My Brother’s Best Friend Is My Nemesis

Chapter Seven

Wren

Nobody moves.

That is the thing about the truly catastrophic moments in your life — they don't feel real for about four seconds. You just stand there, completely frozen, watching the disaster arrive and being absolutely unable to do a single thing about it.

Mason is still holding the whiskey.

His eyes haven't moved from my face.

"Mason—" I start.

"Don't." His voice is flat. Not loud. Not screaming. Flat, which is somehow so much worse. He sets the bottle down on the entry table like he's afraid of what he'll do with it if he keeps holding it. "Don't say a single word right now."

"Cole—" Ace tries.

"You either." Mason's eyes cut to him, and whatever is in that look makes Ace go completely still beside me. I have never once in four years seen Ace Calloway go still for anyone. "Not one word from you. I'm serious."

The apartment is so quiet I can hear the refrigerator humming.

Mason drags both hands over his face. He stands in the doorway of his best friend's apartment with his duffel still on his shoulder and the reality of what he just walked into sitting on all three of us like a weight, and he breathes through his nose for a long moment.

Then he looks at me.

"How long," he says.

"Mason, it's not—"

"How. Long."

"It just—" I stop. I start again. "It literally just happened. Like thirty seconds before you walked in."

"That's not what I'm asking." His jaw is tight. "How long has this been building."

I don't answer.

That is an answer.

Mason closes his eyes.

"Jesus Christ," he says quietly, to nobody in particular.

"It's not what you think," Ace says from behind me.

Mason opens his eyes and looks at his best friend with an expression I have never seen on my brother's face before. Not anger. Something more tired than anger. Something that looks like betrayal trying to find its shape.

"What do I think, Ace."

"You think I just—" Ace stops. Starts again. "This isn't casual. This isn't me doing what I normally do. You need to know that."

"What I need," Mason says, very carefully, "is for you to tell me that you did not just have your hands on my little sister in your kitchen while I was three states away trusting you to keep her safe."

Ace doesn't answer.

That is also an answer.

Mason laughs. It is not a good laugh. It is the kind of laugh that lives right next to something that hurts. He picks up the whiskey, walks to the kitchen, gets a glass, and pours himself two fingers like the rest of us aren't even standing here.

"Mason." I follow him in. "Say something."

"I'm thinking."

"That's what scares me."

He drinks. He sets the glass down. He looks at me the way he's been looking at me my whole life — like I'm something he's responsible for and terrified of failing at the same time — and he says: "Did he do anything you didn't want him to."

"No." Immediate. "Absolutely not."

"Did he—"

"Mason. It was a kiss. I was a willing participant. Do not make me into something that needs rescuing right now."

He looks at me for a long moment. "That's not what I'm doing."

"That's exactly what you're doing."

"I'm asking because he's Ace," he says. "Because I know who he is. Because I know what he does with girls and how he does it and I am standing here looking at my sister's face and trying to figure out if she knows what she's walking into."

"I know who he is," I say quietly. "I've known who he is since we were twelve."

"Knowing who he is and knowing what he does with girls he wants are two different things, Wren."

"I'm aware."

"Are you?" He looks past me to where Ace is still standing in the living room, watching both of us the way you watch something you know is about to explode. "Because from where I'm standing it looks like you've been in this apartment for nine days and you've already—"

"Don't finish that sentence," I say, "in a way that makes me sound stupid. I'm warning you."

Mason stops.

He knows that tone. He's heard it exactly once before, the day I told him I'd reported Ace and he asked me if I was sure about what I saw, and I looked at him with this specific expression that means I am not a child and I do not need to be handled, and he never asked me again.

He runs one hand through his hair. "I don't think you're stupid," he says. "I think he's been living alone for two years and you walked into his apartment and you're—" He gestures at me vaguely.

"I'm what."

"You're you, Wren. You're—" He stops. Scrubs his hand across his jaw. "You look different. Than when you left. You look different and you seem different and I've been gone nine days and I come back to this and I just need a second, okay? I just need a second."

I don't say anything to that.

I look over my shoulder at Ace.

He's watching Mason with something in his expression that I've never seen on his face before either. Not guilt. Something more complicated than guilt. Something that looks like a man waiting to find out how much something is going to cost him and deciding it's probably worth it anyway.

"Ace," Mason says without looking at him. "Say something useful."

Ace moves into the kitchen. He leans back against the counter across from my brother and he looks at him straight on, no smirk, no performance, nothing.

"I didn't plan it," he says. "You know me well enough to know I'd tell you if I had."

"I know you well enough to know you don't plan anything you actually want."

"Then you know what that means."

Mason looks at his best friend for a long time. Something passes between them that I'm not part of, that lives in ten years of friendship and two-a-days and everything they've been through together that I only know pieces of.

"She's my sister," Mason says.

"I know who she is."

"If you hurt her—"

"Mason—"

"If you hurt her, Ace, I will burn every single thing we have down to the ground and you know I mean that." His voice doesn't rise. Doesn't waver. "She has spent four years being the person that everyone in this school treats like she doesn't matter. You were part of that. I let you be part of that because I was a coward and because it was easy and that's on me. But I am not going to stand here and watch you be the next thing that happens to her."

The kitchen is dead silent.

I am staring at my brother.

Because he has never once said that out loud. Not to me, not to anyone. Four years of watching and never saying a word and he has never once acknowledged it until right now, in Ace's kitchen, at ten o'clock on a Friday night with a glass of whiskey in his hand.

"Mason—"

"I'm not done." He looks at Ace. "You tell me right now if this is real. Not a game. Not a thing you do because she's the one person who's ever told you no. You look me in the eye and you tell me it's real and I will figure out how to be okay with it."

Ace holds my brother's gaze.

"It's real," he says.

Just that. No preamble, no hedging, no angle. Just two words in a voice that doesn't leave room for anything except the truth.

My heart does something completely stupid.

Mason looks at him for a long, unreadable moment.

Then he picks up his glass, finishes the whiskey, and sets it down.

"I'm going to bed," he says. "I'm not okay with this yet. I want you both to know that I am not okay with this yet." He points at Ace. "And you—we're talking tomorrow. Not tonight, because I will say something I regret. Tomorrow." He points at me. "And you — we're also talking tomorrow."

"I look forward to it," I say.

"Don't be smart right now, Wren, I'm being very mature about this."

He picks up his duffel bag and disappears down the hall into the spare room.

His door shuts.

Ace and I stand in the kitchen in the sudden silence, six feet apart, and I can still feel where his hand was on my jaw like it left a mark.

"That went well," I say.

He looks at me. "You okay?"

"I don't know." I lean back against the counter. "He said something. About the four years. He's never said that before."

"I know."

"Did you know he felt that way about it?"

Ace is quiet for a moment. "I knew he wasn't proud of it. Mason doesn't talk about things he's not proud of."

"No." I look at the hallway. At my brother's closed door. "He doesn't."

We stand there for another second.

"Wren."

I look at him.

He crosses the kitchen in three steps and his mouth is on mine again before I've fully processed that he's moved, and this kiss is different from the last one — slower, more deliberate, like he's making a point — and I grab the front of his shirt with both hands and kiss him back and for approximately eight seconds everything is very simple.

Then I pull back.

"Your bedroom has a lock," I say, slightly breathless, which is embarrassing.

He pulls back and looks at me. "Yeah."

"So does mine."

"Yeah."

"And my brother is twenty feet away."

"Yeah." He doesn't let go of my waist. "That's going to be a recurring problem."

"It's going to be a problem starting now," I say. "Because if he comes back out here and sees this, all the mature he was just doing goes directly out the window."

Ace looks at me for a long moment.

Then he drops his forehead against mine, and that — that quiet, simple thing — undoes me more than the kiss did.

"Go to bed, Wren," he says quietly.

"You too."

I step back. He lets me go, slow, like he doesn't particularly want to.

I make it to the hallway.

"Hey." His voice stops me.

I turn around.

He's leaning in the kitchen doorway with his arms crossed and his eyes on me and the low light of the apartment doing absolutely nothing to make him less infuriating to look at.

"For the record," he says. "When Mason asks me tomorrow — and he's going to ask me — I'm going to tell him the truth. All of it. How long, what happened, everything." He holds my gaze. "I'm not hiding it. I'm not pretending it wasn't real. I want you to know that before he asks."

I stare at him.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay," he says.

I go to bed.

I lie in the dark in his spare room, listening to the quiet of the apartment, and I think about four years and report forms and kitchen counters and my brother's face when he said I was part of that and I let you be.

I think about Ace saying it's real like it cost him nothing. Like it was just true and there was no other way to say it.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand.

Mason.

I pick it up.

*I still love you. I'm just processing.*

I smile at the ceiling.

*I know. Go to sleep.*

*I can't sleep, I just walked in on something traumatic.*

*You're so dramatic.*

*I get it from you. Tell your boyfriend I want pancakes tomorrow, it's the least he can do.*

I stare at the word boyfriend for a long moment.

Then my phone buzzes again. Different contact.

Ace.

*Mason just texted me asking for pancakes.*

I press my face into the pillow.

*He texted me too.*

*Is that his version of a blessing.*

*That's his version of I'm not going to fight you but you owe me.*

Three dots.

*I can work with that.*

I put the phone down and stare at the ceiling, and I should be terrified. My brother is twenty feet away processing the information that his best friend and his sister just kissed in the kitchen. Monday I have a thesis deadline. My whole life is technically still in two bags in the corner of this room.

I should be terrified.

I'm smiling so hard my face hurts.

That scares me more than any of it.

Because Ace Calloway just told my brother it was real.

And I believe him.

And I have no idea yet how much that's going to cost us both.