Wrong Bed, Right Brother (Accidental Love)

by Rebecca Brooks

  So you’ll do all that in a conference room, but you won’t respond to a text?

  I’m not sitting around expecting a message every 5 seconds.

  But you could at least write me back.

  All I need is an acknowledgment that we’re on the same page here.

  So I can show my face at work again.

  “Look, I know you’ve never liked Amanda,” Luke said, and Noah’s eyes shot up from his phone so fast, he was afraid they were going to fall out and roll across the table.

  “What?” he said, trying to make himself stop looking down his phone. Were he and Amanda on the same page? Did he want to drop this, too? Did he want to think about her at work, hanging out with his brother, and not see or touch her again?

  It doesn’t matter what I want. No matter what, it’s ending.

  “Admit it. You don’t like that she’s always hanging around, and you’re glad we’re moving and will get away from it.”

  “She’s fine,” Noah said, not even sure what was coming out of his mouth. Or his brother’s. Did he really dislike Amanda that much? How could he admit to his brother that wasn’t the problem?

  Or maybe he was just confused, taking all the feelings he’d once had for Kristina and putting them on the nearest woman who happened to be there. He wasn’t avoiding her. He just didn’t know.

  “Well, whatever. It doesn’t matter,” Luke said. “First step in Operation California is going to be to get you laid. I know you’re still holding a torch for she-who-cannot-be-named, but this freaky, celibate runner’s life isn’t healthy. That client’s still texting you, by the way. You need to tell them to chill?”

  Stop texting I can’t talk right now. He hit send on his text to Amanda as fast as he could. He just needed to write something to make it stop before Luke kept badgering him and Amanda texted even more.

  But as soon as he saw the bubble of text pop up in their chat, his stomach twisted into knots. It was a shitty, rude text to send anyone—let alone someone he’d just slept with.

  Well, “slept with” was sort of euphemistic for fucked over the edge of a conference table in her office. Definitely no sleeping involved. They hadn’t come close to an actual bed.

  But that didn’t make him any less of a dick.

  He thought he’d feel better for responding with something, anything, so he could focus his attention on Luke, L.A., and their plans. And on how much he did not need his brother to play matchmaker as soon as they moved.

  But all it did was make him feel worse.

  No matter how much he tried to be excited along with Luke—excited the way he’d been since Luke had agreed to his plan—all he could think about was his fingers in her hair, the feel of her hips moving against him.

  That sigh into the palm of his hand after holding in her breath, her cries, as she came.

  He should text her again. Tell her he’d talk to her later. Take back what he’d just said.

  But wasn’t she telling him it was over? Didn’t that mean no more talking, no more wanting, no more blurring the lines between them? She’d made herself clear. She wasn’t interested in more.

  And Luke was still talking, giving him a hard time about whatever was up with him. He slid his phone into his pocket, determined not to look at it again. His future was in California.

  He couldn’t let anything get in the way of his plans.

  Chapter Twelve

  Amanda sat at Jessie’s kitchen table and willed herself not to look at her phone. Brunch with her best friends was a monthly tradition, and she wasn’t about to spoil it by pining over some guy. She needed to stop waiting for the telltale buzz, the moment Noah would swoop in to say the right thing and make the boulder in her stomach go away.

  Because he wasn’t going to say the right thing. Apparently, he wasn’t going to say anything at all.

  “Fuck him,” Talia said emphatically, reaching over to put another fluffy, golden waffle on Amanda’s plate. “More syrup, fewer dumb boys.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Amanda said. “You’re in love with a dumb boy and he loves you back. Not that Reed is dumb!” she added quickly as Talia burst out laughing. “Just…you know. Domestic bliss and all that.”

  She sighed into her food. Although she had to concede that Talia did have a point. The waffles were thick with blueberries, and the bourbon-infused syrup Amanda had brought home from the distillery for her friends was warm and sweet and perfect.

  Unlike Noah, who was not warm, not sweet, and nowhere near perfect.

  Goddammit, even trying to think about things that were better than him—like being at besties brunch instead of at home willing her phone to vibrate—still made her wind up thinking about him.

  “I can’t believe I was so stupid,” Amanda said. “The first night was an accident. But after that? We could have gotten caught, someone could have walked in on us, those poor employees at the barn did not consent to a peep show. And at work? I’m such an idiot,” she said again before realizing the kitchen had gone quiet because her friends were staring at her, mouths open.

  “I’m sorry,” Jessie said, licking syrup from her fork. “I know I’m supposed to be outraged, but I’m still stuck on the part where you. Amanda Perkins. My friend. Had sex.”

  “I’ve had sex before,” Amanda said defensively.

  Jessie raised an eyebrow behind her glasses. “Outside? Against a barn door? In the middle of the day?”

  “I shouldn’t have told you all the gory details,” Amanda grumbled.

  “And in a conference room?” Jessie went on as though Amanda wasn’t about to burst into flames of embarrassment right there at the table. “At work?” Jessie raised her mimosa glass. “To my new hero. May you continue to show the rest of us slackers how it’s done.”

  “Amen,” Rose and Talia both said, raising their glasses, too. Amanda refused to touch hers. Because they were crazy. And they didn’t understand.

  “You guys got the memo that I’m talking about Noah, right? Not Luke?”

  “Thank God,” Rose said then clasped her hand over her mouth like maybe she hadn’t meant to say that.

  Amanda turned to her. “Are you serious?”

  “You know I don’t think Luke’s a bad guy,” Rose said, pulling her wavy hair over her shoulder as though that did anything to hide her blush.

  “But?”

  “But it’s been so long and he never made a move. Doesn’t it seem like—” Rose risked a glance across the table.

  “Like he’s totally leading you on and basking in the ego trip of having a hot, talented, badass friend crushing on him without having to, you know, do the actual emotional labor of acknowledging that you’re a real person with feelings who might need more than just the morsels of attention he deigns to dish out?” Talia took a sip of bubbly. “What?” she said when everybody stared. “Don’t tell me you think I’m wrong.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” Amanda said, the waffles turning gluey in her stomach as she digested everything Talia had just let slip. “He’s a lousy friend, and he’d make a lousy boyfriend. I get that. But he’s moving in five weeks, and so’s Noah, so honestly? It doesn’t matter how I feel.”

  “Oh, no.” Jessie reached over and snatched the glass out of Amanda’s hand.

  “What—”

  “No more mimosas for you. You clearly don’t know what you’re saying. Obviously it matters how you feel. Noah sent you a shitty, dismissive text, and it feels shitty and dismissive. You don’t have to pretend it’s raining puppies.”

  “If it wasn’t this text, it’d be something else down the line.” Amanda snapped her fingers and waved to get her drink back in her hand where it belonged. “Are you going to let me wallow or not?”

  “Absolutely not,” Jessie said. “I’m holding your mimosa hostage.”

  “That’s got to be illegal
.”

  “My apartment, my rules.”

  Amanda made a face. “Your parents are clearly still married,” she said.

  “And still in love with each other,” Rose added. “Which turns out isn’t the same thing.”

  “So?” Jessie looked between them. “I’m still right, and Miss Defeatist is killing my brunch buzz. Are you sure you want that on your conscience?”

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “I just mean that you still believe in love. Whereas I’ve seen its path of destruction and know what lies ahead.” She saw the stricken looks on her friends’ faces and could have kicked herself. “I mean, not for any of you guys.” Now she was making things worse. All her friends were coupled up now. She didn’t mean to insult anyone. It was just—how did they trust that they were in love? And that their love would last?

  How could anyone know?

  “Jesus, sweet pea. This is getting bleak,” Rose said.

  Amanda sighed. “Nothing’s going to happen. He’s moving, he’s obviously a shithead, so who cares?”

  She mimed raising a glass, even though she didn’t have one anymore, but nobody joined her. She dropped her hand by her side.

  “Did he really tell you not to talk to him?” Rose asked.

  “I don’t know,” Amanda admitted. “That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? I don’t even know what he meant. I was the one texting him that this couldn’t continue. So I guess I was asking for it. I just didn’t expect him to be so…”

  She groped around for an answer, but what came to mind was the silence from Gregg. How it had felt like water in her lungs.

  It was one thing to end something. It was another thing to dismiss it altogether. She may not have wanted to continue sleeping with Noah. But that didn’t mean she wanted him to drop her with one cold line telling her to knock it off.

  She pulled up the text in question and read it out loud, repeating it in different ways: stern, angry, pleading, apologetic, worried. Stop texting I can’t talk right now. Every way it sounded like it meant something different.

  Finally, Talia snatched the phone out of her hands.

  “I think it meant not to text him. So then what did you say?” she asked.

  “Nothing. He told me to stop texting, so I stopped.”

  “Yeah, but after.”

  Amanda stared at her. “He told me? To stop? So I…stopped.”

  “I mean after after. Like, later that night. The next day.” Talia frowned at her. “A few days later?”

  “I’m good at following directions.” When she’d accepted she was never going to hear from Gregg, she’d rather have run over her own hand with a truck than message him again. There was such a thing as too much humiliation. She wasn’t going to beg.

  “But then didn’t he say something?” Jessie asked, grabbing the phone from Talia to look. “He said ‘right now,’ not ‘ever.’ He can’t have just left it like that.”

  Amanda threw up her hands. “Now you see my problem.”

  “But why didn’t he want you to text in the first place?” Rose asked. “I still don’t get it.”

  “He must have been out with Luke,” Amanda said. “I thought I’d waited long enough that he’d be home. But, I’ll admit it, I was blowing up his phone like an insecure asshole.”

  “So maybe he just hasn’t had a chance to text you again,” Rose, ever the optimist, said sweetly. “If Luke’s always around.”

  “He and his brother don’t sleep in bunk beds in the same room anymore. He could take five seconds at night to say, Hey.”

  “Then maybe he’s just following directions, too. You told him to lay off and he’s laying off,” Jessie said.

  “But what if he didn’t want me to text him all that in the first place? Oh my God, I’m losing my mind.” Amanda pulled on her hair.

  “You can’t be trusted with texting privileges,” Talia decided. “You need to call him.”

  “No,” Amanda said so quickly that everyone cracked up.

  “Then see him in person,” Rose suggested. “Too much gets confused over text. Even if the point is just to clarify that you guys aren’t doing anything else, you can’t end something that way. You know each other too well, and you both know Luke. You can’t let this get messy.”

  “You people are monsters,” Amanda said, staring at her so-called friends who had now taken away her mimosa, her phone, and would probably start scavenging her breakfast next.

  They must have been taking away her sanity, too.

  Because even though she tried to say that she had no idea where Noah would be or when to see him again, her brain knew her mouth was straight-up lying. Noah was a creature of habit. She knew exactly where he’d be on Monday morning.

  If she wanted to talk to him without Luke knowing, she knew where she’d have to be, too.

  Shit, she needed another mimosa. And a whole lot more waffles, if she was really going to go through with this dumbass idea.

  Chapter Thirteen

  This time when Monday morning rolled around, Noah was already up and dressed before his alarm went off—no more lingering around with his dick in his hand. He hadn’t texted Amanda since their little tryst at her office last week, but she hadn’t texted him, either. He didn’t know a lot about the etiquette of casual mistakes, but he was pretty sure that meant they were officially done.

  Which is a good thing. Even if it didn’t feel very good for every second he was stuck living through it, trying to force his leaden legs to move.

  It was cold as his feet hit the pavement. Winter was just around the corner, and the sky was gray and threatening rain. He jogged west from Yorktown and into the park. A cool mist hung in the air. Noah had to admire his clients’ commitment. He sure didn’t feel like being up this early in the dreary cold, and he was getting paid for it.

  But in some way, he had to be thankful for the shitty weather and how tired and grumpy he was. It was a nice reminder of what he wouldn’t have to deal with in L.A. He’d have normal hours, and his office would have heat—which he wouldn’t even need most of the time. How had he lasted this long scraping by in New York? Maybe Kristina had done him a favor by making him shake up his life.

  When he got to the meeting spot at the Central Park reservoir, he blew on his hands and started counting heads. Then it was time for the warm up: an easy mix of walking, jogging, lunges, and squats before the real work began. This was one of his favorite groups of new runners, training for the New York City Half Marathon—their first long race.

  He was going over his mental list of exercises when he noticed someone walking down the path. The park was always full, even this early on a wretched day. But that shock of bleached hair caught his eyes immediately.

  Amanda?

  I must be seeing things.

  She didn’t run. She didn’t wake up early. She definitely didn’t do either of those things in conjunction with him.

  But there was no mistaking who was coming down the path, wearing black leggings, something with a hood, and a bright puffy jacket. She was carrying the largest Starbucks coffee ever invented, her hands gripped tight around the cup for warmth. She wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves, and her fingers were red, her lips pinched tightly together. He’d thought he was cold and miserable this morning, but it was nothing compared to how she looked.

  Not that it stopped her from walking right up to him. He peeled away from the group, trying to stave her off before his clients started wondering what was going on.

  “What are you doing here?” he said, keeping his voice low.

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “I’m working.”

  “I know, and I’ll wait. But I didn’t know where else to find you.” She took a sip of coffee and shivered. “I thought we should talk in person.”

  He opened his mouth. He wasn’t sure what to say. “Are you kid
ding?”

  “Do I look like I’m having fun?”

  “Okay,” he finally decided, because he wasn’t sure what else to say. “Give me a sec.”

  He got everyone started off on squats and lunges—the kind that kept them walking away from him so he could have five seconds of privacy while his brain reeled.

  This wasn’t part of the plan. He’d spent all this time convincing himself it was over—thank God, so he didn’t have to figure out what it meant that he’d had sex with Amanda on a conference table in his brother’s office. Everyone had rebounds, slip-ups, one-time things with people they never saw again. It wasn’t worth worrying about.

  But here she was standing in front of him. He folded his arms. “So talk.”

  “Jesus, never mind,” she said, stepping back.

  His shoulders tightened, but he let his stance relax. “I’m just cold, okay? And surprised to see you.”

  “That whole texting thing didn’t work out so well.”

  “Is that what you came to talk about?”

  “I told you that we can’t keep doing this.”

  “This as in meeting at six a.m. in Central Park when it’s freezing outside and I’m supposed to be leading a group in butt kicks?”

  “Butt—what?”

  “Never mind. It’s a running thing. But consider it done—we won’t make you crashing my training group a regular thing.”

  She blew into her coffee in a huff. “I’m being serious, Noah. Not this.” She gestured around them. “I mean the other stuff.”

  Her cheeks reddened from more than the cold. He couldn’t deny he felt a jolt of satisfaction at the sight. The reminder of that “other stuff” made him feel as warm as if he’d already done a lap around the water.

  He tried not to smile. He told his face not to crack. He swore he wasn’t going to do it.

  But goddammit, Amanda had a way of making all his plans go haywire.

  “So let me get this straight,” he said. “You woke up before dawn. To come all the way from Brooklyn to Central Park. In the cold, when it’s about to rain. To see me.”