Fuck.
I composed my features and carefully slid my gaze to her. Thankfully, taking her seat and smoothing the immaculate black pants over her thighs preoccupied her.
“A whiskey, please.”
I nodded curtly, two cold glasses of liquor on the rocks already in my hands as I skirted the coffee table. I kicked Giselle’s purple garter belt further into the shadows as I moved past to sit on the chair adjacent to Elena.
She accepted the tumbler with a tight smile and a sincere ‘thank you’ because her politeness wouldn’t allow for anything else.
“What is it that you would like to say?” I asked, leaning back in my chair and crossing one leg over the other.
Elena’s eyes flickered over the bare skin of my torso as my muscles contracted with movement. She had never been overly effusive about my looks, something I had always been thankful for, but I knew that the sight of me unclothed affected her. Strangely, perhaps, the knowledge did nothing for me.
I wished for Elle’s sake that I was wearing a shirt.
“I want to better understand this early mid-life crisis you seem to be having. I’ve had time to think about it and I can see that your company’s expansion could be putting too much stress on our relationship.” I opened my mouth to speak but she held up her hand. “We both have one hundred hour work weeks and even though our professions have always come first, we need to remember to take time for us.”
I knew she must have taken the time to read articles and books about our situation: what-to-do-when-your-partner-leaves-you-unexpectedly and how-to-breath life-back-into-your-relationship psychology dissertations and magazine findings. When Elena was faced with a problem, she researched the hell out of it so that when the opportunity arose she could beat it to death with thought and theory. I knew all of that because even though we weren’t married, for the last four years we had lived like husband and wife. I knew all of the things that made Elena Lombardi frequently intolerable and constantly brilliant. I could see the despair she tried to hide in the lines around her pursed mouth, the helplessness she held tightly in her clasped hands. I was actively destroying her and it was killing me.
It helped to remind myself that it was the least that I deserved.
She offered me a small, shaky smile.
Putain, I was such an asshole.
“It’s too late for that, Elena.”
“It doesn’t have to be. There is no deadline on a relationship, no expiration date. We can work this out. A co-worker recommended an excellent couples councilor.”
“Not interested.”
“Don’t be so closed minded,” she urged, her voice still pleasantly modulated even though her hands had unconsciously curled into fists.
“It’s not a matter of obstinacy. Counseling wouldn’t work for us.”
“How can you know that?”
Because I’m savagely in lust and irrevocably in love with your sister, who, coincidently, is laying naked about fifteen feet away from us in my bed.
“Because we don’t have any issues to work through. We’ve never been passionate with each other, which I always thought was a good thing,” I tried to explain.
“It is,” she agreed eagerly.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, caught the scent of Giselle’s sex lingering on my fingers and fought the urge to lick her off my skin. “It isn’t a good thing for a couple. How can there be erotic love without passion?”
Elena’s lips twisted, then went lax. “Are you saying that you aren’t attracted to me anymore?”
Yes.
Instead, I said, “Have you ever heard the Greek term, philia? It describes the love between two warriors or best friends, a partnership based on unswerving loyalty and respect.”
Elena blinked at me. “Are you kidding?”
I spread my hands and shrugged. “The Greeks actually valued it more highly than romantic love.”
Her eyes, just shades darker than Giselle’s, narrowed dangerously. I sounded callous and cruel, as I often did when discussing emotional issues. It was difficult for me to marry the empathy I felt with the logical methodology of my thoughts. Giselle was the only one who gave voice to my mute soul. I wished, irrationally and unfairly, that she was beside me.
“I,” Elena cleared her throat. “I thought we both valued those characteristics. You make our relationship sound so… unfeeling. Maybe I didn’t do a great job of showing it, but you mean the world to me, Daniel.”
Her words pressed around me like a cold iron fist. Was it possible to feel heartbroken even though I was the one ending things? I wanted, no, I needed to be with Giselle but in doing so, I was effectively antagonizing my best friend. Elena and I had never been as perfect as we thought, but we were still a team. I was losing my right hand man and despite how unromantic that may have seemed, it was fucking devastating all the same.