Chapter 4
This is Where I Leave Me
It’s been one week since Jared told me he thinks he might be gay. I told him I needed space to think, and I still haven’t had the courage to tell anyone what’s going on. Instead, I’ve been quietly unraveling inside my apartment, which now looks like a time capsule exploded. Open books are splayed on the coffee table as if they fainted mid-read. A sweater I meant to return three months ago has found its forever home draped over the back of a chair. Magazine piles are so high they give me hoarder cred. My three dead work succulents are now cozied up next to my houseplants—two Pothos and a Ficus named Tim—all of them in various stages of passive-aggressive death.
Two dozen moving boxes sit around the apartment, waiting to be filled.
Outside, a siren wails, rising and falling as it tries to weave through bumper-to-bumper traffic. Somewhere nearby, someone screams at their dog, or their partner, or the void. I’ve stopped trying to tell the difference.
This apartment was not supposed to be permanent. It’s a one-bedroom with slanted hardwood floors, questionable plumbing, and a window that frames just enough of a maple tree to trick me into thinking I live somewhere beautiful. But it’s mine, and it’s a living vessel that holds my wall of photos of Mom and Dad and Jared and his family, my secondhand Turkish rug, which costs more to clean than it did to buy, and my mismatched collection of mugs with quirky feminist quotes.
This is the apartment I lucked into a year after college, after a decade of bouncing through foster homes and Craigslist chaos. It’s the first place I ever chose for myself, and it felt like it belonged to just me. It’s the place I got brave enough to try color therapy and painted an entire wall teal. I hated it and painted it back to a soft cream two weeks later, but the point was I could paint a wall. It’s the place I returned to after every deadline. Every celebration. Every heartbreak.
Now, I have to give it up like a pair of shoes that no longer fit but still look good with everything.
Through the condensation on my windows, I can make out the outline of the maple tree outside. Its bare branches tap against the glass, like they’re trying to get my attention, to tell me my apartment will not pack itself.
So, I order takeout.
Outside the restaurant, someone’s yelling about garbage bins as I wait for Raj to bring me my chicken tikka masala. I munch on the complimentary naan and mint chutney he left me, pausing mid-chew when I hear a laugh.
My head jerks up, heart thudding before I even see him.
It’s Jared.
Not in our booth, but at a table near the back.
Across from him is a man. Tall. Blonde. Crewneck sweater. He’s said something that makes Jared laugh, that crinkles his eyes, bright enough that a couple at the next table turns to look.
My body moves before my brain does. I twist on the barstool, turning toward the window, pretending to study the street. Too late. Jared’s eyes find mine.
Recognition flashes across his face.
He starts to rise.
His chair scrapes loudly against the tile.
Raj appears beside me, too cheerful, too loud. “Extra rice, just how you like it!”
I grab the takeout bag—my escape parachute—and turn to flee, but Jared is already there.
“Ava—”
“Don’t. I can’t.”
The words come out sharper than I intend. People glance up. The blonde man half-stands, uncertain.
Jared freezes.
For a split second, it’s just us.
Then someone behind me is asking about samosas and utensils, and the door is right there.
I push through it.
Outside, I clutch the warm to-go bag to my chest and walk as fast as I can, then the walk tips into a jog, as if I’m late to something urgent. Maybe my own emotional breakdown.
My phone buzzes in my pocket with calls from Jared. The vibrations feel like dozens of tiny, panicked heartbeats.
My sneakers slap the pavement like awkward applause for every awful choice I’ve made this week. A few tears fall just as the sky opens up, rain hitting hard and cold, and pedestrians glance away, afraid my heartbreak is contagious.
On the bright side, this is the most cardio I’ve done in years. Maybe the endorphins will cure the heartbreak. Maybe I’ll lose those last stubborn ten pounds.
I glance down as the toe of my shoe catches on something. Broken sidewalk cement? Exposed tree root? Karma? Doesn’t matter; it leads to the same thing. I stumble forward, flailing my arms with wind-up duck energy, straight into a man wearing a peacoat.
The impact launches my takeout container against his chest just as his hands catch me, keeping me from face-planting on the sidewalk. The vibrant red-orange sauce explodes across him.
“Oh my God,” I gasp. “I just Jackson Pollocked your coat.”
I glance up to see the face of my victim and good Samaritan, and immediately wish I hadn’t.
Of all the people in a city of eight million, with my heart broken, makeup and now sweat dripping down my face, the universe doesn’t just kick me when I’m down, it invites my emotionally constipated, almost-brother-in-law to spectate.
“Ava.” His voice is robotic, as usual.
My mouth opens, then closes like I’m buffering.
He frowns at the red stain on his chest, then glances back up at me.
“Is there a reason you’re attacking me with condiments again?” he asks.
“Not a condiment,” I say automatically. “It’s chicken tikka masala. The best in the city. And it was an accident. Obviously.”
I brace for a signature Gavin Eye Glare, but his expression shifts just slightly.
“You’re crying.”
I wipe my face with the back of my sleeve. Useless. I try my hardest to keep the tears in. My face twists in a mess of emotion—part grief, part hormonal chaos, part mid-level facial gymnastics. Gavin actually winces.
“You’re shaking,” he says, stepping closer, his hand reaching out to my shoulder, but he stops it a few inches away, and it hovers in the air awkwardly. Now he’s buffering.
“I’m not shak—” But I am. My body is trembling from the cold and the adrenaline, and maybe the overwhelming sense of doom.
“You need to get out of this rain,” he says, his tone leaving little room for argument.
“Not necessary. I’ll be fine. My apartment is right here.”
A rumble of thunder and a shock of lightning break the sky in two, and the rain becomes a thunderous downpour.
“Right,” he mutters, already reaching past me to hold open my door.
Inside, I shiver as he helps me peel off my coat, then he shrugs off his soaked peacoat and hangs them both on the hooks by the door.
“I have some dry clothes,” I say, nodding toward my bedroom. “Check the right side of the closet. Jared’s stuff.”
Gavin hesitates at the doorway, as if stepping into my bedroom will activate a booby trap.
I turn up the heat, then glance back, just in time to see him pulling his shirt over his head.
Oh.
He’s shirtless, rummaging through my closet as if it’s a tactical mission. He’s not just Jared’s older brother anymore. He’s a half-naked man in my bedroom. A tattoo curls from his ribs to his back—a line of script in some elegant, unfamiliar language. Hebrew? Arabic? I want to ask. I don’t, but I do remind myself that I absolutely, definitively have never been attracted to Gavin.
I see him wince at the pile of clothes that has imploded on my bed.
“If I don’t show up at your parents’ anniversary party, it’s because I couldn’t find anything to wear,” I call out.
When he returns in one of Jared’s hoodies, I ask, “Why are you here?”
“I was in the neighborhood. Jared asked me to check on you. He was worried.”
That’s when the dam breaks. Not a cute, cinematic single tear. No. This is snot-dripping, shoulder-heaving, hyperventilating sobbing.
He blinks, alarmed, and looks wildly uncomfortable, like he just stepped into a puddle of feelings and isn’t wearing boots.
Gavin is not one for public displays of affection. Back when Jared and I were together, he used to vanish from the room whenever we so much as held hands.
So, when he pulls a literal handkerchief—white, monogrammed, absurdly soft—from his pocket and hands it to me, I blink at it like I might have just ugly-cried my way into a Regency novel.
“Who even has handkerchiefs anymore?” I manage between gasps, collapsing at the table. “Are you secretly eighty?”
He shrugs. “They’re practical.”
He moves toward the kitchen. Opens cabinets without asking. Finds my teapot. Fills it. Boils water.
He sets down two mugs. No words. Just tea and his presence. And for now, that’s enough.
I don’t owe Gavin an explanation. But he is Jared’s brother.
I search my purse for the napkin. Even now, I am irritated that my purse is always such a freaking mess. Jared used to joke that he needed a HAZMAT crew to find my keys. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Gavin watching me, confused, concerned, as though he’s observing some strange animal burrowing into his perfectly organized life.
The napkin is ink-smeared, as if I carried it across a wet battlefield. A message that would have to get to the other side, where it would make more sense. Maybe it will be my map back to understanding the order of things. I push it across the table toward Gavin.
He studies it, then glances up at me with his grey-green eyes. I never noticed how similar they are to Jared’s. He furrows his brow, glances back down at the napkin, and then back up at me.
“Wait. Are you coming out?” he asks, looking confused.
“What?”
“Are you trying to tell me that you’re gay?” He pushes the napkin back at me.
Now I see the problem. The word ‘ME’ is between ‘bi’ and ‘gay’.
“No. It’s Jared’s. He wrote that. He told me a week ago.”
A lump rises in my throat. Saying it out loud still hurts.
He stares at the napkin again. Then at me.
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t reach out. But something in his expression softens. Like he just remembered I’m a person, not a problem.
“I see.”
“You don’t look surprised,” I say.
“Maybe he’ll change his mind. Remember when he quit anthropology to study photography?”
“Are you equating being gay with switching majors in college?” I’m being slightly mean, and I should stop, but …
He rubs the back of his neck—the same tell his brother has when he’s stressed. “Forget I said that.”
I stare at him for a long beat. He’s trying. Failing a little. But trying.
And somehow, that’s worse.
I take a sip of the tea. It scalds my tongue, but I welcome the sting. I’m not crying now, just watching Gavin across from me. He looks like he’s trying to solve an equation where no one gets hurt.
Spoiler alert: Everyone gets hurt.