“Wait, hold that thought,” he set the phone down on the coffee table between us. “Okay, Liam’s here too.”
“Why is Liam on speaker?” I asked Wyatt.
“Because we’re doing the brother thing. I didn’t want to miss out just because I have an away game tonight. How is my house, Wy?”
“Awesome,” Wyatt said. “Syd’s bummed you snatched it up before we could buy it.”
“We’re not doing abrotherthing,” I protested. “This is not a brother thing.”
“Fine. We’ll call it a bro thing.”
“A bro thing.” It was official. I was going to lose my mind.
“Either works,” Wyatt said. “Now fill Liam in on what’s been happening so we can do this together.”
I scowled at Wyatt, then at the phone. They were two men, in their thirties. Each of them recently in serious relationships. Maybe they actually had some advice to offer?
How the hell did I begin?
Then it occurred to me. These were two guys I could actually tell my secret. There would be no judgement. No reaction. They had no skin in this game like every other resident of Calico Cove, who had watched Nora grow up, did.
“So whatever we talk about. Stays confidential.”
“I’m a vault.”
“He’s not,” Wyatt countered. “He’s actually the biggest mouth on the planet. But he’s got no one to tell. Neither do I, so I think you should be okay.”
“Fine. Here it is. Six years ago, on her eighteenth birthday, Nora-”
“Life long family friend of Nick and his family, Liam. Also super cute.”
I glared at Wyatt, but he didn’t flinch.
“Got it. Proceed. On her eighteenth birthday…”
This was tough. This went against every mental guardrail I had to take this secret with me to the grave. “She showedup at my apartment thinking…well she had this idea that our friendship was more than a friendship. She said she was in love with me and that we should…we should…”
“Duuuude. Did she proposition you?”
I dipped my chin once.
“That’s an affirmative,” Wyatt told Liam.
“Of course I told her she was wrong about us. That she was having some teenage crush moment and that it would pass,” I rushed to explain. “That I didn’t think about her like that. Ever.”
“Ever? Not even a teeny little bit?”
“Never,” I barked into the phone.
“I think I understand,” Wyatt said, pinching his chin between his fingers. “You probably thought you said all the right things, but I’m guessing you crushed her eighteen year old romantic heart.”
“Something like that. It didn’t exactly help that I was with another woman at the time.”
“Double whammy!”
“Okay, enough commentary, please,” I said to the phone. “Anyway, she left for college not long after that and we just sort of stopped talking.”
“And now she’s back, a super cutie, and you realize you fucked up.”
