Falling in Love With My Ex’s Best

by Izabella Brooks

  “Don’t you think that’s weird? That he never gives out his address?” Arla asks.

  She bites on her lower lip when I turn and pass her a mug. She likes her coffee black and strong, while Bree likes it like a milkshake. I make sure that I dump in a crapload of creamer, which is gross, but it’s what she likes.

  “It is a little weird,” I grind out, since it’s expected. I’m definitely not going to fess up and tell them that I’ve been to his house. Or what else happened there.

  “It’s dangerous,” Bree hisses as she takes her mug. “Something could happen and no one even knows how to find him.”

  “So he just went to the hospital because he had a fever?”

  “He was really dehydrated from throwing up and he had that really high fever, but they put him on an IV for a few days and that fixed him up.”

  “So he’s out?” I try to sound as casual as possible and nearly succeed, which is pretty crazy given the wild storm going on in my chest, stomach, and head at the moment.

  “Yeah. He got out a couple days ago. Karsyn called him and he says he’s feeling better.”

  “Jake gave him shit for never telling anyone where he lives. I don’t know why he keeps it a secret. It is really strange.”

  “Do you think he has something hidden there? Is our friend really a serial killer?” Bree grins, and Arla and I let out a sigh. She’s just trying to lighten the mood.

  “I doubt he has any bodies hidden in his basement. He’s too normal for that. The guy works in finance. What could be more boring than that?” Arla laughs, and even though it’s forced, it still relieves the rest of the tension lingering in the kitchen like a dense, dark cloud.

  “Did Bryn text him? Or call?” The question comes out the most normal sounding of anything I’ve said.

  “No. He’s away on business. He’s been gone for a week,” Arla says cautiously.

  “Oh.” That’s one thing I have to get used to. Not knowing Bryn’s schedule as intimately as I used to. Even when we weren’t together together I still knew where he was and when he’d be gone. It’s weird how thinking about it, the not knowing, doesn’t hurt at all. I really do feel nothing.

  The ache in my chest is isn’t about Bryn at all. It’s about Trell. I imagine him, sick and alone at home, finally texting someone when he was out of his mind with a fever. Trell is a big guy. He’s extremely good looking, with that baby face, but he’s tough. I’m starting to realize that he’s also very secretive and private.

  That he might have been hiding the biggest secret of all, living with it, fooling all of us, for a very long time. Or maybe that kiss was spontaneous. Maybe it was Christmas and we were both just a little lonely and messed up and maybe it just happened. Maybe it wasn’t premeditated. Maybe it’s really vain to think there was anything there for me, any feelings on his part before.

  “I’ll text him.” I sip my coffee casually. At least, I hope it’s casually. “I hate hospitals. I know he does too.”

  “Jake says Trell is scared shitless of them. He and Bryn once stitched Trell up after a game with a needle out of Bryn’s mom’s sewing basket because he was too scared to go to a real doctor and get it done properly.”

  “How did I not know about that?” Bree sticks out her tongue. “Gross.”

  “I didn’t know about it either.” I did know that Trell hates hospitals, but I had no idea he hated them that much. “Did anyone go visit him?”

  “We were all busy.” Bree goes back to looking at the floor. “With work and everything, and then he was out.”

  “Jake just assumed he didn’t want anyone to go in. Trell’s just like that. He hates it when people pay attention to him.”

  “Yeah.” I nod. The mess inside of me, all those nasty knots, just keep doing up tighter when I think about Trell being alone in there, having to face his phobias by himself. I wish someone would have told me. I wish I would have grown a backbone and talked to him about what happened on Christmas.

  “So, the furniture sitch…” Arla glances around. “Can I please help you? I’ve been dying to buy a few more things, but Jake keeps telling me we don’t have room and that antiques aren’t strays.”

  “Sure.” I grin at my friends. At least furniture is something safe. It’s not Bryn and it’s not Trell. I can do furniture.

  “And if you ever want to get a cat, I volunteer at this great shelter now,” Bree informs me, all radiant smiles.

  Why did I ever try and avoid these two? I love Bree and Arla. I let my fears and my pride and everything else come before my friendship with them. I should have done this weeks ago. I feel better already, like the clouds are parting and there’s going to be some real sun in the future, not just this bleak nothingness that I imagined. “And I’ll ask about pets.”

  “Tomorrow? Can I take you tomorrow?”

  When I nod, Arla claps her hands together. God, her love for antiques might rival her love for Jake, which is crazy, considering how in love they actually are. They’re the ones everyone else aspires to.

  While Arla and Bree start rattling off plans, I make a few of my own. I avoided my friends. I shouldn’t have. It got me absolutely nowhere. I’ve spent enough time in my head and by myself. I have to make things right. Not just with them, but with Trell.

  No one else might know where he lives, but I do. He might not want me to show up unannounced, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

  Chapter 6

  Trell

  I’ve been scrubbing down the house for a few hours straight when the doorbell rings. I pause, still on my knees in the bathroom, surrounded by three different cleaning products and a pile of sponges. I don’t get sick often, but apparently when I do, it makes up for lost time. I started feeling human again when they released me from the hospital, but I was too drained yesterday to do much of anything. Today, I feel better, though still a little like a walking, talking corpse.

  The doorbell peels again, echoing through the house. I grind my teeth. Whoever is out there usually gets the hint that I don’t want to accept pamphlets or hear about whatever new world saving device they’re peddling. You’d think that the sign on the mailbox that says, in big bold letter, NO SOLICITING would deter people, but apparently not.

  The third time really is a charm. I scramble off my knees and head to the front door, full of steam and feeling a hundred percent for the first time in days, so I guess I should thank whoever didn’t get the hint before I shred them a new asshole.

  I immediately regret that train wreck of thought when I rip open the door and find Cozzie there. She looks flustered, nervous, like she doesn’t want to be there either. She’s wearing a thick red cable knit sweater and black skinny jeans with a pair of distressed black ankle boots. Her clothing is well put together, but her hair looks like she raked her hands through it the whole drive over to my place, and her eyes refuse to meet mine.

  She thrusts a clear container between us. “Here. I heard you were sick. I’m sorry I didn’t know. Been a little wrapped up in my own world lately. I brought you this, though. There’s a place by my parents’ that makes the best soups. Chicken noodle. Should fix you right up.”

  “Where were you three days ago?” I groan, but I reach out and take the soup anyway. It’s still faintly warm and I curl my hands around the sides.

  Cozzie stands there, chewing at her bottom lip and studying her boots. Right. This is awkward as shit because I don’t do this. Ever. She’s my one exception. Then again, she’s always been my one exception.

  “I guess I had my head up my ass and was drowning in a pity party, if you must know.”

  “That was rhetorical.” A smile tugs at my lips, but I keep it at bay. “I know why you went MIA.”

  “Yeah, about that…thanks for the damage control. You did a good job. Everyone knows and no one has really gotten out their spades and dug deep.”

  “I thought I was pretty thorough in the text. Sometimes reading things helps.”

  Her head shoots up w
ith a fresh burst of courage. This is more the Cozzie I know. Eyes glistening, shoulders back, confidence and light oozing from every beautiful, perfect pore. She’s dazzling. She has charisma for days, which is why she works in customer service, when the rest of us would probably throttle half the people who complain about stupid shit all day long.

  “I need to ask you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “I, uh…”

  Great. She’s back to studying her boots again. I back up a step and leave the door open. I’m not going to invite her in, but if she happens to want to step through…

  Her attention lands on my feet and she notices when I back up. Her eyes flick to mine, questioning, searching, searing. She’s never looked at me the way she looked at Bryn, like he was her whole world and then some, but when I search back in my memory bank, I can’t remember him looking at her like that. Not for years.

  All the signs were there. I just missed them the same way everyone else did.

  It makes me want to find out where Bryn is staying and send a steaming bag of shit right to his hotel room. I know what happened wasn’t really his fault. That people change and grow apart, but the rage that climbs up my throat when I think about how many years he wasted, how he had this amazing treasure that he just let go. It drives me fucking nuts. Even if that’s kind of a catch twenty-two deal for me.

  My hands clench around the soup container, throttling it so hard that I’m amazed the lid doesn’t pop off and explode soup all over.

  “Did you eat yet?”

  Cozzie forces herself to look up at me. God, she’s brave. “No, but that’s alright. I don’t have much of an appetite.”

  “Just don’t get sick. It was horrible.”

  She slowly crosses her arms, which sucks in her sweater and defines her full breasts. I swallow hard and tell my dick not to notice. Of course, the fucker doesn’t obey, and I have to angle in towards the house to hide the massive erection straining at my jeans. Great. Apparently, my dick is feeling a hundred percent. Good to know.

  “Trell…”

  Shit. My name on her lips… I’d pretty much gotten to the point where I could block out what it did to me, but now, when she says it like that, dragging it out to make it sound like a thousand syllables, I’m pretty much a goner.

  “Yeah?” Great. Now I’m gripping the soup like it’s a lifeline. I know she’s going to ask me about that kiss. It’s been weeks, but it’s all I’ve thought about. I doubt she chose to hide out for any other reason and that makes me feel like a shithead.

  Her mouth works, but she comes out with a question I don’t expect. “Why do you hate hospitals so much?”

  “That isn’t a conversation for the doorway.” I cock a brow. “Are you coming in or not? If you don’t touch anything and don’t breathe in, you likely won’t get poisoned. I’ve been cleaning up all day, but I can’t promise there isn’t still lingering germs.”

  “I’m not scared of germs.” Cozzie glances over her shoulder like she’s being watched. “Okay,” she finally says, reluctant as hell, but she steps inside.

  “Just leave your boots on. Come on in to the kitchen. I’ll warm this up and I’ll give you an answer.”

  “Really?”

  I still haven’t put my house back to normal after the last time she came, so I think shit’s safe for now. She doesn’t glance around. Instead, she follows me straight to the kitchen.

  I produce a pot from the bottom cupboard, throw it on the stove, pop the soup lid off and inhale. “That does smell pretty much close to heaven, and I don’t even like chicken soup.”

  “You don’t?” Cozzie pulls out one of the oak chairs from the round kitchen table set I bought forever ago off some used site. I like it, even though I’m sure Arla would say it’s not antique enough to actually be nice. It is solid and functional.

  “Not really. Probably because every single time I’ve been sick, that’s what my mom made.”

  “Ugh, yeah, it’s like those crackers that my mom would give me to try to settle my stomach. I can’t even look at them anymore.”

  “This one will be good. Thanks for picking it up.”

  Cozzie’s hands are suddenly fascinating now. They’re planted on her lap, the square nails on display at the ends of perfectly dark, tapered fingers.

  “So. Hospitals.” I should give her time to brace, warm her up. Just like asking her over, I’m about to plunge her into a world that no one else has been privy to. “When I was four, I broke my arm. I fell out of a tree being stupid. My parents didn’t have any money. My dad was out of work and my mom had been staying home to raise me and my little brother, which really put a strain on them. Things were already tight and stressful and we didn’t have insurance.” I hold up my arm and Cozzie stares at me in horror. I think she already knows what’s coming and the compassion burning in her eyes twists at something inside of me.

  “They didn’t take you, did they?”

  “Nope. Not when I was younger either. Never had a reason. My dad made a splint out of some wood and my mom wrapped it really tight after they kind of pressed it back to where they thought it was supposed to go. I wasn’t in school yet, so no one knew. I just laid on the couch for a month while mom tried to keep me still. By some miracle, it actually healed fine.”

  “That’s insane,” Cozzie breathes, but I know she’s not judging my parents. She’s just horrified by the thought of that actually happening.

  That’s just one more thing I love about her. She’s generous to a fault, both with tangible things and with her emotions and feelings. Another reason Bryn is also an idiot.

  “Anyway, my dad went back to work a few months later. My mom wasn’t big into taking us to doctors even when we had insurance. I never even was in the hospital before I was twenty, when I had to have my appendix out. I was terrified. They did blood tests after and I didn’t even know what blood type I was. I hate needles too, and I don’t trust other people with my body…”

  Cozzie’s face softens with a shared memory. “Right. I remember that you hate needles. You passed out when we got our Tetanus shots in school. Freaked the nurse right out.”

  “That was me.”

  “And I think the not wanting to be poked and prodded and looked at is a universal thing a lot of people are uncomfortable with. I’ve never really been in the hospital for anything either. I think it would be really scary just to see the rooms and all the machinery and smell the smells and know that people are really, really sick in that building and maybe dying.”

  “Creeps you right out.”

  “Yes.”

  “I needed it though. God. I haven’t been that sick in a long time. I wasn’t even in my right mind. I could barely find my mom’s number on my phone and she had to come pick my ass up like I was a five-year-old kid again and take me there.”

  Cozzie grins at me. I know she likes my mom. Everyone likes my mom. My mom is one of those moms that always has fresh baked cookies waiting for me and my brother when we come over, even though we’re grown ass men.

  “I’m sorry that—”

  “Don’t be sorry. Cozzie—”

  She cuts me off too. “I… Trell, that kiss, was it out of pity?”

  Pity? My jaw nearly falls off my face and ends up in the soup sizzling on the stove where I’m standing. There’s only six feet between us, but it feels like so much further.

  “No, it wasn’t pity,” I choke out. “Why would you ever think that?”

  “Well, I was feeling sorry for myself about what happened with Bryn and me, and I was down and I—”

  “No. It wasn’t pity.”

  Her eyes lock with mine. They’re blazing, but I’d need a much more complex brain than the one I have to try to sort out all the emotion entangled in her dark depths.

  Cozzie stands up abruptly. “It can’t happen again. It can’t, Trell.”

  I don’t nod. I don’t agree with her. The soup is just about boiling over, near the top of the pot, so I reach ove
r and shut the burner off. I’m not going to admit defeat. Not after I waited, pathetically, nearly a decade and a half just for a chance. Not that I wanted Cozzie and Bryn to fail. I don’t want to see her unhappy. Ever. It’s just, she’s single now and I’m not going to not take the chance I never thought would come. If I didn’t, and she found someone else, it would destroy me in ways I can’t fathom.

  On the one hand, they say that happiness is the greatest killer of art. On the other, I think I might actually go fucking insane, even though I want Cozzie to be absolutely, radiantly happy above all else.

  “Why not? You’re single now. You said yourself that this was years in the making. I know what it might look like—”

  “You have no idea! I literally avoided all of our friends all this time because I was scared I’d do or say something or they’d know just by looking at me and they’d hate me and condemn me.”

  “No one is going to do that.” Maybe I’m too calm, but I’m sure they wouldn’t. They might be stunned all over again, but full on condemnation? I think that’s a little harsh.

  “You don’t know that!” Cozzie stamps her foot against the laminate flooring. I’ve never actually seen her have a meltdown before, and I hurry to cut her off at the pass.

  “Fine. If I asked for Bryn’s permission, would you let me kiss you again?”

  A hysterical burst of laugher bubbles out of her throat. “Ask Bryn? Yeah. You go ahead and try that. If you can get him to agree to letting you take me out and then you inform all of our friends that Bryn gave the go ahead and we’re not actually doing something dubious or shady and you find some way to magically charm them into thinking that it’s okay, then maybe you can kiss me again.”