How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas - Molly O'Keefe Page 0,8

him?” I asked.

“Nah. Saw your mom.”

“Christmas spirit herself?”

“She hissed at me.”

“Well, that’s an improvement.”

We grinned at each other. I actually couldn’t stop. He made me so happy.

“You want a drink?”

I want to know what you think of my dress. I want to know what you think of my ass. Of me.

“Sure.”

“Champagne or the usual?”

“You know my usual?”

He turned and ordered a gin and tonic with two limes for me, which was, in fact, my usual, and when he slipped the glass into my hand I broke. I broke right in half.

“Notice anything different about me?” I asked, my voice strident and loud. It was like I was screaming the question at him.

“You’re taller,” he said, ordering another beer for himself.

“Well, it’s the shoes.”

“Your hair is…bigger.”

Something went sour in my stomach.

“Your dress is very…bright.”

It was reflecting the light from the dance floor. I was a beautiful blue disco ball. But I didn’t have the breath to say that. “You’ve never seen me in a dress.”

“Yeah.” He laughed and took a huge gulp of his beer, his eyes going across the bar to where the glassblowers were standing. “It’s a little weird.”

It was like one of those balloons shot in slow motion. That was actually the feeling in my stomach. In my body. I felt the terrible puncture and the slow explosion, like every part of me had lost connection to every other part of me. I gasped and gasped again, and he looked at me and then looked away.

“So, what are the names of the glassblowers?” he asked.

“I don’t…I don’t know,” I said, trying to gather myself up. Finding an arm over there and a leg over there, the beating of my weak heart right there at his feet.

“The blonde is hot.”

Tears. I hadn’t cried since we got the phone call from his mother three months ago that Sam had been hurt and that he was unconscious and alone a million miles away.

Humiliated, I blinked the burning tears back, but it wasn’t working.

There. That’s the answer. He never saw you like that. Never thought of you like that.

“Sophie?” he said, like I’d chocked on an olive pit. “You all right?”

If I opened my mouth I wasn’t sure what I would say. If I opened my mouth I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t sob, and it had already been a bad night. The stuff nightmares were made of. I didn’t have to go and add more to it. Crying because of Fucking Sam Porter was one thing. Crying in front of him was the kind of thing I would never recover from.

So I sucked back that gin and tonic like it was medicine for a broken heart.

“Hey, careful—”

Yeah. Fuck him and his worry. I turned on my fancy high heel and got the hell away from him before I could do anything else I might regret. Blindly, I circulated back through the shadows, looking for my brother. Joy. Anyone who might make this feeling go away, but then I realized, it wouldn’t. It would never go away.

The humiliation shifted, making room for the grief. The bone-deep grief that the man I loved with my whole self didn’t feel at all the same way about me.

There was only one thing to do—leave.

4

Sam

That…

That had been the right thing to do. 100%.

I was sure of it.

Though it was getting harder and harder to tell what was right and what was wrong when it came to Sophie Kane. When she’d been a kid, it had been simple: protect her.

But then she grew up and started looking at me out of the corner of her eye. And she got real interested in me and my damage, and that was a mistake no matter which way I looked at it.

So then the mission became: ignore her. But that was impossible. It was like ignoring a 4th of July Sparkler right in front of your face. A tiny little pivot and I just had to ignore how she felt about me. Which she did a shit job of hiding. But even that was hard, because a few times I selfishly wallowed in her kindness. Her respect. The bright center of her love.

I know. I’m an asshole.

But, I took some comfort in the fact that I’d tried so hard for years. For years. Not to look at her that way. See her that way. She was my best friend’s little sister. She was, if I was honest, probably more of a best friend than my actual best friend.

But goddamn…that dress.

No. That