Page 57 of Looks Real Good Now
“If I say hazelnut, are you just going to smile your way through eating the other one?”
“No, Rob’s downstairs. Aaron and Stassie might want to fight for it when they are back from their walk. Just figured you would want options.”
“Stand down, you can eat your hazelnut croissant,” I said as I sat up and reached for the pistachio pastry. “Why did you only run 2k?”
“I could not be bothered, and it took me that long to accept it. I talked to Teddy on the way back, so that was nice.”
“And how is the Teddy bear?” I asked just beforeI let out a moan at my first bite of pastry. I saw Liam’s eyes darken.
He cleared his throat. “They’re in Boston. He spent Christmas there with his family, so he is well and truly settled before their game later today. Is while you’re having a moment with your breakfast a good time to tell you that there are photos of us out there?”
I couldn’t say I was surprised; it had occurred to me that this would happen. I thought I would care more, but I actually felt indifferent to it. I wasn’t hiding being with Liam and in some ways, I accepted that it came with the territory.
“Photos of us doing what?” I did still need to know for sure that someone hadn’t managed to catch our dressing room tryst on camera.
“Teddy mentioned something about us frolicking in front of Macy’s and the ice rink.”
I sighed in relief. “Oh, well that’s fine. For a second, I worried that we got caught in the dressing room.”
“I think Teddy would have been a lot more scandalised if that was the case, but he seemed pretty chill. Plus, he couldn’t tell that it was you in the pictures.”
“So he thought you had a mystery girl?”
“Yeah, he did. Was kind of surprised when I said it was you. Then a little bit annoyed that I hadn’t told him directly. You know Teddy.” Liam was peeling flakes off the top of his pastry and very intentionally not looking at me anymore.
He was right, I did know Teddy. Well. We had never stopped being friends. All week, Liam and I had been skirting around the reason we hadn’t seen each other for years. Liam knew me well enough to know that I wasn’t going to start talking aboutmy feelings unprompted, and so while we found our bearings around each other, he had let it go.
But I knew he could only let it go unspoken for so long and we couldn’t exactly move forward as a couple with it still hanging between us.
“Why did you go to Michigan?” His voice was quiet. Tentative.
And there it was. I took a deep breath, knowing I couldn’t deny him the truth anymore, and jumped straight in.
“I had exactly zero intention of falling in love with my best friend. The same best friend that everyone told me I would end up marrying one day. One, because I thought you were a stupid boy, even if you weremystupid boy, and two, because it’s just too fucking basic. How many films have been made about that? So, imagine my surprise when I’m listening to Lacey talk about how she loves her boyfriend so much she’s going to have sex with him and when I ask her how she knows she loves him she says all these things that sound familiar to me. Then a couple of days later, you walk into my kitchen at three in the morning and sleepily hang out with me while I bake, and I realiseyouare the reason the things sounded familiar.
“And then I just felt very stupid, because at no point did you give any indication that you saw me as anything more than a pseudo-sister. But I couldn’t turn it off once that switch had flipped. Then I remembered that we were going to college together. And I knew you would know that something was wrong because I couldn’t keep it in anymore. These feelings that were blooming for you. So, I knew there would come a point where I would start to feel irrationally jealous or sad or angry at you ifyou started having casual encounters with people, like I wasn’t dying inside to have you. I convinced myself that if you knew how I felt, you’d give me this speech about how you did love me, but it was like a sister. Or you’d give some spiel about how you couldn’t commit to a relationship because of hockey or college or because you liked having casual sex and didn’t want to be stuck with one person. With me. And because I made it weird by confessing all these feelings, you would slowly pull away. In my head, I was losing you anyway and I figured there was no need to drag it out any longer. And I got into Michigan. So, I broke my own heart and ran away.”
Liam was silent for what felt like forever, and I tried to distract myself with the pistachio topping of my pastry. I felt him move up the bed until he was sitting next to me. I waited for him to get me to look at him, but he just started talking.
“It is really basic to fall in love with your best friend, but if you’d told me, I wouldn’t have told you that I loved you like a sister. I would have told you that I loved you too. Because here’s the thing Alana, I juggled hockey and school andyouthroughout high school with great ease. I didn’t go to every party or always hang out with the guys because I wanted to hang out with you. Coming out of the rink on a day when we lost was fine because I would walk into that parking lot and see you leaning against the side of my car with the bottom of your face buried underneath your scarf and your hands in your coat pockets. And that became the best part of my day.”
I wiped under my eyes, and I realised I was crying. Liam took my chin in his hand and tilted my head to look at him. He swiped his thumbs over my cheekbones and something elseclicked into place.
“The day I met Kai was the same day I got this tattoo.” I gestured to my right arm. “I got it as my final hurrah to you—”
“What flower is it, by the way?” Liam cut me off.
“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”
Queen of the Night. A flower that only blooms at nighttime and then dies at sunrise. Liam discovered its existence when we were thirteen and told me about it because it reminded him of me.
“Fine, how many Queen of the Night flowers are tattooed on you?”
“I think you know the answer to that too,” I said quietly.
“Seventeen?”
The number on the back of every hockey jersey he’s ever worn.
