Walk on the Wilder Side by Serena Bell

36

Brody

Two weeks after the summer festival, Connor finds me washing the boat outside Gabe’s and Wilder. I don’t set down the sponge or look at him, but I can feel him standing just off my shoulder, breathing.

He should be uneasy, because even if he was right, he was a dick about it.

“Hey,” he says. “I, um, thought you might want to know. Rachel went back to Boston.”

“Thanks.”

I still don’t look at him.

“Hey,” he says again. “I heard you got kicked out of Oscar’s last night.”

I close my eyes. Fucking small towns. “I didn’t get kicked out. I just got cut off.”

And the night before that, too, but who’s counting.

“Jill said you seem pretty miserable.”

I don’t bother to answer that. If your own best friend has to hear from someone else that you’re miserable, you shouldn’t have to explain it to him.

“I’m, um, really…” He takes a deep breath. Connor’s not exactly a big talker, either, so I know this isn’t easy for him, but there is no fucking way in hell I’m letting him off the hook. Let him stew in his own juices. “I’m really sorry.”

Now I turn around. In almost thirty years of friendship, I have never heard Connor apologize for anything.

“For fucking things up between you guys.”

“Isn’t that what you were trying to do?” I ask him.

He shifts uneasily, not meeting my eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

“Just what I said.”

And to his credit, he doesn’t deny it. He just says, “Yeah. I guess. I mean, it just seemed like such a bad idea. And if it went south, I didn’t want to have to pick up the pieces on either side. But if I’d known how much you liked her—”

I shrug, because it hurts less that way.

“It’s fine, Connor. It wasn’t going to happen. She has a plan, and it doesn’t call for being with a guy who can’t pull it together in any aspect of his life.”

I turn back to the boat, working over an algae stain.

Behind me, he takes a deep breath.

“So my mom was right.”

“About what?”

“She said I needed to apologize to you. And not just for fucking things up between you and Rachel. She said I needed to say I was sorry for hurting you.” He clears his throat. “Did I… hurt you?”

The way he asks this actually manages to make me laugh. Connor’s no dummy, but we’re not guys who talk about our emotions a ton. Or ever. And he makes it sound like it’s the craziest thing he’s ever heard, that I might have feelings and he might have hurt them. Like it’s dirty, too, the way some of the women sound when they first start talking about sex on the boat. Like the words feel foreign and awkward and wrong.

“Yeah, I mean, I figured that was bullshit,” Connor says, laughing, too, relieved.

“No,” I say.

I’m not sure where it comes from. It would be so much easier to let this drop. But I can’t.

“No, she’s right. You did hurt me.”

I turn around and face him.

“You’ve been my best friend since forever, Con, and you all but told me I don’t rate your sister. That’s fucked up.”

He looks like I’ve struck him. “Jesus, Bro.”

I’m quiet, letting him think about it, and after a moment he says, “Is that what I said?”

“Not in those words, but yeah.”

He nods. “Brody. I’m so fucking sorry.”

This is why my mother believes in the power of a heartfelt apology. I’m not going to say my heart grows two sizes in that minute or that I instantly stop being hurt or pissed or sad. But my skin does feel less too-tight, my heart less bruised.

Connor groans. “Don’t make me do this, Brody.”

“Do what?” I’m genuinely curious, because he looks like he’s in serious physical pain right now.

“Don’t make me say—” He rubs both his hands over his face. “I mean, Jesus, okay? I was jealous. You guys hanging out all that time, having a blast, and neither of you saying anything to me. Leaving me out of it completely. I’m not super-human, Brody. She’s my sister and you’re my best friend.”

His eyes meet mine for the first time in this whole conversation.

A lot of stuff suddenly makes sense.

Connor was a dick because he was jealous.

He said a lot of shit he probably meant at the time.

Some of it probably was true.

Some of it probably was not.

I hear my own voice, saying back to him, I’m not that guy.

What would Rachel say to that?

I know exactly what she’d have said, if I’d given her the chance:

You’re not any kind of guy. You’re just Brody.

And here’s the thing. If I’d let her say it to me?

I might even have believed it.