“Well, that was an exciting meeting,” Silvia said as we walked out of the conference room the following Thursday.
“Exciting?” It was possible I’d missed something. I’d been in a funk since Sunday when Brett declared he needed “time to think.” I’d been present for Tess’s entire presentation, but if something exciting had happened, it hadn’t penetrated through my brooding.
“Oh, Henry,” I realized before Silvia responded. Scott’s father had blustered and bullied Tess the whole time, but that wasn’t new. He threw a tantrum at least once a month. I waved my hand dismissively.
“But Scott doesn’t usually contradict him.” She stopped walking, apparently wanting to take her time with the gossip.
I stopped too, not because I really cared, but because it would be rude not to at least pretend like I did. “He didn’t contradict him to his face.”
“He contradicted him to everyone in the room.”
I shrugged.
Okay, bickering about what had happened in the meeting and whether or not it was notable was probably just as rude as if I hadn’t stopped to talk about it at all. I wasn’t at my best that day.
I hadn’t been at my best all week, but the occasions where I had to share space with Brett were the worst. I’d spent the whole hour trying to focus on my tasks, or rather trying not to focus on him, and it had taken so much energy that I was now extremely drained.
Silvia didn’t seem to be put off.
She leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “He contradicted his father over a woman.”
“You think that was about Tess?”
Silvia drew back as if in shock. “Isn’t it completely obvious?”
I had suspected there was something up with her and Scott. Maybe if I was ever in a good mood again, I’d enjoy that validation.
Right now, though, I didn’t have the strength to be enthusiastic so I feigned surprise and gave her my best do-tell-me-more expression.
“Scott’s a playboy, you know.” She seemed then to remember the office rumors and colored slightly. “Yes, you do know.” She wasn’t ashamed enough to not go on, however. “So it’s very intriguing to see him form an attachment. But even more intriguing is the triangle aspect.”
“Triangle?” My skin prickled.
She was already leaning in again, ready to tell me more. “Did you see she and Brett were exchanging texts the whole time?”
No.
No, I had not seen that.
Because I’d pointedly not been looking.
“How do you know they were—?”
She cut me off, too excited about giving me a scoop to keep it in. “They both had their phones, and it was all over their faces. Lots of body language in between typing.”
I knew Brett liked Tess. But liked her enough to text her during an important meeting?
While it was strange for Scott to show an attachment (and yes, there was a little bit of an ouch about that, even though I was definitely over him), it was stranger still for Brett to ever not be completely professional. Especially at a meeting with Henry Sebastian, the owner of the company and Brett’s cousin.
Or was it second cousin? The whole familial thing got complicated to me after a generation or two.
Point was, I wasn’t buying it. And not just because I didn’t want to.
“Are you sure that he wasn’t just giving her advice during her presentation? Henry’s his cousin and all.”
“Cousin once removed.” Oh, that was it. Leave it to Silvia to feel the need to correct me. “And no. Definitely not. The expressions they were exchanging did not say ‘business.’”
I still didn’t buy it.
Except, I also did.
I’d been learning Brett wasn’t exactly the man I’d thought he was. I’d never have thought he’d let a woman give him a BJ at work in a non-private room, and yet that had happened. I’d never thought he would be the kind of guy to declare his love and then run away, and yet that had happened too.
My chest suddenly hurt.
Without excusing myself, I turned back toward the conference room. Brett hadn’t walked out yet, and if this was why—if she was why he’d needed time—we needed to have words. Why hadn’t he admitted it when I’d asked? Was yet another Sebastian gaslighting and stringing me along?
I caught the door as someone else walked through and stopped in the threshold when I saw Brett was already engaged in a conversation. With Tess. Otherwise alone.
My mouth fell open, and then I forced myself to be very, very still so I could make out their conversation from several feet away.
“Tess…” he said, with a weight in her name that wouldn’t be there if this was a professional conversation.
She turned to him. “What? He’s a player. I got it. I’ll try to make sure I don’t smile at him again.”
“I’m serious here. He’s got a reputation for stringing girls along, even when he knows that they’re misinterpreting his actions.”
Scott.
They were talking about Scott.
Brett was warning her about him. And he’d spent last Saturday with her—a fact he and I had never gotten around to discussing. It was one thing to have a passing interest in her, but anyone with a head would take those facts and extrapolate the same conclusion: He wasn’t just interested. He was trying to win her.
As Silvia would have said, Isn’t it totally obvious?
No wonder he had to think about us.
Quietly, I stepped back out of the room and shut the door behind me. In the hall, I tried to steady my breathing, hoping it would relieve the ache of each lift and fall of my chest. Familiar refrains repeated in my head:
This is fine.
At least I’m in consideration.
A not completely interested man is kind of my brand.
Sit on the sidelines and take what I could get. That’s what I’d done with Scott and countless assholes before him.
The thing was...
The thing was Brett was not my usual brand, and a new kind of man deserved a new kind of approach. And if it were some other guy I was pining over, what would Brett tell me to do? Stand up for myself. Refuse to settle.
Propelled by something I couldn’t identify, I marched to Brett’s office. “Just grabbing something for him,” I said to Julie, his assistant, before letting myself in.
Then I faced the door, leaned against the door, and waited.
And waited.
And prayed to God that the reason he hadn’t returned yet wasn’t because Tess was on her knees in front of him in the conference room.
And I waited some more.
Finally, I heard Julie outside the office. “Eden’s still in there.”
“Eden?” He pushed through the door, not staying for her to answer, asking me the question instead with his expression.
I didn’t give him a chance to wonder. “You made me think it wasn’t about Tess.”
He raised a confused eyebrow as he pulled the door shut behind him. “What wasn’t about Tess?”
“You said you needed time to think, and when I asked if it was about Tess, you didn’t answer, but you very explicitly gave me the impression that it wasn’t. But then...you and her...you just expect me to wait around while she makes up her mind?”
“Makes up her mind a—”
But I was on a roll. “Because I’ve always waited around for men in the past? So you thought, ‘Oh, sure. Eden will be there whenever.’”
“Hold up. I have never—”
“Were you just going to keep putting me off until you knew for sure if things worked out with her and Scott? And if it did, then...what? Then you come back and say we’re all good? So I’m not even supposed to care that I’m your second choice?”
“Are you fucking kidding me? My ‘second choice’?” It was a roar. A lion roar. Shaking the air and stealing whatever I’d been meaning to say next. “Do you even hear yourself? I’m your second choice!”
“What?” The accusation baffled me, but mostly I was confused about his demeanor. I’d seen Brett mad, but I’d rarely seen him so explosive. I had never seen him explode at me.
“Don’t be like that. Don’t play like I haven’t spent the last year comforting you over Scott.”
“Sure, but—” I no longer had control of the conversation, and he ran over me this time.
“Before that, who was it? Rufus. And before him, Erik. And before him…the French guy…”
“Michel,” I said softly.
“Right! Not even your second choice, am I? Your tenth? Fifteenth?”
Okay. That was a lot of guys over the years. I gave a weak smile. “Am I being slut shamed right now?”
My attempt at humor didn’t put a dent in his cloak of anger. “Then you have the nerve to accuse me of making you my second choice? For fuck’s sake, Edie...I have waited for you and waited and waited. Waited while you let asshole after asshole walk all over you.”
“You could have…” Could have what? Told me that I was making a mistake? He’d done that, every time. Told me I was worth more? He’d done that too. Stopped caring about me?
He’d never done that. I’d known he wouldn’t, no matter how frustrated he got with me.
...And I was starting to see the point.
“Oh,” I said, softly, a squeezing type of pressure building around my chest.
“Exactly. Then you fell for, of all people, Scott.”
“I didn’t…” But I did. I had. Everything he said. It was all true.
He took a step toward me, but with my shame and his wrath still clearly etched in his features, it was impossible not to shrink back. “Yes, I’m in love with you, Eden, and I guess I can’t blame you for returning to the guys who bring you pain, because I kept going back to you. Even though it hurt to listen to your heartache, I swallowed my feelings. I let myself be hurt over and over. You want to know why I really needed time to think if we made sense? Because I already know the answer. And I wanted it to be a different answer, but I know from experience that it won’t be.”
“No.” I couldn’t let him say it. “No. No.”
“Because even though you’re choosing me now, you didn’t ever choose me then.” His words were softer, which somehow made them punch harder. “And that matters. I’ve accepted my place as a Lesser Sebastian, but I value myself too much to be someone’s second choice. I can’t do that to myself. Not even for you.”
A tear fell down my cheek. Then another. Then too many to count. For the first time in...ever, he didn’t move to comfort me.
And I desperately wanted to comfort him. “Brett…”
But I didn’t have any words, let alone the right words. Not just because I had no defense. That wasn’t even half of my agony. The source of the bulk of it was much more unpleasant to face. I’d hurt Brett. Deeply. In ways I’d been hurt. Ways I’d never wish on someone I loved.
“I think you need to leave now,” he said after a long beat filled only with the sound of my sniffling.
Dismissal jolted me to action. “Brett, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t realize.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. Just...” He gestured toward the door.
I couldn’t accept that. It had to still matter. If it didn’t matter, we had no chance, and as bad as it was knowing that I’d hurt him, it was a million times worse if I couldn’t fix it. “No, it does matter. I should have realized.”
I stepped toward him, my arm out, but he moved out of reach before I could touch him. “I can’t do this with you anymore, Edie.”
There was something final in his posture, in the set of his eyes, in the thickness of his voice.
“What are you saying?” But I already knew. I’d been dismissed enough to know the difference between I can’t do this right now and I can’t do this ever.
“I’m saying I need a break.”
“A break to think some more?” I clung to a miniscule hope that this wasn’t what I thought it was. It wasn’t the no I was so used to hearing. It was just the maybe he’d given me before.
He suddenly looked weary. “A break from our friendship, Eden.”
I couldn’t make an effort to change his mind because Julie buzzed that his four-fifteen was waiting, and I had no choice but to go this time when he ushered me out.
The truth was that even if I’d had the opportunity, it wouldn’t have made a difference. I’d never figured out how to keep an ordinary man.
How on earth would I suddenly know how to keep the best man ever?