Best Friend's Brother #2 (Best Friend's Brother Romance Series - Book #2) (2 page)

“You want to order a pizza?” I asked him. He looked
relieved and said, “Yes, please.”

I called in the order and when it got there, we ate
and watched television. Half-way through the movie my dad said, “Are you doing
okay…really?”

I finished chewing the last of my second piece of
pizza and took a big gulp of water. “I am doing okay,” I told him. “I’m not
great or fantastic or even awesome…but I’m okay.

“It will get easier…with time,” he said. That was
hard for me to imagine. I had two holes in my heart now, one from the loss of
Emma and one that Ian had punched in there right next to it. I knew none of
that was Dad’s fault though and he worried too much about me already,
especially since Emma died.

“I know Dad,” I lied. “Things are getting better
already.”

*****

Two miserably long days after I skulked out of Ian’s
apartment, feeling like a fool,
I
woke up with the same two thoughts in my head I have every day now. First, my
best friend is dead. I let that wash over me like it does every day and I lay
still until the pain that comes with it and radiates through me stops
throbbing. When that was over, I remembered that Ian made a fool out of me. I
really wish that I could stop thinking about him. Instead of just thinking of
my best friend who I would never see again…now I had to also keep trying to get
my mind off of her stupid, cheating brother. I’m so stupid. How the hell could
I look at Ian and not even consider whether or not he had a girlfriend? He was
gorgeous and sexy and he seemed so nice. He was funny and fun to talk to
because he was smart. Only an idiot wouldn’t think a guy like that wouldn’t
have a girlfriend. He probably has two or three of them…he probably collects
them and he wanted to make me one of his harem girls.

Shit! I need to just get him off my mind. I’m sure
that I was off of his as soon as I walked out the door the other night. Unless
he’s pretty proud of himself for getting the girl with the messed up head to
have wild sex with him…no strings attached. I thought about the text message
that said,
“I can’t wait to see you,”
and
I wondered if he was with her right now. I wondered what she looked like…and
then I remembered her hooch picture on his phone. I wondered if that was why he
was with her, or if he really loved her…Then, I realized again what I was doing
to myself. I said out loud,
“Oh my God,
Alexa! Knock it off! He’s a cheater. Why would you want him? If he would cheat
on her, he would cheat on you.
Once a cheater, always a
cheater!”
He’s a slime-ball and it doesn’t matter if he was Emma’s
brother or not. Being my sweet friend’s brother didn’t make him a saint. I
already knew that he wasn’t a saint anyways. He definitely had issues that I’d
managed quite nicely to overlook. He stopped going to school his sophomore
year. Emma wouldn’t talk about it, but I knew that her parents were torn up
over it and it had all trickled down onto poor Emma. Things were tough in their
house because of him and she always wanted to stay over with me. She said they
were fighting all the time…Ian and her parents. Yes, I knew then that he was no
saint. I don’t know why now that Emma died, I thought it would be any different.
People don’t really ever change, and I should have never slept with him. I can
guarantee him it is never going to happen again. I am thoroughly disgusted not
only with him, but with myself. It doesn’t matter how much it made me forget
for that moment that my best friend was dead. I was nobody’s booty call and I
never would be.

These thoughts weren’t helping anything. I finally
pulled myself up out of bed. Before I went to bed last night, Dad had asked me
to go out for breakfast with him at some new coffee house or café that he was
in love with. It would get me out of this house and I think I needed that. I
pulled my underwear out of the dresser and then went over to the closet and
picked out my clothes for the day. I carried them into the bathroom and as soon
as I got in there, I heard my phone buzz. I went back into the bedroom and
looked at it. It was two or three text messages from Ian. I ignored them and
went back into the bathroom. I took a long, hot shower and when I got out, I
actually felt human again. I could do this, all of it. I was strong enough to
handle things on my own. Screw Ian. That big talk and bravado lasted all of
five full minutes.

After I dressed and fixed my hair I found my dad on
the patio having coffee.

“Morning dad, are we still on for breakfast?”

“Absolutely if you still feel like going with me.”
he said.

“I feel like it,” I told him with a smile. “I’m
ready when you are.”

Dad drove and the ride there was mostly silent. My
dad was not big on small talk. He could talk for hours on a subject that
interested him or provoked a passion in him, but he didn’t like talk for the
sake of talking. I was glad, because I wasn’t really in the mood for chit chat.

The café he took us to was like a little deli,
situated right next to the train station and bus depot so it was busy with a
lot of commuters coming in and out. The company that my dad works for supplies
restaurant equipment so every time they get a new client,
me
and Dad
have to try the place out and critique it. This place looked
nice on first glance. The outside was made out of the shell of an old rail car
that had been refurbished and painted a bright red. Inside, the floor was white
and black checkered tile and the tables were the black wrought iron ones with
the Formica tops that you see in IKEA catalogs. There were black and red vinyl
stools at the bar like the cafés of the old days and there were prints on the
walls that depicted all of the places a person could travel to and I found
myself staring at one with the Eiffel tower in the background and suddenly
wishing I was there…far away from the looks of pity my father gave me every
time he looked at me, and far away from Ian so no matter how tempted I was to
see him, it would be impossible.

The servers wore white shirts and black pants and
everyone was cheery. They served bagels and croissants and fancy little
breakfast sandwiches. My dad ordered a smoked ham and Gouda sandwich with a
fried egg in the middle of it. I shuddered at the though. I ordered a bagel,
plain. Then I ordered a coffee…no fancy latte or espresso for me. Just give me
coffee, black, plain like my bagel. I suddenly felt numb again and I was in no
mood for anything fancy.
When the waiter left my dad looked
at me once again with those worried eyes and said yet again, “Are you okay
honey?”

I gave him one of my false smiles. It felt strange
on my face. “I’m fine, Dad. Please stop worrying about me.” He raised an
eyebrow and didn’t look like he was buying it, but it was the best I had at the
moment. We ate our breakfast, hardly talking again and then he dropped me back
at home while he went to work for a few hours. I prepared myself for another
less than ordinary day and began to wonder if taking the semester off had been
my best idea. At least if I was in school, I’d have something else to think
about
.

Half-way through the day when the quiet was eating
through my brain I switched on the speakers my I-Pod was attached to and turned
it up loud. Then I went into the kitchen and searched until I found the pasta
maker that I had hounded my dad into buying a few years back. I was fairly sure
that it hadn’t been used since the last time I was home and made pasta for us.
I sat it up on the counter and started collecting the flour and eggs that I
needed to make them. I put on an old apron that had hung in the kitchen since I
was a kid. I don’t even know
who
it belonged to or
where it came from. I mixed up the flour and eggs and water and I kneaded the
dough. Then I dumped in a can of spinach that I’d already drained and I kneaded
and mixed some more. I started humming along to the song that was pounding out
of the speakers in the living room and I realized that my stress was beginning
to dissipate a little bit.

When the dough was ready, I flattened it out and
began feeding it through the little pasta maker machine. It was like playing
with Play-Doh. I liked watching it grow longer and thinner as it came out the
other side. Once it was out, I’d change the thickness on the rollers and feed
it back
through
. I did it over and over and the
repetition was soothing to me. When it was eventually long and papery the way I
wanted, I cut it to the size I wanted and put it on the rack to set. When it
was set, I put it in the pot to boil and looked around the kitchen. Flour
covered nearly every visible surface in the kitchen. I wasn’t a neat cook, but
I was a good one. I fished around in the cabinets until I found a few cans of
tomato sauce and paste. I mixed them up and added oregano, garlic and basil
until it looked and smelled like pasta sauce and then I put that on to boil
too.

By the time Dad got home from work it was ready and
I had heated us up some sourdough bread sprinkled with butter and garlic. I
topped off the pasta with the sauce and some parmesan cheese and when I sat it
down in front of my father he said, “Wow, maybe this is what you should do with
your degree.”

I laughed as I sat down across from him. “I should
use my degree in biology to become a chef?” He shrugged, “Why not? You’re an
amazing cook.” I could tell by the way he closed his eyes and held it in his
mouth to savor it that he really liked it and he wasn’t just trying to make me
feel good.

I took a bite of mine and I had to agree with him…I
was amazing. “I’m afraid that I’d weigh three hundred pounds if I cooked like
this all the time.”

He laughed and said, “I’ve gained five just in the
two weeks you’ve been here.”

“That’s good,” I said, “You were too skinny.”

He told me about his day at work while we ate and
then after dinner, he did the dishes. We watched some television again and I
turned in early. I lay there for hours, thinking about Emma and remembering
what it felt like when Ian touched me. I remembered it in intimate detail and I
despised my body for responding to the memories. I finally fell into a sweaty,
fitful sleep sometime early in the morning. When I woke up not that many hours
later, I lay there again wondering what I was going to do with another long day
on my own. I’ve had my fill of Facebook and Twitter. I’ve read every book on my
Kindle. The house was clean, the laundry was done…I decided that I could go and
see some of my friends that I went to school with. Other than at the funeral,
or online, I hadn’t seen or really even talked to any of them since last
summer. I reached for my phone with the intentions of texting my friend Laurel
to see what she was
up to
. When I pulled up the
messages the first things I saw were the ones from Ian. It was the one’s that
he’d sent me yesterday morning and I hadn’t looked at. I wondered what he could
possibly think he had to say for himself. I wondered if he had ever even
figured out why I left. I wondered about it until I had a headache and then I
finally pressed “view.”

I read the message twice. It was actually like three
messages because it was really long. The first time was read with cynicism and
leftover anger and the second time I relaxed a little bit and let myself
imagine that it was the truth. It said: “
Alexa,
I’m not sure if you left because you saw the messages from Kristy. Just in case
though, she’s my ex-girlfriend. She’s crazy and disillusioned. I haven’t
actually been with her in over a year. She won’t stop calling and texting and
sometimes she even shows up…but I send her away. I don’t want her and I’m not
with her and I’m sorry if you saw those messages and thought otherwise. Can we
talk tomorrow maybe? I’ll be at the gym all day and I have a fight tomorrow
night, but if you want to meet me at either place, I’d really like for us to
talk. I feel like you’re the only one who understands me, Alexa and I had so
much fun with you the other night. Please talk to me.”

I put the phone down and lay there for a while
longer thinking about what he said. He could be telling the truth. He could be
telling a big fat lie too…but why would he lie? He really didn’t have any
reason to lie to me. He’d gotten his piece of ass; he could just walk away now.
Something was nagging at the far recesses of my brain. It was something that
Emma mentioned one night when we were watching a movie. There was some crazy
chick in the movie that was obsessed with this guy and wouldn’t leave him
alone. She’d said, “That reminds me of Ian’s last girlfriend. I keep telling
him he’s going to come home and find her boiling a bunny.” I don’t recall her
saying a name, but it was maybe six or eight months ago. The timing would fit.
I finally got out of bed and called Laurel. I arranged to meet her for lunch. I
was trying to get Ian who was suddenly
back
on my
mind, off of it again.

I met Laurel for lunch at a little grille in town.
Some people never escaped their childhoods. For whatever reason, they just
don’t feel safe in the adult world. Laurel was one of those people. Her clothes
still looked like she bought them at the Children’s place. There was a big
Hello Kitty on her bright pink t-shirt and glittery Hello Kitty sequins across
the pockets of her jeans. I almost cried when I saw her because my first
thought was, “I can’t wait to tell Emma.” It would have been one of those
things we had a big laugh over. We would never talk about Laurel to anyone else
and we would never hurt her feelings, but it was one of those fun things that
best friends did with each other.
One of the little things
that was now a big thing, because we’d never be able to do it again.