“How’s the single life treating you?” she asked.
I bit my lip and thought back to the day before—I would keep that little incident to myself, for the time being, just to be on the safe side. Ant would never judge me for hooking up with someone so soon after meeting them, but if she found out the guy up and ditched me without another word, his chances of not being eaten alive as soon as she found out who he was were not good.
“Not bad.” I shrugged. “Just focusing on getting everything set up here.”
“Come on then, let’s get started,” she told me cheerfully, and she went to pull open a box full of books, plunging her hands in and coming out with a huge armful.
“Thanks so much for doing this,” I told her, the dozenth time I’d offered my appreciation for what she was doing for me.
She waved her hand. “Not at all,” she told me. “Thank you for finally getting rid of that waste of space boyfriend so I don’t have to pretend I find him interesting anymore.”
“You’re welcome.” I giggled, and I went to grab some books from the box she had opened. “I can’t believe how little I miss him. I thought this would be harder, but …”
“But shedding the heaviest dead weight you’ve ever carried has been a good thing?” She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Color me shocked. Fred was an asshole, always was. I’m just glad you’re done with him.”
“Wish I hadn’t had to walk in on him cheating on me, though,” I muttered as I began to load the books into the shelf above the couch. She rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“Hey, if you want me to go down there and beat the crap out of him, then I’m still game for that,” she reminded me. “Offer still stands.”
“I know,” I said with a grin. “And trust me, I might just take you up on it one day. But right now, I just want to forget about him. Pretend that whole thing never happened.”
“I’m on board with that.” She nodded as she carefully arranged the books in order of size. I was just tossing them up there, but Ant was actually trying to make them look nice; she might have played at being this big, swaggering bad-girl, but she was really detail-orientated and sweet when she wanted to be. And she often seemed to want to be around me.
We met eight years before, in my last year of high school, when Ant moved across the country after the death of her parents to live with some relatives in the city. When I first met her, she had still been Anthonette, a name she hated with a burning passion but her family had tried to stick her with for life. She used the city as a chance to reinvent herself, to turn herself into something entirely fresh and new, and the Ant that I knew now was a result of that reinvention: street-smart, cool, and fiercely loyal. She was the kind of girl I wanted in my corner if I ever had to throw down into a fight, bold and sharp and not afraid to throw a few proverbial punches for her friends when they needed it.
“You know, you’re not living too far from my brother,” she remarked as we continued unloading the books. I cocked my eyebrow.
“Oh, the mysterious brother?” I teased her. “Am I ever going to get to meet him?”
“Well, you probably will now that you’re living in his building.” She shrugged.
“Great. This is his building? And is he still an asshole?” I went on, grinning. She knew I was just playing—she had spent most of high school and our early years in the city together telling me what a jerk her brother was to any woman who had the bad luck to wander into his flight path, sleeping with anything that moved and then swiftly moving on the next day. He went to college outside the city, and she had made a concentrated effort to keep the two of us apart during that time. I wasn’t sure what she thought was going to happen; I didn’t particularly care about hooking up with her brother, but she seemed convinced that he was just that irresistible that I wouldn’t be able to restrain myself. Which I had to admit, had made me even more curious to explore these apparently endless sexy charms of a man I was banned from meeting. But one way or another, we had never crossed paths, and Ant seemed happy to keep it that way.
“He’s not as bad as he was, you know that.” She shook her head.
“And so why haven’t you ever introduced him to me?” I waggled my eyebrows at her suggestively. “It’d make your visits a lot more efficient if I was just dating him.”
“Not a chance,” she shot back cheerfully. “He’s got the kid, remember? Erin?”
“Ah, yes, the mysterious Erin.” I bowed my head reverently. “I’m not sure she exists, either. All this is just a long con to make sure that I never go near your brother.”
“Yeah, well, if it meant that I didn’t have to cover babysitting duties every five minutes, I wouldn’t mind,” she replied, but there was a smile on her face as she spoke. I knew she adored her niece; I had never met her, but Ant was always showing me pictures of the two of them together, her little kid face all squished up against hers. She was the only child Ant seemed to be able to stomach, but she loved her more than she would ever have admitted to, which was incredibly cute to me.
“Well, trust me, as long as he’s got a kid, I won’t be going anywhere near him,” I assured her as I ripped open another box, this one full of clothes, and started through to my bedroom to lay them out. “You know I’m not about that life.”
“Yeah, it’s a pretty good Nina-repellent,” she agreed.
And she was right; I couldn’t think of anything worse than having kids at this age. It wasn’t that I never wanted them, just that the thought of being pummeled with that much responsibility when I could hardly keep my own life together scared the bejeesus out of me. And dating a guy with a kid? Coming into some pre-established routine and having to be the one who rocked that boat, who messed things all up? Yeah, no, there was no way I was going to skip straight into a relationship like that. The thought of it made me shudder.
“Doesn’t having a kid cramp his style?” I wondered aloud. “I mean, from everything you told me, he was a total player in college. Did he just stop when she came along?”
“Pretty much.” Ant nodded as she joined me in the bedroom; I had made up the bed the night before, one of the only things I had the energy to do after the apartment was all unpacked, and the whole time I had been lying there, I had been able to smell that guy in the mattress, the remnants of his aftershave lingering in my senses. And I may have used them as a decent trial-run for my vibrator. Perhaps.
“That’s crazy,” I shook my head. “He was out every night, and then he just dropped it all to look after his daughter?”
“And walked away from a good job in the process,” she reminded me. “He had a sure thing at Canticos, that Spanish place across town. But he turned it down so he could be a good father to her.”
“Damn.” I shook my head again like I was trying to dislodge some thoughts that had got stuck up in there. “I can’t imagine changing everything like that.”
“Well, people do it,” Ant replied with a shrug. “It’s amazing what you can get used to when you need to.”
“Here’s to hoping I’ll never need to, right?” I grinned, and she flashed me a smile back.
“Here’s to hoping,” she agreed, and we continued to unpack the boxes, starting in on the gossip from our social group that I had missed the last couple of days; most of it was just people cutting Fred out of their lives after what he had done to me, which I found supremely satisfying. I would never have thought that people would choose me over him, but it seemed like everyone had just been acting nice to his face while waiting for me to get the nerve to kick him to the curb the first chance I got. I would probably be seeing more of everyone now they didn’t have to contend with hanging out with him too.
Just as we paused to make ourselves a coffee and take a break, Ant’s phone rang. She answered it at once; she always had to be on call for her brother and her niece. I watched her as she took the call, and I could tell at once that she was being called up for babysitting duties.
“Yeah … yeah … yeah, no, of course. I
don’t mind at all,” she replied, and I felt my heart sink as I considered having to do the rest of the unpacking without her company.
“I’m actually in the same building as you already,” Ant told the person on the other end of the line. “My friend, Nina, she just moved into a new apartment, and I’m helping her unpack. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
As soon as those words came out of her mouth, I felt my stomach drop as I put two and two together in my head. There was no way that it was Logan on the other of the line … No, no way—I would have recognized him, wouldn’t I? I racked my brain to try and remember if I had ever actually seen Ant’s brother before. I must have come across a photograph, right? Ant must have posted something with him on her social media profiles, something I’d smiled at and hit like over, but now that I thought of it, I couldn’t think of one time I had actually laid eyes on him. I wouldn’t know him from Adam. Which meant that there was a chance … a very good chance. How many guys named Logan could be living in this building?
“I’ll be up as soon as I can,” she promised him. “I’ll see you soon, alright?”
She hung up and turned to me—and as soon as she did, she furrowed her brow. “Hey, are you alright?” she asked, concerned. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Yeah, just a little tired from all the unpacking.” I offered her a reassuring smile. “Who was that?”
“It’s my brother,” she held up her phone and sighed apologetically. “He’s been called in to work at the last minute, and he’s asked me to go up and look after Erin for a few hours. I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to bail on you for now.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” I assured her quickly. Dread was creeping up the back of my neck. I had a bad, bad feeling about this, but I didn’t know whether I should jump in right then and there and do damage control or just let things unfold naturally. I silently tried to send signals upstairs, just in case, letting him know that a big-ass storm was about to come crashing down in front of him and that he would likely want to be ready for it.
“Hey, you want to come up and join me?” she suggested. “Could be fun. You could finally meet my niece after all this time …”
“You know I’m no good with kids.” I sidestepped the question as best I could.
“Come on, it’s my family, it’ll be different,” Ant pressed hopefully, but I shook my head and lowered my gaze.
“I still have so much unpacking to do,” I protested weakly. “I don’t have time to help you babysit.”
“Alright, no need to be like that about it.” She held her hands up and looked a little upset. “I just wanted you to meet my family, that’s all.”
I wished I could tell her that I had already gotten up close and personal with her family the day before, but for one thing I didn’t even know if that was true—and for another, I didn’t want her finding out like this, with me blurting it out like an idiot before I had a chance to stop myself. I ran my hands through my hair, tried my best to play it casual.
“What’s your brother’s name again?” I wondered aloud, and she glanced at me, brow furrowed.
“Logan,” she replied. “I’m sure I’ve told you that before.”
“Yeah, it just must have slipped my mind,” I replied weakly. I wanted to kick myself. How could I have been so spectacularly stupid as to think that the man I had slept with actually came with no strings? Even when I tried to pull off the one-time fun hook-up shit, it backfired on me in the most comically ridiculous way. How the fuck was this always happening to me? I couldn’t seem to catch a break when it came to guys.
“Well, I guess I better get up there and do my aunt duties,” she said with a grin. She was quick to anger but quick to forgive as well. “If he makes it back from work at a reasonable time, I’ll come down and give you a hand getting everything together, alright?”
“Don’t worry about that,” I replied quickly. “Really. You just take care of your niece, I’ll be fine.”
Ant paused in the doorway, and she slowly turned to plant her gaze on me. I felt like I was going to burst into flames beneath it. She knew me better than anyone else in the world, and so she could always see through me when it came to me trying to keep shit from her. She narrowed her eyes and peered at me for a long moment, and I shifted my weight from foot to foot, praying for a reprieve.
“You’re acting funny,” she told me. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I assured her. “Just restless, that’s all.”
“I know when I’m not wanted.” She waved her hand at me and headed for the door. “I’ll stop by on my way out, alright? I’ll text you when he’s coming back; have a glass of wine ready for me.”
“I will,” I promised her. “I’m sorry I’m being weird; I’m just feeling a little out of it, you know, with everything that’s happened.”
“I think you’re allowed to get a pass for at least the next month,” she assured me, and I smiled at her gratefully.
“Thanks, Ant.” I gave her a quick hug before she left. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Be a functioning member of human society, probably,” she teased, and she planted a swift kiss on my cheek as she pulled away and headed for the door. “Good luck with the rest of your unpacking!”
“Thanks,” I called after her weakly, and she closed the door behind her and left me standing in the middle of the apartment all by myself again. The chaos in those boxes around me seemed like a pretty decent representation of the chaos that was going down inside my head right then, as I tried to come to terms with the fact that I had very probably spent yesterday afternoon hooking up with my best friend’s brother. The very brother that she’d been trying to keep away from me all these years, who she’d been convinced would just fall into bed with me as soon as he laid eyes on me. Turned out she had been right.
I sank down onto the couch, suddenly feeling a little dizzy. Had Logan figured it out yet? Would he tell her? I suddenly felt the urge to sprint up there and stop her, to throw myself down the stairs or something crazy that meant she couldn’t leave me alone for the rest of the day and therefore couldn’t see her brother to discuss what had happened. But her niece needed her and, much as I might have hated kids, that didn’t mean that I wanted Erin to go without. I closed my eyes, let out a long sigh, and let my head sink back into the pillow behind me. I had been here all of two days, and I had already driven a potential wedge between me and my best friend, as well as her and her brother. So far, so fucking terrible.
Chapter 4
Logan
“Alright, alright, alright,” I muttered under my breath as I swiftly gathered all the stuff I would need for work. Whites, watch, phone charger, water, something that wasn’t cast-off fries to eat. It was going to be a long shift, especially because I hadn’t even been planning to spend my night at the kitchen, and all I wanted was to get there, get it over with, and take the overtime to pay the rest of the bills this month.
Thank God Ant had been nearby when I had called her up. She said she was helping her friend move into her apartment—I had been so distracted that I hadn’t even bothered to ask which friend or where they were moving in, but it must have been close because a few moments later she came sweeping through the door.
“Ant!” Erin raced towards her aunt, tossing her arms around her waist. Ant gave her a tight hug, and I tried to remember the last time I had carved out time for the two of them to see each other. It had been a long while, that was for sure—things had been crazy at the restaurant, and Ant had been busy at her own job, and so we had just slipped through the cracks one too many times.
“Hey, brother.” She gave me a hug when she saw me, gently removing Erin from around her waist and taking her hand. “How long do you think you’re going to be out tonight?”
“I have no idea right now.” I shook my head. “Won’t be less than three hours. Is that alright?”
“Sure it is.” Ant smiled at me, glancing down at Erin.
“We’re going to have a great time, aren’t we?”
“Yeah!” Erin exclaimed excitedly. “Ant, I have to show you some of the pictures they let me take home from school …”
“I’d love to see them,” she replied with a grin. “Do you mind if I just speak with your daddy a minute first?”
“Sure,” Erin nodded seriously, and she wandered off down the hall to her room to grab the pictures that she’d been saving to show her aunt. I turned to Ant expectantly; I didn’t have much time to stand around chatting with her, no matter how much I might have liked to.
“What’s up?” I asked quickly, and she planted her hands on her hips.
“For one, I’m going to need more notice if you need me to look after her in the future,” she replied firmly. “I’m not always going to be just downstairs when you need help.”
“Right, right.” I nodded, and then I froze on the spot. “Wait, you were downstairs?”
“Yeah, that’s the other thing,” she replied, running her hand through her hair and suddenly looking exhausted, as though she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks. “My friend Nina just moved in downstairs. She split up with her boyfriend a couple of weeks ago—he was a jackass, but still—she could use some kid gloves these next few months while she comes back to the real world.”
“Yeah?” I swallowed heavily, trying to keep my voice neutral. How obvious was it that I was freaking out? I did my best to quell the racing of my heart, but it wasn’t working. Ant knew me well enough that she could see something was amiss, and she narrowed her eyes at me and cocked her head.
“Is something going on with you?” she asked. “I’m not saying you have to go down there and marry her, just—”
“No, I wouldn’t marry her,” I blurted out. “I wouldn’t do anything with her. Uh, I mean, sure, I’ll look out for her. Thanks for letting me know.”
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