But Dan was my best friend, and he'd been there for me at some of my lowest moments. Even when I didn't give him a good reason to, he stood by me and defended me, and he deserved at least an answer to his question.
Especially since I'd already opened my stupid mouth and started talking.
"I'm just saying that Elise likes things a certain way. She's big on doing things herself. I'm pretty sure that at the end of a crappy date, her car not starting was like a blow to her pride. She'd already picked a dumb dude to go out with, and then her car wouldn't start, and even though that wasn't her fault, she probably felt like it was. So calling you and having you take care of it would have been like... I don't know. Coddling or something. Something she didn't want."
"But she called you and then you took care of it," Dan pointed out.
"Yeah, and I gave her shit the whole time because I'm me. I don't do coddling. I can't tell you what was going on in her head when she called me because I don't know. She didn't explain it that well, and I didn't really get too deep into it. I just know that it's not because she doesn't trust you or whatever. You're her brother. She trusts you more than anybody."
That seemed to cheer him up a bit. He was smiling, at least. And then he tilted his head to one side, looking at me. "You know, she trusts you, too."
I snorted. "Yeah, I don't know about that."
"No, she does. You're right that she was probably feeling pretty bad that night, but she trusted you to see her feeling vulnerable. She knew you'd make rude comments or whatever, but that didn't stop her from reaching out anyway."
He had a point about that, and I frowned, thinking it over. Elise knew well enough to know that there was a high chance I would be a massive asshole to her about it all, and yet she'd still called me. And I was pretty nice about it, all things considered. Nice for me, anyway.
But she insisted we didn't get along and didn't like each other. The truth was, I liked her fine. The parts of her personality that annoyed me were sort of becoming...tolerable. No, that wasn't the right word. Endearing, maybe. They weren't as bad as I'd thought they were at the beginning.
And yeah, good sex could change a lot of minds, but I didn't think that was what it was.
It was like being hit over the head with something hard and unpleasant to realize that I actuallylikedElise. Liked her as more than just my best friend’s sister.
It explained my jealousy at seeing her with other men or hearing about her going on dates. I wanted her for myself, which was… problematic to say the least, considering she didn’t like me or want me back probably.
So that was an interesting dilemma.
Fuck my entire life.
