Chapter Forty
Ali walked through her house, relishing the progress she’d made with JT’s help. There were still boxes, but a lot fewer. The bookshelves in her office looked amazing, but something was off. She stood in the doorway and cast her eyes around the room, trying to put her finger on what the issue was.
The white bookcases filled with her collection of books looked great, but she kept snagging on something. Yes, she needed a desk and a chair and probably a couple of lamps to make the office a place she could do work, but that wasn’t the problem.
As she turned, scanning every inch of the room for what was bothering her, it dawned on her. She hated the walls. She hated the yellow. Once she realized it, the hatred came flooding in. She really fucking hated the color they’d chosen to paint the room.
She thought back to standing in the paint store with JT, lifting swatches off the wall, comparing them, and landing on this one. She hadn’t liked it in the store. She wasn’t a person who liked yellow. What had she been thinking?
She wanted something deeper, cooler, something bold.
Instead, she’d gotten the kind of bland color people chose for a gender-neutral nursery.
She leaned against the doorframe. It wasn’t even that JT had tried to convince her to choose the color.
She wanted to be mad at someone, but JT hadn’t done anything more than suggest she go with something neutral.
It wasn’t her fault that Ali was so set on not inconveniencing anyone, not rocking the boat by saying No, I don’t like that color, that she’d ended up spending hours painting the room a color she hated.
She looked around at everything she’d done with JT to put the room back together.
The bookcases were filled with books. They weren’t organized very well, but they were full.
If she was going to repaint the room, she would have to dismantle so many things.
She sat on the floor, her back against the wall as she estimated how long it would take her to do it.
She didn’t feel like she could ask JT to help.
JT had put together all the shelves, painted the walls and filled the shelves with what felt like a million books.
How on earth could Ali ask her to do it all again?
She would think Ali was flighty and indecisive.
Ali dropped her head back against the wall, allowing herself a moment to feel bad about all the work ahead of her.
If only she had said something earlier. JT didn’t care about the color.
She wasn’t invested in Ali having a yellow office.
Ali wouldn’t have hurt her feelings saying she didn’t like it.
But Ali had gone along with the choice because it was easy and she thought it would make JT happy, instead of thinking about what would make her happy.
What she wanted was a deep blue-green. She wanted that jewel-tone office she’d seen in a magazine.
She fucking knew what she wanted but she didn’t get it because she’d been too busy worrying about what other people might want or think.
This was how she’d ended up marrying Kyle.
She’d ignored the part of her that’d said she didn’t want to and gone along with what everyone else wanted and expected of her.
It wasn’t like she’d been tricked or trapped into marrying him—she simply hadn’t said No, this isn’t what I want when the time came.
And now, a decade later, in a house she bought all on her own, she’d done the same thing.
Granted, paint colors were much easier to change than marriages, but how had she not learned her lesson?
She thought back to that morning, to Kyle talking shit about how JT could never measure up to him and how her mom had pleaded with her to let Kyle win to preserve her chance to be with him again.
The anger returned. It burned in her chest. She was pissed at her mom but she was pissed at herself, too.
It shouldn’t have taken her so long to tell her mom, and Kyle, to fuck off.
She hoped she’d been clear enough that morning.
She hoped her mom finally understood that Ali didn’t want Kyle.
She didn’t want him or a chance that they might be together again in the future.
Her mom may have wanted something different because it had been so hard for her to be a single parent, and Ali could understand that.
But she didn’t want the safety and security her mom thought Kyle and his landscaping company represented. She didn’t want Kyle at all.
She wanted her own damn house and her own money and she wanted a room that didn’t look like a generic baby nursery. She wanted her home office to be hers, and if no one else on earth liked the color she chose, who cared? They weren’t the ones who were going to use it every day.
It was a daunting task. Undoing all the work she’d done to get the room painted and put together in the first place was a little scary.
But after telling off her mom that morning, she felt like maybe she could do this.
She wasn’t going to ask JT to help, though.
She wanted to surprise her with the result.
But she also didn’t really want to do it on her own and she wasn’t sure she could move the bookcases by herself without risking getting crushed by them in the process.
She took out her phone and dialed. “Hey baby brother. Can you meet me at my house in an hour or so? Wear shitty clothes. I need your help and it’s going to be messy.”
Tommy didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll grab a six-pack and be over in an hour. Let me know if you need me to grab anything else on the way.”
* * *
An hour later, Ali was standing in her office with a new gallon of paint courtesy of one of the gift cards she and JT had won that morning.
Might as well put it to use. The guy at the store had told her he liked the color, and she was annoyed with herself for how happy that had made her.
It didn’t matter what he thought because she liked the color.
But it also didn’t suck to have someone confirm she’d made a good choice.
She wasn’t as confident about Tommy. But when she showed him the color smear on the top of the can he surprised her.
“Oh, that looks amazing! Mom’s going to hate it, but it’s going to look so good in here with all the white bookcases.” He paused, understanding dawning on him. “Shit, that means we have to move them all out, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, so you are more than just a pretty face,” Ali said, cracking up.
Tommy scowled for a second before joining her. “How come you didn’t ask your girlfriend to help with this?”
Ali’s heart stuttered at the sound of the word girlfriend.
JT wasn’t her girlfriend. They weren’t even a couple or publicly acknowledging that they were more than friends.
Ali decided not to get into it. “Who do you think put all those together in the first place? And helped paint the room this god-awful yellow? I didn’t want to ask her to do it all over again.
I wanted to surprise her with it when it’s done. ”
Tommy nodded but his lips twitched at the corners.
“And she’s not my girlfriend.”
“There it is! I was waiting for you to object.”
Ali smacked his shoulder with her dry paintbrush. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re the one who called her a flake and told her to stay away from me.”
Tommy hung his head dramatically. “Not my finest moment.” He straightened up and looked at her. “I was wrong. I was trying to protect you, and honestly, she doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to long-term relationships—”
“This is the worst apology in the history of the world, Thomas.”
“I was wrong! I’m sorry. I was trying to look out for you, and I screwed up.
Ali, she’s my best friend for a reason. If I ever needed something I know she’d be there for me.
She would do anything she could to help me.
” He looked around the room. “I mean, she’s obviously shown up for you this week.
That’s who she is. She will go to the ends of the earth for the people she loves. ”
Ali’s heart lurched again. She tried to keep her face neutral, but Tommy’s face made it clear she’d done a terrible job.
“Do you love her?”
Ali froze. Did she? She didn’t know. How could she?
It had been less than a week. God, was she that much of a cliché that she’d fallen for a woman instantly?
“Maybe. But it doesn’t matter. She’s not going to stay here.
Not with the way she feels about this town and her parents.
It’s too complicated. And I could never ask her to, it hurts her too much to be reminded of all the ways this place treated her like shit.
” She swallowed. “I would never want to hurt her.”
“Have you told her how you feel?”
Ali shrugged. “Tommy, how can I tell her when she doesn’t want to be here?
She asked the hockey league to put her on any team except for Boston, that’s how much she hates it here.
If I tell her how I feel, that puts her in a terrible spot.
Even if she feels the same way, especially if she feels the same way, she would have to choose between those feelings and the way being here makes her miserable. ”
Tommy gave her a hug. “Do you think she’s been miserable this week? Because I’ve never seen her happier.”
Ali let her head rest on her baby brother’s chest. “You think?”
He laughed and his chest rumbled against her ear.
“Ali, from the looks of your house you two have been working day and night, and I have truly never seen her happier or more full of joy when she was home. Usually, she’s miserable unless I rescue her from her family and we go out for drinks or to skate on the pond.
This year, she hasn’t called me once for a rescue. ”
Ali sighed. “Well, I’ve been keeping her away from her family probably more than they are happy with.”
Tommy let his arms drop. “I don’t know what’s going on with the two of you, only you guys do, but I do know that my best friend has never been like this before.
I’m sorry I almost fucked everything up.
I’ve apologized to her, but not to you. I’m so sorry.
She’s not a flake. She’s the best person I know—except you, of course—and I think the two of you could make each other wicked happy. ”
“And would that be okay with you? Your big sister dating your best friend?”
Tommy laughed. “As long as you don’t tell me any details about your sex life, I will be the happiest guy on the planet if the two of you are together.”
Ali grinned. “Thank you,” she said, surprised by the tear sliding down her cheek. “That means a lot to me, and I know it will mean the world to her. Now, enough of this chitchatting. We have a room to transform.”
Tommy pried the top off the paint and poured it into the tray. “You get started on that wall while I carry these books out of here.”
“I fucking love this color.” Ali dipped her brush into the paint. “Thank you for helping me.”
Tommy nodded and filled his arms with books. “Least I could do after you made JT help you with the rest of it. If I didn’t do something she’d never let me forget how useless I am.”
Ali rolled the first bit of the new color across the wall and paused. “How pissed is she going to be that I changed everything in here?”
Tommy returned for another load of books. “Not at all.” He grabbed for more books before setting them down on the floor out of the way. “Okay, she might be mad, but only because you didn’t call her to help you do it.”
Ali grabbed for a small brush to do the edges. “Really?”
Tommy shook his head. “No. She’ll have wanted to help but she’ll understand why you didn’t call her to redo it.”
“And you don’t think she’s going to be annoyed I changed colors?”
Tommy set his stack of books down. “Ali, with all due respect to you and the very important choices you’re making, I don’t think JT gives a rat’s ass what color you paint the room in your own house.
She’ll only care that it makes you happy.
” Ali looked at him, disbelieving. “Ali, I swear, the only thing JT is going to care about—after she gets over you not asking her to help—is that you are one-hundred-percent happy.”
Ali smiled and went back to painting. Even with only half the wall done, she loved it. She believed Tommy, but the prospect of being with someone who only cared about her happiness was something she would have to get used to. She hoped she got a chance.