I didn’t get the chance to respond. The sound of the front door opening and closing downstairs pulled both our gazes toward the footsteps coming up the stairs. Slow, familiar. Josh.
“You didn’t answer me,” repeated Gina. “How was it. Was it good? Bad?”
“What was good?” his voice paused, catching us as he passed Gina’s doorway.
“None of your business,” Gina said quickly, chipper and unbothered. “Our darling Bri, however, just went on maybe her only good date out of almost a dozen with the one and only Brenden.”
My heart thudded.
“Because it was good, right?” Gina asked for the third time.
I felt Josh’s gaze hit me before I even looked up, and when I did, I almost wished I hadn’t. His eyes were already on me from where he stood halfway in the doorway, unreadable and impossibly steady.
“It was good,” I admitted, voice low.
Her entire face lit up. “It was?”
“Your high-school boyfriend, Brenden?” Josh asked, interrupting again. Quiet. Just curious enough to sound harmless.
I swallowed hard, but my throat ached. “Yeah. It was nice to see him again.”
There was a beat.
Josh nodded slowly. “Right. Of course.” He didn’t say anything else. Just turned and headed down the hall.
My eyes stayed on him until he disappeared.
“Niiight,” Gina called after him without a care in the world.
She waited just long enough to hear Josh’s bedroom door click shut before wriggling in place and turning toward me like a giddy kid at a sleepover. “Okay, now tell me everything that happened.”
But I didn’t say anything right away.
I didn’t know how to tell her the part of where I still had spent half the evening thinking about someone else. Someone who had walked away tonight with a dullness in his eyes ever since I had left him standing alone at the gallery.
Brenden was good. Safe. Easy.
“Bri?”
“It was good,” I said quickly again.
She cocked her head, giving me an odd smile. “Ok. Good. But I’m going to need more details.”
I waited, lying in Gina’s bed while she gently snored, until the rest of the house was still. I heard the telltale creak of the stairs and the hum of the dishwasher downstairs. I padded down the hall in my socks, holding my breath like it might somehow make this moment easier.
There, just like I’d known he would be—just like he was those years ago the last time I stayed with the Huttons for Christmas— sat Josh. Alone in the living room. His legs stretched out, a book resting open in his lap, though his thumb had stopped turning pages. His face was tilted toward the reading lamp, the soft amber glow catching the angles of his jaw and the faint crease between his brows.
“Hi,” I said quietly, taking a seat beside him on the couch.
His gaze flicked to me without turning his head. “Hey,” he said, then looked back down at the book.
After a pause, I reached out and gently took it from his hands, laying it on the coffee table as I sat down. “Josh, we need to talk.”
This time, he looked at me directly. His eyes were tired, guarded. A little sad.
“About what?”
“About earlier,” I said, tucking one leg under the other. “I know me seeing Brenden again probably wasn’t expected.”
