Page 50 of Sweet Twins For My Brother's Best Friend

Christopher

I sit with Tyler, eating a croissant as I watch Tyler drink coffee.

I look momentarily at the other patrons drinking coffee and eating little sandwiches. They all seem so carefree.

Just a few weeks ago, I felt that carefree feeling.

Julie was somewhere else in the world, far away from me, and Hannah was just Tyler’s little sister. Now, it’s all complicated.

I wish I’d never called Tyler.

Sometimes, all you want is your best friend. But the way that I’ve complicated this relationship, I can’t look at him without a twinge of guilt.

The confusion and hurt that I saw washed over Hannah’s face has been haunting me. It haunted me all night, and it haunted me all morning, and finally I had to phone a friend, unable to handle it anymore.

Still, even with all the secret strings from me to him that he doesn’t even know exist, his face and voice are full of the usual cheer and camaraderie that has defined our friendship since our college days at UCLA.

"All right, Chris,” he says, his goofy demeanor helping with my mood already.

“I’ve been watching you nurse that croissant for a half hour now. I can’t take it anymore. Tell me about your woman troubles, dude. I know you’ve got them.”

I snap my head up to face him, my fingers twirling crumbs around in circles.

“How do you know I’ve got woman troubles?”

“Because I’m a man, and I know when a man is having issues with a girl.”

I cringe atgirl. Even though Hannah is an adult woman, Julie’s voice echoes in my head, the way she’d mocked me for being intimate with her.

She’d got me wondering if the age difference was too much. She also got me wondering how Tyler would take it.

I feel guilt eating at me that I hadn’t really considered him.

But Tyler’s always been astute. We’ve known each other so long that he feels like an extension of my brain sometimes, like a friend and a journal and a brother all in one.

“Yeah…” I trail off, unsure how to continue without revealing too much.

Tyler laughs, his green eyes sparkling the same way Hannah’s do sometimes.

“So spill, dude. What’s going on? Wait, no, let me guess. Julie’s back in the picture?”

Terror seizes at my heart, a sudden fear that Julie made good on her covert threat, that she called him before he came over and he’s play-acting, playing the part of my best friend who doesn’t know. I look at him warily, hesitantly.

“Sort of. I did see Julie yesterday.”

Tyler’s strawberry blonde eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.

“Please, no more Julie. We barely got you back after the last time.”

"Well, it’s not that…you don’t have to worry about her coming back…in that way.”

“What do you mean?” he asks, spilling a splash of coffee on the front of his shirt and wiping it haphazardly.

“She's stirring things up.”

“So, in other words, being Julie,” he points out, lifting the front of his shirt and dabbing it with a wet napkin.

I laugh thinly. He got me there.

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