“Well, you obviously haven’t seen enough,” I snapped back, immediately regretting it as she recoiled with hurt in her eyes. Desperate to regain any sense of composure, I paused and rolled my shoulders back. “Brooklyn’s different, Nikki.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“And you knoweverything, don’t you?”
I paused and gritted my teeth. I didn’t need to justify it anymore. I spent the most time with Brooklyn, and Iknewthat he was fine. I would know if he wasn’t.
“More than you think you do.” I lowered my voice. “I’m not having any more of this conversation. Not here, and not now.”
“Everything cool?” Brooklyn came up behind me and draped his arm over my shoulder. “Sorry about that, it was my mom. You know how she gets.”
I shot Nikki a hard glare.I told you so,again.
“Whatever,” Nikki grumbled, dropping her gaze to her silver stilettos.
“Everything’s good,” I told Brooklyn. “Great, actually.”
He beamed at me, oblivious to the emotional standoff my sister and I were having. He led me away back into the gallery crowd, and it took everything in me not to look back at her.
>> <<
Mom sold two paintings that night, one of which was to the younger guy she’d been making eyes with. Otherwise, the gallery had mostly cleared out.
“You go, Nikki and I have this handled.” She winked at me before looking over my shoulder at Brooklyn, who lingered by the door, his suit jacket draped over his arm.
“Mom, I don’t know where you think I’m going except to bed.”
Mom chuckled and shook her head in response.
I glanced across the room at Nikki, who’d been talking to one of the curators, still clutching an empty champagne glass in her hand. When we made eye contact, she scowled.
“Seriously.” Mom swept me into a quick hug. “Thanks for all your help. Be smart.”
“Oh my god.” I groaned before walking away. “Pretending I didn’t hear the implications behind that.”
I met Brooklyn by the door, who gave me one of those effortless smiles. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.” I returned his smile. “Take me home?”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
We drove home with the windows open, and I tried to let the stinging sense of unease from earlier fly out of them and into the night air. Everything had ended up being fine—great, even—and maybe I shouldn’t be so expectant of the other shoe dropping out of the sky. Brooklyn slowed to a stop in front of my house, and some old, soft rock song I didn’t recognize crooned faintly on the stereo in the background. It was quiet; not the kind we forced ourselves to sit in during family therapy, but the kind of quiet that only came when you were just so comfortable with someone, words couldn’t express it. I’d never had a person who understood me like he did, and it felt so good and so right that I almost had to wonder if he was even real, or if he was someone I’d made up because I wanted something like that more than I’d realized. Until him.
“We had a good night,” he said over the faint lulling of the music.
“We did, didn’t we?”
Brooklyn dropped his eyes to the stereo. He hit the Next button, and I couldn’t help but notice his shaking hands. He pressed his lips together and furrowed his brows, carefully mulling over his next words.
“Everything all right?” I asked him, absentmindedly running my hands back and forth over the silky material of my dress.
“I don’t know, Nat.” Every time he looked like he was about to say something else, he pressed his lips together again. My heart began sprinting.
“What, Brooklyn?” I reached over the center console and gave his arm a playful shove. “Please say it. You can tell me anything.”
He looked over at me, and the glow from the moon above us turned his eyes into little pools of light. “I feel like you’re the only person Icantell anything to.”
