Chapter 28
twenty-eight
I remembered her vaguely from before. It looked like I wasn’t the only one getting back in touch with past significant others, was I?
But now she was here. In his space. With him.
As she should be. I mean, I didn’t have any right to him. I’d told him we couldn’t be anything, and now I …
A sharp, slow ache built behind my ribs, something vulnerable cracking inside of me. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected when I walked toward him. Resolution? Reassurance? Another near kiss we’d pretend never happened?
He glanced up, mid-laugh, catching my gaze. His smile faltered—not disappeared, just softened. Like he didn’t know whether to hold on to it or let it go.
“Hey,” he said, voice quiet despite the laughter around him. His eyes held mine with that frustrating depth that always made it feel like he could read me too easily.
The girl next to him looked between us, a small, polite smile forming as she stepped half a breath away, her hand sliding from his arm. “I’m going to grab another drink,” she murmured, her voice kind and casual, but tinged with curiosity.
His focus was still entirely on me.
I took a step forward, still unsure what I was even doing, and offered a thin smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he echoed, his tone gentle now, edged with something quieter. A hesitation. “You okay?”
I nodded quickly. Too quickly. “Yeah. I just needed to see you for a second.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly, and something flickered in his expression—hope maybe or surprise. “You found me.”
“Yeah.” My voice almost broke. “I found you.”
And for a moment, we stood there, the air between us heavy. The girl hadn’t gone far. She was just behind the punch table now, glancing over occasionally, and Mrs. Hutton, standing in the archway near the hallway, sipped her wine, but didn’t look away.
I realized, all too suddenly, she was watching. Not just me. Us. Watching Josh. Watching me. Watching something.
Maybe she knew. Maybe she’d known all along.
Josh tilted his head, the noise of the party dimming around us.
“Do you want to talk?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Yeah. I really do.”
He took a slow step toward me, his fingers brushing mine in that quiet, unspoken way he always had—like he was asking permission without saying a word. And despite everything—his friend, the noise, the fear—I didn’t pull away.
Not this time.
“Let’s go talk,” he said.
I nodded.
He took me down the hall toward his childhood bedroom.
Growing up, I’d felt like it was a do not enter zone, both because of the fact that it was an extra turn down the hallway from the bathroom and also because of the sign he used to have posted there when he was in middle and high school.
Now it was gone, and he led me right inside.
He shut the door behind us, the volume from downstairs decreasing dramatically.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
He stared at me. “ ’Cause you don’t look okay, Brielle. And honestly, you are driving me crazy here.”
“I’m driving you crazy?”
“Yes.”
At least we were in the same zone.
“It was stupid,” I told him, waving my hand around as if I could swat this entire problem away. Wow, I should’ve never come back to this town. So many things were meant to stay here, and I was dredging them all up. “I was stupid to even think that …”
“To think what?”
“That you …” Why was I struggling to say this?
He was leaving, and it would be just like it had been before he showed back up in my life and decided to become roommates with me and Gina. So, what did it matter?
“That we …”
Slowly, he nodded. Sighed. Sat down on the edge of his bed. The frame creaked.
He clapped his hands together. “You’re ready now?”
“Ready?” I asked. Though it wasn’t really a question.
Still, he answered, “Let’s talk.”
“We have.”
“Really talk this time because, obviously, what we’ve been doing isn’t working.”
“It definitely isn’t.”
“I love you.”
“Josh,” I whined.
“What?”
“You were just downstairs with that girl.”
“Kate?” He raised his eyebrows. “We were just chatting. My mom invited her and her family over. She’s getting married next fall.”
“Oh,” I said softly, leaning from one foot to the other. What was it about Josh recently that made me feel like I was acting like a crazy teenager again? “I didn’t …”
“Wait. Brielle, were you jealous?”
“No. I was just …”
His lip curled up. “You were jealous. You didn’t realize it was Kate, and you thought—”
“You said you were already getting over me last night and—”
“You were jealous.”
I didn’t respond. I was jealous.
He shook his head. “Good.”
“What?”
“Good. You’re jealous. Fantastic.”
“How’s that good? From what I understand, jealousy isn’t the best characteristic of a person.”
He shrugged. “I don’t care because for the past few days, that is all I’ve been thinking about.”
“That I’m a newly jealous person?”
“How you were going to go off and meet someone else during your dates. Someone simpler. Easier for you and probably even smarter. And I was going to have to watch it happen,” said Josh.
“I probably still am. But what you’re feeling right now is probably an ounce of what I have been dealing with while I tried to give you space to figure out how you’d play this. ”
I swallowed as my throat seemed to close. I took a deep breath, trying to calm down my heart that really needed to chill out.
It was now or never.
I took a step forward, close enough that only a few inches separated us and the edge of the bed where he sat. The room felt impossibly small, filled with everything I hadn’t said and everything I was suddenly ready to.
“I want you so badly that I feel like I’m going insane, Josh,” I said, my voice raw with honesty. “You’re always there. Everywhere. In my thoughts when I wake up. In my writing. I hear your voice in the back of my head asking, ‘Why don’t you write anything fun anymore?’ Like you always used to.”
He looked up at me, his eyes softening.
“And I’ve been trying,” I went on, breath catching slightly, “even when it feels like the whole world is yelling screw you to anyone who isn’t a doctor or a teacher or some perfectly polished adult with a benefits package and dental insurance.
I’ve applied to a hundred terrifyingly boring desk jobs just so I don’t drown. ”
“I know you have,” he said gently. “Your newsletter is amazing, Brielle. It’s funny and weirdly emotional, and it feels like … you.”
My heart stuttered. “You’ve read it?”
He gave a half smile. “I’m subscribed.”
Somehow, that simple admission made my chest twist tighter. I pressed my lips together to hold back whatever wanted to pour out next—tears maybe. Gratitude.
Josh shifted slightly, the air between us thick with all the things we hadn’t said until now. Then he asked quietly, “What about Brenden?”
I shook my head. “My story with Brenden ended a long time ago,” I said, and it felt true. Firm. “And honestly? That’s where it was supposed to end. He’s a good guy. But it was high school. It never became anything more than that.”
Something flickered across his expression. “Despite my sister’s well-meaning schemes.”
“Always so many well-meaning and chaotic intentions,” I said with a faint smile, though my voice wavered.
“I’m just …” I exhaled hard. “I’m scared of losing her. Of ruining the one constant person I’ve had. If things go bad between us—if this ends badly—what if everything else falls apart too?”
Josh stood slowly, closing the last of the distance between us. His hands came up to cradle my face, warm and steady, his thumbs brushing softly along my cheeks. “Hey, hey. Don’t cry.”
“I don’t cry,” I whispered, but my voice cracked. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.” His eyes were searching mine now, serious and open. “It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to feel this. But I don’t want to be the reason you’re hurting.”
“You’re not,” I said quickly. “It’s me. It’s all this inside me. I’m making it complicated because, in my head, it is complicated. Wanting something so badly when you’re terrified of everything else falling apart? That’s a special kind of hell.”
“You’re not going to lose everything, Brielle.”
“How can you know that?” My voice came out sharper than I’d intended, my heart suddenly exposed like a nerve. “I’ve already lost so much.”
He stilled, something changing in his expression. It was as if he finally saw the full scope of what I’d been carrying all these years.
“I tried—I tried—to build a life that had meaning anyway. I worked hard. I pushed through.”
Josh didn’t speak. He didn’t interrupt. He just stood there, his hands on my face, holding me like I might shatter if he let go.
“I found Gina in school. She was loud and beautiful and didn’t mind how quiet I was.
I clung to her like a lifeline, and she never once made me feel like I was too much or too little.
She let me stay here. She and her parents let me stay in this house, in this space, when I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
When home wasn’t really home anymore. And this place …
this house became something safe. Something warm.
It was good with Gina.” I swallowed hard. “And it was good with you.”
Josh’s thumbs stilled on my cheeks.
“I hear you,” he said at last, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I won’t pretend I know what that’s like.
I don’t. I grew up in a stable house, with two parents who came to every school concert and every spelling bee.
I went to college, made a safe choice, then left it all when I realized being happy mattered more than being practical.
But you?” He paused, shaking his head like he couldn’t quite believe I was standing in front of him.
“You made something out of nothing. You built yourself from scraps and still turned into someone beautiful and strong and wildly good.”
My eyes welled with tears again.
“That’s what I love about you, Brielle,” he said, his voice catching. “Not perfection. Not the strength even. But the way you keep going when it would be so easy to stop. You still want. You still hope.”
I let out a shaky breath.
“That’s what I love about you.”