Swoon: A Brother's Best Friend Standalone

“You’re Logan’s little sister,” Colin continues. “Which makes you mine, basically.”

“Does it, though?” I ask, my eyes narrowed.

Colin pauses, apparently surprised by my snarky tone.

“Well, yeah,” he says.

Shoot. I didn’t mean to say what I did out loud. I intended to merely think it, while standing here agreeing with whatever bullshit Colin said, so we could fast-forward to the part where Colin leaves and we never mention my unfortunate text to him.

But now that I’ve said what I said, I can’t take it back. Indeed, I feel obligated to elaborate on my comment.

I clear my throat. “I get the gist of what you’re saying. You’re not sexually attracted to me, when sober. You were wearing beer goggles last night.”

“No. Amy, no.”

“But don’t insult me by saying I’m like a sister to you, unless you can also look me in the eye and tell me there’s some amount of alcohol you could consume that would make you tongue Caitlyn or Chiara, and press your hard dick into her pelvis, and then tell her you want to eat her pussy and do The Sure Thing to her, until she’s ‘speaking tongues’ and ‘seeing God.’ If you can look at me with a straight face and say that to me, then, fine, I’ll believe I’m like a sister to you. I’ll also believe you’re a sicko, but that would be beside the point I’m trying to make at this time.”

Colin looks flabbergasted. And I’m loving it. Maybe I shouldn’t have said everything I just did, but I’m all out of fucks to give. If Colin came here to reject me, which he plainly did, then at least let him do it with some integrity. I don’t care how much we both drank, I know the fireflies I felt during our kiss were mutual! Colin might not remember feeling those fireflies today. Or if he does remember them, he might deeply regret them. Either way, I know he felt them, every bit as much as I did, whether they were caused by alcohol or not.

“About my text,” I say, deciding to face my humiliating text message, head-on. “I warned you Drunk Amy has no filter.”

“Your text was fine. You were reacting to what I’d said to you on the patio. This is my fault. I’m the one who fucked up here. Not you.”

What’s his fuck-up, though? The kiss? The stuff he said to me afterward?

But before I’ve mustered the courage to ask for clarity, Colin continues speaking. “The important thing,” he says, “is that I don’t want you thinking you’re not sexy or attractive. You are. You’re sexy as hell, Amy. Also, fun and funny and smart.”

“Okay, this isn’t helpful to me. It’s confusing. I get what you’re saying, generally. You shouldn’t have kissed me. You were drunk. Blah, blah. Let’s just move on, pretend everything from the kiss until this moment never happened, and never talk about any of this again. Sound good?”

“It sounds great. Yes. But before we erase last night from our memories, there’s something important you need to know. I should have told you this last night, when you were crying on the patio, but I was too drunk to think straight. After you left my mom’s house the other night, I called Caleb, like you suggested.”

“Oh, wow.”

“And it went great. And while we were talking, Caleb told me why nobody hit on you during the tour. Amy, after that game of ‘Never Have I Ever,’ Caleb tucked you in and then went back out and told everyone you were off-limits.”

“What?”

Colin nods. “He considers me like a brother, and you’d told him your connection to me. So, in his mind, he was doing you—and me—a favor by keeping those horny crew guys from bombarding you for the rest of the tour.”

“What the hell? But I wanted at least some of those horny crew guys to bombard me! That’s half the reason I went on the tour, in the first place—to get to walk on the wild side!” I jerk to standing and begin pacing the small hotel room. “How dare Caleb do that to me! He had me thinking, the whole time, I’m totally unfuckable!”

“I know. I’m so sorry.” Colin sighs. “That’s not the case. Caleb felt the need to designate you as off-limits precisely because you’re so fuckable. That’s the real take-away here. That’s what you need to understand.”

I stare at Colin for a long beat. Is he stupid? If I’m so fuckable, then why didn’t he fuck me last night? But I’m done talking about that. In fact, I never want to talk about it again.

“Thank you for telling me about this,” I say stiffly. “I can’t begin to tell you what a relief it is to me. I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought nobody found me the slightest bit attractive.”