“For God’s sake,” I mutter, “what are you asking me all this for? You’re supposed to tell me I’m great and Giselle’s wrong and everything is fine.”
“You’re great,” he says, and the tension in my muscles slides away. But it snaps right back when he adds, “Giselle’s not wrong. Everything…may or may not be fine?”
I pull my ankle out of his grip. It immediately feels ten degrees cooler. “Brad!”
“What?” he laughs. “I’m not gonna lie to you, Celine. Your life plan is coming off slightly bitter and vengeful—”
I make that cough-laugh sound people do when they are both astonished and amused. “I beg your pardon?”
He ignores me. “But it’s warranted! It’s not a capital crime to have bad feelings when bad things happen to you.”
Well, I do realize that. It just feels like a crime to have any feelings at all—like I should be okay no matter what. My dad doesn’t rattle me. I can prove it.
A voice that sounds very like Giselle’s asks, By letting him shape your whole life?
“What am I supposed to do?” I demand. “Just…forget about him? Let him get away with what he did? How is that fair?”
A sad little line forms between Brad’s eyebrows. “It’s not.”
Something inside me that was venomous and ready to bite stands down. Now I feel deflated and directionless.
“But you know what I care about?” Brad’s eyes are huge and lovely behind his glasses, like a cow angling for gourmet daisies. “Whether or not you’re happy with your bitter, vengeful choices. Are you? Happy?”
I open my mouth, then close it.
“Ah, ah! No thinking. Do you want to be an overachieving corporate lawyer who goes camping with Katharine Breakspeare on the weekends? Yes or no? Answer quickly.”
“I mean…I want some of those things.”
“You’re talking about the Katharine Breakspeare part,” he says, “aren’t you?”
I roll my eyes. “Shut up.” I think I’ve had enough public self-reflection for one day. I feel uncertain, now—in my decisions, in myself. And if I can’t be sure of me, what exactly do I have to hold on to? But I can’t dump all that on Brad. I can’t dump it on anyone. “Do you want to be an overachieving hotshot lawyer who goes camping with Katharine Breakspeare?” I ask, trying for a smile, trying to tease.
“No,” Brad says instantly, thoughtlessly. Then his throat flushes brick-red.
I blink. “You mean no to the camping part.”
He shifts awkwardly. “Yeah?”
Is he lying to me? He is. He definitely is. But that means…“You…don’t want to be a lawyer?”
He doesn’t reply. I see a muscle move in his jaw, clenching it shut.
“Brad?”
He winces. “I don’t not want to be a lawyer.”
What would Minnie do in a moment like this? Be sensitive. “But you don’t not not want to be a lawyer?”
“No,” he says, “I do. I do. It’ll be fun.” But I recognize the hopeful tone in his voice, like he’s negotiating with himself—I recognize it because sometimes I use it, too.
“It’ll be fun,” I repeat carefully. “But not as fun as…？”
He huffs out a breath like a frustrated horse.
“Come on. I showed you mine; now show me yours.”
“God, Celine,” he laughs, and flops back onto the bed, then sits up again. Takes his glasses off, then puts them on again. Rubs his jaw, then mutters, “Sometimes I think I’d like to write a book or two?”
A little chain reaction goes off in my brain and a memory unlocks. “Oh yeah. Oh yeah! You wanted to be an author.”
He groans and squeezes his eyes shut. “When I was ten!”
“But not anymore?”
“It’s…not that easy.”
“Why not?”
Brad bites his lip. I really wish he’d stop doing that; it’s deeply inconsiderate to me, a person who can see him and is tragically vulnerable to the sight of an excellent mouth.
“Because,” he says, and stands up abruptly. “Just…look at this.” He fetches his laptop from the desk and sits beside me again, cracking it open. His screensaver is John Boyega being criminally hot in Star Wars. Then he opens a series of folders and I’m faced with a page full of Word files. The labels start small: Draft 1. Draft 4. Draft 9. Before long, letters are introduced. Roman numerals. Bradley has written a lot of drafts.
“I can’t finish anything,” he announces, then slaps the laptop shut and puts it on his bedside table.
I blink. “Oh my God.”
“I know!” He is disgusted with himself. “I keep trying, but—”
“No, Brad, that’s what I’m saying. How many times have you tried to write this book?”
He glares at me like I just trod on his already-broken toe. “About a thousand, thank you, Celine.”
“And you’re still going?”
“I realize it’s pointless, but you know what they say about the definition of insanity.”
“Are you allowed to say things like that?”
“Hang on, let me consult with the mentally ill council.” Brad pauses. “Yes.”
“You want to know what I think?”
“Unfortunately,” he sighs, “I do.”
“I think you’ve got this all wrong. You think it’s a bad thing that you’ve written so much. I don’t.”
Brad seems deeply skeptical—but, because he is sweet down to the bone, he props his elbows on his knees, props his chin on his hands, and listens. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You only do something this much if you love it. And if you love it, you should go for it. Plus, I have no idea what it takes to write a book”—actually, I think I’d die of boredom—“but I’m pretty sure you have to be exactly this committed. You know, to finish it.”
Brad’s eyes bug out. “But, Celine. Here is the point you are missing. I. HAVEN’T. FINISHED IT!”
My laughter spills out without permission. “Yes, Bradley, and here is the point you’re missing: ONE. DAY. YOU. WILL.”
That brings him up short. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. “You…you don’t know that.”
“You don’t know that,” I counter. “I’m positive. You’re Brad Fucking Graeme. I’d bet on you any day.”
His smile is the softest, sweetest thing, like a spilled bottle of relief. “God, Celine. You’re so lovely.”
I blink. “What.”
“Do you know what you just said to me? Or were you, like, in an emotional fugue state and you’re going to snap out of it and forget the entire thing?” He pats my knee reassuringly. “That’s okay. I’ll remember.”
Now that he mentions it, everything I just said was hideously mushy. And sentimental. And possibly revealed certain things about my…my unreasonable fondness for certain aspects of his character. Okay, fine, my unreasonable fondness for literally everything about him.
“Um,” I croak. “Never mind. Pretend I never said anything. You’re too tall and you get on my nerves, how’s that?”