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I took a deep breath, realizing he wasn’t letting it go and I wasn’t fooling him into thinking nothing was wrong. “My mom is insisting I move home to do my grad school at Georgetown.” There, I’d said it, and without tears.
He looked shocked. “Wait, I thought you were doing a summer internship downtown and then attending UCLA for your MBA.”
“That was my plan, but unfortunately it isn’t hers.” I filled him in on the slip-up by my dad’s golf buddy and the subsequent dialogue with my parents.
“Did you tell Brian?”
I shook my head. “I was going to, but he seems to have enough on his plate at the moment.”
“And in addition to insinuating you’d moved out to LA for me, Rebecca already knew your mother’s plan and was rubbing it in?”
Kill me. Kill me now. “Uh, yeah. You know how she loves spreading misery.”
He continued on. “Pay your horrible sister-in-law no mind. She was only trying to cause trouble.”
“Yeah, I know.” I sighed heavily and let down my long, blond hair from the pins which had held it up most of the day, attempting to alleviate my throbbing headache and feel more like myself. If I was being brutally honest, I had to admit my infatuation with Colby had, in fact, influenced my decision to move to Los Angeles. But four years later, I knew I loved living in the Golden State whether or not he resided there, too. It was beyond humiliating, however, that he’d ever think I had moved or wished to stay for him.
As if sensing my thoughts, he looked at me and took my hand over the console. “I’ve never believed for a second you’d move across the country to be closer to me. For one, you had a full lacrosse scholarship to attend UCLA. Secondly, anyone who knows your mother or has been in the same room as Rebecca for five minutes is well aware of the real reason you moved to the opposite coast of the United States.”
His fingers squeezed, and I wished there was a world in which the contact gave him the same tingle I was feeling.
Hoping to inject some levity back into the conversation, I decided to go for the sarcasm route. “The good news is if Rebecca was right about you feeling an obligation as my babysitter, you won’t have to hold that title for much longer.”
I was unprepared for him to pull off the road into an empty bank parking lot. He put the car in park and turned to me, his expression showing his agitation.
“I come over on Sundays for dinner because I want to spend time with you. Not because I need to babysit or feel some obligation to do so.”
“So then why is my brother texting you asking if I’m okay?”
He flushed slightly. “Like it or not, you’ve always had your big brother and his friends—which includes me—looking out for you. But make no mistake, I’ve never seen it as a burden. Hell, if anything, it means a lot that Brian trusts me with his sister given my, uh, unfortunate reputation that Rebecca so nicely brought up.”
I nodded dumbly.
“Plus you’ve been busy over the last few months on our regular nights. I feel as though I hardly see you anymore.”
Experiencing a twinge of guilt, I let out a breath. I’d purposefully made myself unavailable on some of our regularly scheduled Sunday nights in the hope that I didn’t appear too obvious when it came to wanting to spend time with him. “I guess I needed to hear that you never felt obligated to hang out with me.”
His eyes softened. “You’re my friend, Kenz. Outside of our older brothers being best friends or our families growing up next door to one another. I look forward to Sundays because there’s no agenda with you, and I can be myself. Not to mention, your cooking is awesome.”
I cracked a smile. “My culinary skills are only a slight improvement over boxed mac and cheese, but I’m glad you enjoy it.” For the first time, I felt an affirmation that whatever did or didn’t happen between us, at least we had a very real friendship where we both cared about one another.
He pulled back into traffic and navigated toward the airport while looking lost in thought. Then he hit me with a question I hadn’t been expecting.
“So why have you been busy on our usual Sunday dinner nights lately?”
I was reasonably certain that the excuse of: Because I was hoping you’d miss me, and it would make you want to rip off my clothes when you did see me might make things awkward. “I had other plans and figured you might want off the hook from coming over every week.”
“Other plans meaning dates?”
His inquiry took me off guard. We hadn’t previously talked about that aspect of our lives. I figured this was mostly a conscious effort on his part to spare me hurt feelings over hearing about the women he went out with, but he’d never asked about my dating life, either. “Sometimes. Why?”
He shrugged. “After my brother’s wedding in Tortola a few months ago, I felt as though things changed between us and wondered if I had done something to cause that. Then I asked Brian if you had a boyfriend and maybe that’s what had you so busy.”
He’d asked my brother that question? Interesting. During that wedding weekend over New Year’s I’d realized how obvious my crush might be to him and had decided to become a little less available. I’d hoped it would start a spark, but this was the first time I had evidence he’d even noticed the change. “No, nothing like that. I guess I didn’t think you’d miss it.”
“Well, I did.”
A shiver lanced through me with the possibilities of that answer and then sadness overwhelmed me. If I had to move, I’d miss our Sunday nights together greatly. “Yeah, me, too. Maybe before I pack up, we can do one last movie marathon night or something.”
