Page 103 of Best Kind of Trouble
He ignores her, keeping his focus on me. “Anyway, I actually just got a text from Liam.”
“You did?” I blurt.
“I’d asked him if he wanted to grab a drink, like, weeks ago, and he just now texted me back. I thought I was the only person who forgets about texts. Anyway, Liam’s cool. He offered to teach me how to make beer. I love learning how to do new things.”
“Consider some etiquette lessons,” Nora mutters.
“Did he sound drunk?” I ask before I can think better of it.
Cormac’s brow furrows. “How can a person sound drunk on a text?”
“I don’t know, forget it,” I say as Nora gives me a speculative look. “I was only curious.”
Nora angles her head toward the hallway. “Let’s go have that drink. Cormac has some work to do.”
“Oh, we won’t be brewing the beer today,” he replies. “It’s going to happen in a week or two, probably, because he says he has a lot of stuff leading up to?—”
“I was talking about cleaning the kitchen,” Nora clarifies.
“Oh, right,” he says, and his head disappears back under the sink.
Nora tugs me out of the room, down the small, creaky hallway, past a bathroom, and to and through a door with a crystal doorknob. The room beyond it is small but neat, with a double bed covered by a purple comforter, a rolltop desk with a chair, and a beanbag chair.
“Let me just change my shirt,” she says and disappears into the closet, reemerging in a plain red sweater.
“Did you get a reindeer one too?” I ask.
“Yes, but I’m not a masochist. Cormac didn’t have to put it on.” She blows hair off her face with a puff of air. “I always feel like I’m walking back in time when I’m over here.”
I smile ruefully. “I know what you mean. I become a child as soon as I step into my parents’ house.”
“I claim the beanbag chair,” she says with a return smile, then plops down onto it and pours ginger beer into each of the glasses. One of them goes to me.
“Soooo…” she starts.
I get settled in the chair at the desk and take a sip of the ginger beer—the holiday variation we’ll have at the New Year’s party—because I have a feeling I might need it for whatever’s coming next.
“Why did you go out with Jonah?” she asks.
Not what I was expecting…
I study the glass in my hand, taking in the lovely caramel hue and the bubbles fizzing to the top. It smells like caramelized fruit. I take a sip, steeling myself for the Jonah talk, and nearly hum at the taste.
God, I love the transformation that’s at the center of brewing—how you can start with a few disparate ingredients and end up with something ambrosial. “This is delicious.”
“It is,” she agrees. “So is my question.”
“I think Jonah could tell I was lonely, and he took advantage of it,” I say, feeling the familiar weight of self-recrimination in my chest. But I fight it. I’m sick of feeling guilty for wanting the world to be kinder than it is. “He knew my dad had promised to give me the brewery. He said he’d help, and it made me feel less alone. I…” The ache in my chest seems to speak the next words. “I’vealwaysfelt alone, for as long as I can remember.”
She gives me a sad smile. “Guys like him look for weak spotsto burrow into. Like worms. You shouldn’t blame yourself. Manipulation is literally their thing.”
“Why didyougo for him? You’re not weak.”
She points a finger at my chest. “Neither are you. You thought you needed him, but you didn’t. Look at you, running off, making A-plans, B-plans, all kinds of plans. I don’t know many people who’ve done as much in as little time. You didn’t need Jonah to do any of that. You just thought you did.”
My grip on the cup tightens. “But Idoneed Liam.”
“You don’t need him any more than he needs you,” she says archly.
