“What else was I supposed to think?” he said. “You haven’t been home since before Mom and Dad left.”
“That’s not . . .” Okay, so it was true. But traveling was expensive—today had proved that, if nothing else—and our parents had been out of the country themselves for nearly a year. It’s not as if I’d been intentionally missing cozy Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving meals where everyone sat around and lamented my absence. There hadn’t been much to come home to. “Fine. But still. What was with all that stuff about Alex? Can you please share the chips? I’m starving.”
He rolled his eyes, then dropped them on the counter, nudging them my direction. He shrugged. “I thought with all your history and crap, you were . . . I don’t know. He’s been preoccupied lately. And he’s asked about you a billion times. I thought maybe you were getting back together.”
He’d asked about me? Why had he asked about me? “I haven’t talked to him since you were both in New York,” I said, my tone flat. “And I thought you said he was dating someone.”
Isaac raised his eyebrows but bless him, he seemed to know better than to ask why I sounded so disappointed. He waved away my question. “He went out with Jasmine Cooper. You remember her? But only once. It was nothing. You still need money for the cab?”
I shook my head. “Alex paid for it.”
“Sweet. So why are you broke?”
I took a deep breath, buying time with a handful of chips. Deliciously incredible, best-I’d-ever-eaten chips. “That’s a funny story.”
I expected sarcasm. Some sort of slanderous rebuke about my wannabe socialite lifestyle, or my pandering for attention from New York City’s fashion gatekeepers. Instead, he just stood there, a concerned look on his face. “Let’s hear it.”
I crossed the kitchen to where a roll of paper towels sat in the corner and ripped one off. I wiped the chip grease off my fingers then folded the square into thirds, creasing it over and over without looking up. I had to tell him. I needed to tell him. I couldn’t exactly ask for help if he didn’t know what was going on.
I swallowed and finally looked up, meeting his gaze. “I lost my job.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s a long story, and not one I feel like telling right now, but I basically lost everything I’ve been working toward for the past four years. My dream job, my dream apartment. It’s all gone. And I’m pretty sure there’s nothing I can do to get it back.”
“Wow,” Isaac said. “Do Mom and Dad know?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. And I don’t want to tell them. Not until I’ve figured out what’s next. I don’t want them to feel like they have to come home and help me.”
“I’m sorry, Dani. That really sucks.”
The sincerity in his voice—and the fact that he’d called me Dani instead of Dandi—almost made me want to cry. Momentum had been carrying me forward the past few days, but so many emotions were close to the surface. Sympathy from my brother showed me just how fragile I really was.
He walked over and put his hands on my shoulders. “Maybe it’s a good thing. A chance to start out on your own. You’re finally free, you know?”
“But that’s just it. I don’t want to be free. I wanted to design for LeFranc and now I never will. I’m not ready to celebrate.”
His jaw tightened. “Whatever. You’re so much better than LeFranc.”
“Please don’t lecture me right now, okay? I need a place to stay.”
He froze. “Oh. So you want to stay here?”
“I don’t really know where else I’d go. I mean, Mom and Dad’s house is obviously out, and I don’t have the money to find a place on my own.”
“You couldn’t have stayed in New York? With a friend?”
In truth, I’d worked hard to convince myself leaving was my only option. But I hadn’t tried very hard to stay in New York. I couldn’t have stayed with Paige. All those reasons why we had to give up our apartment were perfectly valid. But I really could have slept on Chase and Darius’s couch for a few weeks until I found another job and earned enough of a paycheck to find a new place, and a new roommate. But staying had felt impossible. I hated that it did, that I wasn’t stronger. But my ego felt irreparably bruised, battered to the point that I couldn’t even imagine walking into another fashion house and asking for a job. Especially since there was no way in hell I would ever ask Sasha for an actual recommendation.
“I couldn’t stay in New York,” I said. My voice broke on the last word and I pressed my lips together, willing myself not to cry.
“Couldn’t? Or wouldn’t?” Isaac folded his arms across his chest.
“Please, Isaac? I needed to get away for a little while.”
“Why not ask Mom and Dad for some money? You know they’d help you.”
“I don’t want their money,” I said, an edge to my voice I hadn’t expected. “I can fix this. I just need a little bit of time to get back on my feet.”
He seemed to study my face for what felt like an eternity before his features softened and he leaned on the counter. “I wish I could help, Dani, but I don’t even have a spare room,” Isaac said. “There’s a couch in the living room, but there are six dudes in this house, awake at all hours of the night. The living room is almost never empty.”
He turned and stalked into the dining room, or what I thought was supposed to be the dining room. He’d turned his into a music room. A huge stereo system and large shelves covered the wall, filled entirely with row after row of vinyl—a record collection Isaac had started when we were thirteen after he’d found his first vintage Beatles album at old Ms. Landry’s yard sale at the end of the cul-de-sac. “Where else am I supposed to go?” I asked him. “I literally have nowhere else to turn.”
Isaac sifted through a stack of records, pulled one out, then dropped it back onto the pile. He turned to face me. “I genuinely wish I could say yes, Dandi. I just don’t think it would be comfortable for anybody. You wouldn’t have any privacy.”
“Please don’t call me Dandi. And I don’t care if I don’t have privacy. It’s temporary. You won’t even know I’m here. Truly, it’ll just be for a month or so. Enough time for me to save some money and figure out what I’m going to do next.”
“I’ll put you up in a hotel for a couple of weeks. Long enough for you to figure stuff out.”
I sniffed. A hotel? “I can’t let you do that. I could never pay you back.”
“What about the bedroom above the studio?”
Isaac and I turned to see Alex standing in the doorway. “Sorry. I couldn’t help but overhear. I don’t want to make it my business, but there is an empty bedroom above the studio.”
“The studio?” I looked to Isaac for clarification.
“The kitchen house out back,” he said. “We converted it into a recording studio a few months ago. It’s where we do all of our filming.”
“I don’t mind sleeping above the studio,” I said, hope blossoming in my chest.