Chapter Three
Riley started awake at the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. The clock on the DVR showed that it was a little after two in the morning, and he knew he’d only drifted off around midnight when he’d decided that Brent wasn’t getting up again.
Apparently, he’d been wrong.
Riley sat up just in time to see Brent wandering into the kitchen in a t-shirt and his underwear, pushing his hair away from his face and yawning widely.
He looked less miserable, but Riley’s heart was still breaking for him. Brent didn’t deserve the way he’d been treated. No one did, but Brent especially so. He’d never hurt a soul. He was kind to a fault.
Riley didn’t believe anyone was perfect, but Brent was as close as anyone could get. Not that Brent would ever agree with that. His lack of self-confidence was his biggest flaw.
“Hey,” Riley said as he followed Brent into the kitchen, flicking one of the lights on to see by. “I thought you were asleep for the night.”
Brent shrugged. “Guess not. Sorry about falling asleep on you and letting the hot chocolate go cold.”
“It’s okay. Do you want me to make another mug, or do you want me to reheat dinner for you? It’s just pasta, but you must be starving by now.”
Brent opened his mouth to respond, but his stomach growled instead.
“Pasta it is,” Riley said, not about to take no for an answer. He wasn’t going to let Brent make himself sick over this, not even if he had to spoon-feed him.
“Thanks,” Brent murmured, moving to sit down at the kitchen table.
“Don’t thank me until you’ve tasted it.” Riley turned the oven on and adjusted the temperature dial before opening the fridge. He could have reheated it in the microwave, but microwaved food always went cold quickly. For a quick bite after a long day, it was fine, but what Brent really needed was a kind of internal hug.
Besides, that gave them time to talk, and Riley knew that Brent needed to talk.
“Hey, uh. There’s a bottle of champagne in the fridge that I was saving for, y’know, tonight,” Brent said. “You wanna help me drink it?”
As much as Riley knew that was a terrible idea, he couldn’t bring himself to refuse. Brent wasn’t asking for much, and one hangover wouldn’t kill either of them, despite the fact that they were both turning thirty this year.
If it would make Brent feel better about today, Riley was willing to go through ten hangovers.
“Sure. You want it in a fancy glass, or should I get out mugs?”
Brent laughed at that, and it almost sounded as though there was the tiniest spark of actual humor in it. Maybe he was feeling a little better.
“Fancy glasses. Let’s at least pretend to be celebrating.”
“What are we pretending to be celebrating?” Riley asked, reaching up into one of the top cupboards to find a wine glass. Brent didn’t own a champagne flute—he had no reason to—but Riley figured that was close enough.
“Dodging a bullet, I guess.”
Brent was probably trying to sound upbeat about it, but if anything, he just sounded more miserable.
Riley was fairly sure he had dodged a bullet. He liked Rose well enough as a person, but he didn’t like her for Brent. They didn’t fit together. They weren’t right.
He’d never said that, of course, and he’d chalked it up to a combination of fear and jealousy. Brent was his best friend, and he hadn’t wanted to lose him. Thinking ill of Rose had seemed petty and selfish, so he’d brushed it off as uncharitable and ignored his instincts.
At least he wasn’t trying to help Brent get a divorce right now. Things could have been worse.
“Well, if she was going to leave you, at least she did it before the wedding,” Riley said. “After would have been a lot messier.”
Brent huffed softly, sitting back in his chair. “This is my fault. I wanted so badly to get married and settle down that I was totally blind. I should have known.” Brent wet his lips. “You knew, didn’t you?”
“No,” Riley said, hoping it wasn’t too obvious that he was hiding something. Brent didn’t need to hear that he hadn’t thought they worked together. “I just wanted you to be happy.”
That part was true. And Riley had convinced himself that Brent would be happy with Rose. Brent deserved to be able to settle down, have a stable, loving relationship with someone who’d treat him right and value everything about him.
Rose couldn’t have thrown away her chance with a better man.
Riley had wanted to marry Brent since they were fifteen. Since before he even understood what that meant about him.
As they aged, it had gotten more and more obvious that Brent didn’t quite feel the same way. So Riley had given up on the idea.
Well, sort of. Deep in his heart, it was still the thing he wanted most in the world.
Riley brought the champagne bottle and glasses over to Brent, setting them on the table in front of him.
“And you will be happy,” Riley added belatedly. “You’re going to make someone deliriously happy one day. You’re impossible not to love.”
Brent snorted as he reached for the champagne bottle. “Apparently not.”
He peeled off the foil and twisted the cork out of the bottle with more confidence than Riley would have had in his place, a loud pop echoing in the otherwise quiet kitchen.
“I kinda expected that to go everywhere,” Riley said, nodding to the champagne bottle that was definitely not overflowing right now.
“Only if you open it wrong,” Brent responded. “If it foams up you lose all the bubbles, which are… kinda the only thing that makes it different from cheap wine, really. I watched a documentary a while back.”
“You nerd.” Riley laughed, taking the glass Brent offered him when he was done pouring.
“I am a nerd,” Brent said. “I’m an accountant. I have a comic book collection. I watch Star Trek re-runs on purpose.”
“You’re adorable.” Riley shrugged. “It’s okay to like things. Nerd is a stupid insult. I think you’re cool.”
Brent laughed softly. This time, he sounded as though he meant it. “If you’re being this nice to me, you must really be worried.”
“I’d say nice things to you all the time, but I know it makes you uncomfortable. For the record, I think you’re amazing. And I think that you’ll find the right person one day, and that person will love everything about you.”
“Even my freckles?”
“Especially your freckles. One day, someone will love you enough to keep a running count of them, because they’re part of you, and every part of you is special.”
Brent raised an eyebrow. “I was thinking about having them faded, actually. I… well, Rose mentioned it to me, and I’m not sure if she was serious or…”
“I’d miss them,” Riley said, his gut twinging at the mention of Rose wanting Brent to change something that was literally embedded in his skin. That didn’t sound quite right. “I mean, it’s your body, and you should do what makes you happy, but if you’re looking for an opinion, keep them. They suit you.”
Riley knew that Brent didn’t hate his freckles. He’d never even mentioned them before now, not seriously.
Maybe Riley had been wrong about Rose. Maybe she wasn’t as nice as she seemed.
If he’d been around more often, he would have known. He probably would have been able to predict this, prepare for it, maybe even talk Brent out of asking her to marry him in the first place.
But he hadn’t been around. And now he was picking up the pieces.
That didn’t feel like doing Brent a favor. It felt like penance for not having been there for him all this time. Not when it really mattered.
Maybe he would never have realized, but he couldn’t let go of the thought that he might have.
“This is good,” Brent said, sipping from his glass.
“Really?” Riley lifted his own glass, watching bubbles trail up the side and burst when they got to the surface.
“Absolutely not,” Brent admitted, taking another sip. “Burns like cheap vodka. Smells like grape bubble gum. But it’s alcoholic, which is all I’m asking from it right now.”
Riley chuckled, taking a sip from his own glass. Everything Brent said was true, but if the point was to get drunk, it’d do the job.
“Emily told me you weren’t going to leave for your honeymoon until Monday. The Caribbean seemed like a weird choice for you.”
“Wasn’t my choice.” Brent shrugged. “I wanted Rose to be happy, so I let her pick.”
That sounded like Brent.
It also wasn’t what a healthy relationship was supposed to be like. Brent really wasn’t a cocktails on the beach kinda guy.
“Okay,” Riley said. He got the feeling that he was just starting to see what Brent and Rose’s relationship had been like. The picture wasn’t exactly what he expected.
How could he have been so blind? Why didn’t Brent tell him any of this before?
“I can hear you thinking that I should have stood up for myself,” Brent said. “But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t care, not really. I just wanted… I dunno. I wanted to be a good husband. Maybe a good father one day.”
“You’ve been an excellent father to Emily,” Riley pointed out, taking another sip from his glass. The taste was starting to grow on him.
“She’s my sister. And I just… she’s leaving for college soon, and all I could think about when I realized that last year was how lonely this place would be without her, and I… I wanted someone to share my life with. I love Emily, but I’ve lived my life for her since I was just out of college myself. I wanted to start having my own life.”
Riley opened his mouth to say that Brent rushed into it, but he could tell Brent realized that now. He’d rushed in. He’d grabbed hold of the first person he’d seen and decided to love them.
That was what Brent did.
Riley really hoped he’d learn one day that he couldn’t be happy like that.
“You need to have your own life on your own terms,” Riley said.
The timer he’d set next to the oven pinged, letting him know that Brent’s food was ready. Riley stood and grabbed a pot holder to get the dish out, waiting for some response from Brent.
All he got was Brent staring into his glass, twirling the stem.
He knew he’d made a mistake. There was no point in rubbing it in.
“She has no idea what a good man she’s lost,” Riley said. “You’re not gonna be alone. You’ll always have me.”
Brent glanced over at him, the look in his eyes saying loud and clear that he wasn’t convinced.
Riley didn’t stick around. Riley blew through people’s lives like a hurricane and then disappeared for six months.
He was just beginning to realize himself why he did that. Brent wasn’t the only one who had issues to work through.
Brent wasn’t the only one in love with someone who didn’t love him back.
Riley plated up his food and brought it over to the table, watching Brent finish his glass of champagne and pour a second one. As long as he was going to eat, that was probably fine.
Not that it mattered. Tomorrow was Sunday, and Brent had every excuse to drink until he passed out right now.
“You’ll feel better after you eat,” Riley said, hoping it was true. He knew there was only so much he could do to stop Brent from hurting, even if he would have given anything to make it all better for him.
“Maybe,” Brent responded, taking up his fork in one hand and his newly-filled glass in the other. “Thanks for this. It means a lot that you’re here.”
“I’ll get you through this,” Riley promised.
Whatever it took, he would. Brent meant too much to him to let him go through this alone.
Even if it was breaking Riley’s heart.