Page 59 of What We Brave
"Had a moment of madness." I laugh, but it's manic. "I kissed him. Really kissed him. And he kissed me back for about three seconds before he pulled away and freaked out."
Jamila is quiet for a long moment. Then: "How did it feel?"
"The kiss?"
"The kiss. Him. All of it."
I think about Blake's hands on my face. The scratch of his stubble. The way he tasted like coffee and cold air. The sound he made—half groan, half protest—before he wrenched himself away.
"It felt like something," I whisper. "That's what I told him. He asked, and I said it felt like something."
"Something good?"
"Somethingreal." I press my palms against my eyes. "Which makes me a terrible person, right? Because I still love Reid. I do. When I saw him last week, my heart actually hurt. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to go back to being us. Those feelings didn't go anywhere."
"But now you have feelings for Blake too."
"I don't know what I have for Blake." I drop my hands. "Attraction? Obviously. Some kind of connection? Maybe. But feelings? Real feelings? How can I have real feelings for someone who spent months being so horrible?"
Jamila reaches across the table and squeezes my wrist. "You can have both, you know. You can be angry at what he did and still feel something for who he is underneath. Humans are complicated like that."
"It feels like a betrayal. Of Reid. Of myself." My voice cracks. "I spent so long trying to make things work with Blake, trying to get him to accept me, and he just kept pushing me away. And now that I'm free—technically single—I kiss him? What does that say about me?"
"It says you're human." Jamila's grip tightens. "It says you had an impulse and you acted on it. Not the smartest move, maybe, but not unforgivable either."
"Reid would be devastated."
"Reid doesn't get a vote right now. You're not together." She releases my wrist and picks up her fork again. "Look, I'm not saying what you did was a good idea. Kissing your ex's best friend—who also happens to be the guy who tormented you—is objectively messy. But you're allowed to be messy, Laine. You're allowed to not have all the answers."
"I feel like I should, though. I'm thirty-two. I should know what I want."
"Says who?" Jamila points her fork at me. "There's no rulebook. No timeline. You got out of a relationship that was hurting you, and now you're figuring out what comes next. That's allowed to be confusing."
I slump back against the booth. "What do I do now?"
"What do youwantto do?"
"I want to go back in time and not kiss him."Lies.
"Not an option. Try again."
What do I really want? I can't get Reid's face when he said he still loved me out of my head. Or Blake's eyes in the orange glow of the heat lamp. The way my heart pulled toward both of them, in different directions, for different reasons.
"I don't know," I finally admit. "I need time. Space. I need to figure out if what I feel for Blake is real or just... adrenaline. Confusion. Some messed-up response to finally having him be vulnerable with me."
Jamila nods. "That sounds reasonable."
"And I need to figure out if I can trust Reid again. If we can rebuild something without Blake in the middle of it."
"Also reasonable."
"And I need to stop kissing people until I have my head on straight."
Jamila grins. "NowthatI fully support."
I laugh—a real laugh this time—and steal a bite of her pancakes. She swats at my fork but doesn't actually stop me.
"For what it's worth," she says, "I think you're handling this better than you give yourself credit for. A few months ago, you would have already booked a flight to somewhere far away."
