Chapter 31
thirty-one
“Oh my God. What am I looking at?” The same voice said the three words again before I managed to respond to it.
Or think about responding to it.
Josh was already striding forward to block me. “Gina.”
“No.” She put out a hand toward him, turning her face away from the two of us. “I don’t even … no. You’re not serious. You two—here—now—during the Christmas party? You’re not even dressed, so I don’t want to look at you right now. Fix that.”
I swore her eye twitched.
“Oh my God,” she repeated. “You’re sleeping with my brother?”
Josh raised his hand sheepishly. “Technically … we just finished.”
“Joshua!”
He winced both from the pitch of his sister’s voice and the way I swatted him. “Sorry. That felt funnier in my head.”
I stepped forward, reaching for Gina’s arm. “Gina, I’m so sorry. We were going to tell you. It just … happened.”
“Clearly.” Her eyes narrowed again.
Blinking, she shook her head, already turning away.
“Gina!” I called after her, but she was already moving.
Finally, near her room, she stopped.
“Sorry, I just … I need some literal space between whatever—well, not whatever was happening in there. I’m pretty sure I know what was happening, and now I’m very grateful that one of our nosy neighbors distracted me for an extra five minutes about what exactly an art gallery museum person did so that I didn’t walk in on you two doing exactly what I know you were doing in there.
” She waved her hand back down toward the hallway.
I glanced back there, too, seeing the light still on for Josh, who was still probably trying to find his shirt.
“You two were …” Gina drifted off. She didn’t want to say it, but it was clear she needed to repeat it to herself a few times before it fully sank in.
So much for Josh and I waiting to tell everyone.
To tell Gina.
I tried to figure out how to fix this, but nothing was coming to mind. There was nothing to fix, and yet the way Gina’s face was screwed up as she worked through what was going on said otherwise.
“I’m—” Where did I begin? “I’m sorry I didn’t say something before, Gina.”
“He’s my brother, Bri.”
“I know.”
I imagined my face was flushed and lips swollen. So much so that she had to shut her eyes again.
She took a deep breath.
“I’m really sorry, Gina. I know I shouldn’t have, and I should’ve said something maybe sooner, but—”
“You really like him,” she said.
I didn’t answer, a little taken aback.
“For how long?”
“Not terribly long. Not exactly.” The words felt like an excuse, but I didn’t know how else to explain it.
She let out a slow breath, rubbing her temples like she was trying to piece it all together.
“I thought I’d noticed it, back at the apartment, but I dismissed it.
Thought I was just overthinking things, seeing things that weren’t there.
I thought you and Josh were finally being nice to each other, you know, like friends or something—maybe because you’d felt guilty or because I’d kept pushing you two to make amends. ”
I shook my head, trying to keep it together.
“It’s been going on the whole time?” she asked again, the confusion in her voice making it clear how out of place this all felt.
“Not the whole time.” I gave the simplest answer, hoping it would cut through the tension.
Her eyes flicked between me and the floor, her mind working through everything. “For how long have you been … have you been sleeping with him in the apartment?”
“No,” I said quickly, my eyes squeezing shut, as if the words themselves were too much. “No, we didn’t do anything there. Things just got complicated, and then … no. This was the first time.”
She was silent for a moment, just taking it in. Then she let out a breath, her face softening. “Really?”
I nodded, and for a second, it almost felt like I was giving her a confession. A small, quiet truth.
Her brow furrowed slightly. “But you liked him. You always have. And I could tell. When I walked in on you two the other day … your hair was …” She trailed off, her voice catching as the pieces started to fall into place.
I opened my eyes, finally looking at her. There was no way out of this anymore.
“Yes. Sort of. I mean, we were just kissing.” The last part felt awkward, like a lie, but it was the truth. Or at least, it was all I could give her right now.
But we had just kissed.
And touched.
And wanted to do a whole lot more if I was remembering my reaction correctly.
She seemed to deflate a little, but the uncertainty was still there. I couldn’t tell if it was anger or disappointment—maybe a mix of both. But it wasn’t the blowup I’d expected. She wasn’t yelling or berating me. She was just … processing.
Her eyes flickered away from mine for a moment, and then she sighed. “I feel like I missed something huge here, something that’s been going on this whole time.”
I waited for her to say something, for her to tell me more of what she was really thinking. Was she going to ask me to leave? To pack up and go home? Would she kick me out of the apartment, out of her life entirely? I stood there, waiting and waiting for the inevitable.
“You like my brother.”
“Yeah.”
“Like you really like him?”
I nodded. “I do.”
“You just had sex with my brother, wearing my sweater.”
To be fair, the sweater had come off, but I did cringe for her. “Sorry about that.”
She didn’t seem very concerned about it anymore as a new thought came to her. “And he likes you too,” she said. “He’s not just messing with you.”
I shook my head. “I mean, I hope not.”
“He carried you to your room whenever you fell asleep on the couch back at the apartment.”
“You saw that?” I asked. I hadn’t thought that she was home back then in the beginning when her work really started to amp up.
“Yeah. I did. The way he looks at you …” She sighed. “He used to look at you that way too. Years ago, when we were all in high school and even after he came back from college. He always asked about you and how you were doing. I’m really stupid, aren’t I?”
“No, Gina. Of course not.”
“Well, this sucks.”
“You’re mad?”
“Oh, I’m mad,” she said. “Mostly, I’m just mad you didn’t tell me. And because now I owe Mom twenty bucks.”
I choked. “Wait, what?”
“She said she’d give it till Christmas. I told her she was nuts.” Gina sighed, her voice taking on a more serious tone, “You know, I haven’t been there for you.”
“You have. You helped to set me up on all the dates.”
“Please, we both know that you wouldn’t have done that on your own unless you felt guilty enough to keep going.”
“You helped me get back out there and write actual decent words again, and it has felt really good. Readers even like it. More than I thought, honestly, which I still do not understand. Some of them are even paying to read it twice a week.”
“They are?” she asked with a gasp.
“Yeah,” I said.
“That’s amazing, Bri!”
“Thank you. But you helped me get to this point. Thank goodness or else I wouldn’t be able to pay rent next month.”
“So, you’ll still want to live with me?”
“What?”
“When you and my brother get together and live happily ever after, you’ll still want to live with me?
” she asked. “Because, for some ungodly reason, he chose now to come back, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to stick around, fixing projectors and other nonsense at a school that undervalues him for maybe the rest of his life. ”
She looked directly at me as she said the next part. “More than sure now.”
“Of course I’ll want to live with you.”
“Not forever, of course. But you know what I mean.”
“I mean, you are going to find a big millionaire art buyer and let him sweep you off your feet any day now.”
“You know I will,” she insisted, as if I was joking. “But I want to say this now, however late. Okay?” She bolstered herself. “You don’t have to hide anything from me. If you like him … … well, it’s okay.”
“You really aren’t mad?”
Taking a deep breath again, she shook her head. “Nope. I don’t ever want to hear anything about what goes down between you two though. Already, this was a bit much. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good,” she agreed. “Glad we are on the same page. You deserve to be happy. Even if it is with my brother. Kind of gross, but you’ve done everything for me, even now, when we are all over the place and I’m so busy.
I’m going to support you. But if something goes wrong and my brother messes this up with you, I—”
“Nothing will ever tear you and me apart.”
She let out a sigh that looked like she’d been holding on to it for a while. Relief.
“Good. Because you’re always my best friend, Bri. Whether or not he’s your soulmate or whatever, you’re mine.”