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“For what?”
“Being honest with me earlier. About stuff.”
The energy in this room is so intense right now, a mind-bending combination of lust and awkwardness and raw honesty. I’m walking on a minefield of eggshells. “There’s always stuff,” I say, brushing her off.
“Sure is,” she says, and I think she’s going to drop it again even though I’m dying with curiosity, but she’s a boulder rolling down a mountain now, her green eyes glittering with tears. “It’s my friend. Well, was my friend. She took everything. From me. The business. God! We were just starting to get somewhere with it all and she’s gone and fucked off with all our money!”
Things slowly start to piece together in my head and a possessive rage starts flaring up under my skin. How dare this so-called friend screw Anna over like this? “That’s a low move, dude.”
She throws her hands up. “It’s obscene! You know, she told me she owned our apartment and I thought she was being kind by not making me pay rent. She told me her parents had money and just bought this place for her like it was nothing. And she was so glamorous that I just believed it. And then I got kicked out!Four yearsI lived there, and I never knew her at all. I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid,” I say like a reflex. She scrubs the tears furiously from her eyes and shakes her head.
“Don’t bother, everyone thinks it. You think you’re a family disappointment? At least you’re not gullible enough to spend years building a business with a con artist while your perfect, valedictorian brother flits around the world in first class while Mom and Dad are oh so proud of him.” She sighs heavily. “At least you told Ben before you broke into his house.”
It all makes sense now, why she’s been so evasive and why she threw a lamp at me. She really wasn’t expecting me to be there. Ben doesn’t know a thing.
I want to comfort her, so I do in the only way I know how. By making fun of myself. “And you think he didn’t do that awfulyou should do bettervoice at me when I called him to tell him I fucked up badly enough that I had to hide out?”
Fortunately, the joke lands and a hint of a smile cracks through her self-loathing and rage. Even with wild hair and puffy eyes from crying, she’s attractive to me. She makes me realize that I’ve been living among plastic people for too long. That I’ve been craving something real.
“Yeah, I know that voice. It’s why I didn’t tell him. And there’s no way I’m telling Mom. She already thinks I’m wasting my time trying to make a career for myself instead of trying to make a family.”
“Can’t you do both?”
“Not according to her.”
“What about according to you?”
She hesitates before answering me and I feel like the room around us shrinks. We’re facing each other now, only a handful of feet apart. Closing the gap and pulling her into my arms would be easy if she wanted me to. But she clearly doesn’t. She thinks she’s stupid? I’m the stupid one — the only reason she kissed me is because she thought that was what she was meant to do, and I was too dumb to tell her otherwise.
I only want her if it’s real.
“I think you can do both,” Anna says slowly, choosing her words carefully. “But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with choosing one or the other. It just has to be a choice.”
“Choices suck,” I say. “I miss my PA. Antonio gets everything all set up for me every day. I’m a mess without him.”
My attempt to lighten the mood falls flat though as Anna sighs again. “Yeah, choices suck. It’s what got us here, huh? Prisoners in Ben’s house all because of some monumentally stupid screw-ups.”
“He’d understand, y’know. You should talk to him.”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffs, then stretches out her thumb and pinkie to mime being on the phone. “Hey, Ben, it’s Anna. By the way, I’m homeless now. Anyway, how’s Japan?” She shakes her head. “No thanks, I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life to add to my misery.”
I wave that idea away. “No, he wouldn’t be mean. Ben talks about you all the time, he loves you. Hell, he let me stay here and he knows there’s a non-zero chance I’d wreck his place. You clean up after yourself and everything, there’s no way he would let you go it alone.”
“What do you know?” Anna snaps, reaching forward to snatch the spoon off me so she can stir vigorously. I wince, having forgotten all about the pan again. This cooking stuff is harder than it looks.
“I know he thinks the sun shines out of your ass,” I say, not quite ready to stop trying to make her see that people care about her. “He’s proud of you, Anna. He thinks you work hard and he thinks you’re super smart for doing it all alone.”
She turns off the gas by wrenching the knob so hard I think she’s about to pull it off. “Just drop it, okay? Leave it alone.”
As she turns her back to me to finish the meal, I can’t help feeling like I’ve made yet another monumental mistake.
CHAPTER20
ANNA
Joel doesn’t deserve this anger I’m giving him. But he’s saying such nice things about me and I’ve never known how to behave when someone’s complimenting me. It’s embarrassing. And he’s wrong anyway. Ben’s the good one in our family. I’m nothing.
