The Hot Mess: Brother's Best Friend

by Lauren Wood

  No, of course I wasn’t. No one ends up with the man they lose their virginity to. Not in this day and age. With my new look and lease on life, I was supposed to go out and paint the town. Sleep around. Live daringly and do things I had never done before. All Jack had done was distract me from that. The time and space he wanted was perfect, and I was determined to convince myself I wanted it too. A permanent break. That was what we really needed. To put this whole silly fling behind us and accept that it was never going to be anything more.

  But as I scrubbed away at a piece of dried food stuck to a pan, my vision blurred with tears. No matter what I tried to convince myself of, my heart felt like it was shattering into a million pieces. I thought I had been keeping my head above water with him, but I was so wrong.

  It was bad enough that I felt humiliated and stupid for feeling so much for him. But on top of that, my emotions had been a wild roller coaster for the past week. It was like PMS on crack. One minute I felt on top of the world, the next I felt like crying for no reason. And that was before Jack came back and dropped his bombshell of wanting to take some time apart. If I was struggling to keep it together before, I didn’t stand a chance now.

  I dried my hands off as my phone rang. Isabella was calling. She was the last person I wanted to talk to. She would never understand how I was feeling. For one, no one knew what was going on between Jack and me. And second, she didn’t seem like the type who would ever let a guy get under her skin enough to break her heart. She was the epitome of an ice queen. I had thought I could learn to be more like her, but I was wrong about that too apparently.

  As I pressed the button to ignore the call, I noticed a missed voicemail on the screen. It must have come through during that whole awful exchange with Jack. I held the phone to my ear and listened to the message. Messages I could handle. Actually having a conversation with anyone at that moment - I could not.

  Hi, this message is for Jada Meadows. This is Sasha at Dr. Taylor’s office. I was just calling to confirm your appointment for this Tuesday at 9:00am for your birth control implant procedure. We’ve emailed you some information on what to expect and how to prepare. Please call us if you need to cancel or reschedule. We’ll see you Tuesday morning. Have a great day.

  Dammit! I had been so wrapped up in all of these new things in my life, I had forgotten all about the appointment to have the implant put in. After avoiding it for so long, I had finally come to the conclusion months ago that I obviously wasn’t going to be settling down and having kids with anyone any time soon, so I figured I might as well commit to a more long-term birth control solution.

  Something about the message was nagging at me, making me feel sick to my stomach. But I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. I absentmindedly glanced at my calendar, noticing now that I had written the appointment down when it was first scheduled. But there was something more alarming on my calendar. I snatched it off the wall to look closer, studying my system of dots and dashes that told me when to expect my period.

  I had gone off the pill to prepare for the implant, and my period would have ended just before the appointment. That is…it would have, had it ever actually started.

  My eyes grew wider the longer I stared and was hit with the startling realization that my period was over a week late. Was that why I had been so emotional?

  It had to have been some kind of fluke. My cycle was just all messed up from the switch off of the pill. Right? Yes, that’s what it is, I told myself over and over again. But all of that reassurance didn’t stop me from jumping in a cab to head across town to see the only person I could stand to be around right then.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” I offered to Victoria as she handed me a cup of tea. “I’m sure this is nothing to worry about, but I just couldn’t do it alone.”

  “Of course. We are sister-in-laws after all. I’m happy to be here for you.”

  She slid a paper bag over to me on the edge of her bed, where we both sat with the door locked. “I got a few different tests just in case.”

  “It’s just a precaution,” I insisted. “I’m sure I’m overreacting.”

  I wanted her to agree, but instead she opened up one of the boxes and read the instructions outloud. I took it from her and went into the bathroom to do everything she instructed. After it was over, I set the stick down on the bathroom counter and rejoined her in the bedroom.

  “Five minutes?” I asked. She nodded. “That’s like an eternity. I don’t think I can stand it.”

  “It’s just a precaution, remember?” She patted the bed next to where she was sitting, calling me over to join her again. “Why don’t you fill me in on everything while we wait?”

  Reluctantly, I sat down and told her everything. Jack asking me to dinner, which was innocent enough, until it wasn’t. I even admitted that I was a virgin before him. I told her all about our little affair and how he ended things. I was even more upset after speaking it all out loud, but by the time I finished it was time to revisit that dreadful stick waiting for me in the bathroom.

  “I can’t do it,” I said in a panic. “Can you look for me?”

  “Of course,” she smiled before slipping into the bathroom.

  It seemed like she was gone longer than she needed to be, but all I could do was sit there with my eyes closed, praying to myself that this really was just me overreacting. The test would be negative, and my mind would be put to ease.

  But the moment Victoria appeared, with the test in her hands resting in a strip of toilet paper. I knew from the look on her face that I was not overreacting. I had every reason to panic.

  “No,” I groaned, collapsing back onto her bed. “Don’t say it…”

  “Okay. I won’t.”

  I immediately shot back up again. “So there is something to say, isn’t there!? Something beyond that it’s negative!?”

  “I’m afraid…it’s not negative.”

  “I told you not to say it!” I shrieked, falling back onto the mattress again with my hands over my face.

  “I didn’t say it!” she defended. “I told you what the result was not.”

  The next hour or so went by in a blur. I went back and forth between crying and freaking out and letting Victoria’s comforting words sink in enough to make me feel better, even if it only lasted a few seconds at a time.

  “You can’t tell Lucas. He’ll kill Jack, after he kills me.”

  “I’m not going to tell him until you’re ready,” she assured me. “But you can’t keep it a secret forever, you know. He’s your brother and your boss. He’ll find out.”

  “I’ll run away,” I decided. “I’ll take off and move to another country and then Lucas, Joshua, and Camille will never have to know. God, especially not Camille. She already thinks she’s so much better than me. I’d never hear the end of this from her. I can hear it now. You know how babies are made, Jada. What did you think would happen!?”

  Victoria was quiet for a moment. “This won’t be easy, but…there are certain papers your doctor’s office will file for insurance. Not to mention, you’ll need your maternity benefits and leave from work.” Her expression darkened. “I’m sorry, sweetie. But they’re going to find out. If I were you, I’d start building up the courage to find a time to tell them. Maybe if you start planning it now, it won’t be so bad when you finally decide to do it.”

  “Not so bad,” I scoffed. “Ha! There’s nothing about any of this that’s not so bad.”

  Part of me knew she was right, but that didn’t make me any more in a rush to tell them. I wanted to stay in my safe little cocoon where we were the only two people who knew for as long as I could.

  Victoria sat with me for as long as it took to calm me down, and even then we both knew the calm was only temporary.

  “Maybe I better go now before I get all worked up again,” I suggested. “The last thing I want to do is break down crying in the back of a cab.”

  “It happens all the time,” she told me. “But if you’re sur
e you’re okay, I’ll walk you out.”

  She watched me as I slid into my coat and grabbed my purse. I hesitated to grab the test and the bag of extra tests she had bought as well, but if I left them there it was too big of a risk for Lucas to find them. I begrudgingly stuffed it all down into my purse.

  “One more thing. Before you go, I wanted to ask. How do you feel about Jack exactly? If you decide to go through with this, are you excited he’s the father?”

  My heart felt like it was cracking in half, because I knew the answer was yes.

  “The real question is how does he feel about me?” I frowned, trying not to start crying again. “He’s the one who broke things off with me. He wants to be free. He doesn’t want to be tied down. If I was already too much of a burden on him, I can’t imagine how much he’d flip out over the prospect of being a dad and raising a kid with me.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she pursed her lips. “But people can surprise you sometimes.”

  “I think I’ve had enough surprises in the past couple of months to last me a lifetime.”

  17

  Jack

  “I had a feeling I’d find you here.” I towered over Izzy’s perch on her poolside lounge chair, looking cool and calm as ever.

  She peered at me over her sunglasses and leaned back with a sigh. “Oh, hello, big brother.”

  I sat down in the chair next to hers. “You know, I want my little sister to have a nice, easy life. That’s why the most I’ve ever pressured you into were these damn Heartstring interviews. I’m generous with your allowance from the inheritance, aren’t I? But if all that just gives you time to interfere in my life, then what’s the point?”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, picking up on how angry I was.

  “I’m talking about you running your mouth to Jada Meadows about my personal life. You told her all kinds of stuff you had no business discussing with her, and I want it to stop.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry. She’s not answering my calls or texts, so I doubt I’ll have many more chances to gossip about you.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Izzy,” I growled. “This is my life.”

  She sat up, taking off her shades. “You’re so upset. Wait. Are you…do you have a thing for Jada?”

  “It’s none of your business. None of this is any of your business. What right do you have telling her what I’m looking for when you don’t even know? How could you talk to her about the job offer? You could have fucked up my whole career!”

  “I’m—I’m sorry. I just, I was worried about our inheritance. You know how much I depend on it, and I thought if you settled down in one place, it would last us longer. But if you decided to get married or something crazy like that, it’d just eat more of it up. I wanted you to take the job, not Jada. I got carried away, and I was selfish.”

  I stared at her long and hard, watching her cling to this charade of being the superficial, rich girl everyone pegged her to be. And they weren’t wrong, based on what she showed the world. But I knew there was more to her than that.

  “Cut the act, Izzy. It’s me. I know when you’re lying and trying to put on this air that Mom taught you. Spoiled, rich, selfish. None of that is the real you.”

  I was surprised to see her bottom lip tremble just before she slipped her sunglasses back on and stared off into the pool. “Maybe you’re right. What if I said…the real reason I wanted you to take the job was so you’d be around more. I’ve been lonely, you know. Since Mom died. Sure, I have friends and parties and places to travel. But that’s the worst kind of loneliness. Being surrounded by people and still feeling…”

  She caught herself, realizing she was giving me far more than she was comfortable with. “I missed having you around is all. You’re the only family I have left.”

  I hung my head for a moment, feeling horrible for making her think she was abandoned and alone in the world.

  “See, now you feel sorry for me and you feel guilty,” she groaned. “That’s exactly why I don’t talk to you about these kinds of things. I don’t like sounding pathetic, and I don’t like you feeling responsible for it.”

  “It’s not pathetic,” I assured her. “It’s human. And as much as Mom wanted you to be a perfect Barbie doll, you are human. Not plastic. You’re allowed to feel things, and it’s normal to want me around more now that everyone else is gone.”

  “I didn’t know you had feelings for Jada though. I suspected something might be going on there, and I toyed with her a little. If I had known you were really interested in her, I wouldn’t have run my mouth so much.”

  “No, you would have been even worse if you knew,” I quipped. “You never like any woman I fall for.”

  “How would you know that? You never fall for anyone,” she laughed.

  “Well, it seems I have this time,” I sighed. “If I haven’t messed it all up, anyway. I want both, Izzy. I want to take the job, and I want Jada. But I don’t know if it’s possible to have both.”

  “You won’t get the poor girl’s hopes up, and mine, just to get bored a few months in and take off?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. Not this time,” I admitted honestly. “And anyway, I’ll have you around. You always keep things interesting.”

  She flashed a proud smile and waved the waiter over to order another drink. “I’ll take that as a compliment. What are you going to do? You have to fix things with Jada. I’ve never seen you take anyone this seriously. You can’t let her slip away so soon, without trying to see what it could be.”

  “I know,” I nodded, feeling a hard lump form in my throat. “There’s only one thing to do. I have to come clean to Lucas about everything. At least then I’ll know where I stand. And when I go to make things right with Jada, she’ll know I’m sincere if nothing else.”

  “What if she doesn’t want Lucas to know?”

  “That’s a risk I’ll just have to take,” I decided.

  An hour later, I was standing outside Lucas’s door. I was relieved that he had an opening to see me so short notice, because now that I had decided what I needed to do, I didn’t think I could wait any longer. Once the pieces clicked into place, and I understood exactly how I really felt, I couldn’t keep it all bottled up inside anymore. I needed to know where Lucas stood, and how we might move forward.

  Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst, I walked into his office and immediately went to the bar.

  “Uh-oh. This must be bad news,” he smirked, watching me pour two drinks.

  “You get to be the judge of that.” I handed him one of the glasses and sat across from him. “I need to talk to you about something important.”

  “I’m not stupid, Jack. I’ve known you since we were kids, and I can tell when you’re hiding something from me. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

  “Oh?” I perked up. He looked calm. This was good. “How long have you known?”

  “You set up tracking on your phone for your assistant and forgot to turn it off,” he explained. “It wasn’t that hard to get her to tell me everything.”

  I sighed with relief, imagining how easy it would have been for him to come barging into Jada’s apartment when he knew I was there. We were closer to getting caught than I knew this whole time.

  “Then maybe this will be good news after all,” I told him. “Because I’ve decided to accept your job offer. You knowing about me and your sister was the last thing holding me back.”

  His brows twitched and his expression grew gravely serious. “You and my sister?”

  “It’s not just some fling,” I assured him. “Maybe it was at first. When you and Joshua confronted me about it, I wanted to try and break things off. But that’s when I started to realize I just couldn’t.”

  A strange smile spread across his face and he stood from his desk, circling around to the front of it. “So…you didn’t come here to confess about all the traveling you’ve been doing with your side consulting gigs. You came here to confess
…”

  My heart dropped as I realized the error I had made. A horrible, horrible mistake—and such a rookie one too. I confessed to the real crime, thinking I had been caught, when Lucas only knew about my other, much lesser, offense.

  “You’re sleeping with my sister?” he growled.

  “Not just sleeping with her,” I tried to explain. “I have feelings for her. Real feelings. I want to see where things go. But I couldn’t keep it a secret from you anymore. And I needed to know how it might affect the offer you extended to me.”

  Once again, he smiled. But this time it turned into a laugh. However, it was obvious that none of this was funny to him. These were laughs and smiles of rage. Pure rage.

  “You needed to know how it might affect the offer I extended to you?” he scoffed. “I call you in here and give you the offer of a lifetime. I gave you a top tier position and raised the salary far beyond what I would pay anyone else. I bumped out my own brother to offer his spot to you instead, because all of that still wasn’t good enough. On top of that, you wanted time to think about it, which I gave you. And what did you do with that time? You started sleeping with my sister behind my back and kept traveling all over the place taking more consulting gigs. As if you were so far above our puny little salary and corner office. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? I gave you an inch, and you kept taking mile after mile. You might as well have just spit in my face! At least things would have been more clear then!”

  “Lucas, I didn’t mean—It’s not—I’m sorry, I…”

  His office door flew open. Joshua appeared, quickly rushing in and slamming the door shut behind him. “What’s going on here? I could hear you shouting all the way down the hall.”

  “You tell him,” Lucas barked.

  “Tell me what?”

  I straightened and cleared my throat. “Joshua. I, well, your sister and I. We’re—we’re seeing each other.”