Page 44 of The Pocket Pair

“You obviously have things to say,” I tell her. “So, go on. Say the things. I’m listening.”

Winnie smooths her hair back and tightens her ponytail. “I just … I’m worried.”

“About?”

“You. And Chevy.”

“There is no me and Chevy,” I tell her, the words landing somewhere between truth and a lie. “He spent all day making 3D models of our friendship to remind me where I stand with him.”

“And yet he turned up the heat for you.”

I throw my hands up. “He’s been gone for hours. Long before the temperature dropped. He didn’t touch it, and neither did I.”

“He has an app,” Winnie says. “He installed this last month and was all giddy about being able to adjust it from his phone. But he’s a total cheapskate when it comes to paying for utilities. Whenever I tried to stealthily adjust it, Chevy turned it right back down with his app. Now? It’s on seventy-nine. Practically scorching.”

I shrug. “So, he adjusted the heat. I don’t get it.”

Unless … is this a tiny gesture like the ones I’ve always hoped for from a guy?

“Here’s the thing about my brother.” Winnie’s expression shifts. A subtle thing, but I see it in her distant eyes and the tightness around her mouth. “Chevy knew about our dad way before I found out. Since he was in high school, apparently. He just bottled it up and kept quiet about it, the same as me. For years.”

I search for something to say. Anything at all. But what Winnie and Chevy’s dad did was so horrible. So strange and unbelievable that I’m as speechless as I was when she first told Lindy and me. He seemed, from the outside, like a typical dad. A good dad, even. Worked a lot and took trips, sure, but after their mom died, he raised them on his own.

I know it had to have wrecked Winnie, and she found out after he died. I try to imagine Chevy, carrying this truth around for so many years. He’s always seemed so bright and sunny, playful and optimistic. Steady and sure.

But he’s known about his dad all along?

The familiar prickle of impending tears starts in my nose and eyes. My tender baby heart is ready to go full-on mush. “Winnie—I’m still just so sorry.”

She waves a hand carelessly, though I know her feelings about it aren’t careless at all. “I don’t think Chevy has fully processed his hurt and grief. I’m not sure he knows how to process.”

Sounds familiar. But I’m not going to make a comment about it now.

“I’m also not sure,” she says, pausing to make sure she catches my eye, “if my brother knows how to process good feelings either. If he knows what to do with feelings at all. Chevy is about as emotionally available as an old boot stuck in mud at the bottom of a lake.”

“That’s vivid imagery,” I say drily.

Winnie ignores this. “I love you both. And I don’t want to see either of you getting hurt.”

“Would you be so against it?” I blurt, and once again, my mouth is about five steps ahead of my brain. Winnie goes completely still at the question. But I press on, pushing my finger against what feels like a marrow deep bruise. “If Chevy felt something for me, and if he weren’t an emotionally unavailable old boot—would you be happy for us?”

I try to keep my tone light, adding humor to the question, but it’s the heaviest, weightiest thing I’ve ever said out loud. And I’m terrified of the answer.

Winnie crosses the room before I can blink and sits so close, she’s practically in my lap. Taking my hand, she gives me eye contact so intense I almost wither under the force of it.

“I want so much for your happiness. And for Chevy’s. If that happiness were together? Best news ever.” She shakes her head, smiling. “I am all for two people I love times a billion being in love with each other.”

Relief fills me, making my limbs feel suddenly lighter. “Really?”

Winnie squeezes my hand, and I swear I feel my bones crunching. “Unless the two people I love times a billion broke each other’s hearts. And then, I can’t think of anything worse.”

I swallow hard, staring at the person whose friendship has lasted just about as long as my crush on her brother. And as my temporary relief ebbs, my limbs now feel heavy and waterlogged. Because in truth, I can’t think of anything worse either.

“Well, now that we’ve resolved that issue, which may only be a hypothetical, what are we going to do?” I ask, desperately hoping for something to give me a break from thinking Chevy-related thoughts.

“Netflix and chill?” she asks, then laughs. “The literal kind. Do you have ice cream?”

“Do I have a pulse?”

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