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Josiah leans away from me to get a better look at my face, and the concern written all over his face surprises me. I thought he would be elated to hear about our breakup. He’s never been the biggest fan of Brandon. He didn’t like that it took him so long to commit to a relationship with me in the beginning. He’s never cared for the way he talks to me. At first, I laughed it off as it just being Brandon’s sense of humor, but then it did become a source of conflict in Brandon’s and my relationship for years. Why is Josiah not jumping up and down celebrating right now? Isn’t this what he’s been waiting for?
“What happened?” he asks. His voice is gruff, and his whole body is tensed up, waiting for my reply.
“Logan was at his show tonight with some friends, and he saw him with another woman during the break in between sets. I arrived on the scene just in time to watch him propose to her onstage. The crowd was elated when she said yes.” I cover my face with my hands and will myself not to cry again. My eyes are already achy. I don’t think they could make it through another bout of tears.
Josiah jumps up from the couch and paces around his living room for a moment before going to his closet and pulling on a hoodie. He slips his feet into his sandals and runs around his living room, looking for something.
“Aha!” he says as he grabs his keys from his cluttered counter.
“What are you doing?” I ask. I’m not sure if the shake in my voice is from my suppressed emotions or my fear of what Josiah is about to do.
“I’m going to go let Brandon know exactly what I think of him…with my fist.”
This is exactly what I was afraid of. I don’t want Josiah fighting for my honor. I just want to forget that this ever happened. I want to erase Brandon Marsh from my memory and move on with my life. And I can’t do that if Josiah gets arrested for assault and battery. Brandon definitely deserves a good punch to the face, but if anyone’s going to do it, it better be me. It wouldn’t hurt him very much, but it would feel very therapeutic for me.
“No! No, you’re not. I don’t want to have to bail you out of jail,” I say. I leap up from the couch and go to pry the keys from his hands. He holds them up over his head where he knows I can’t reach them.
I wrap both my hands around his arm, trying to pull it down to me, and his muscles tense under my touch. “Please, I just need to be with my best friend,” I say. He lowers his arm, and I grab his keys. He hesitates to let them go, but then sighs and releases them to me. I hang them up on the little hook by his front door so they won’t get misplaced again.
“I have a lot of questions,” he grumbles and sits back down on the couch. His arms are crossed over his chest, and he looks grumpy and adorable.
“As do I…and zero answers.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks. He runs a frustrated hand through his sandy-blond hair. It’s sticking straight up now, and my hand aches to smooth it back down. Instead, I clasp my hands together in front of me.
“Not really…maybe tomorrow.”
He nods his head and leans it back on the couch, looking up at the ceiling. I rewrap myself in the blanket and sit down beside him. He reaches across me and grabs the remote from where I left it a few minutes before. He turns the movie back on, and I spend the next few hours forgetting all about my broken heart and feeling all the anguish of the characters instead.
2
Josiah
My mind is racing a mile a minute. That idiot, Brandon, broke my best friend in the entire world’s heart. My best friend who is the kindest, most gentle person I’ve ever met. She doesn’t deserve this. No one deserves to be cheated on and tossed aside like that.
I have half a mind to be angry withherfor ever giving him that power over her. But she’s the victim in all this, and it would be wrong to fault her for his actions. I just wish she would have listened to me when I warned her about him when they first started dating all those years ago. I told her he wasn’t worth her time, but she didn’t want to hear it. All she saw when she looked at Brandon was a handsome face with a guitar and a charming personality. Afakepersonality, I should add, but she didn’t know that then. Or she just didn’t want to believe it.
The last time I tried to talk to her about him, I ended up going into a full-on twenty-minute rant until she finally put a stop to it.She yelled at me and said I needed to mind my own business and that I had never liked any of her boyfriends—which, for the record, is not true. I liked her boyfriend junior year of high school. He was a little on the nerdy side. She was way out of his league, but he was nice and treated her like a princess. For some reason, they only dated for about two months, though.
Brandon is the complete opposite of that. He treats her like a maid, a chef, and a personal assistant all rolled into one. He doesn’t take her out on dates anymore. I think he actually considers her going to his shows as dates. He didn’t remember her birthday last year, and he didn’t get her a Christmas gift. I really think he forgets she exists until he needs something from her.
He has never deserved Ellis. I knew that he never cared for her the way she did for him. It has been a long six years of agony, watching him walk all over her and keeping my mouth shut—after that last, almost friendship-ending fight—against my better judgment. She gave him chance after chance after chance, and he blew every single one of them…repeatedly. I don’t know why she put up with him for so long.
But it’s over now, thank goodness.
The TV snaps me out of my brooding when the two main characters start yelling at each other. They do that a lot in this series. I think this time it’s because the guy just professed his love to her, and that’s the last thing the woman wanted to hear. I guess it would be shocking to find out that someone who’s constantly critiquing your every thought and action is in love with you. I find it really hard to believe that two people who dislike each other and fight that much would ever fall in love. Sure, a little tension is good for building chemistry, but the downright hostility between these two is unheard of. I guess some people like it. I don’t understand it, though.
Normally when they’re fighting, Ellis chooses one of the characters to cheer on, but she’s abnormally quiet right now. It’s unsettling. I glance over at her. Her long, dark hair is fanned around her, and a bit of drool is pooling on my throw pillow as she snores lightly. I’d be grossed out, but it’s practically her pillow anyway. She picked out the pillows when I moved into my apartment, and she’s really the only one who uses them. Most of the time, I keep them thrown on the floor in the corner of the room.
I roll my eyes since she isn’t conscious to see it and scold me for it. I turn off the TV, thankful that I don’t have to sit through any more of that tragic story tonight. As gently as I can, I place one hand under Ellis’s head and the other on her back. I slowly lower her until she’s lying flat on my couch and tuck her blanket tighter around her. I take one second to appreciate the freckles on her cheeks and nose while I’m bent down next to her. I never get the chance to do this when she’s awake because she’s always moving. Even if she were to be still, she wouldn’t let me look at her. It would freak her out to catch me studying her.
I turn off the light and go to my bed.
It’s late, but sleep eludes me as I lie awake stressing over what I’m going to do about this new situation I find myself in. Ellis—my Ellis—is single for the first time in six years. I don’t know how I feel about this.
I wake to the sound of someone rummaging through my closet. My muscles tense as I prepare myself to fight off the intruder before I remember that Ellis fell asleep here last night. I roll over and groan as I stretch my stiff muscles. My eyes feelgritty and itchy from not enough sleep. Nothing that a little coffee can’t fix.
“You need a better t-shirt selection,” she says over her shoulder as she holds one up to her chest. It’s way too big, the hem hitting mid-thigh on her. She shrugs her shoulders and then goes into my bathroom. I hear water running for a few minutes and then cabinets opening and closing. I decide this is a good time to get out of bed and put pants on. In the kitchen a few minutes later, I make a pot of coffee and pour two mugs. I fix Ellis’s with enough sugar and creamer that it makes me wonder if it can even be classified as coffee anymore.
