Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hazel
The look in Reid’s eyes last night as he let himself out of my apartment haunted me. But in typical avoidant fashion, I’d thrown myself into rendering the last parts of the commission instead of facing the truth of what he’d said. I’d finally finished attaching the files to an email at 3 am before I’d hidden under my covers and eventually fallen asleep.
I’d survived on only a few hours of sleep before, but I’d never felt quite as weary doing it as I did today. I should have been excited that I was going to meet Seven in a matter of hours, but I wasn’t.
My nerves and anxiety had nothing to do with the anonymous man who I had thought I had a connection with. It had everything to do with the man who had walked away from me last night when I’d hidden behind my insecurities instead of telling him I felt the same as he did.
“What is going on with you today?” Charley asked, straddling the barstool next to where I was tying bows onto the heart-shaped ornaments she’d planned to string from the copper ceiling tiles overhead.
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, that avoidance thing may get your brother to stop asking questions, but you know I’m not gonna fall for that shit,” she laughed, carefully prying the thin pink ribbon from between my fingers and pushing what I’d been using to distract myself out of reach.
“It’s…everything’s fine. I’ll be fine.” And maybe if I repeated it en ough, it’d come true.
“And now I know you’re full of shit.” Which was why she held the title of best friend. Charley had always been able to tell when something was bothering me, and until now, I hadn’t minded her need to fix those things. But she couldn’t fix this. The only person who could change the situation was me. And the more I thought of tracking down Reid and telling him how I felt, the more panicked my mind became.
“I think I love him.”
Glancing to the side, my best friend was the poster child for the phrase gob smacked, her mouth dropped open and her eyes wide as she stared at me.
“What?” she finally asked, regaining her ability to speak. “What the hell happened in the last forty-eight hours? I thought you were going to see how things went tonight before you decided what to do. You mentioned nothing about being in love with one of them.”
“Reid. Reid happened. I think I’m in love with him, but I didn’t realize that’s what I was feeling until it was too late. And now he hates me, and I’m going to die alone.”
The more I let myself acknowledge the truth, the stronger the feelings I’d been denying felt. While I hadn’t been sure they were real last night—and not caused by the endorphin rush of what’d transpired—in the stark, dreary light of day, my doubts had lifted. But the damage was done. And the fatalistic part of my brain had decided that it was now literally the end of the world.
I knew it was anxiety, and I should just talk to him, but I was also terrified of what would come out of my mouth if I did. And every single scenario my fucked-up subconscious conjured up was worse than the last. My vivid imagination had done more damage to me this morning than Reid ever had. And then my thoughts drifted to having to show him this side of me, and the panic started all over again.
“Wow, you’re fucked. Aren’t you?” Charley’s amused laughter that normally made me feel better only reminded me how terrible I felt. “Although that might be funnier because you’re fucked without having ever been fucked. ”
Waiting until her amusement had run its course, I picked at a loose thread on the side of my jeans.
“I’m not kidding,” I whispered as I tried to fight off the urge to cry. “Things got a little heated last night, and I got scared…and then he left. And now I don’t know how to fix it.”
What if, after he left last night, he changed his mind?
What if, when I saw him next, he pretended nothing had changed between us in the last two weeks?
What if he decided that my hesitations because of another man were something he couldn’t overlook?
What if…
“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” she muttered, her hands balling into fists in her lap.
Shaking my head, I let the tears that’d been pooling in my eyes fall.
Charley’s hands framed my face, urging me to look up as she rubbed her thumbs beneath my eyes. “Did he try to take things too far last night?”
“No, he’s never done anything without making sure I was okay with it first.”
She let out a relieved breath. “Then why are you so sad right now?”
My chin quivered as I shook my head, my throat too tight to answer with words.
“I thought you were staying away from him until after tonight.” Charley patiently waited for me to calm the fuck down, and I hoped my friend would help me figure out how to do what Reid had asked of me. He’d been so sure I was brave, and I’d told him I wasn’t with him. But I wanted to be.
“I was having trouble with a drawing, but I didn’t want to ask him to help me with it because he’d have to…” I trailed off abruptly, trying to figure out how to tell her what happened without revealing details I didn’t want her to know. I’d accidentally overheard way too many whispered conversations to know she was into unconventional playtime with my brother that had something to do with UNO cards and probably wouldn’t judge me. But I didn’t blush on command for no reason.
“And Reid’s pierced package is now a part of your peen pics?”
“That was a lot of alliteration.” And I frowned as I ran what she said back through my head. “And how do you know about his…?”
“Accessorized dick?” she asked when I didn’t finish my thought. “Pretty sure anyone with ears in this building knows about that. His lady friends talk.”
Of course they did. As if that wasn’t hard enough. Now, if he suddenly started dating someone for real instead of continuing his string of meaningless hook ups, how many whispered comments was I going to deal with about his past?
“Don’t change the subject. You may try to hide behind that adorably innocent looking face and a thin veil of sarcasm, but I know exactly what you’ve been working on for the last few months. You forget I know what your Instagram handle is, and while you tried to be sneaky and leave it off your website, I found that secret subscription service you started as a little side gig.”
It was my turn to be gob smacked as my best friend yet again laughed at my expense, but it’d done the job of stopping my panic spiral in its tracks.
“Huds doesn’t know about that, does he?”
“Fuck no. And I’m sure as hell not going to tell him. He thinks you shoot sparkly rainbows out of your ass and will be a virgin forever. I am not going to be the one who tells him that his angelic baby sister draws penises like a pro and has been giving sneaky through the clothes blow jobs to his best friend in the middle of the night in the apartment above the bar he owns.”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
“Ya think? Your brother is laid back about a lot of things, but overprotective when it comes to you might be an understatement. There are some things he doesn’t need to know.” When my eyes widened, she placed a hand on my forearm. “I meant he didn’t need to know that you draw dicks for money, not that he shouldn’t know you’re in love with his best friend. But that is all you. ”
“It’s tasteful bookish dick art , not just gratuitous dick illustrations. You sure you don’t want to tell him about Reid?” I asked, knowing she was going to laugh at my expense yet again.
“Nope. I’m good.” The door behind me closed, and judging by the secret smile Charley aimed over my shoulder, it seemed like my brother might find out sooner rather than later.
My hands began to sweat as I waited for him to join us, and I averted my eyes when he placed a tender kiss on her cheek, running his hand down her arm. “Hey there, little devil. You’re not encouraging my sister to do bad things tonight, are you?”
“Not exactly,” Charley laughed, standing up and grabbing my much taller brother by the shoulders and forcing him to sit on the stool she’d just occupied. “She’s being naughty all on her own.”
He cringed, eyes darting between the two of us. “Not sure I need to know that.”
“Haz.” Charley stood behind my brother, not so subtly nodding my head in his direction. “Now might be a great time to talk to your brother about that project you were telling me about.”
Eyes wide, I mouthed, you’re dead, but she just laughed and escaped into the kitchen, likely to eavesdrop while she pretended to give us privacy.
“You finally going to tell me about that secret project you’ve been working on for the last few months?” Hudson looked amused, but I knew he wouldn’t pry if I stuttered my way through an excuse to run away and hide upstairs until the embarrassment wore off, which would likely be never.
“Not exactly.”
He nodded, propping his boot on the bottom rung of my barstool, and tapping his foot while he waited for me to speak. “You know both of us could get on with our days if you just tell me. Because you know Char won’t let us leave until we talk.”
“So, obviously you know that I’ve been working on some artwork on the side while I’ve been taking classes.”
He nodded, smiling as his eyes filled with mirth .
“Well, I’ve been taking private commissions to illustrate some scenes from books.” He never needed to know what types of books they were from, and my meddling best friend had better keep that information to herself.
“Sounds pretty cool. I’ve noticed you buried in your tablet a lot down here. So, what’s up? Do you need to cut back on your hours or something?”
“No, not exactly… I kind of wanted to talk to you about something else.”
“Okay. We going to do this the Hazel way, or are you just going to tell me?”
My entire family knew that I was completely incapable of talking to them without laying out all the extraneous details I thought they needed to know ahead of time before I just awkwardly spit out the point, but maybe now was the time to just get on with it and fill in the details later. Not that my brother ever needed to know all the details when it came to what had happened in the last few weeks.
Charley’s head popped up over the counter in the expo window and she mimed me taking in a deep breath, followed by the two words Reid had used last night: Be Brave.
“I think I might, sort of, maybe…beinlovewithReid.”
My best friend’s hand covered her mouth as her shoulders shook with laughter, but my brother didn’t seem to find the situation quite as comical.
“Say what now? You’re in love with who?”
“Um…well, you see… I…”
Hudson’s hands balled into fists, and his eyes suddenly flashed with something that I rarely saw from him, a bit of disappointment mixed with anger. “Did he touch you?”
“Huh?”
Hudson’s jaw clenched, and he shook his head once before refocusing his gaze on me. “What exactly is going on here? Did Reid come on to you or something? Where is this coming from? You’ve barely talked to him in years and suddenly you’re in love with him? ”
“It’s not suddenly. I’ve had feelings for Reid for a long time, it was just in the last few weeks that…”
“That he decided he needed to fuck my baby sister?” he yelled, and I flinched, hating that was his response. Hudson loved Reid, and if anything, while he had come on strong about insisting on helping me with my commissions, I was just as much of a willing participant in what had happened between us.
“First of all, no one has fucked your baby sister.” Hudson flinched, but I didn’t stop, suddenly angry that he was just assuming that Reid was the bad guy. “Second, he’s your best fucking friend. Do you honestly think he would do anything if he wasn’t serious about his feelings for me?”
“But he doesn’t take anything seriously, and he’s never had a serious relationship in his life. Do you really want to be the person he tries out monogamy on? You think it’s gonna last?”
He wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t thought in the last week, but Reid had also shown me multiple times that he was patient enough to wait for me to be ready for him—even though I’d repeatedly pushed him away. My relationships hadn’t exactly been serious until this point, either, so it wasn’t like we were on an uneven footing.
“I don’t know if it’s going to last, just like you don’t know if what you have with Charley is going to last.”
“But at least I—”
“No, there isn’t anything you can say right now to dismiss that you never know if any relationship is going to work out. Just because a relationship lasts a long time doesn’t mean it’s a good one. Can you honestly say that your relationship with Viv was more important than the one you have with my best friend—who fucking adores you—”
“Stop cursing, Haz,” Hudson muttered, but I growled at him and a surprise laugh echoed from the kitchen.
“No. I won’t quit fucking cursing. Because you’re going to fucking listen to me. I may have been afraid to say something—hell, I was afraid to admit it to myself to begin with—but I love your best friend, and he has done nothing to show me he doesn’t deserve it, so I’m going to get through this stupid reveal tonight, let down the guy who would probably be the safe option, and then I’m going to find your best friend and I’m going to tell him he is worth being brave for.”
Hudson’s expression had shifted from anger to something else, understanding maybe, I wasn’t sure, but whatever it was had him nodding a moment later and reaching forward to hug me. “He’s never going to deserve you, Haz. But I really want him to prove me wrong.”
“Me too,” I whispered, squeezing him tighter before I broke from his hold. “And you will not be an asshole about it.”
“I make no promises,” he laughed, leaning back into Charley as she snuck up behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
“Don’t worry, Haz. I’ll keep this one in line.” He tried to look grumpy about it, but when she kissed him on the cheek, a smile broke loose. He was a total softie even when he pretended he wasn’t. “You sure you want to wait until tonight to talk to Reid?”
“Yeah, I should probably tell Seven in person.”
She bit her lip, then leaned forward to whisper something in Hudson’s ear. He got up from the stool and she sat back down, reaching forward to grasp both of my hands once he was gone. “You know I love you, right?”
“What did you do?”
“It’s not my place to tell you, and honestly I don’t know the entire story, but maybe go into tonight with an open mind.”
“Not your place to tell me what?”
She shook her head, but I couldn’t prod her for more answers because a shouted curse from the kitchen drew our attention.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!?"
Then asking her was off the table when Hudson started swearing up a storm that the compressor in the freezer had seized and everything had thawed overnight .
The afternoon was spent in a flurry of activity as we tried to salvage what we could from the freezer, and I got to work hanging the decorations for the party while the two of them scoured every store in town for replacements since we couldn’t exactly open the bar on a holiday without things to feed people. And if we tried to close the kitchen for the night, we wouldn’t be able to serve alcohol because it violated the liquor license if we didn’t serve food after 8 pm.
But as we tried to avert the logistical crisis threatening to close down the bar, a lingering sense of unease grew within me. Because I had a feeling everything was about to change.
And I was afraid it wouldn't be for the better.