A Brush with Love(86)

Thu took a swig of her beer. “It’s called football. Very popular with kids these days.”

“Huh…” Harper said, tapping her nail against her beer bottle. “Why are we watching it?”

“No reason we shouldn’t engage in America’s pastime like everyone else.”

“Baseball is America’s pastime, and we don’t like sports.”

“Semantics,” Thu said with a wave of her hand.

Harper gave it a few more minutes, periodically looking between her friend and the TV, trying to get the joke.

“But why football?”

Thu shrugged. “Alex likes football.”

“So?”

Thu turned to face Harper. “So, I like Alex. And that means I’m trying to like football. Because that’s what you do for the people you like—you accommodate them into your life.” She gave Harper a pointed look before turning back to the TV.

Harper blinked at her.

“You officially like Alex?”

Thu huffed out a laugh and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I think so. But that’s not the point.”

“I know,” Harper whispered, picking at the sticker on her beer bottle.

“The point is,” Thu said, turning to Harper again, “you can’t keep doing this to yourself. Living like this.”

Harper gave her a weak smile. “I know that too. And I’m trying.”

“But what are you actually doing to work on it, Harper?”

Harper didn’t have an answer for that, not one that would satisfy Thu anyway. Harper wasn’t sure how to explain that slowly she was rebuilding every wall she’d let crumble. Getting back to protecting herself in fortified isolation.

Harper could see the concern behind Thu’s eyes. Tendrils of warmth spread from Harper’s heart, but they magnified the pain, and she rubbed at her aching chest. Thu put her arm around Harper’s shoulders and gave a brief squeeze before turning back to the game.

“Is Dr. Ren letting you make up the exam?” Thu asked a few minutes later.

Harper nodded. A pulsing mix of sadness and anxiety was starting to move through her system. “She gave me an alternative assignment. Fifteen-page systematic review on invasive intervention in oral cancer.”

“Oh, so just some light reading.”

Harper gave a half-hearted laugh and took a swig of her beer, hoping Thu would bring up Dan.

Harper missed him in the sharpest way possible. It felt like her skin had been flayed open. Like she was exposed and bleeding out. She was angry at him for telling her secrets, for taking that ugly thing inside her and judging it, deciding she needed treatment for it.

But what made it worse was that, on a rational level, she knew she’d brought it on herself. She’d pushed him until he couldn’t come back. She’d broken her own damn heart so Dan couldn’t do it for her.

Because that’s what hearts did. They filled and swelled and pushed at their confines until they inevitably fractured into pieces with sharp, jagged edges that cut your fingers when you tried to put them back together. She’d worked too hard to allow one moment to set her off course like that.

Or so she thought.

She felt so directionless—so impossibly lost, it was hard to do anything but breathe.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what happened with Dan?” Harper eventually said.

She craved and dreaded the question. Part of her wanted to be forced to face what she’d done—have the words pulled from her so she could be free of them.

But Thu shook her head. “You’d tell me if you were ready to talk about it.”

Harper stared at Thu for a moment before nodding and snuggling into her side. Thu switched the channel and shifted to a comfortable position.

After a few minutes, Thu spoke again, her voice tinged with uncharacteristic caution. “You know what’s happening, though, right?”

Harper shifted to look at her friend. “Happening with what?”

Thu let out a long sigh, chewing on her bottom lip. “You haven’t heard from him at all?”

“He called me once but I didn’t answer. Why? What aren’t you telling me?”

Thu looked down at her hands, seeming to search endlessly for words. A trickle of dread snaked down Harper’s spine. Thu was never at a loss for words.

Thu finally looked up, meeting Harper’s eyes. “I just really think you need to go talk to Dan.”





CHAPTER 35





HARPER

The next morning, Harper made her way to Dan’s apartment. She hadn’t been able to get any more information from Thu, who just repeatedly told her it wasn’t her information to share, whatever the hell that meant.

Harper knew she should have called first, but she had a feeling that whatever it was, it wasn’t something she wanted to learn about over the phone. And, for some reason, the idea of dialing his number, taking the chance of the call ringing into the abyss unanswered, felt way more daunting.

But, as she mounted the stairs to his apartment, the queasy jostle of nerves in her stomach had her second-guessing that decision.

As Harper stood outside his door, trying to find the courage to knock, she realized how weird it was that she’d never been to his place before. He had so easily melded into her space, into her life, never forcing her to take a step out of her own little bubble.