He glared at me. “Mia getting hurt … yes, I said things about you to Lyle. We were drinking and saying shit like pissed off men do. But what he did … I never would condone that.”
“But you didn’t stop it either.”
“I didn’t know it was going to happen,” the pitch of his voice rising.
“Oh, come on, you had to have known they’d been hanging around the hospital for a long time.”
“Sure, but they were loitering, not storming the place.”
I shrugged. “Mia is the one you need to apologize to.”
“I did.”
“And why are you here?” I’d asked three times and I still wasn’t sure.
“Mia asked me to check on you. She’s worried.”
I held out my hands to the side. “I’m alive and well. I’m unemployed and about to take a trip. I’ve got the world at my feet.”
“You look like shit.”
I felt like shit.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs and swirling his drink. “Do you love my sister?”
“I did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His eyes were piercing, and for the first time, I saw the man I’d known and been friends with once. A man who felt I betrayed him.
“Because I knew it would be weird for you … for us. You asked me to watch out for her and instead I was—”
“Fucking her.”
I gritted my teeth. “I loved her. I’d planned to spend my life with her. She left me.”
“What about now?”
“What about now?” I felt antsy, like all my neurons were wanting to fire but couldn’t. I didn’t want to have this conversation.
“Do you love her now?”
“What does it matter, Eli?”
“Peggy seems to think you do.”
“Peggy should mind her own business.” I dropped my head. Now I wished I a double vodka too.
“You were ready to throttle me because Mia got hurt.”
I looked up at him. “Yeah so?”
“So, I want to know if you’re in love with her.”
Yes, nearly escaped my lips, but if I was going to confess my feelings it would be to Mia, not Eli. “She’s got a career to protect. I’m like a grenade to her life.”
“I agree with that, but it doesn’t answer my question.”
“I’m not going to answer it, so maybe you can move on.”