It is.
He must hear me hovering on the stairs because he comes over to lean against his door frame like a bouncer. His hands are in his pockets, his expression is amused…
And he’s wearing his glasses. They’re oversized circular frames made of pale gold and I don’t think I’ve ever noticed how adorable his nose is until I see his glasses perched on top of it just now. This is mortifying. I think I’m already having heart palpitations.
Stop. Get ahold of yourself!
Brad arches an eyebrow. “You know you have my number now, Celine. You can text me if you’re coming over. I could…unlock the door for you.”
I try to sound unaffected by his presence. “And let me bypass your father like a mannerless heathen?”
He rolls his eyes and steps aside to let me in. But I notice him flicking looks back at me as I walk through his room, like he’s nervous. “What’s up, anyway?”
There’s no easy way to ask someone if they think your entire life plan amounts to BIG FAT DADDY ISSUES, so I decide to subtly ease into things. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Right.” He snorts, then points at the pack of digestives in my hand. “Don’t you dare eat those in here, by the way. I can’t deal with crumbs.”
“Ugh. You’re tyrannical.” But I already knew that, which is why I haven’t opened the packet.
Brad’s room has changed just as much as he has, but also not at all. There’s still soothingly cream walls, a perfectly made bed, and his drawers and wardrobe are neatly shut instead of overflowing with crap like mine. The desk under his window is new, but everything on its surface is set at perfect right angles. He’s always neater when exams are coming up, and we’re revising for winter modules right now.
The enormous bookshelf by his wardrobe isn’t new at all, but the books on it might be. Although, judging from the spines, he’s still into sci-fi and fantasy.
“You can sit down,” he says, interrupting my thoughts.
“Where?”
“Wherever you want, Celine, come on.” He flops down onto the bed, pointedly messing up his perfect duvet.
I tut and perch neatly on the corner of the mattress.
Brad grins. “You’re so nice.”
“What?” I am horrified. No one has ever accused me of this. “Nice? Do you realize how…utterly bland—”
“Don’t have a cow, Cel.”
“How disgustingly milquetoast—”
“Nice,” he says over my conniptions. “Nice, nice, nice. Like pie.”
“Pie?”
He’s confident. “Pie.”
Dear God. The fact that I’m enjoying this conversation—that it’s a real struggle not to beam like an enthusiastic lightbulb—should be setting off alarm bells in my head. Unfortunately, I have been feeling this way around Brad for a while, and I suspect I know the issue.
He’s wearing soft pastel clothes again, mint green, and his dimple is showing because he’s smiling at me. He’s obnoxiously beautiful and he calls me nice despite the sheer number of times I’ve succeeded in ruining his day. Something warm and nervous rises in me like the tide and before it can spill free and cause untold harm, I blurt out something else. “Am I a terrible daughter?”
His smile fades. “What? No. Why?”
I don’t know why I’m happy he said no. He hasn’t even heard my crimes. “Giselle knows about…my dad,” I say stiffly, “being involved in…you know.” That’s why I’m here: Brad does know. He knows so well, he helped me climb out of a window.
“Hang on.” Brad gets up to close the door because he’s thoughtful and thorough—someone should tattoo those words on his forehead—and I hear Mason shout from down the hall, “Dad, Brad’s shutting the door with a girl in his room!”
“It’s only Celine,” Brad calls back. “Grow up.”
For some reason, my cheeks catch fire like two piles of dry, shriveled up leaves. Right! It’s only me! His completely platonic friend! Obviously, Mason, get a grip.
The door closes without a word of complaint from Trev (so you agree, Trevor, that your eldest son finds me as dangerous to his virtue as a hunk of wood? Okay, that’s cool, just checking). Then Brad comes back to sit on the bed with a serious expression, closer to my corner than before. His right knee is a handspan away from mine and he’s leaning toward me, legs crossed, elbows on his thighs. It’s a very comforting posture. His eyes are like a warm summer night. “What’d she say?”
I blink. “Hmm? Erm, she said…” I scrabble through my mental files to remember the distant history of yesterday. “She said I’m hiding things from Mum and I’m letting Dad rule my life when he’s not even in it, and lots of other rubbish like that. All because I want to rub my eventual, inevitable success in his face. She’s wrong.” I pause, take a deep breath, and admit through gritted teeth, “But. Then again. Giselle is smart and she is technically in the same boat as me, parent-wise—”
“Technically,” Brad agrees, far too solemn to be serious.
“Shut it.” I whack him on the shoulder and try not to have heart palpitations at the fact that he is (1) warm and (2) solid. Like, duh, Celine. He is a living human, not an icy transparent ghost; obviously he possesses form and vigor. I put my tingly hand carefully in the pocket of my black Vulfpeck hoodie and continue. “I just…I have an intellectual duty to investigate accusations like that without bias. Right?”
Brad nods.
“So. I thought I’d ask you for an…outside perspective.”
“Okay,” Brad says. “Let me ask you something. Aside from the scholarship—is your dad one of the reasons you’re doing the BEP?”
I shift uncomfortably and force myself to be honest. He called me avoidant but I’m the boss of my own brain and I’ll face whatever’s in there, thank you very much. Just like every woman on my Steps to Success board faces whatever’s thrown at them. “Maybe.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Does maybe mean yes?”
“No.”
“So it means no.”
“No!” I glare at him. “What are you doing?”
“Applying pressure,” he says serenely. “I learned about it in therapy.”
“Did you?”
“Nah.” Before I can flick him between the eyes for being so deeply annoying, he reaches out and squeezes one of the pom-poms on my socks. (Yes, there are pom-poms on my socks. It’s cold, okay?) I watch him pinch the soft red ball between finger and thumb. But when I look up, he’s not focused on my socks; he’s focused on me. “Tell me the truth,” he says so, so softly, not like it’s an order but like he’s really asking. Like it really matters.
I swallow hard and admit it. “There’s…something satisfying in the fact that my dad’s going to see me win this scholarship.”
The corner of Brad’s mouth twitches.
“What?” I demand, self-consciousness creeping in like fog.
“Nothing.” He lets go of the pom-pom and squeezes my ankle. I very nearly die. “I just like how certain you are, that’s all,” he says. “What else?”
My mouth is dry. “What else…”
“What else are you doing because of him?”
“Not because of him.” I frown. “I don’t want to be a lawyer because of him.”
“But you want to work in corporate law,” Brad says. “Is that because of him?”
My frown deepens into a scowl. Annoyance is easier and much more familiar than whatever I feel about the weight of his hand, which is still on my ankle, Jesus Christ, Bradley. It’s nothing, it’s nothing, I see him touch all his friends. “How do you know what field I want to work in?”
“Because I was at that party where you announced it,” he says mildly, “and I thought it was weird how the people you admire—like Katharine—work elsewhere, but you’re not remotely interested in following in their footsteps.”
“It’s not that I’m not interested,” I protest, then cut myself off because—
Well, what does it matter? These decisions, practically speaking, are years into the future. And yes, I am someone who plans her decisions in advance, but, well—
“For God’s sake,” I mutter, “what are you asking me all this for? You’re supposed to tell me I’m great and Giselle’s wrong and everything is fine.”
“You’re great,” he says, and the tension in my muscles slides away. But it snaps right back when he adds, “Giselle’s not wrong. Everything…may or may not be fine?”
I pull my ankle out of his grip. It immediately feels ten degrees cooler. “Brad!”
“What?” he laughs. “I’m not gonna lie to you, Celine. Your life plan is coming off slightly bitter and vengeful—”
I make that cough-laugh sound people do when they are both astonished and amused. “I beg your pardon?”
He ignores me. “But it’s warranted! It’s not a capital crime to have bad feelings when bad things happen to you.”