Page 83 of Head Over Heels

Not people.

Not Katie and me.

I pick up one of the cobalt bowls from the night table and throw it at the wall as hard as I can. It shatters into a million pieces, but I don’t feel any better.

Chapter 46

Chase

Brooks rings the doorbell on Thursday night. I get up from the couch long enough to open the door, then sink back down in front of my glass of bourbon. It’s my third. Or fourth. Or maybe fifth.

Brooks strolls over and stands beside me, forehead wrinkled. “You look like the walking dead, Chase. What the fuck?”

“I didn’t invite you over.”

“No, I came over because Rodro and I are worried about you. You were a zombie at work today. You looked happier when you were in the middle of that fight with Thea about where Katie was going to spend Christmas.”

“I’m happy.”

“Happy dudes don’t drink by themselves,” Brooks points out.

“There are more glasses in the kitchen. Right of the sink.”

He rolls his eyes, but crosses to the kitchen and comes back with an empty lowball. He pours himself some bourbon and sits beside me.

“You going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“No.”

Brooks, wise man, stays silent. Around us, the house is making its night noises, the refrigerator humming, the joists expanding and contracting. I’ve heard quite a bit of the night noises recently, during the not-sleeping portions of the last three nights, which is pretty much all of them.

Normally, when I can’t sleep, I make Liv come watch movies with me. Yes, it’s true: I have actually made up nonexistent dates just to have the excuse for one of our consolation parties.

And somehow it never occurred to me that that might be indicative of a problem.

Not too bright, this guy.

Brooks is still eyeing me like I’m a ticking time bomb. “Does this have something to do with Liv’s leaving?”

Outright lie? Half-truth? Silence?

I don’t get the chance to decide, because Brooks nods like I’ve confirmed something he already knew. “That’s what Rodro was guessing. He said you were in love with her. Is that true?”

He asks it the way you’d ask a close friend to confirm the rumor of a cancer diagnosis.

I open my mouth to deny it, because a long time ago, I decided I would never let the phrase “in love with her” apply to me again. But now that Brooks has let it drop like a bomb in my living room, I can see it’s true.

That it’s probably been true all along.

I think of that first blind date. How beautiful and polished she was, how even then I wanted to feel every curve and secret of her, and how that scared the shit out of me, because the only other time I’d wanted that before, it had landed me in sewage.

I can tell already this isn’t going to work.

A wall I threw up between us, because I knew if I let myself, I would fall for her.

All I can do is nod.

Brooks opens his mouth and I think he’s going to howl with laughter, but then he seems to realize that I’m in no condition to be laughed at and shuts it again. “We’re talking about the Liv who—and I quote—is your friend ‘like you and Rodro and I arefriends’?”

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