“I’ve been sleeping with Ryan since the White Elephant party. And there are…feelings involved.”
“I feel like I missed something. Don’t you two hate each other?”
“I guess there’s a thin line between hate and…” I don’t make myself finish the sentence.
“And I assume you didn’t tell me earlier because of the stepbrother thing.”
I sigh. “It’s weird, isn’t it? The fact that we’re related?”
“Not really. It’s not like you’ve known each other from birth, and I know that you’ve never seen him like that, as a true brother. It’s not that much weirder than if you fell for a guy you had a crush on in junior high.”
“Exactly, if his dad was married to my mom.” I cover my face with my hands. “God, if Mom ever found out about this…”
“It might be weird for your parents,” Cat admits. “But for everyone else, I don’t think it’ll be all that shocking. Especially once they find out you were already a teenager when you met. I’m more worried about the fact that you’re with a guy who’s spent more than a decade insulting you to your face. Pippa, are you sure you’re making the best choices for yourself? Are you putting yourself first?”
I lean back against the couch. “I am now. Last night, I gave him the chance to tell me the truth about how he feels about me. And I got it—he wants me, and he cares about me, but not enough. He doesn’t want a real relationship with me. I don’t know if he thinks our situation is too complicated, or if he’s scared of commitment, or if…” I take a fortifying breath before I say the hardest part. “If he doesn’t care about me the way that I care about him.”
“Maybe it’s like you said,” Cat says gently. “Maybe it’s not about you. Maybe he’s just not capable of it. You remember that Toronto Tea article about him last year? Nate told me it was true.”
I lift a brow, not sure I want to know.
“You know,” she says. “The one about how for a while in white collar circles it was well known that the way to get over someone was to getunderRyan Archer.”
I drop my face into my hands. Ididalready know that, but… “How pathetic does it make me that that fact only makes me feel bad for him? Like, all those women just wanted to use him. Theydidn’t want to get to know him. They didn’t care about him. He was a ticket punch on their journey to recovery. It’s cruel.”
“Oh, Pippa. Sometimes I forget how big your heart is.”
I sigh. “Regardless, Ryan is not what I should want. I should want a guy like…like Jacob.”
“And instead you got a shameless poker legend with the emotional range of a teaspoon.”
A watery laugh escapes me. “Yeah. And the worst part is, I think he might be it for me, Cat. Not in the cute unrequited crush way, in the ‘I don’t know how to picture the rest of my life without him’ way.”
“Wow.”
She’s taking this all really well considering the magnitude of the bomb I just dropped in her lap and I have to wonder how much of this she’d already picked up on.
“I didn’t mean to give him this much of me…I didn’t think I gave him my heart, but somehow it wound up in his hands, anyway.”
“The question is…” Cat looks at me apologetically. “And this comes from a place of love because you deserve the world…”
I frown.
“What you need to ask yourself is if he’s capable of holding something that important,” she presses a palm to her heart to mime her meaning, “…without dropping it.”
Cat takes my hand, and we sit together in silence for a few minutes while I soak up the love that my best friend gives me so freely. Her question bounces around in my head, trying and failing to answer itself.
“Well, I can’t wear your underwear forever,” I say finally. “And I can’t handle living with Ryan anymore. I don’t trust myself not to fall back into some old patterns if I’m around him. That means I need a new apartment.”
“Haven’t you been looking for places for a while now?”
“I have, but my standards have been way too high before now. Floors, ceilings, windows, doors—all luxuries that I don’t need. Any place that doesn’t also have my stepbrother in it is good enough for me.”
“You’re not moving into a dump,” Cat says sternly.
“If a dump is all that’s available, well, call me Oscar the Grouch, cause I’m moving in. Open up your laptop. Let’s look at apartments.”
We spend the next hour applying online to every place that allows next day move-in. Cat tries to talk me out of it, but I even apply to a place where I’ll have to walk down a hallway to use a shared bathroom. Because I’d rather tromp down the hall in a towel and flip flops than face Ryan’s cocky smile again.
