“I’m sorry,” Portia said. “I haven’t turned it on for a couple of days.”
“Well, I get that, but the internet has been going wild.”
“Umm, that’s what I was avoiding.”
“Typical. Stick your head in the sand and everything will just take care of itself, right?” Reggie didn’t mean it, but she was just SO MAD. Why hadn’t Portia called her?
She saw Gus walk back into the house, giving her privacy, from the corner of her eye.
“About that,” her sister said into her ear. “There’s something I have to talk to you about.”
Chapter Ten
Gus had called his brother the day before, while walking to the corner store, and asked him if it was bad that his girlfriend didn’t seem to love him back.
“So you’re saying she just . . . closed her eyes after the second time you said it?” Dave had asked. “And then changed the subject? Shit, man. I don’t know if that’s a good sign. Maybe give her some space.”
He hadn’t needed Dave to tell him that, but he’d hoped he was missing something. When she’d opened her eyes again he hadn’t expected her to say “I love you” back. He knew she would feel it when she felt it. But he hadn’t expected the distance in her gaze. Just like that, the Rubik’s Cube in his chest had been reset, all the colors mixed up again.
Walking back to the house with a pint of half-and-half for their coffee, he’d finally allowed himself to begin to believe what had been bugging him since the night before—that maybe he was wrong about how Reggie felt about him. Maybe they had just fallen into a pattern, and her sister’s situation had made the pattern apparent or knocked it out of alignment. Or maybe . . . maybe . . . and Gus knew that this particular reaction wasn’t logical, but maybe he was jealous.
It was so clear that she cared for her twin sister—as she should—and seeing that distance in her eyes had reminded him that no matter how he felt, she’d initially described their relationship as only lasting a brief period. He’d been the one pushing everything ahead, pushing too fast, and he knew Reggie would only let herself be pushed where she wanted to go.
So he’d withdrawn, waiting to see how things went without him leaning into their relationship.
They’d slept with space between them on the bed.
And now she was on the phone with her sister, arguing. She’d argued with her parents, too, because that was something you did with people you loved sometimes. She’d never argued with him. Even when he’d said he didn’t like Akira, she’d shrugged it off instead of debating as she would with any troll online.
She was wiping away tears when he peeked through the back door, and he went back to pacing in the living room, looking at the picture of Aurora and Briar Rose over the fireplace. When he glanced out through the sliding doors a moment later, she looked up, beckoning him out.
She was still talking, and the first thing he heard when he opened the door was, “My friend saw that pic of you being carried out of that party like a bag of potatoes and he noticed something.”
Her friend. Her friend.
She was looking at him with a tentative smile as she continued talking, as if she hadn’t just figuratively knocked over his jar of salad dressing. Was that all he was to her? Gus cherished his friendships, few as they were, but he didn’t see her as only a friend.
“Yeah. The guy you found for me? It’s a long story. Anywho, he’s pretty good about detail stuff . . .”
Gus stopped listening, her words echoing around his mind. It was Portia who had found his email address for Reggie. Because Reggie had needed his voice. He was the one who had pressed for phone calls, and video chats, and meeting up. Reggie had only ever asked for one thing from him—his voice. And then she’d wanted in on a project about her favorite show. She hadn’t asked for love. She’d offered him money, for God’s sake.
Heat flushed through his body—not desire, but shame. This was the problem with some puzzles; sometimes you put the pieces all together and they made a beautiful image, but it wasn’t the correct image.
And Reggie was the most beautiful to him.
He’d known that he cared more than her, but there was caring more and there was one person thinking about a future and the other describing him to her own twin sister as my friend. He’d told her that he’d give her whatever she needed.
She’d never asked for him.
“Gus?”
He’d been staring out into the garden, at the roses drooping on their bush in the summer heat. When he looked at her, her phone was in her lap and her eyes were teary, still full of emotion. He felt like he was intruding.
“I should maybe go,” he said flatly.
Her expression, an anxious smile, caved at that. “What?”
“I’m sorry. I think . . . I got confused about some things. I’m gonna go.”
“Gus, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that you describe me as a friend, and that you only contacted me because you wanted my voice,” he said, trying to keep his tone level. He couldn’t be mad. She had never promised him anything but an explanation of Reject Squad Ultra.
He’d misread everything.
“I’m just going to get some stuff I left in the apartment and go?” He tried to keep his voice calm. “No worries.”
He was already backing away and into the house. He didn’t want to see that distance in her eyes. He didn’t want to see pity on her face. He didn’t want her to say something to make him feel better because she’d hurt his feelings—it was fine if he’d been wrong, but he didn’t want to think about it ever again.
He trundled down the stairs and into the apartment, which he’d been so excited to show her Friday night. After her sister had gone MIA it had seemed like a bad time. And now? It would just be pathetic.
Gus was figuring out how to move the giant cardboard loom he’d constructed when he heard the back door that led out to where he’d left Reggie sitting open. Of course, she would come investigate. Who would just let some person having a freak-out wander around their house unsupervised? Not Reggie.
“What is going o—oh my GOD!”
He put his hands on his hips, dropped his head down, and sighed deeply.
“Gus?”
He turned his head to look at her, where she was examining a wooden box with tiles that had to be pushed around in the right sequence so that the image of a rose appeared, which would allow the box to be opened.
She glanced around at the new posters he’d hung, at the purple cape for his Charming cosplay that he’d meant to wear when he showed her in draped over a chair, at the scattered vases containing bouquets of roses.
“You made an escape room? For me?” Her voice was higher than usual and she was staring at the box like it was something more substantial than evidence of his inability to get a clue.
“You said you didn’t like real escape rooms,” he muttered, twisting his neck from side to side. “I thought maybe you’d be more comfortable in your own house, so I brought some of the prototype stuff I’d made over.”
She rolled over to where The Sword of Truth, Aurora’s giant blue-bladed sword, rested against a steamer trunk. Or rather the replica Gus had constructed out of papier-mâché.