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“Sure you do. People do it all the time.” Brooke swallowed another mouthful of wine and shook her head. “I broke us. I didn’t mean to break us, but that’s what I did.”
“Broken things can be fixed.”
“Not if he doesn’t want to fix it.”
Twisting a piece of her blonde hair around her fingers, Olivia seemed to debate something. She looked up. “Let me ask you this: What do you actually want? What’s your best-case scenario from here?”
That was easy to answer. “I want him to be my friend again.”
“Is that all? Just your friend?”
“Yes,” Brooke answered too fast.
Olivia’s gray eyes were skeptical. “You don’t want anything more than that? Really?”
Brooke shifted on the couch, moving her wineglass from one hand to the other. “Life isn’t like a romance novel. Just because we were friends when we were kids, before our brains had finished developing or we’d had any actual life experience, doesn’t mean we’re supposed to be soul mates.” It was a very good speech. She almost believed it, even.
Olivia clearly didn’t. “Counterpoint: sometimes lifeislike a romance novel. Look at me and Adam. I never in a million years would have imagined the two of us would find a way to make a relationship work. And yet, we did.”
“Just because you happened to win the love lottery doesn’t mean I should run out and blow all my money on scratch-offs.”
“No, but maybe you should scratch off the ticket that’salready right there in your handinstead of throwing it away.”
Brooke stared at her friend. “Are you trying to say I’m the asshole in this situation?”
One side of Olivia’s face scrunched up. “Wellllllll…”
“Oh my god. You think I’m the asshole.”
“It’s not about being an asshole.”
“It kind of is.” Brooke swallowed another mouthful of tasteless wine.
Olivia shook her head. “Let’s put a pin in that for a minute. You’ve been moping around like your heart’s broken ever since he left.” She fixed Brooke with a penetrating look. “If you could have Dylan, would you want him?”
Brooke sat forward and reached for the wine bottle on the coffee table to top up her nearly empty glass. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“Ignore the complications. Pretend they don’t exist for a second, and you’ve got a wish-granting genie on your side so anything you want is possible. Would you want to be with Dylan if you knew you could be happy?”
Sinking back into the couch, Brooke gazed at her wineglass as she thought about it. “Yes,” she answered finally, feeling the truth of it resonate as she spoke the word. If he wasn’t him, and she wasn’t her, and there weren’t any obstacles between them? Hell yes she’d want him. In a heartbeat. She’d be crazy not to.
“That’s all that matters,” Olivia said with much more confidence than Brooke felt. “The rest is just logistics, and logistics can be negotiated.”
“Not always.”
“For sure not if you don’t even try.” There was a hint of reproach in Olivia’s tone that stung.
“It’s too difficult,” Brooke said, shaking her head stubbornly.
“It’s always difficult. But it’s worth the effort, even if you fail. And you know me well enough to know I don’t say that lightly. Rejection isliterallymy greatest fear. But if I was you? I would not let that man go. Not if there was any way at all to hold on to him.” When Brooke didn’t say anything, Olivia shrugged. “But hey, I’m not you. I don’t keep people at a distance the way you do.”
“I don’t do that,” Brooke shot back, bristling.
“You do. And look, I think I have some idea why—although not really, because you’ve never actually told me the details—but you’re not doing yourself any favors with this island-unto-yourself stuff. How many close friends do you even have other than me?”
“I have friends.”
“Closefriends. Not just people you sometimes talk to when you happen to be around them. People you go out of your way for.”
