I’m an idiot. An idiot in a hell of my own making.
“Where have you been all day?” Andrew’s brow rises as I enter through the front door. “Is that my jacket? And…my sunglasses? Dude, what the hell?”
“It’s a long story.” I shuck off the coat before placing it on a hanger and back inside the hall closet. Then I rub a hand against my chest before thinking better of it. I make a mental note to buy another bottle of Aquaphor. I’m gonna need it, in case I make another spontaneous trip to the tattoo parlor. “I was…trying to impress someone.”
Your sister, specifically. The one who hates you.
The one I realized I have it bad for.
“Really?” His mouth quirks up. “Inthatgetup? Did it work?”
“It made her laugh, which is what I was going for,” I tell him, figuring it’s safe to talk about Leti as long as he doesn’t know that’s who we’re talking about. “We’re friends, though. She has a date with someone else tomorrow.”
“That’s a bummer.” He rummages through the fridge and turns back with a hard cider and a beer cradled in his arm. “Need a pick-me-up? I didn’t know you liked someone.”
What a coincidence. Neither did I.
“Thanks.” I take the hard cider and flop down on the couch. For a moment I consider how much is safe to tell Andrew when the person in question is Leti. If she knew I was telling him even this much, she’d kill me. Hell, if she knew I like her as much as I do, she’d kill me. “And it’s sort of hard to explain.”
“What’s so hard about it? You like her, she likes someone else.” He takes a sip from his beer. “It’s a tale as old as time.”
“Yeah, well, the problem is I didn’t even know I liked her until about two hours ago,” I say. The man has the audacity to laugh into his beer. “What?”
“This coming from the guy who givesmeshit for low emotional intelligence,” he says. “Not so fun now that the tables have turned on you, is it?”
“Shut up,” I grumble, and he laughs again. “How the hell did I let this happen? She already shot me down once.”Twice, not that he needs to know that. “And that was supposed to be the end of it. I was fine with that being the end of it.”
“You sure about that?”
“Obviously not anymore.” I let out a groan. “I just need to ignore it. If I ignore my feelings, they’ll go away eventually, right?”
“Now I know something’s seriously wrong with you, because you’re thinking like me. And trust me, you don’t want to do that to yourself,” he says. “Remember last year when Kayla went out with that chem major and I was going to give up, and you convinced me I shouldn’t?”
I nod, remembering how down bad he was for Kayla before they finally got together.
“I’d probably still be pining if you hadn’t given me the kick in the ass I needed to get over myself and ask her out.”
If there’s anything Andrew has in common with his sister, it’s his stubborn streak. Too often, he gets set in his ways. I’d been telling him for two months to shoot his shot with Kayla before he finally made a move. Later, she confessed she’d been waiting on him to make a move for twice as long. It was tiring, watching them circle each other, both too afraid to make the first move. The kick in the ass was warranted.
“You and Kayla are perfect for each other. It’s not the same,” I tell him. “I just got this girl to tolerate me. We got off on the wrongfoot, initially, and now…we’re friends.” I cringe slightly. “Friendly. Friends-adjacent. She’d probably still hate if I called her my friend.”
“She’s really making you work for it, huh?” He gusts out a laugh. “Why didn’t she like you?”
I bite down on my tongue, along with the urge to spill my guts. As much as I hate keeping secrets from Andrew, the last thing I’d ever do is betray Leti’s trust.
“Oh, some misunderstanding or other.” I shrug. “She knows how to hold a grudge.”
“Sounds like my sister.” He snorts. “Now, there’s someone youreallydon’t want to get involved with.”
I still, my heart beating overtime beneath my rib cage. If I were a smarter man, I’d let the comment go. I’ve let a lot of his comments about Leti go, back before I knew who she was. The few times I’ve pressed him on them, he hasn’t been willing to give away much.
“Have you talked to her recently?” I ask him.
“No.” He tries for a light tone, but there’s no mistaking the way his shoulders tense up.
“You know, she is upstairs.”
His gaze cuts to me, brows furrowed.
