AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How’s Chicago?” Lee asks.
“They have me in a short-term rental right now that’s pretty sweet, so I can’t complain about that. But there’s a cold snap happening right now. I forgot what fall’s like when you’re not in California.”
Lee and Brady chuckle, but I can’t be bothered because, in seconds, I’m going to have to tell Miles that I did the one thing he warned me not to—hurt his little sister.
“So, what’s up?” Miles asks.
In my peripheral vision, I see Lee and Brady turn to look at me.
I sigh. “I messed up and hurt Twyla.”
Miles’s jaw flexes. I wait for him to lay into me, but it doesn’t come.
“What happened?” he asks.
I explain how things have been a little tense since he left and how I think it was because Twyla and I never discussed what would happen when she had to leave. Then I tell him about Mathew’s call and how I didn’t discourage her from going to see that idiot.
“You didn’t tell her to send him packing back to Connecticut?” This is the first time Miles interrupts me.
“I know, it was stupid. I knocked on her door this morning to try to take it back, but she wasn’t there. I think she’d probably already left to go meet him.”
“What the hell were you thinking?” Miles asks.
“I don’t know what I was thinking!” I throw my hands up in front of me. “I was thinking she could do better than me and that she deserves someone who can give her his full attention all the time, not a guy who will have to make her number two on his priority list for half the year during football season. She’s so bubbly and I hate talking.”
“Not right now. You’re a fucking chatterbox.” Brady snickers.
“Has Twyla seemed unhappy with what you’re able to give her since she’s been here?” Lee asks.
“No, I guess not,” I grumble. “We don’t even live in the same city or on the same side of the country. Her life is in Connecticut. I don’t have the option to just uproot my life and move to the East Coast to be with her.”
“Admittedly, that’s a problem,” Miles says. “But Twyla has been able to visit me all the time. Or maybe she’d be willing to move there. You owe her a conversation at least.”
I’m quiet for a minute, looking at my hands before I look back up at Miles. “What if she moves here to be with me, leaves everyone and everything she knows, and I fuck it up?”
“Why are you so sure you’re gonna mess it up?” Brady asks.
“I don’t know anything about relationships. I’ve never been in a serious relationship before. I’m grumpy and like being alone a lot of the time. I don’t enjoy being social and being around a lot of people and God knows Twyla thrives in that kind of environment. What if I can’t make her happy?”
“Why are you so sure you can’t?” Lee says.
“You can just say it,” Miles says through the laptop.
I turn my attention that way. “Say what?”
“That you’re scared.”
I give him a deadly look, but my mouth doesn’t open to argue with him because it’s the truth. “I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt her.”
“But you’re already hurting her because you’re not being honest with her about how you feel,” Brady says.
“What if she moves here and I get traded? Look at Miles.” I gesture to him on the screen. “He had less than a day’s notice before he had to pick up his life and move. She’d have to pick up her life and start all over again in another new city.”
“You can come up with all the excuses you want, but I think what it really comes down to is how you feel about her. Do you love her?” Miles asks.
My heart rate picks up speed and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I already know the answer—have known it for a while. I do love Twyla. But saying the words requires a certain type of vulnerability I’m not used to sharing with anyone. It feels as though if I say them, I’ll be handing the power to destroy me over to someone else.
As if he can read my thoughts, Lee says, “Whether you say it or not, the reality remains the same.”
