I’m almost to my dorm when my phone starts to ring. Ethan’s name flashes on the screen. Weird time of day to call me, but I’ll bite.
“Hey.”
“Damn, somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.” His cheery voice sounds through the speaker.
“Sorry. What’s up?”
“Can’t a cousin just call to check in on another cousin?”
Not Ethan. “What do you need?”
“Firstly, I need you to stop being a dick, and secondly, I really am calling to check up on you. Good thing I did, too; sounds like something’s wrong.”
Silence is the only response my brother receives.
“Talk to me.”
I remain silent for a few more seconds, holding the phone tightly, trying to find the courage to have this damned conversation.
A few seconds later, I tell him everything. Every. Fucking. Detail. And shit, does it feel good to get that off my chest. If her friends can know, so can Ethan.
After I finish the recap of the last couple of months, there’s no sound coming from the other end. I pull my phone away,making sure that I wasn’t talking to myself for the past fifteen minutes.
“Ethan?”
“I fuckingknewit. I knew there was something going on with you two when you came to visit,” he spits out. “I’ll admit, it was a lot more than I was expecting.”
“Same here.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he shouts.
I pause, making sure I heard him right. “What?”
“Why did you have to have sex with her, dude?”
Still confused, I hesitate. “Um, because she’s hot, and I’m insanely attracted to her?”
He curses under his breath. “No. Kamila and you, it wasn’t supposed to—” He halts mid-sentence.
Stopping dead in my tracks, I hold onto the phone even tighter. “It wasn’t supposed to what, Ethan?”
He sighs. “She was your best friend, Cameron?—”
“Emphasis on thewas.”
“Shut up and listen. Shewasyour closest friend, your confidant. You haven’t found anyone like her since then, and you went and fucked it up when you could’ve fixed it after two years. If you liked her, you could’ve just asked her out on a date.”
“That’s the thing, Ethan, I didn’t like her. I’m still not sure if I fucking do. She drives me insane half of the time. Sure, she’s a good lay?—”
“Oh, save me the bullshit Cam?—”
“Smith is also a really good friend?—”
“Not like she was. You can’t compare him to her?—”
“Enough.” This conversation is useless. “Ethan, she said she needed space. I’ll figure this out later, but for now, I’m going to respect it.”
“And that, right there, is how I know that you still care about her. No matter how hard you tried not to, no matter how muchyou thought you hated her, you never did. I’m not even sure why you thought you did?—”
