She was twelve thousand miles of nerves in a body built for fifty. Her brother had given her the puzzled look he turned on their parents and other people so much more than on her. To him, it was simple: she had a plan, everything was in place, and either it would work or not.
But no amount of preparation took her toes off the knife's edge. Anton sent her in his truck. The garage door code for Vic's house was programmed into his console. It gave her maybe one and a half minutes of grace before Vic would know that she was the one showing up with a pizza, instead of Anton.
She balanced her package on top of the pizza, but wasn't brave enough to carry her overnight bag in from the car. The kitchen was empty. And the way her breath caught somewhere between her sternum and her throat was an unnecessary reminder about how much she wanted to see Vic, but didn't want to live with the unknowns of this conversation.
“Ton?” he asked.
She cleared her throat. He was walking her way. “It's not Anton.”
He stopped in the kitchen threshold. “Gill.”
She tried for a confident smile. “I brought pizza. Bacon as requested.”
He crossed his arms and didn't reply.
“Sorry for the ambush.” She couldn't tell if he was staring at her because it had been too long since they were together, and he wanted to soak up every inch of her. Or if he was trying to figure out what he'd ever seen in her in the first place. She was crossing her fingers for the first one.
She set the boxes on the table and smoothed her hands down her thighs. “If it's okay, can we talk?”
He took two steps towards the table and the rubber bands stretching between them eased just enough for her to drop her shoulders.
“I’ll go, obviously, if you want me to. But I really needed to see you. To apologize. And, Vic, I’m so sorry. It’s—let me … I’m stumbling over myself. Sorry, I want to talk to you. And I want to explain myself. And I want to tell you so much.” Her voice hitched, and she trailed off.
He looked at the pizza. And at her, and out the window, and back at her. “Do you need a beer?”
She wasn't sure he could even see her nod, he turned so fast towards the fridge. She let a blip of optimism spur her to grab a couple of plates and napkins.
He looked at the other box she’d carried in, but didn't ask anything as she moved it onto an empty chair and sat across from him. “Thanks.”
He pursed his lips and nodded. “Thanks for the pizza.”
“Anton says he'll make it up to you for the trickery. Says he'll show you how to get through that boss level without losing stamina.”
His grunt was unamused, but he hadn’t thrown her out. So she took a deep breath and stuck with the plan.
“Remember when we were camping and Cisco said that about us all being tied by the hips?”
He nodded.
Her throat was dry but she wasn't allowing herself to be refreshed by the beer just yet. “So, I realized, I've known you for so long as this … extension of Anton. The Tony twins, ride or die, all that stuff. And here’s the part where I say never mind what my parents or anyone else thinks: Anton is not a problem I need to solve. I've known that for ages. The only thing is, at one point, he kinda was my problem. Not in an unwelcome way. I've never thought of my brother as a burden, and never could. He's just part of my life, and it was important to me to find ways to help him bridge between his world and,” she waved towards the window, “everything out there. I've been doing that since before you knew him.”
Vic nodded and slid the pizza box an inch her way.
She flopped a slice onto her plate. “I never thought I was jealous of your role in his life. Never thought you were something else I had to fix or solve or mitigate or observe cautiously—none of that. But I always took for granted that you and I were the most important things to Anton. And since I knew what my role in his life was, I realize now I took it for granted that your role in his life was essential to you in the same way.”
“I love Anton.”
She's smiled. “Of course you do. No one's ever doubted that for a microsecond, any more than they doubt it about me. But I'm trying to say that I guess I always assumed you were on Team Anton in a way that could be … therapeutic, too. I go around anticipating dangers all the time, worrying about people being cruel, worried about him not understanding some social situation. Laying whatever groundwork I can to make his life easier. Getting to know his teachers, his peers, his boyfriends. And I just guessed—from the way you always got him involved in friendships and activities and even mischief sometimes—that you were actively laying groundwork like I was. Your own version of it.”
“It's called friendship, Gillian.”
She picked a piece of bacon off the pizza. “I know, I figured that out. Way, way too late. But I figured it out.”
He didn’t jump in to reassure her that he got all she was trying to say. Fair enough, since she wasn’t exactly following the plan to explain herself.
“I’m not on track. Everyone always says I'm on track all the time, but I'm not on track right now, and I'm sorry about that. Thing is, you and Anton, you’re best friends. And I love that. He's always been there for you, and I love that you've always been there for him. And I'm trying to learn to be the right kind of there for you, too, and the right kind of there for him. For him, I need to be a sister and a friend, but not a protector, not a guardian. Not always looking for something that's going to hurt him so I can ward it off before it does.” She pleated her napkin. “This whole time, even before I thought about you and me as an option, us spending more time together and getting to know you as a friend. As as the man you are now and not the kid I knew long ago, or the fuck boy—”
“Fuck boy?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for that.”
She leaned in. “But, see, that's what I've done. I got into this relationship with you without ever dropping the ‘he’s my brother's friend’ thing, the same way I've never dropped the ‘I have to protect my brother’ thing. I'm sitting here, over and over and over again for months, being surprised that you're all grown up now. That you're a man in your own right. But I'm the one who was being immature and stuck in my childhood. I'm the one who didn't take you as you are now and understand that I was falling in love with Victor Anthony. I wasn't falling in love with Anton's best friend, who I needed to approach like the most important thing was to protect my brother from the fallout. If there was going to be fallout. Or to make room for Anton, if you and I were going to be together. That wasn't fair to you. Wasn't even fair to me. It was short sighted and unwise and it clouded me over and here I am, in love with Victor Anthony. And I don't even know how to deal with it.”
“Hang on.” Finally, his eyes flicked up to hers. “In love?”
She wanted to gaze at him without the scrim of tears blocking her sight, but it was just impossible. “Desperately, yeah. Desperately in love with you, Vic. I mean it—with you. Not with some version of you I decided was the truth, before I ever met you on neutral ground. Not with a guy I can spend my life with because it will make my brother more secure. Maybe I fucked us up too much.”
She bit her lip. Swallowed. Kept going. “I’m pretty sure I did fuck it up way too much. But you snuck up on me, Victor. With your kindness and your insight and your bright side of everything and your goddamn sexy humor and your heart.” She broke off and buried her face in her napkin. “You snuck up on me, and now I'm just ….” She shrugged. Wished he would talk. Knew he wouldn't until she'd said her piece, because he was Vic. And for all his physical restlessness, he called up infinite amounts of patience to let emotions enter the space when necessary.
“I’m grateful, is what I’m trying to say. Grateful that you said you loved me, and grateful you made room for me in your life. Without you, how would I have ever accessed this forever kind of feeling I have now? I wasn't ever looking for that. I'm not champagne and roses, I'm not fancy parties and grand gestures. I’m just a cynical professor who gets too caught up in her inner monologue and too distracted to get on with things without setting a hundred alarms to remind me to stop working.”
“I love your hundred alarms.”
See, she could be wrong. There he was interrupting her, and she wasn't even done pleading her case with all the ways he was perfect for her. “You can't like my hundred alarms, they're overkill. I should just learn to make dinner at a proper time like a proper adult.” The goddamn napkin was not soothing on her snotty nose.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why do you have to learn to stop work and make dinner without an alarm reminding you? You found a system that works for you. You're not hurting anybody with it. It's not something you have to change, Gillian.”
She scoffed. “Tell my mother that.”
He scoffed right back. “I will not. It's something she should have figured out already. But you can't think I want to discuss your parents right now.”
Damn, the way he got her. It would be unnerving if she wasn't so thrilled every time his simple statements proved that she wasn't less-than in his eyes. So she scrubbed her face again and went back to her plan, which seemed like it might truly be working.
“Victor. I love you. Maybe I waited too long, and if I did, I get it. Because you're not the kid I knew. And you're not somebody whose heart I can take for granted just because you're my brother's best friend and that somehow turns it into a walk in the park for you to be with me. To put up with everything I ask of you. I know I've taken you for granted. And I know that's unfair. And I know I ambushed you today. You say the word and I’ll leave. I'll stop talking about all this and give you space to eat your pizza alone.”
She laughed a little. He did not. Damn but his eyes were soft.
She felt her throat and her stomach and her palms and her knees in every beat of her pulse. “Before I go, though, I just want to promise you that I mean it. And that it's not casual, it's not fleeting. It’s not going away anytime soon. Or, ever. So, when you're ready to talk to me—if you want to talk to me—you know where I am. I'll be waiting, and I won't make it bad for you. I won't be awkward. I'll stay out of Anton's unless I’m sure you're not there.”
Every molecule of air had rushed out of her body. A shame, since it would have been nice if her brain could have had the oxygen to process the moment. She thought she'd said it all. She thought she'd completed the plan. But it felt like such hollow work to stand and leave. She tossed her napkin into his trash can, patted her pocket for her keys.