Page 60 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

I take a sip of wine. I look at the ceiling. Then I look at her.

"I'm in love with him," I say.

The kitchen is quiet for a moment. The pasta water bubbles on the stove. Maggie picks up her wine glass and takes a slow sip and she doesn't react withthe alarm I half-expected or the immediate flood of questions I was bracing for. She just looks at me steadily.

"Okay," she says.

"Okay?"

"I've known for a while." She sets her glass down.

"I was waiting for you to catch up."

I exhale. "It's a problem."

"It's not automatically a problem." She leans against the counter across from me.

"What has he said?"

"You know Logan doesn't—"

"I'm not asking about his communication style. I'm asking what he has said. Anything. Whatever it is."

I think about the corridor in New York. ‘Please. I don't want to be without you tonight’.The way it came out stripped of everything controlled. The way it surprised both of us.

"He asked me to stay," I say.

"In New York. Not just — he said please. He said he didn't want to be without me." I pause.

"For Logan that's — it's significant."

"It is," Maggie agrees. "What else?"

"The way he's been including me professionally. Pulling me into rooms I have no formal reason to be in."

"That could be professional."

"It could be," I say. "I don't know if it is."

Maggie is quiet for a moment. She picks up the wooden spoon and stirs the sauce without looking at it.

"Can I say something?"

"That's why I'm sitting on your counter at 8:00 on a Tuesday night."

"The things you're describing — asking you to stay, the way he looks at you, pulling you into meetings — those are actions. Real ones. I'm not dismissing them." She looks at me.

"But you are carrying something very heavy for a man who hasn't told you he wants you to carry it." She pauses.

"You're building your life around a question he hasn't answered yet."

The words land. I don't flinch from them because they're true and Maggie only says true things when they matter.

"I know that," I say quietly.

"Do you know what you need from him?"

"Yes."