Falling for My Best Friend's Brother

“Boo to my easy job.” I laughed and handed my laptop over to Liv. “Do you know who Elizabeth Jeffries is, by any chance?”

“Elizabeth who?” she asked in a confused voice.

“I’m guessing that’s a no.” I sighed. “Do you know if Aiden is dating anyone?”

“Not that he’s told me.” She frowned. “Why? Does it say he’s in a relationship on Facebook?”

“Not exactly.” I shook my head. “But this whore Elizabeth is commenting on his wall.”

“What? A prostitute?” Liv’s eyes widened and she looked down at the computer to see what I was talking about. “How do you know she’s a working girl?”

“Oh,” I said meekly, feeling bad for calling my unknown nemesis and enemy a whore. “I don’t know if she’s really a whore, Liv. Keep up.” I rolled my eyes at her.

“What?” She looked up at me. “You’re confusing me. Is my brother dating a whore or not?”

“Oh my gosh, Liv,” I groaned. “I was looking at Aiden’s profile on Facebook and some girl called Elizabeth commented on his wall saying she can’t wait to see him this weekend, and I called her a whore because I’m jealous and I want to see him this weekend,” I explained feebly. “And if you didn’t have your head in the clouds, you would have understood what I was talking about.”

“Oh, I get it.” She giggled. “She’s not a whore, like she’s hooking up for money, but she’s a whore in that she’s a ho because she’s after your man.”

“I prefer my explanation.” I giggled. “Yours makes me sound like a psycho. I can’t call her a ho because she’s after my man because he’s not my man.”

“Alice,” she groaned, “you’re super confusing me.”

“You’re super confusing me.” I made a face. “Now do you know her or not?”

“I’ve never heard of her before in my life,” Liv said and handed me back the laptop. “Do you want me to call Aiden and see what’s up?”

“I don’t know. Do you think that will be obvious?” I asked her as I gazed down at Aiden’s profile again. “Oh shit,” I groaned out loud as I gave Elizabeth’s comment a like. “I just liked her post on his wall. What should I do?”

“Unlike it quickly,” Liv said as she shook her head. “And then like a different post, so if Aiden gets notifications, he will see you have a like somewhere.”

“Ugh, he’s going to know I was Facebook-stalking him.” I sighed. “I’m such a loser.”

“Alice, it’s fine.” She jumped off of the bed. “I’m sure he won’t think anything of it.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. Guys don’t analyze Facebook likes and comments like we do.” She smiled at me encouragingly. “He most probably won’t even notice that you liked anything.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I nodded hesitantly, my heart racing in fear. Liv was talking as if she knew what she was talking about, and she most probably thought she knew everything about men now that she was dating Xander, but I knew that she didn’t really know that much. I mean, she hadn’t been dating Xander for very long, and I was the one who had given her all her dating advice up until she started dating him. So essentially, Liv was giving me the advice I would have given her, and in all honesty, I had absolutely no idea what I’d been talking about when I was the one giving advice.

***

Have you ever done something you know you shouldn’t do? Like sending a guy a Facebook message in the middle of the night, when you knew you absolutely should not be sending him a message? And doing it sober, no less. Drunk messaging and drunk dialing can be forgiven, but sober messaging is done by fools, like me.

I knew I shouldn’t send Aiden a message. I knew I should wait for him to contact me. That’s what all the rules say, right? If a guy is interested, he’ll contact you. I knew that, but I was worried that he would think I had something for Scott—his brother. He caught me kissing Scott. Well, really he caught Scott kissing me, but ever since that night, Aiden has acted like I’m a leper or invisible. And I don’t even like Scott, which he should know, but you know men. They can be weird and stupid and totally obnoxious and arrogant, and so that was why I sent Aiden a Facebook message at 11 p.m.

Hi Aiden, it’s me, Alice. Hehe, obviously as it’s from my Facebook page. Just wanted to say Hi. So Hi. And then I hit send. And then I fell back on my pillow and groaned. Why oh why had I sent a Facebook message to Aiden? Ugh. Then I heard a small ding and sat up again. Someone had sent me a message. I quickly looked at my Facebook account.

Hi Alice. That was all Aiden had said in his reply, but I felt as giddy as a drunk mouse as I stared at the screen. He had replied to me. He didn’t hate me! I quickly clicked on my profile to see what photo I had up as my profile photo. I groaned as I saw myself grinning like a fool, my medium-length blonde hair looking messy and my blue eyes squinting. This was not the photo I wanted Aiden to be staring at as he typed back to me.

You’re up late, I typed back quickly. I know, I know, I really shouldn’t have sent another message. He hadn’t exactly been enthusiastic in his response, but I didn’t care. The fact that he had responded, period, was good enough for me.

It’s 11pm. Not exactly last call. I rolled my eyes at his response.