On His Knees by Tabatha Kiss

Chapter 66

Seth

Ireturn home to find the door unlocked.

“Seth? That you?”

Drew?

“Yeah, it’s me,” I answer as I close the door. His stride creaks down the hall from his room. “Back early?” I ask as he enters the living room.

“Back early,” he says. “Meetings got merged a little, so they canceled the last day. I figured I’d surprise Heidi.”

I nod. “Nice.”

“Yeah.”

He pauses. The silence between us is instantly heavy. I look him up and down. It’s rare nowadays to see him outside of his corporate costume. He’s wearing an old Delta Xi T-shirt and CNU lounge pants. It’s almost as if he wants to remind me of the good old days before...

“Seth, there’s something I need to talk to you about,” he says. “It’s about Heidi.”

Before dropping a nuclear bomb on us forever.

I knew this was coming, but my stomach still clenches.

Act surprised.

“Sure,” I say, activating a bit of big brother mode. “Is she okay? Did something happen?”

“Oh, she’s fine!” he says, waving a hand. “No, nothing happened. This is about something else.”

“All right. What’s up?”

Drew takes a breath, noticeably disjointed on the exhale. It’s honestly adorable. It’s not like him to get this nervous about anything.

He really loves her. He wants to build a life with my sister.

I can’t stand in the way of that.

Even if I have to give up my dreams.

“Can we sit down?” he says.

Without waiting for an answer, he moves around the couch and takes a seat, expecting me to follow him.

Adorable.

I follow and sit down on the opposite cushion. “Drew, you okay?” I ask, purposefully teasing him a bit, but big brothers gonna big brother. “You seem pale.”

“I’m good,” he says quickly. “I’m real good. It’s just that, uh...”

He clears his throat. He smiles, then his lips drop again. He struggles to tell me something that he should be screaming from the rooftops instead. “Well...”

“You’re getting married,” I say.

Drew raises his head in surprise. “How did you—”

“It’s written all over your face, man.” I smile to break the tension. “Have you guys set a date yet?” I ask, though I already know.

“No,” he says. “I actually haven’t asked her yet. I’m planning to ask her for her birthday next month, but before I do that, I wanted to talk to you.” He looks me in the eye. “I want to ask for your blessing.”

“My blessing?”

“When she and I first got together, I kept it from you. That was wrong. It’s never sat well with me I did that to you.”

“You didn’t tell me about you and Heidi because you knew how I’d react,” I say. “I get that. I get that more today than I did three years ago, actually.”

“It wasn’t right,” he says. “I fell in love for the first time and I couldn’t talk to my best friend about it.”

My heart stalls as a bolt of empathy charges through me.

“I want to do this right this time,” he says. “I love Heidi. I love her so much. I want to spend the rest of my life with her... but I won’t do it without your blessing.”

I scoff. “Yes, you will.”

“I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”

“Drew, you and I are never not going to be friends,” I say. “You don’t have to worry about that. After you get married, we’ll be brothers. Honestly, I’d be offended if that wasn’t the main reason you’re marrying her specifically,” I joke.

He laughs. “It’s high on the list, yes.”

“You don’t need my blessing to get married,” I say, swallowing hard. “But you need for me to get out of your way.”

Drew furrows his brow. “What are you talking about?”

“Come on, man. You have it all going for you right now. A perfect relationship. The perfect job that’s going to lead into a perfect career. You’re building a great life for you and my sister. You need to focus on that. Something has to give and we both know that it’s me, so... you have my blessing to back out of our plans to open the bar.”

His mouth sags. “Seth, no. That’s not—”

“When is the last time we talked about it?” I ask. “When is the last time you even thought about it at all?”

“Every day. I think about it every day.”

“It’s all right, Drew. You don’t have to fight it. This is more important.”

“I’m not fighting anything. You’ve got it wrong, Seth.”

“Heidi told me that Nora wants you to run a sister app.”

“Did she also tell you I turned that down?”

“Why would you do that?”

“Why would—” He grunts before launching off the couch. “Hold on a sec.”

“Drew—”

He bounds for his room. “Just hold on!”

I exhale as I wait. We’ve prolonged this topic long enough now. I knew it would hurt, and it does, but I didn’t think I’d have to convince him. He should choose the easier path. He has to. For him, and for her.

After a minute, Drew returns from his room with a small letter-sized canvas in his hands. “I’m making this,” he says, slightly out of breath. “It’s for Heidi. For the proposal, but...” He holds it out for me to take. “Read my number three.”

I turn it over in my hands. He decorated the canvas with paint and various pictures torn from magazines. The Chicago skyline. A couple wrapped in a warm embrace. A golden watch. Rolex, specifically. Typical Rose.

“Five Goals for a Perfect Year,” I read the text along the top, then stop with a raised brow. “Dude, you made a vision board?”

Drew nods as he excitedly plops back down on the couch. “I made a vision board.”

“Seriously?”

“I know it’s dumb, but... it’s also not. It’s actually really motivating to visualize your goals like this. To see exactly who you want to be a year from now. You look at it every day and you manifest it. It’s really cool!”

“Seriously?”

Drew points at the canvas. “Number three.”

I sigh, hitting him with one more glare before I read it. “Number one, learn a new life skill. Number two—”

“Number three.”

“Number three...” I skip down and pause, reading it to myself first before saying it out loud. “Open the bar.”

Drew nods. “You’re not stepping aside, Seth. You’re going to get your MBA, I’m going to leave Little Black Book, and we are opening our bar next year — just like we always planned.”

I sigh. “Drew.”

“Am I potentially closing doors I shouldn’t? Maybe,” he says. “Am I turning my back on the career path of a lifetime? Giving up the stability most people only dream of? Probably.”

“No, yes. Yes, you are.”

“I don’t care.” He turns up his hands. “I’m not my father, Seth. I don’t want to live my life in suits and ties. That’s not who I am. That’s not who we are.” He taps the canvas. “This is who we are.”

“It’s not just us you have to worry about now.”

“Heidi doesn’t want that guy, either.” He pauses. “Look, I know that life has handed me a lot. It always has, but I haven’t lost sight of this. I’m sorry if I made you think I had. I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t sure how to stay true to the promises I’ve made to you. To her. To my parents. Dad’s been putting a lot of pressure on me to step up and follow in his footsteps, but I can’t. I can’t do it and still be me. I want to do the right thing for everyone, but sometimes it doesn’t seem like I can.”

“I didn’t know you felt like that.”

“Well, I haven’t been very chatty lately,” he says. “And I didn’t want to bring you down.”

“Bring me down?” I ask.

“You seem really happy for the first time in a while.”

I smile without thinking. “Okay. Sure, but... you can always talk to me, Drew. Rain or shine.”

“You, too,” he says, matching my expression. “I hope you know that.”

“I do.” I nod. “You can’t make everyone happy, you know that, too.”

He sighs. “Yeah, I know.”

“But you damn sure make Heidi happy, and that makes me happy, so...”

“Does that mean we have your blessing?”

“Fuck yeah, brother!” I say, slapping my knees. “Let’s have a wedding!”

Drew reaches for me at the same time as I launch at him. We meet in a hard and fierce bear hug. I pat his back. He sighs with relief. I do, too.

It’s really happening.

“Dammit, Seth,” he says, “you do not know how fucked up I’ve been about this conversation.”

Ditto, man.

“Well, stop worrying about it.” I release him and sit back, calm and cool. “You shouldn’t have been so worried at all.”

A strong big brother white lie never hurt anybody.

We’re really doing it.

We’re opening the bar.

Jenna was right. I should have given him a chance to prove me wrong.

“Anyway, you want to celebrate?” Drew asks. “I feel like we should celebrate.”

I nod. “Let’s celebrate!”

“Manny’s? I’ve been jonesing hard for a triple stack lately.”

My stomach growls. “Manny’s sounds perfect.”

“Let me grab my keys.”

We rise off the couch. Drew walks quickly down the hall to his room again while I linger behind. I stare at the canvas, an admittedly beautiful vision of their future together. It’s nice to know that I have a place in it, too.

I look up as Drew returns. “But just out of curiosity...” I say as I set it down. “If I didn’t give you my blessing, what would you have done?”

Drew thinks, but it doesn’t take long. “I probably would have married her, anyway.”

I feign offense. “You don’t say?”

“Hey, when you know you know,” Drew says, his eyes soft on the canvas. “I’ve known since the second I saw Heidi I wanted to be with her forever.”

When you know you know.

Bethany told me the same thing. I thought nothing of it at the time — might have even dismissed it entirely, actually.

But now, something’s different.

“You just knew, huh?” I say.

“There might be some hindsight to that, too, but...” His lips twitch into a quick smile. “I look back on our time together and it was there in every moment, even if I didn’t know I knew — if that makes sense.”

Yeah, brother.

It makes sense.

So much sense, in fact, that I...

Fuck.

“Uh-huh.” My heart tugs me toward the door. “Hey, I gotta go do something.”

I bolt across the living room to the front door.

“Okay,” Drew says, confused. “What about Manny’s?”

I stop in the doorway. “I’ll meet you there,” I say, thinking fast. “Is that okay? There’s something really important I have to do first.”

“Yeah, that’s okay—”

I rush out and down four flights of stairs to the ground floor.