Page 105 of Best Kind of Trouble
“It was good, wasn’t it?” she presses. “You wouldn’t be this wound up over bad sex.”
“It was the best I’ve ever had. If it was just sex, though, there wouldn’t be a problem. I like him…a lot, but I don’t think he’s interested in me like that. Even if he was, I’d be worried about ruining our dynamic. You told me it was awkward when things didn’t work out with you and José. I’m…oversensitive. If we tried dating, and it blew up, I don’t think I could be around him every day. I couldn’t do it.”
“So unfuck the situation, my friend. You think he can forget about what happened? You both need to be on the same page for that to happen.”
“I think he wants to. He told me he can’t care about anyone like that. It must be because of the woman the Mountain Morning fight was about. He’s probably still in love with her.”
The words feel painful coming out, as if each of them is covered in shattered glass.
“I doubt that very much,” Nora says, adjusting her position in the beanbag chair. “I saw you and Liam together. There’s definitely something there. But my advice is to give him what he says he wants. You’ll see soon enough whether he meant it.”
“He gave me boxing gloves for Christmas,” I confess.
“Good,” she says with a grin. “So you won’t hurt your hands if you need to hit him.”
Shouts erupt outside the room, and Nora springs up from her beanbag chair. Worry written all over her face, she hurries out the door, and I follow her.
“Nora? Nora!” her mother is shouting from the kitchen.
We burst into the room, which smells like gingerbread and is no longer spattered with wine. Cormac is in the corner, guzzling his mulled wine and shaking his head, while hisfather and Nora’s mother are embracing over a sheet full of cookies.
“What is it?” Nora asks, stopping so abruptly I almost bump into her. “I thought you were dying.”
Cormac finishes the wine and sets the cup on the counter with a smack. He mumbles something like “close enough.”
Then Nora’s mom, whom I still haven’t properly greeted, gestures her over to the cookie sheet.
“Just look at what this beautiful man did for me. Just look.”
Eugene is watching her like she’s every dream he ever had pressed into one person. “It’s the first cookie I ever decorated,” he says proudly.
I walk over and see one of the cookies on the sheet has a crown—a diamond ring.
“Oh shit,” Nora says, her expression full of shock. But then she forces an incredibly fake smile. “Congratulations.”
“Let’s all have a congratulatory drink,” I say, because she deserves a moment to gather herself.
Nora’s mother gasps. “Whoareyou?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
LIAM
I get drunk every year on Julia’s birthday. It’s something I’ve done for so long, I’m accustomed to it. It’s built into my muscle memory to get blackout drunk on Christmas, when little tykes are opening their plastic junk and their parents are downing buckets of coffee. Sometimes I do it with my dad and brother, or Hannah. Sometimes I’m alone.
But today, I’m standing outside Otis’s grandmother’s house with a six-pack, wondering what the fuck is wrong with me.
It’s Dottie. She put this picture in my head of Otis getting through to Briar, and now I can’t unsee it.
I’m here because I want to see ifshe’shere.
I want to see her, period.
I know that’s a bad idea, but I can’t summon the energy to care. Not today.
I knock, and an older woman answers the door with a surly look on her face. The smell of cooking turkey wafts out, making me realize I haven’t eaten for a while. I can’t remember how long.
The older lady instantly waves her cane at me. “Is there nodecency left in this world? You’d try to swindle money out of me on Christmas day? Who sent you, boy? What do they know?”
