Page 96 of Stay With Me

I grip the door handle and pull it open.

Trina pushes past me and stomps through the mudroom and into my living room. So, I follow.

She whips around to face me. “Why is my sister sad and crying?” Her tone is demanding, and she softens it only slightly when she looks me up and down and adds, “And why do you look like shit?”

“Hello to you, too,” I answer in a sarcastic tone she doesn’t deserve.

She glares at me and the tiny spark of energy I got from her forcing herself into my house like a damn tornado dissipates.

My shoulders sag and I walk away from her to the refrigerator and grab a soda. I know she follows—I can sense her behind me. “What do you want to drink?”

“Grape soda, please.”

I grab a can of the sugary sweet drink that’s her weakness—I only buy it for her. I hand it to her and follow her out to the deck.

It’s always been easy with Trina and me. We’re opposite sides of the same coin and get how the other thinks. Once we sit down, the popping and fizzing that accompanies us opening our cans is the only sound for several minutes.

I know Emily and I are over, but I’d decided a few days ago that I still need to tell Trina about us. Not all the details, obviously, but if our friendship is going to survive the fact that I hurt her little sister, I have to come clean.

I swallow around the lump that has formed in my throat. “I need to talk to you about something.” She looks at me, waiting, but quiet. “Uh, when Em was here… uh, well, things, um?—”

“Do you two think I’m stupid? Or blind, for that matter?” Trina’s voice isn’t anger-filled, but there’s definitely a tension in it.

“What? No, of course not.”

“Look. You know I’m typically blunt, so I’m just gonna say it. Did you getinvolvedwith Emily when she lived here?”

I lean forward in my chair, forearms on my knees, and drop my head, staring at the ground.Here’s where I lose my best friend. Hell, really my first genuine friend.

I turn my gaze toward her, look her in the eyes, and say, “I swear I didn’t mean for it to happen. And we were going to tell you. It’s why we invited you over that night you showed up with Ben. But then it didn’t feel right to tack that on at the end of everything you shared with us.”

Trina stares at me for several uncomfortable seconds, her expression neutral but her eyes revealing that her brain is processing this. Just when I think I’ll have to look away because of the awkwardness, she sits back in her chair and stares straight ahead.

“I knew it. That night, I could see something was different between you two.” She pauses for a few seconds, and I sense she’s not done. “Really, I’ve known it for a while, I think. I just couldn’t put my finger on what had changed until I saw you two together that night. Saw how you looked at each other, reacted to each other.”

Worried that my time with her here might end at any moment, I have to ask the question that’s been on the tip of my tongue since she plowed past me into the house. I lean back in my chair and in a near whisper, I ask, “Is she okay?”

When Trina turns to look at me, her eyes are softer. “No, Charlie. She’s not. She’s really sad.” My stomach drops. “She’s apparently been staying in an Airbnb holed up crying whenever she’s not at work.”

“Fuck,” I mutter mostly to myself.

“You know, Emily has had a crush on you since she first met you. For the first few years, I didn’t realize there was something there on your end as well. It wasn’t until she and Teddy broke up that summer she graduated from college that I started seeing it. The way you watched her when she was in a room, how you smiled when she talked. How you were just as protective of her as I was. I thought maybe something would happen with you two, that maybe I should give you permission, but I opted to sit back and see how it unfolded. And then it all just got weird right after Thanksgiving that year. I could see your discomfort around each other, and I didn’t have to ask either of you to know something happened.”

“God, was it that obvious?”

She simply shrugs. “To me it was. But you and I have the kind of friendship that transcends words. And thank God for that because neither of us are big talkers. We justgeteach other.” She stops talking and raises a finger up to me, telling me to hold on.

When she pulls her phone out of her pocket, I realize the faint buzzing I keep hearing isn’t a bug, like I thought. It’s her phone blowing up. She stands and walks few feet away for some semblance of privacy, I assume.

She doesn’t even say hello when she answers. “Benjamin, quit calling me. I’m fine. No, I’m not out ‘making myself bait.’ I’m with Charlie.” I watch with interest as she listens to whatever he’s saying on the other end before speaking again. “I get it. I’m sorry. I’ll message you when I leave here.” Her tone is softer this time, and I’m quite surprised she apologized. That’s something I know isn’t easy for her to do. She ends the call, comes back over and sits down next to me.

“Anyway, to make a long story short. I thought maybe I’d misread that you felt something for her until…” She looks down at her hands.

“Until what?”

She looks back up at me with regret filled eyes. “Until I saw your face when Teddy proposed to her several years later. It was subtle, but I knew immediately whatever you had felt for her wasn’t gone like I thought. And shit, I should have said something before she got married. It all just happened so fast.”

I shake my head. “Don’t feel bad, Trina. He’s who she wanted to be with, or she wouldn’t have married him.”

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