“She probably knew I was coming,” Lindsay said at length.
That surprised Brad so much, he had to sit down in the armchair near the sofa. “You mean she set me up?”
Lindsay let out a breath. “I mean, I don’t know anything for certain. I just know that walking in on you and Phoebe was the worst moment of my life. You say you didn’t want to kiss her. I’m just trying to come up with a reasonable explanation, I guess. I know she had a thing for you.”
While Phoebe’s crush was not news to Brad, it surprised him a little that Lindsay knew. Well, and also, he seemed to be winning her over. He was almost afraid to breathe lest this delicate moment slip away from him. “I was faithful to you.”
She met his gaze and nodded. “But you can see how I might doubt that, right? Women were throwing themselves at you all the time.”
“Did I ever return their affections?”
“How should I know?”
Brad sighed. He’d lost the moment. Arguing with Lindsay was sometimes like arguing with a brick wall. “Look, I don’t know what happened. All I know is that I was with you, I wanted to be with you, and one day Phoebe approached me and mauled me and you walked in. You chose to believe the worst of me instead of letting me try to explain myself.”
“You had a foot out the door.”
Brad balked at that. He had no idea what she was talking about. “I didn’t. What makes you say that? I was committed to you.”
She shook her head. “We talked about traveling, or opening our own restaurant, or moving in together after we graduated, but whenever I brought up those plans, you acted like you couldn’t plan more than five minutes into the future. So we made all these plans, but I always felt like I was the only one who was taking them seriously.”
Had he really given her that impression? In those days, Brad had been a live-in-the-moment kind of guy. He figured he’d graduate and get a job somewhere, and he and Lindsay would still be together, and sure, they’d travel and work together, but he hadn’t realized he’d needed a five-year plan. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want those things. “I was serious. I was also a little preoccupied with graduating. Was there some rush to make plans?”
“No, but nothing ever got past being hypothetical. You always put me off when I asked about it. Do you get how frustrating that is?”
“I was twenty-five! Who knows what they want out of life at that age? I wasn’t ready to make that level of commitment about the future yet.”
“Don’t you get it?” Lindsay shouted. “I was in love with you! I had this whole life planned. You and me, we had plans! I thought you were on board with those plans. But whenever I brought it up, you changed the subject. You kept saying it was too soon to make any long-term decisions. What was I supposed to think?”
“I wasn’t ready.”
“I know! And that would have been okay, too. But you should have talked to me. If you’d said, ‘I don’t feel ready to make a commitment like that, let’s do something else first,’ I would have understood, but instead, you kept saying, ‘Let’s talk about it later.’ Do you know how that made me feel? Like I wanted to plan a future with you, but you didn’t want that with me.”
“Of course I wanted a future with you. You were always part of the plan, such as it was. I just didn’t feel like I needed to decide everything right then. There were too many variables.”
“And fucking Phoebe. It sure didn’t look like you wanted to take any of this seriously.”
Ah, back around to that again. Brad’s head spun. “Phoebe didn’t do anything.”
“Didn’t she? She wormed her way between us. Everything fell apart after that.”
“But I was never interested in her in that way. I never wanted to date her. She was just my friend.”
“It doesn’t matter. She set out to sabotage us, and you let her.”
Brad was taken aback by that. He tried to remember the night everything blew up.
He’d been noodling in one of the school’s test kitchens. He had an assignment to design a dessert menu for a New American restaurant, and he’d wanted to test out some twists on the old standards like cheesecake and brownie sundaes. Phoebe had walked in while he’d been working and struck up a conversation about fudge. Brad had only been half paying attention; he’d been focused on keeping an eye on the tray of brownies in the oven because he didn’t know precisely how long they needed to bake.
He therefore didn’t notice when Phoebe’s tone turned flirtatious.
“I have to confess,” she’d said. “I know you and Lindsay are seeing each other, but I’ve had feelings for you for a long time.”
Brad didn’t know how to process that. “Oh,” was all he’d said. He pulled the brownies out and put them on the counter.
As he turned off the oven, Phoebe sauntered over. He turned to see what she was doing, and she put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him before he could react.
Which was of course when Lindsay walked into the kitchen.
