Page 54 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
I grab a granola bar off the cooling rack where I left them and break it in half. “Like it or not, he was a big part of me getting my start.”
My long-distance high school boyfriend Preston, who I met while visiting my dad in New York, was a trust fund kid with endless resources. After graduation, when I was finally ready to see the world, he would have paid my way to anywhere I wanted to go, then tag along just for the fun of it. My pride wouldn’t let me freeload so blatantly, so I always insisted on paying my own way. But it was hard to refuse when we traveled to places where his family owned property. His father is some sort of real estate mogul and has villas and beachside condominiums all over the world.
For a while, Preston thought himself a photographer, and so we worked together. He took the pictures, while I wrote the articles. But then my stuff started selling, and his didn’t. That was the beginning of the end of our relationship.
“How did you guys break up?” Brody asks, his face so neutral, it can only be intentional.
I frown and take a bite of my granola bar. My relationship with Preston was going nowhere long before he called things off. We got comfortable with each other, interacting more like friends than two people who were actually in love.
“He called things off,” I finally say. “But the fact that I didn’t really care probably tells you everything you need to know about our relationship. The hardest thing was that he was basically my only traveling companion, and then, all of a sudden, I was alone. For pretty much the first time.” I jump up and sit on the counter so my legs are dangling. “What about you? Any serious girlfriends?”
He gives his head an easy shake. “Not really. Well, one, sort of. Jill. We dated in college. It lasted a year, and then we broke up.”
“Wow,” I say, my tone thick with sarcasm. “Sounds like you really liked her.”
He grins. “What do you want me to say? There just...wasn’t anything there.”
It shouldn’t make me happy to hear him say it. I have no claim, no right to concern myself with his dating life, past, present, or future.
“I get it. That’s how it felt with Preston too. Our relationship always felt like it had an expiration date. Still, I learned a lot. I think I have a better idea now of what I really want in a boyfriend.”
Brody’s body is very still, only his jaw moving as he chews the last of his granola bar. “Or a husband? Do you think you’ll ever want one of those?”
An image of me walking down Piccadilly in London, arm in arm with a dapper British man wearing shiny dress shoes and a Burberry wool fedora dances through my mind. It’s so ridiculous and wrong, I almost burst out laughing. I think Idowant a husband at some point, but I don’t think I’ll find him in London. At least not one who looks like that.
“I hope so,” I say.
Brody lifts his eyes to meet mine. He holds my gaze for one beat, then two. “I just hope when you do, you find someone who really sees you, Kate. I’m not sure Preston ever did that.”
He’s not wrong about Preston. I was always more of a convenience to him than someone he truly wanted to know. But nobody has ever seen me like Brody does. He’s setting the bar pretty high. “Like you do?”
He shrugs. “You like to sell yourself short, but you deserve to be with someone who recognizes how great you are.”
My heart squeezes uncomfortably. “More like howneedyI am,” I say with an eye roll. I clear my throat. “Speaking of, care to haul a bunch of enormous boxes out to your truck?”
I give myself an internal salute for steering the conversation away from the vulnerability Brody is so casually demanding.Excellent deflection, soldier. Well done.
Yes, I told him I’m working on being more vulnerable, and I am. But I’mhere.Talking to Mom. Cleaning out Grandma Nora’s house. My bandwidth is a little thin at the moment. I don’t have it in me to tackle something as deep as “the happiness I deserve.” Mostly because I don’t know how to separate it from the happiness Iwant.Assuming I can even figure out what that happiness is. Or answer the question of whether those two things can even be the same thing.
“Just tell me what to carry,” Brody says, pushing himself away from the counter.
I lead him into the living room where several boxes sit near the front door. I was up late last night after Brody left, packing up everything in the living room and hall closets, minus the wooden moose for Freemont, and a stack of things I begrudgingly decided I can try and sell on eBay.
I also created a pile of things I think Mom will want to keep. Or I will if she doesn’t. There’s an entire shoebox full of photos from when I was a baby, and a box twice that size of photos of my parents, pre-divorce. I barely scratched the surface of that box, even after spending a solid hour sitting in the middle of the floor, pictures spread out around me.
I reach for a specific picture I left on top of the box. “Actually, I wanted to show you this first.” I hand Brody the photo and watch as he studies the images of me, a year old or so, holding onto my mother’s fingers and taking what looks like my first step. I’m smiling a toothy grin at whoever is holding the camera. Grandma Nora, probably. But there’s something else I noticed about the photo, and I’m wondering if Brody is going to notice the same thing.
His face shifts, his brow furrowing. Hedoesnotice. He looks up. “This looks like my front porch.” He points at the fuzzy tree line in the background. “See the trees? The way they’re spaced? Imean, they’re smaller. Obviously. But...that’s weird.” He hands the photo back.
“I thought the same thing. I’ll have to ask my mom who lived there. Maybe they were friends?”
“Yeah, maybe. All the houses on this street are at least fifty years old, mine included. Someone had to live there.”
I put the pictures back, making a mental note to call Mom and ask about the house in the photo as soon as I have the fortitude to do it. Which, let’s be real. After our last conversation, it may be a while.
I point out which boxes need to go in the truck, and Brody grabs the first one. I follow behind him, then climb into the truck bed to shuttle the boxes into the back. None of them are particularly heavy, save the one holding the encyclopedias, so it’s easy enough to shift them around and fill the bed.
“That’s the last one,” Brody says five minutes later, lifting the last box onto the tailgate.
