it took Baz three whole seconds to realize the music was coming from Aya’s phone, two more to clock she was dancing, and another five to understand that she was beckoning him to join.
Oh, hell no. He had sunk low enough.
“Come on. You gotta release the negative energy somehow,” she said.
Eevee jumped up too, making a point of wiggling her shoulders when the lead singer sang about it being time to move on. She grabbed his hands and dragged him to his feet, swaying back and forth offbeat.
He didn’t like country music—he was surprised Aya did—but he had to admit, this song was infectious. The rhythm tugged at Baz’s shoulders, made his leg twitch.
Aya and Eevee twirled each other around.
Aya mimicked Eevee waving her hands above her head, Eevee swung her hips to the beat, and if that was all that Baz had to show for at nearly thirty, two people who cared enough about him to make fools out of themselves to cheer him up, then maybe he hadn’t gone completely wrong in life.
It took another song until the ridiculousness of dancing after his life had fallen apart had truly sunken in, but then, Baz couldn’t help but laugh at himself.
After more mockery about the state of Baz’s cabinets, Aya ordered pizza, and Baz proposed marriage to her because she might be the only non-relative to ever put up with him.
She turned him down with a remark about how ‘a lavender marriage is so 50s’ and they laughed and in the midst of it all, it was easier to believe things would get okay again, somehow.
At least he wasn’t alone. That counted for a hell of a lot more than becoming untouchable—which was precisely what Sami had tried to tell him that morning on his balcony, wasn’t it?
God, he had seen through Baz’s bullshit so easily, and he had still stuck around, at least for a little while. Baz welcomed the sting in his heart like an old friend. Maybe… He tapped on his phone screen—Aya snatched it out of his hands and tossed it across the floor, far out of his reach.
“Don’t you dare. Stop torturing yourself.”
Fair enough.
He resisted the urge to collect it, though he couldn’t keep his eyes from wandering to its new resting place, waiting for the display to light up. Nothing happened.
Waiting was doing him no good.
They put the pizza box in the middle of the floor, sat around it like a bunch of college kids. The stringy cheese burned his tongue. He laughed as he watched Eevee frantically fan air at her mouth too.
Thud.
Baz’s eyes darted to the door, following the sound. Were those footsteps?