Page 26 of Twins For My Bestie's Brother

I turn onto Lily’s street, my face growing hotter with each passing moment. Thank God we’re close to her home so that I can have a moment alone to collect myself.

Or any other number of things.

“Yeah, I think it will be easy to convince Will he doesn’t have a chance,” Lily remarks.

“I hate that guy,” I mutter. And I hate when she says his name too.

Lily sighs and unbuckles her seatbelt. The click is a harbinger of my eventual loneliness. “You don’t have to hate him, Jackson.”

“Oh, no, I’m happy to,” I reply as I pull up to the curb in front of her house. I put the car in park and finally look back at her again, now that I can’t be distracted away by any traffic lights.

She’s got her hands folded over her clutch in her lap, her eyes downcast. No muscles in her body tensing to make a move to get out of the car. “Don’t let me do something stupid. Okay?”

“You’re afraid he might . . . ” I gulp, “convince you?”

“I know I don’t want him,” Lily says. “I don’t want to be with him. Ever again. But . . . ” She finally turns back to look at me. In the darkness, the brown parts of her irises look black while the green still seems to flash and sparkle. “I don’t have much going for me right now.”

I resist scoffing. “What are you talking about, Lil?”

“Just . . . I’m living with my parents, working at the family drugstore the same way I did when I was sixteen. I’m single and almost thirty and—”

“What’s wrong with being thirty?” I ask.

Lily waves her hand. “It’s different for men.”

“How?”

“You don’t hear the ticking of the clock like we do.”

I watch her for a moment. “You think it might be easier to go back and at least have a partner so that the clock isn’t so loud?”

Lily sighs, leaning back on the headrest. I’m just noticing her dangling red earrings are glass tomatoes. “Yeah, maybe. Even though I know I don’t want that with him.”

“You don’t want to have a family with a guy who wears one dangling gold earring.”

“You’re obsessed with his earring!” Lily laughs. “I’m wondering if you’re just jealous.”

I balk. “Never in a million years would I want an earring.”

“You sure? A little stud? Right here?” She reaches out and pinches my earlobe between her fingers.

I jerk away. “No! Never!”

Lily keeps laughing, her hand landing on my bicep. She leans back over the console a bit and looks at me. “At least in Seattle I could be a tattooist again.”

“You can do that here, too, can’t you?”

“I mean, I’d have to start my own studio, and that will take time. And I guess I have time, but I have an artist brain. Not a business brain.” She starts toying with a wrinkle in my jacket, pushing it back and forth and watching how it curves. “Plus money.”

I’ve got a business brain. And I have money. I have a feeling if I offered either one right now, she might jump out of the car with a flurry of goodbyes. The last thing I want is for her to run fromme right now. I want her to stay. Right here. Next to me. “Good things take time, Lil. Just because it’s not happening right now doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen.”

“I know,” she says. “Or I guess my brain knows, but my heart is totally freaked out that everything I thought I knew is—” She stops, then lifts her eyes up to look at me. “Is different now.”

No more Seattle. No more Will. No more tattooing. That’s all different.

And me . . . am I different to her too? Is she starting to see me the way I’ve always wished she would?

“Thanks for doing this, Jackson.”

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