The door opened before I could figure out how I was going to knock with my hands full, and Brooke gave me a small smile when she saw the size of the wine bottle tucked underneath my arm.

“Not messing around, huh?”

I shook my head. “Not a chance. I hope you like cabernet.”

Brooke laughed, and the fact that it was lighter and less unsure than when I’d left made me feel like I’d already checked one in the win column for the night. When I set the steaming box on the kitchen counter, I noticed she’d already set out two plates, napkins and stemless wine glasses.

“This feels so adult, doesn’t it?” she asked from behind me. I smiled, but she couldn’t see. When I opened the box, we both inhaled immediately, and Brooke hummed. “I remember the first time I had to set out nice glasses when people came over here for a meal. For some reason, not even being pregnant or buying a house made me feel like an adult. It was thinking through what my nicest glasses were, trying to remember if I had place mats that we could use. That’s what made me feel old.”

Brooke sidled up next to me while I laughed and bumped me out of the way so she could take a large slice of the pizza. I bumped her right back. “Don’t I get the first slice since I drove all the way to get it?”

She glanced at me. “How many dirty diapers did you change today?”

I held my hands up and backed away. It wasn’t weird that I noticed that she hadn’t freshened up before I got back. What was weird was how much I liked that. Brooke wasn’t trying to impress me, she never had. Maybe that’s why I found her so … impressive.

So that I wasn’t standing there and gawking like an idiot, I set about opening the wine so it could breathe a little before we drank it. Opening the drawer closest to me, I found the wine opener, and twisted it into the cork until I was able to pull it out. Brooke took a bite of her food and moaned.

“Humagaw,” she said with a string of cheese still connected to the pizza. Her eyes closed while she swallowed, and I forced my eyes back to the wine. No flirting, no flirting, no flirting. “This is incredible, Michael. Thank you so much.”

“Uh-huh.” I snatched a glass and poured a healthy amount into my glass. Wine wasn’t my favorite, but with Italian food, it was necessary for me. I didn’t sniff it, didn’t roll it around in my mouth before swallowing to catch the nuances of the flavors, just knocked back about half the glass. And Brooke just kept moaning around every bite. I slammed my glass down on the counter.

Her eyes widened and she set down her plate. “What?”

“Rule number three. No orgasm noises when you’re eating pizza. Or when you’re eating anything. Or ever no matter what is happening around you.”

She was trying not to smile. “No matter what?”

I pointed my finger at her. “If I can’t flirt, you can’t flirt.”

Brooke smiled sweetly. “Deal. As long you pour me some wine.”

“I can manage that,” I said warily. After I’d grabbed three slices, we went to the couch and sat on opposite ends. Brooke didn’t say much while she flipped through the channel guide. I kept waiting for her to say something. Make small talk. Ask me what the hell I was doing there. But she didn’t.

And it wasn’t weird at all.

Eventually, she found some reruns of The Sopranos, and we settled in with full bellies and empty wine glasses. I refilled hers after one episode, but switched to water since I’d have to drive home eventually. We’d laugh, make a few comments about the show, but that was it. Nothing was said about her mom, or what she said to Jacob. Of course, I was curious about who the father was, what his role was in their lives, but it didn’t seem like much of anything from what Julia had said.

In between bites of room temperature pizza, I flipped it around my head like a Rubik’s Cube, this faceless person. What kind of man did it take to walk out on your pregnant girlfriend simply because you weren’t expecting it? And not only that … but the coward stayed away.

My dad hadn’t been around much, inconsistent visits, constantly breaking his promises to me and Tristan when we were younger. Once we hit thirteen, my mom gave us the choice. If we didn’t want to see him, we didn’t have to. We didn’t have to take him up on his offers of a camping trip, or visit to whatever house he was living in at the time.

I’d said yes more than Tristan, probably because I’d been desperate for something, anything, from our father.

And even though I didn’t personally know Brooke’s ex, what I did know was that he was the weakest kind of person. He forced ignorance on himself, chose to look the other way when he had an incredible gift at his disposal. There was a tragedy in being that kind of person, the kind of tragedy that was almost impossible to overcome.

“You solving the world’s problems over there?” Brooke asked quietly, like she didn’t want to startle me.

Even so, I took a deep breath and angled toward her on the couch. My forehead wrinkled while I thought about how to answer. Normally, I’d throw out some line about how my serious look was a guarantee for a phone number, but this was Brooke. She’d basically stripped away all my usual weapons. Now I was just left with … well … me, I guess. Just Michael.

Damn it.

Telling her more about my mom, my dad, all of it, rested on the tip of my tongue. But instead, I swallowed it down. Now wasn’t the time. But eventually, it would be.

“As many of them as I can, at least,” I told her honestly.

Brooke regarded me curiously, like I was a puzzle piece she couldn’t quite fit into place. In the dim light of the room, her skin glowed blue from the TV screen.

“You’re not what I expected, Michael.”

I laughed and shook my head. “I hear that a lot.”

As evasive as my answer was, she accepted it and turned back to the TV.

And that night was what started our strange new schedule, a routine I never thought I’d find myself in. I’d left when Brooke yawned behind her hand, only heading to my truck when she’d locked the door behind me. The days that I worked on her house, and I mean every single day I was there for the next week, I stayed to hang out with her once my work was finished. The second day it happened, she gave me this look, and I knew she didn’t want me to leave. It wasn’t spurred by sadness, not like the first time. Brooke was lonely. Despite being around people all the time, despite a complete lack of downtime, Brooke was lonely.

That was something I recognized. My loneliness didn’t bother me. But I kept staying because I just plain liked her. And every new thing I learned about Brooke just pushed that feeling deeper and deeper under my skin, like a burr I couldn’t dislodge even if I wanted to.

Chinese takeout was her favorite. She would not eat it on a plate because she said it tasted better in the carton. She refused to back down if she thought she was right. That shouldn’t have been so attractive, but it was.

“That’s just wrong,” she laughed. “You’re wrong. I’m right.”

“It’s not a right or wrong kind of question,” I argued, pointing my chopsticks at her. “You’re placing way too much validity on your own opinion.”

Brooke threw up her hands. “It’s not too much when my opinion is the right one.”

“You cannot factually prove that Sean Connery was the best James Bond.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Wanna bet?”

“No. No, I do not want to bet because the next thing I know, you’ll have a forty page thesis on why you think you’re right.” I shoveled more pad thai in my mouth and rolled my eyes at the way she was grinning at me.

“Smart man. You’d lose your money anyway.”

I held her eyes while I swallowed my food. “Brooke,” I said in a warning tone. “Drop it.”

“No one, literally no one I know who loves those movies would ever put Roger Moore or Daniel Craig in front of Connery.”

“Me! I would. Craig humanized him. He’s got the dry humor without losing the complete bad-assness that Bond needs. You’re crazy.”

When she opened her mouth, I laid my hand over her lips. They were soft against my palm, and my heart started racing. From her lips against my hand. Probably meant I should run, not walk, out of there.

She shoved my hand away. “Rule number four. Or five, or whatever it is. No covering my mouth when I’m about to speak, unless you value your man parts.”

“Fine,” I conceded with a gracious nod. “Rule number six, because I respect our rules enough to keep track of how many there are, you are not allowed to have satiny soft lips because it does strange things to my head when I have to cover your mouth when you’re about to talk. Which I will not be doing anymore.”

Brooke burst out laughing. Her eyes tracked over my face, full of amusement and I think some affection. Great, now she was looking at me like I was a puppy or something. But there was still something about her. Something that made me want to keep our relationship completely intact, no changes, no substitutions, no alterations. Because one shift, and it could all fall out of focus. And I was enjoying it too much for that to happen.

Another thing I learned, on day two of hanging out, was if there was a stretch of silence too long, Brooke usually broke it by asking me random questions. The third night hanging out with her that week, I found myself pushing my work hours later so that I could more easily stay after the twins went to bed. God bless those little chunkers, once they were out, they usually stayed asleep the entire time I was there.

“What’s your favorite show?”

“Like, ever? Or currently airing?”

She considered that. “Can be either.”

I dropped my head back onto the couch and stared at the ceiling while I thought about my answer. “I don’t watch much TV anymore, but currently airing, I’d say Game of Thrones.”

Brooke snorted into her wine glass. This time I’d planned ahead and bought the kind of riesling she liked before I got there to frame out the extension to the laundry room. “You and the rest of the world.”

My head rolled to the side so I could give her a look. “All time, no contest, it’s Cheers.”

She lifted her eyebrows at that. “Really?”

“That surprises you?” I could have explained to her about how sitting down and watching Cheers with my mom was one of the traditions that Tristan and I never broke as we got older. Sure, we were young when it started, but I couldn’t remember a time when Thursday nights didn’t include a huge bowl of popcorn and Cheers. It made us laugh, and there were plenty of times when that was the only thing that we looked forward to on a weekly basis.

Brooke narrowed her eyes at me. “I guess it shouldn’t. Sam Malone is probably your idol for how to live life.”

As much as I wanted her comment to sting, as much as I waited for it to make me feel uncomfortable that she still viewed me as the player, the manwhore who couldn’t commit, I had to recognize my own culpability in how she viewed me. My friends said shit to me like that all the time. How’d I’d slept through half the women in the greater Denver area, even though it wasn’t even remotely true. And because they thought that about me, which I never corrected, their wives and girlfriends believed it of me. Of course Brooke would think it was true, because I’d never done a single thing to dissuade anyone in my life that it wasn’t.

Our conversations hadn’t ventured into the serious yet, I pushed my tongue against the inside wall of my cheek and let out a slow breath through my nose. Would Brooke believe me if I turned and told her that everything she knew about me was complete exaggeration?

Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced at her, at the stubborn tilt of her chin, the berry color of her lips, the mass of dark hair piled on top of her head in a messy knot. There was no artifice about Brooke, and maybe she would’ve believed me. Taken my truth for what it was. But I kept it in.

Stupid, I know. I get frustrated with myself too, trust me.

As it was, that truth acted as a sort of buffer between us. A safe-zone. Brooke probably thought that my inability to commit was part of a larger issue, and that her being a single mother and all the responsibilities that came with her made her less appealing to me. Responsibility didn’t scare me. I’d just never found anyone, or anything, that made me want to fight for it.

So instead of making a new rule, one where she wasn’t allowed to assume things about my life, unless she was willing to ask me first if it was true, I just smiled at her. So if she wanted to assume that Sam Malone was my idol, and factored into why I was the way I was, I’d let her believe it. For now. “Somethin’ like that. You have to admit, all the ladies loved him.”

“I suppose,” she sighed. “He did have the best hair ever.”

On day six, I learned that Brooke was a truly, magnificently awful dancer. I came down the hallway and she was dancing in front of the twins, messy and covered in spaghetti sauce in their respective high chairs. The version of the running man that I saw before me was one of the worst I’d ever seen. And I laughed until I had tears in my eyes.

“Shut up,” she whined before she punched me in the stomach. When I used her hand to wipe my tears away, she cracked a smile, even though her cheeks were bright red.

Her smile dropped though when I set her hand on my heart, still laughing too hard to drop it.

“Rule eight,” Brooke said quietly and extracted her hand from mine. “No holding hands.”

I straightened and gave her a nod.

“Rule nine,” I countered. “Don’t ever do that dance move. Ever, ever again.”

She scoffed, but was smiling when she turned away. That night, she forced me to watch a dance movie, and I wanted to gouge my eyes out. Did I leave though? Hell no. I also learned that Brooke was completely unashamed of her dancing, because she had no problem attempting to recreate the moves in the movie right in front of me.

On day eight, I couldn’t wait to figure out what I’d learn next, but when Tristan and I were leaving the shop, he stared at me the entire time I packed my bag up, complete with a clean t-shirt and jeans for when I was done working at Brooke’s.

“Something you want to know, brother?” I asked over my shoulder.

He grunted.

I rolled my eyes. “If that’s a no, try using your words like a big boy.”

As I zipped my bag shut and turned around, he still said nothing. I looked up at him, and he was scratching the side of his face.

I lifted a finger. “You should shave. The beard with the long hair is just too overwhelming. You’ll start causing women to spontaneously conceive if you keep walking around like a hipster dream come true.”

He just stared. And Tristan’s unblinking stare was awfully unnerving. I’d been on the receiving end my entire life, and it still made me twitchy. Because what came after it was usually something I didn’t want to hear.

“You haven’t been home much,” he said, voice scratchy like he hadn’t used it all week or something.

Keep it casual. Don’t prolong eye contact. If you bolt right now, he’ll know you’re panicking.

“I told you I’m doing some side work at Brooke’s house.”

“Mmmhmm.”

Damn him and his loaded sound effect responses. He didn’t say anything else, and neither did I.

“What?” I snapped.

Tristan’s eyebrows lifted incrementally, because snapping was not something I normally did.

“You tell me,” he said evenly. “Something’s different, little brother. I’m not sure what, but something is. And if it has to do with Brooke, you better be careful.”

I laughed. “Are you threatening me away from her?”

“Nope.” He crossed his arms over his chest. Oh, he so was.

“We’re just friends.”

“Okay.” Tristan looked away. Freaking finally. With efficient movements, he snapped a rubber band from around his wrist and pulled his hair back. He only glanced at me once more before leaving the shop, but it was rife with brotherly concern, and a hard edge I didn’t normally see aimed at me.

I couldn’t shake it while I worked on drilling the sheetrock into place at Brooke’s. Each push of my drill, each bead of sweat that snaked down my spine while I worked with angrier movements than were necessary, I heard his stupid Mmmmhmmm. What was I doing?

Brooke wasn’t my girlfriend, but I was certainly taking up an awful lot of her time. The twins were so young that my presence didn’t matter to them one way or another, but how would I have felt if some dude had been over almost every night, hanging out with my mom but offering her nothing of substance?

I’d have hated him. Thought he was selfish. Everything that my friends probably already thought of me. That Brooke probably still believed of me too.

So instead of changing into clean clothes and washing my face off, I pushed past the plastic and wiped my dirty hands onto my already dirty jeans. My smile was polite, and it stayed that way when Brooke’s face brightened.

“Hey, do I have walls now?”

I nodded. “Feel free to look after I’m all cleared out.”

Her eyes narrowed a little. “You’re not staying?”

The brick in my stomach at her disappointed tone grew heavier and heavier. “I can’t. I’ve got stuff to take care of that I’ve been neglecting the last week or so.”

“Oh.”

Jacob squawked from the family room and Brooke glanced over at them.

“I should go,” I said into the awkward silence.

Her eyes rallied first, the disappointment and surprise warming into something slightly friendlier, then her lips followed, curving into a smile that I’d never seen before. Probably a mirror image of the one I was giving her.

“Have a good night. Thanks for letting me know you’re finished.”

“Yeah, sure.”

This sucked. Sucked with a capital S.

I wasn’t the martyr. I wasn’t the guy who upset someone I genuinely cared about because they were better off. But that night I was, apparently. Because I picked up my tools, slung my bag over my shoulder, and walked out the back door without a backwards glance.