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“You can punch me if you want,” I tell him. “I would get it if you do. Hell, I would get it if you want to do more than that.”
He suddenly stands up, and I get ready to get punched in the face, but instead, he gets out his phone from his pocket. “I’m calling her,” he says and rushes out of the room.
“Fuck,” I say to the empty room. This can’t be a good thing.
NINA
After I hang up with Sloan, I pace around my room, trying to come up with a plan. I don’t want to try and go find Travis, that will be too difficult. At some point, he’ll have to come back home and shower. So then, I will ask him what’s wrong.
My phone rings and I see Grady is calling me.
“Hello, Brother,” I answer.
“What are you thinking? You and Travis?”
I’m taken aback by his tone. Of course, I know what he’s talking about, but I need to play dumb, at least for now.
“What do you mean?”
“All this time and you didn’t tell me? My best friend and my sister? Ugh. How could you? He is like a brother to me, and you’re like a sister to me.”
“I am your sister…”
“Exactly, that’s why this is all so weird. You two go together as well as peanut butter and pickles. You met Sydney, and that means you know the kind of relationships Travis involves himself in. He’s not for you, little sister. You’ll only get hurt.”
“No, Grady, you don’t understand. Travis and I have been together before. Right before he left town, actually.”
“I do understand. He told me everything, and I know that he left, and you cried for months. That’s not a healthy thing to revisit.”
“What did you think was going to happen if you put us in the same living quarters?”
“Not this. I didn’t know any of this,” Grady screeches. “Why is now any different than then?”
“I just think maybe we weren’t ready then,” I tell him honestly.
“And you’re ready now to what, be serious?”
“Maybe,” I say, thinking about it for the first time. “I mean if he is. Look, I don’t know, this whole day has been weird.”
“He’s upset,” Grady finally says, “I think he really cares about you, and that just freaks me out.”
Laughing into the phone, I say, “I get that. Travis and I need to work on talking to each other. Don’t say anything to him until I figure out what I want to tell him.” If he’s talking to Grady about me, maybe he’s not checked out, at least not completely.
“All right, I’m still going to kill him though.” Grady hangs up before I can respond. He sounds angry but less than before, so hopefully, he’s joking about killing him. If not, well… I hope Travis can run fast.
* * *
Travis
Grady returns to the living room a few minutes later and paces in front of me. I swear he’s going to wear a hole in the floor if he keeps it up.
Finally, he turns to me, his face filled with an unreadable emotion. “I guess she cares about you, but you really did destroy her for a little while when you left. Now thinking about it, I’m stupid for not putting one and one together sooner. You left, and she didn’t sleep or eat, and I was scared and angry.”
“She destroyed me too, there’s more to the story, things I haven’t told you yet.”
“Okay,” he says and sits back down, grabbing the football and tossing it from hand to hand.
“After we slept together, I spent like a whole week getting my costume together. I was going as Maverick because I knew she loved Top Gun.”
