Jax disappeared into the crowd for the rest of the night, and I was more bothered by that than relieved.
The times in battle where one side retreats without surrendering, there’s a sort of confusion and waiting period. I didn’t know if Jax had retreated to regroup his army or had given up.
Both of the thoughts terrified me.
When the dinner party began to disperse, I figured I could bail on everyone. I wanted time to myself, alone with my thoughts.
Katie tried to give me the space I wanted but Vick glared from her to Rome to Jay like she would eviscerate them one by one if they didn’t follow me home.
So, we headed to my apartment together. When they all had settled in the living room watching some house remodeling show, Vick turned her eyes on me. “Can we please decompress by talking about Jay’s family?”
Jay groaned, and I turned toward the oven where I’d been spending my time making brownies. I’ll admit it was a diversion tactic. I didn’t want to decompress and talk about them. I wanted to forget.
“Please, can we not?” Katie grumbled from the floor where she sat.
Rome’s eyes met mine from the rocker he sat on. He took the seat every time like he owned it, spread his legs out, leaned back, and rested his tattooed arms over the armrests. From the corner of the room, he saw everything that went on like he watched over it, like a lion overlooking his kingdom. “You okay over there, baby girl?”
“Just fine,” I singsonged as I took the brownies out of the oven and started to cut them into squares. “I’m really proud of Jay graduating. I’m happy we all got to spend it together.”
And I’m happy it was over.
Jay got up to grab one of the brownies.
“All right. Remind me to never buy dessert again,” Jay said as he popped a whole brownie square in his mouth.
I glared at him and he smiled wide with brownie all in his teeth.
Rome moved in and shouldered Jay out of the way as he took his own brownie square. “Why aren’t you baking for the men in your life every night?”
I smiled. “You men don’t give me enough motivation to bake every night.”
Rome cut me off. “I think I gave you something last night when I—”
“Rome!” I yelled.
Vick yelled, “I knew it!” at the same time.
My eyes snapped to Jay. He didn’t know, we’d all kept it from him. He looked around. “What’s going on?”
We all looked anywhere but at him. I started to shove a brownie in my mouth. It wasn’t that we wanted to hide things from him, it was just that he was the light of our group. His easy going way helped us all to unwind and relax. We couldn’t have him uneasy.
“Seriously.” He leaned back on his heels and crossed his arms. His muscles bunched under his T-shirt and his jaw ticked. “You guys are hiding something, and I don’t want to be shielded like a damn child …”
“Well to be fair,”—Katie started—“you are the baby in your family. You do act like—”
“Don’t start your psycho-babble from a class you slept through, Katie.” He didn’t even crack a smile when he said it.
“Oh, fuck off. I got an A in that class,” she mumbled from the floor as I grabbed my glass to take a long swig of the red wine. I figured I was about to need it.
“Rome and Brey are sleeping together,” Vick blurted out loud enough for the damn neighbors to hear.
“What?” Jay whispered so quietly the neighbors probably thought no one responded to Vick’s outburst.
“Oh God.” I rushed to clear the counter and busy my hands.
When no one answered Jay, he roared, “What?” and pounded his fist down on the counter.
Rome crossed his arms over his chest and stood his ground in the kitchen. “We can talk like men or we can yell like children. You want to yell and act out, then we take it outside.”
Jay stepped toward him. “I should kill you where you stand.”
I gasped. “Jay, you don’t mean that.”
His eyes snapped to mine and they held so much anger, I shrunk back. “I’m fucking pissed at you, Brey.”
I set the dishes in the sink and stood between the two men I loved so much. “Jay, let’s talk. Rome, give us some time.” I sighed and looked at Vick and Katie. “Can we just have some time?”
Vick elbowed Katie and looked remorseful as they headed out of my apartment. Rome stood his ground for another minute, staring at Jay like something more needed to be said between them.
I clenched my fist, trying so hard not to lash out at him. Jay and I were unbreakable, he had to know by now. Rome and I could sleep together, share a bed, wake up and have sex again. He could give me ten million orgasms and make me forget about life over and over again. But he’d never get between Jay and me.
He looked at me one more time and sighed in some sort of defeat before he walked out.
I took a breath, turned to the dishes and started washing. It felt like ages passed before Jay nudged me over so he could manage one side of the sink. “You should have told me,” he said barely above a whisper.
I shrugged but couldn’t mask the guilt. “I know. Is it too late to apologize?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I handed him another soaped up dish. “Because you are the baby in your family but the big brother in mine. You’re too overprotective and you would have been judgmental and …”
He waved the clean dish through the air. “Excuses, Brey. All I’m hearing are damn excuses. The reason you didn’t tell me was because you know that shit’s unhealthy.”
“To be fair, don’t you think it’s time for just me to worry about how unhealthy I am?”
Jay set the now dry plate gently down and then dried his hands before he answered me. “It’s one thing for me to see you blowing off classes, drinking too much, and dying your hair black like you want to disappear.”
“Everyone didn’t have a problem with my hair color before,” I interrupted.
He just rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I can handle those things. We’re in college and you’re expressing yourself or what the fuck ever. But don’t expect me not to worry. You think you can handle all this shit by yourself?”
“What shit?” I snapped back. I stepped up to the plate but hoped he wouldn’t throw the pitch.
“I saw you tonight with my brother, Brey, and you looked scared. Back to being as polite and quiet as you were in high school.” He waited a beat. “After the fire.”
He threw the ball right past me. My eyes probably popped out of my sockets. I started to say something, not sure what, then stuttered to a stop because Jay normally babied me. He didn’t bluntly throw his brother or my past in my face.
I stepped back and shrugged. “Yeah. Well, I handled it, and I’m fully capable of handling my own decisions.” He tried to cut in but I held up my hand to stop him. “That includes Rome, Jay.”
“And are you fully capable of pulling me off him if he breaks your heart because, Brey, I’ll fucking kill him. Friend of ours or not.”
“Jay, be reasonable.” He knew exactly how those words would affect me. As laid-back as he could be, he was also the son of the most brutally lethal businessman in the country. He didn’t hesitate when he felt threatened or when he wanted something to stop. Instead, he attacked the situation just as ferociously as any Stonewood.
He targeted my biggest weakness—our group—and endangered it with a pointed attack which made me question everything.
“I’ll be reasonable when you start being realistic. Focus on your future. Don’t fuck a guy you have no future with.”
“You’re being an ass.”
“And you’re being difficult because you know I’m right. You should be mapping out your summer and figuring out what classes you’re going to take to graduate.”
I walked to the living room, trying to brush off his words. “I told you, I’m taking that investment class you suggested and that’s it. I’m busy.”
He followed. “You shouldn’t be that busy. Those girls are doing fine when you aren’t there.”
“They do better when I am there though. And helping them with accounting is icing on the cake. I’m getting experience.”
Jay sighed. “Investment and accounting aren’t the same and you know it.”
I didn’t argue, just shrugged. “I go there once a week. That’s not that much.”
“I’m just saying you don’t have to take all that on by yourself. You don’t owe them—”
I glared at him. “I know I don’t owe anyone anything.”
He waited a beat. “You want me to go with you next week?”
I sighed. “You have your premiere and need to be in LA. They don’t expect to see you.”
He leaned toward me, a small smile playing on his lips. “You could come to LA, shack up with me, and leave this shit behind.”
I rolled my eyes because he’d made the offer more than once. Jay would keep me under his wing as long as he could if I let him. “Yeah, I think I’ll pass.”
His jaw ticked and he leaned back on the couch. “I hate I can’t be here with you. This shit with Rome and my brother makes it infinitely worse. You could just move to LA for a while.”
That was it for him as he grabbed the remote and turned the TV on. He wanted the conversation over, and it could be because we’d shared our thoughts on everything before.
It was the best and worst thing about having a best friend who knew you better than anyone. I knew he was thinking I should avoid them both like the plague. He knew I was thinking about how to overcome everything, how to get along with them and how to move on.
“Jay,” I sighed as I grabbed the remote and turned the TV back off. “Rome’s always going to be around.”
“So.” He didn’t look at me.
“So, we slept together. We’re still good friends and no one is hurt.”
Over the years, I’d learned to see past this facade. No one else would notice the way his eyes squinted just a little and his shoulders bunched slightly before he spoke. “Define ‘slept,’ Brey. Are you still sleeping with him, or is it done?”
“Honestly,” I threw my hands up. “I don’t know. With your little tantrum tonight, it’s probably done.”
He sucked in air through his teeth. “We both know that wasn’t a tantrum. That was me handling it extremely well.”
“Oh, please.”
His lopsided smirk was back. “I deserve a damn Academy Award for how well I acted through that one.”
“Your acting was subpar. If Matthew McConaughey isn’t getting an award for How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, you aren’t getting one for tonight either.”
Jay’s smile turned up a notch. “Have I told you lately that I miss that nice little lady that you were back in high school?”
“I miss the nice little boy who didn’t expect Academy Awards for nothing.”
He walked around the counter slowly toward me. “You’re going to pay for that, Sass Pot.”
I jumped up, circling around the couch to put it between us. I made it about two steps before he’d grabbed me around the waist and hauled me back.
I fought him, laughing my butt off. “Let me go, you idiot!”
“Nope. Apologize!” He demanded as he threw me back on the couch and walloped me with a throw pillow.
I ducked and laughed harder, shaking my head no.
He sideswiped me and whacked me again. “I’m the best actor you’ve ever known. Say it.”
I grabbed another throw pillow, scrambled upright and swatted him the best I could before he plowed me with another swing. “Well, since you’re the only one I actually know—”
That had him collapsing next to me in laughter, so I took the opportunity to throw one last pillow in his face. He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close as we both laughed for a minute longer.
My belly hurt from laughing. Then it seemed to hurt for a whole other reason. Jay had graduated and would be moving into a whole new world of acting and fame. He’d already come close to all of it.
He and his brothers had already been named “Most Eligible Bachelors” in magazines. When Vick met us, she’d jokingly named them Brey’s Bachelor Boys, and Rome had been an honorary mention in her book. She couldn’t believe how down-to-earth Jay still was and it scared me to think he may not be one day.
He was on the cusp of it, just out of their reach, just far enough away from the spotlight that we could still have these moments, still have each other, still be best friends.
I wanted to put him in a damn jar, close it, and never let him out. “I’m going to miss you, Jay.”
“Miss me?” He said, his half-smirk back in place, ready to smooth things over right away. “I’m not going anywhere you can’t reach me.”
“You will,” I sighed. “You and I both know it.”
He squeezed my shoulder and winked at me. “You can come with me.”
“Sure, and I’ll just chase women out of your place every day.”
“Someone’s got to be my watchdog.”
“Hire a security team then!”
“Because that’ll look good in the tabloids: ‘Jay’s Bodyguards Carry Another Woman From His Premises.’”
“If it was me, they’d make up something even worse.”
He sighed and unwrapped his arm from me. “Most of the tabloids love you, Brey.”
“Most of them write totally made-up stories about us, Jay.”
“Well, the stories sell.”
“Right. So, that makes it okay. I can look like your understanding girlfriend in the tabloids every so often as long as they are nice about it.” I sneered.
“I haven’t seen you in one in a while.”
“Why are you defending them?” I crossed my arms.
“Because,”—he stood up and started pacing—“I know you.”
I blinked at him when he looked at me to respond.
He sighed. “This will be your way of getting out of going to my premiere with me.”
Before I could make an excuse, he just waved it off. “I want you there, Brey. This is me making it, me being where I want to be, and I want my best friend there.”
I sighed because he was right. I was building to that. We both knew I didn’t want to go. “It’s not that I don’t want to be there to support you, it’s just—”
He stopped me, “If you feel like you can’t handle it, I get it.”
He’d lost his smile and the sparkle he always had in his eyes.
I pursed my lips and smoothed my hair back a little. “I can handle it.”
My voice sounded surer than I felt.
After Jay left, I went to lie down, wondering if my decision to sleep with Rome would end up ruining my small circle of friends. I knew that was Jay’s intention. I knew he wanted me to think about my actions, to question myself, to second guess my decision. I didn’t want to let his words affect me. Yet, I lay there staring at my ceiling and wondering if my self-destruction had bled over into the destruction of our group.
I sighed and stared and stared, hoping the dark sky would lull me to sleep.
Strong arms wrapped around me later that night. Rome’s scruff nuzzled into my neck. “You awake, doll?”
“I wish I wasn’t.”
I heard him sigh behind me. “You know I love you, Brey.”
I tensed because I knew what was coming.
“Falling in love sneaks up on you. You don’t stand at the edge and decide to jump. Someone, probably the person you’re about to fall for, pushes you over the edge with a little gesture, a little hint, a subconscious action. Then it’s all over. You’re falling and humans can’t fly. We don’t get a shot to catch ourselves mid fall. I don’t want to fall for you, and you don’t want to fall for me.”
“I get it, Rome.” I felt my throat close, my eyes tear up. I swallowed hard. “I know we have to stop.”
He pulled me closer and said a muffled good night.
I fell asleep crying. It wasn’t because I’d lost the casual relationship with Rome. It wasn’t because I had more feelings for him than I admitted. It was because I couldn’t hide from my emotions anymore, couldn’t lie to myself about the real battle my heart and mind always waged.
Truth was, I knew the damn reason I didn’t want to date other men. I knew the reason to not get involved.
I hated the reason and the man.
