“I’m not—”
“Lie to yourself all you want.” Owen picks up his fork. “But it’s useless lying to me. I’m the better version of you, remember? I know everything.”
I let out a slow breath and go to the fridge to get the second plate Mom sent over. Well, that’s if Owen didn’t eat it too. This is one of the rare occurrences where Owen is one hundred percent right. I like Danielle. I want to be more than friends with her, and I’m sure it is obvious.
“How long are you going to be gone?” Owen asks.
“We’re leaving Thursday morning and will catch a late plane Sunday Hawaii time. I’m not sure when we’ll get back here.”
He sighs dramatically. “That’s a whole weekend fucking gone.”
I peel the foil off my plate and stick it in the microwave. “Working four days in a row won’t kill you. Then again, I don’t think you’ve ever worked four days in a row before. Now I’m questioning if you’ll survive.”
“Fucker.”
I laugh and go to the pantry, grabbing treats for Dexter, who’s been silently begging under the table this whole time.
“But the serious question is, can I trust you to take care of Dex, or do I need to drop him off with Mom?”
“Drop him off with Mom and you might not get him back.”
“True,” I say, holding out the treats. Dex plods over, tail wagging like crazy. “And you’re too energetic for old Rufus.”
“I can handle the dog. You know chicks love guys with a puppy anyway. He’ll be my wingman since you’re deserting me.”
Owen and I have spent time apart, of course, but for most of our lives, we’ve done things together. Having a twin is like having a built-in best friend, and we get each other without even trying. Which isn’t always a good thing. There are many things about Owen I’d rather not get.
“I’ll call in and check on you every day,” I tease. “Should I prepare meals for you too? Label them in the fridge with which day of the week you can eat them on?”
“You might have to. I’ll run out of food on day one.”
We both laugh, and I grab my food from the microwave and then join Owen at the table.
“But really,” he goes on, tone changing. “This has to be it. You either make your move in Hawaii, finally tell her how you feel and do something about it…or you need to move on. I can’t watch you spend the rest of your life on the sideline, just waiting for the ref to call you in. You need to put yourself in the game.”
I push my food around on my plate, mind drifting to Danielle. Letting out a breath, I look up at Owen. He’s right again, dammit.
“Regretting something you did sucks ass, trust me, I know,” he goes on. “But regretting what you didn’t do sucks even worse. Then you get stuck in the what if game and even I can lose sleep over that.”
Shoveling a forkful of food into my mouth, I just nod. He’s referencing his own personal regrets when it comes to love. His ex-girlfriend Charlotte still has his heart, and we found out last year she moved to New York and got engaged to some big shot lawyer. Owen took the news harder than anyone—including me—expected. He’s still in love with her, even after all this time.
It kills me to see him hurting over her. They broke up because Owen was, well, Owen. Charlie wanted something more serious after college and Owen wasn’t ready to settle down. Really, he was scared. We were young, just graduated, and didn’t know what the hell we were supposed to do with our lives. Charlie was in law school, set on getting a job at her dad’s firm here in Eastwood.
The thought of settling down, of being the second one out of all of us to get married and pop out babies…it freaked Owen out. I don’t think he’s even admitted it to himself, but I think he was more afraid of letting Charlie down than anything else.
So they broke up and she moved on, getting a fancy job in the city. That was years ago, and it still haunts him. I don’t want to end up in the same situation with Danielle. I can’t imagine watching her date anyone else. Fall in love with anyone else.
Marry anyone else.
I swallow my food and reach for my water. Owen is right: this has to be it. Because if this isn’t…then it won’t happen at all.* * *
“I fucking hate all of you.” I set the weights down and glare at Owen, Dean, and Archer. It doesn’t always happen that we end up at the gym at the same time, but when we do, we spend more time heckling each other than working out.