"What's going on, Elise?" he asked. "Where's Logan?"
"He got called into work," I told him. "He didn't mention you were going to be coming by."
"He didn't know. I was going to..." He shook his head. "What are you doing here?"
I took a deep breath and then let it out in a messy rush. "I spent the night."
"You...you what?" he asked, sounding like he couldn't believe it. "You spent the night here? Why? Is something wrong with your apartment?"
"No," I said. "It's... I spent the night here because I... because I wanted to be with Logan. We're um... we're..." God, I couldn't say it. How was I supposed to look my brother in the eye and tell him that I was sleeping with his best friend? It wasn't even like we were dating or anything. It was just... sex. I didn't want Dan to think of me like that, and I didn't want him to be upset, but I couldn't lie to him either.
"You're what?" Clearly, he wasn't going to let it go. "You're... involved?"
"In a manner of speaking, yeah. It's... We're not... we're not together, we're just..." I waved a hand, hoping that would somehow communicate what I was trying to say.
Judging from the way Dan's eyes went big and then immediately dismayed, I'd gotten my point across.
"Elise, no," he said. "Elise, you can't... no."
"I can't what?" I demanded, folding my arms.
"You're not supposed to be sleeping with my best friend!" He lowered his voice when he said 'sleeping with' like it was something dirty and bad he didn't want to say, and I huffed, irritated.
"I'm not supposed to do a lot of things. Look, I didn't mean for it to happen, okay? It wasn't something either of us planned. We just sort of... fell into it."
Dan blinked at me, and it seemed like he was having a time digesting that. "You fell into it," he repeated. "'It' being his bed, in this case, I guess. How did this even happen? You don't even like each other."
"Well, as it turns out, you don't really have to like someone to sleep with them," I pointed out.
"No!" Dan said, looking like he was one second away from putting his hands over his ears in denial. "I don't want to hear this!"
"You asked," I insisted. "Look, it was a mistake, okay?"
"Was it?"
I whipped around and was surprised to see Logan standing in the doorway. Apparently, he'd managed to come all the way up the stairs and into the apartment without either of us noticing. "Logan," I said, sighing. "You know what I mean."
He closed the door behind himself and then folded his arms. "I don't know what you mean," he said. "And I don't know what you want. And you know what? At this point, I'm pretty sure it's time we talked about it."
"You want to do this now?" I demanded, sounding almost hysterical. "With Dan right here, wanting to know what's going on?"
"Sure," Logan replied with a shrug. "Why not? He deserves an answer, and so do I."
I made a frustrated noise. It was like they had teamed up on me, standing on either side of the room, with me in the middle trying desperately to figure out what to say. We'd been hiding things from Dan well enough, but we should have figured that him coming over unannounced was going to be our downfall.
I shouldn't have stayed. I got complacent, and that was why I was in this mess to begin with.
"Fine," I said. "Fine. You both want to talk about it? Then let's talk about it. Logan and I started sleeping together in Greece," I said to Dan. "And yes, that was a mistake. We were arguing and then something just... snapped, and it happened. More than once."
Dan went pale and shook his head. "I can't believe I'm hearing this."
"Youasked," I reminded him. "You wanted to know what's going on, and that's it. When you came to my apartment a few weeks ago, Logan was there because he spent the night. You can guess why."
"So the story about your car was a lie?"
To my surprise, he looked at Logan, looking hurt.
Logan just looked at me.
