Fourteen
“I like Jon.”
“Come again?”
“You heard me,” Viola said. “I like Jon. I like him a lot.”
Milo’s eyes danced back and forth in the windshield of their rental car as he guided it along the deserted road that led back to Salt Lake City. With less than a thousand miles on it, the car’s engine purred like a kitten, so quiet that the sound of Milo’s breathing picking up was loud enough to drown it out completely.
Viola studied his profile from the passenger’s seat—her eyebrows raised high. “I think we should tell him the truth.”
Milo threw his head back with a deep belly groan. “Fuuuck, Viola, please don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to me! Not now.”
“He’s a good guy, Milo. He has a pure heart, and I know he’d understand. And I really, really, really like him.” I’m losing my mind! I can’t take this anymore! You stole him from me!
“Everything’s about Jon.” He breathed out a laugh, and suddenly the car was moving ten miles faster like he was pressing the pedal to the floor.
“Everything’s not about Jon, but the fact remains that if it weren’t for him, Sleeping Beauty, I wouldn’t have seen my mother for Christmas at all. He didn’t have to drive three hours, you know, but he did. And he didn’t do it for me, either. He did it for you. Seems like a pretty great brother to me.”
“Guess this explains the disappointed ass look on your face when you saw me pull up and not him, huh?”
Viola sighed deeply as Milo hit the nail right on the head. Tears—actual tears—had stung her eyes earlier that morning when that rental car had pulled up to the curb of her mother’s house instead of Jon’s motorcycle. All morning long she’d been waiting to feel the unmistakable roar of the bike’s engine as it approached, so strong it would’ve made the floors shake from all the way inside the house. All morning she’d dreamed of the moment she climbed on the rear of that rumbling bike and felt his hard back pressing against her heaving chest. His taut abs under her clasped fingers. His heartbeat through his leather jacket. Proving it was beating just as strongly as hers—if not more so—no matter how hard he tried to hide it. She thought she’d hidden her disappointment well, behind a forced smile, upon seeing Milo instead, but apparently, she hadn’t.
“I was just expecting Jon, that’s all. He said he was going to be there, so I expected him to be there.”
“He was going to be there. Then I reminded him that you’re my girlfriend, not his.”
Viola nearly cussed him out. Instead, she glared at him over the console, letting her squinted eyes say every profane word that she couldn’t allow to leave her lips instead.
Milo pretended he didn’t see her until he came to a red light. Only when he’d brought the car to a complete stop did he cut a look at her from the corners of his eyes, probably because he could feel the heat of her gaze burning him down to his very soul. Upon seeing her pinched up face—he smirked and looked back toward the road.
“Getting grade school, middle school, and high school flashbacks all at once,” he said. “Hell, I’m getting my entire life in Utah flashbacks. Everyone likes Jon a lot, Viola—he’s a rock star. He’ll forget your name the second he leaves town. Your face will be a distant blur within the week. He’ll break your heart into a million little pieces today and then go get fucked up and have a threesome tomorrow. Unlike him, I’m the only one who’ll actually stick around long enough to piece you back together once he completely and utterly destroys you.”
“Milo, I’m a little confused, so perhaps you can enlighten me… are gay best friends allowed to be jealous when their female friends are attracted to a guy? Just checking.”
“You keep saying how attracted you are to him, but that doesn’t mean he feels the same way.”
“I’m not prone to delusion.”
He clenched his fingers around the steering wheel until his knuckles went pale, a soft squeak filling the air as his palms disagreed with the leather. Only after the light turned green and he blazed ahead, so fast it caused Viola to ricochet forward and then fly back into her seat, did he speak again, voice strained.
“So this is why he fought so hard to be the one to pick you up this morning, huh?”
Her stomach fluttered. Jon had fought for her?
Milo’s voice rose. “All because he’s secretly putting the moves on my girlfriend behind my back? Carrying on a flirtation so obvious it’s left her with no doubt in her mind of his intentions?”
She faltered. “I’m not your girlfriend.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
Her heart skipped a beat. Not because she was reminiscing about the electric field of blinding sparks that constantly flew between her and Jon, but because it had just hit her how dangerous it was to inform Milo of the fact that those sparks existed at all. How bad it made Jon look. Though she still didn’t know what was going on between Milo and Jon, it was no secret that their relationship was perilously fragile. Could she really allow Milo to believe that Jon was flirting with her behind his back? That they’d actually shared a passionate kiss and were now grappling with the aftermath? And worst of all, lying to him about it?
The window for Jon to be honest with Milo about their kiss had long passed. Now it would just look like a lie and a betrayal. Even though Jon had threatened Viola with it many times, she knew he would never tell Milo. She was only realizing at that moment what Jon already knew. What he’d probably always known. That telling Milo the truth would only drive a deeper wedge between the two brothers. The pure sadness she’d seen in Jon’s eyes the night before when he’d opened up about his dismal relationship with his family, was still fresh in her mind. She never wanted to be the reason that sadness became even a single drop more potent by further fracturing his relationship with Milo. She never wanted to give Milo more ammunition to justify the villainous label he’d branded in the middle of Jon’s forehead. A wildly unfair label that was clearly eating Jon alive, bit by bit.
“Has he made a pass at you?” Milo demanded.
“No!” she cried, surrendering to the terrifying thought of the damage she was on the verge of doing. “No, he’s never done anything untoward. In fact… maybe you’re right. Maybe I am delusional. I guess I’ve been so ensconced in my one-sided love affair with him, as a White Keys fan, for so long that I’ve let myself to believe my feelings could actually be reciprocated. Hell, I even told him about the way I used to pretend the lampshade was my father as a kid.”
Milo winced. “You told him about Lampshade Dad? I thought we agreed to never tell anyone about Lampshade Dad, peanut?”
“Guess I’ll always see Jon as the poster hanging on my bedroom wall that always understood. That never judged me and always loved me back, regardless how unhinged my diatribes with Lampshade Dad got late into the night. Why the hell would the real Jon Baca be interested in a girl like me anyway, right? He could have any woman he wanted, after all. No reason to slum it with a girl who talks to inanimate objects…” She bit her tongue when she felt herself on the verge of overcorrecting in a way that would only make Milo suspicious.
Instead of suspicion, however, Milo exhaled, his fingers loosening on the steering wheel. Seeing the way every muscle in his body relaxed upon receiving confirmation that his brother hadn’t tried to move in on his pretend girlfriend proved to Viola that she’d made the right decision. Informing Milo of the attraction between her and Jon would’ve been a terrible miscalculation. Disastrous even. A calamity that would’ve ensured another twenty years passed before Jon came home for the holidays again, let alone ten.
“I just have to stay away from him,” Vila said. “Before my own fantasies embarrass me any further.”
“You’re safer with the fantasy than you’d ever be with the reality. I’ve witnessed it with my own two eyes. Even if he did feel the same way about you, you’d still be playing with fire. He doesn’t live in the same world we do. He doesn’t feel like we feel. He doesn’t think like we think. He’s selfish. He’d eat you for lunch, peanut.”
A peanut could only hope. “Like I said, I’m just gonna stay away from him. Just… get through the next three weeks and get back to New York in one piece.”
“Agreed.”
Viola’s stomach hit her feet because she knew, deep down, that even if she did make it back to New York in one piece, her heart would remain in Utah. Or, rather, her heart would remain with Jon. Sitting in his back pocket, on life support. Accompanying him long after he’d left Utah and resumed jet-setting all over the world—probably while forgetting her face and her name just like Milo had promised. Doing blow and screwing groupies all while her bleeding heart continued to deplete in his back pocket, until it no longer had a single drop left.
She slammed her eyes closed when the Britney Spears Christmas song continued to flow through the car’s speakers on low volume. A song about a woman telling Saint Nick what a good girl she’d been all year, and that her only wish was to find the love of her life waiting for her under the mistletoe at the stroke of Christmas.
Viola had been a good girl all year too. She gotten good grades, paid her taxes, and was currently in the middle of doing her best friend a favor that was slowly destroying her life. So why wasn’t good old Saint Nick rewarding her the same way he’d rewarded Britney?
Or perhaps he hadn’t rewarded Britney at all. Perhaps Britney’s Christmas song had really ended in tragedy, waiting patiently beside the Christmas tree for a love that would never come. A desperate wish, unfulfilled. The same way Viola’s deepest wish would go unfulfilled that Christmas too.
“Please turn this off before I kill myself,” she grumbled, sinking deep into her seat with her arms crossed tight.
“I gotta drive, I gotta control the radio… You just sit there and get comfortable, okay? Nah, don’t lift a finger, Princess. I’m here to worship you and tend to your every precious whim.”
“Bow down, bitch.” It’s the least you could do, evil minion. You’re the reason I’m going to die alone at Christmas, after all.
With a soft hiss, Milo turned the knob of the radio and killed the music, drowning the car in silence.