“Well, thank you.What a dick.”
“I’m trying to talk without making things worse.”
“Even quiet, you make it worse,” Ian calls.
“If you’re eavesdropping, join us!”Nick shouts.
“If you insist.”Ian comes in.
“Where’s the third little pig?”I ask.
Saying it makes me feel empty inside.
“Pig?”Nick asks.
I shake my head, overwhelmed, and say nothing.
“If you’re referring to Ryan, he’s engaged on the opposite front,” Ian clarifies.
“So we have two different factions, and we have to choose who to side with?”Nick asks.
“I don’t know.We don’t know shit!Neither of them is talking!”
“God, this is so frustrating,” Nick mutters.
“You know what’s really frustrating?”I say.“Sitting here, listening to you talk about my life and his like it doesn’t matter.Dealing with your looks, your bullshit, your bad advice, and pretending.”I look up.“Pretending I care about everything else.Pretending I’m okay when I just want to hide.Pretending nothing happened, when everything did.”
“Jamie, we didn’t mean—” Ian starts.
“I didn’t want to.”I push myself up from where I’m sitting.“I didn’t mean to.”
“What?Hurt him?”Nick asks cautiously.
“I didn’t want to… I didn’t want to…”
Christ, I can’t even say it.
“Fall in love?”Ian finishes for me.
I shake my head.
“We don’t ask for it or go looking for it.Sometimes, the more we try to avoid it, the more it seems to find us.We just have to accept it and hope we don’t mess things up too much,” Nick says.
“Is that the best advice you’ve got?”Ian turns to his brother.
“What do you want from me?I’m not good at advice.If it weren’t for him, I probably wouldn’t even be with Casey now.”
Ian sighs and looks at me.“And if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have my family now.”
“You see, we need you,” Nick says.“Without you, we’d be lost.”
“That’s because you’re idiots.”
“True.But now you’re the idiot.Hide out here as long as you want, but you can’t hide from yourself,” Nick continues.
“Fuck you.”
“You tried, but he found you anyway,” Ian adds.
