Always the Last Word (Always the Bridesmaid #4)(24)
"What about Rachel?" Adam asks, his eyes on me. He has seen pictures of Hank and knows that he's my twin brother. Hank, however, has no idea that Adam is Carter's best friend.
"I'm sorry I didn't respond to your calls and texts. I just didn't know how angry you'd be at me," Hank says as I stand to stop him from saying anything more in front of Adam. Hank is a private guy, he always has been … except when he's truly passionate about something. Neither Hell nor high water can stop him when he feels the need to express himself. Still, I consider tackling him to the ground but, before I get the chance, he's already spewing out the things that I didn't want Adam to know. "I know Rachel's your best friend, and I shouldn't have kept what she and I were doing from you."
"What?" Adam asks, now also standing. He's not angry, just completely shocked.
I squeeze my eyes shut so that I don't have to look at either one of them. "Rachel and Hank have been seeing each other."
"Are you sleeping with her?" Adam asks him.
I open one eye to look at Adam just as Hank claims that he and Rachel have been behaving like pilgrims.
"Rachel's emotionally cheating on Carter with Hank," I tell Adam and, as expected, he wrinkles his nose at the term.
"And you knew?" he asks me. I finally open both eyes.
"That's why I've been avoiding you," I say. "I didn't know how I could see you and not tell you."
"Don't be mad at her, dude. This is on me and Rachel," Hank says, but Adam doesn't respond to him. He opens his mouth to say something but snaps it shut and walks off without a word to his car. And then he's gone.
"I take it that was Adam, Carter's roommate?" Hank asks, pulling on his right ear, a nervous habit just as weird as me rubbing my canine tooth with my tongue. I nod. "Shit."
"Yeah. Shit." I look up at my brother. "What the hell, Hank?"
"I'm sorry," he says as he slumps onto the bench. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen."
"Really? You didn't want Rachel to leave Carter for you?"
"I didn't want everyone to be fucking miserable because of me. I didn't mean to pull Rachel from Carter. It just happened and I was too selfish to question it. You know I'm not the kind of guy that snakes on committed women."
I sit down next to him. "I know you're not. But that doesn't make all of this okay."
"I know," he says, burying his head in his hands and rubbing his palms hard against his closed eyes. "I'm sorry, Evie. I didn't want you in the middle of this."
"You're in love. It turned you into an idiot. It happens," I say, patting his back. "Besides, I can't be angry at both my best friend and my brother. If this becomes something real, I'll have to threaten you both to not break the other's heart."
"It already feels like something," Hank says with a twinge of hope in his otherwise broken voice.
I look at where Adam's car was parked only moments ago.
It was starting to feel like something, all right.
Once Hank leaves and I go back inside the shop, Connie and Jamie both bombard me with questions. Well, Jamie bombards me with questions; Connie just talks about how nice and handsome Adam is, and it feels just like a knife being stuck into my side and twisted. I can't focus on either one of them. I apologize and immediately duck into the restroom, being sure to lock the door behind me.
I yank my phone from the pocket of my dress and call Adam. Unsurprisingly, it goes to voicemail. I know he hates listening to voicemail as much as I hate leaving a voicemail but, right now, I don't care.
"You're reached Adam Iberico. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."
The phone beeps and what feels like years pass before I finally manage to get words to come out of my mouth.
"Hey, Adam. It's Evie. I just wanted to apologize. Not about keeping Rachel and Hank's secret from you, though. They're two of the most important people in my life and I couldn't betray them like that. I wanted to apologize for avoiding you. I shouldn't have ghosted you like that, and I'm sorry. I get it if you don't want to speak to me again but, if you do, you know where to find me."
I hang up my phone and slump against the bathroom sink. How did I manage to ruin something that wasn't even there?
Chapter Twenty-Two
I walk in my apartment door to find Titanic on the television and Rachel on my couch with a gallon of ice cream in her lap.
I take a step closer and see a fifth of butterscotch schnapps on the coffee table.
Oh, shit.
"So, I take it you talked to Carter?" I ask in a whisper, like she's a woodland creature and I don't want to spook her for fear that she'll go darting off into the forest.
She nods. "That, and I got the job in Austin."
I drop onto the couch next to her, feeling as defeated as she looks. "But you wanted that job. That's great news."
"It is. The interview was just a formality. They offered me the job five minutes into the video call," she says, and it's obvious she's proud of herself for securing such a great job offer that is so well suited for her. "After it was over, I went over to Carter's to tell him about the job, and about Hank."
"But he already knew?" I guess the next part of her story.
"No. He found out about Hank as I was leaving. I told Carter that I was taking the job in Texas. He said he couldn't leave."
"What's keeping him here? He writes books and articles for the internet. As long as he has access to a computer and WiFi, he can go anywhere." I knew Carter would never want to leave Kentucky, but I still become outraged on Rachel's behalf. It's true that she's been cheating on him and wants to end things, but how dare he not care about her enough to move across the country … okay, I can see where an argument could be made in his defense. But still.
She shrugs and picks up the butterscotch schnapps bottle. She pours the contents into the gallon of ice cream. "I don't know what's keeping him here, but I do know that I'm not enough to make him leave. That tells me more than enough about our relationship."
A pang of guilt runs through me for being so upset over Adam. Rachel and Carter have been dating for six years. They were going to get married next spring and spend their lives together. They had it all figured out, and now … now everything is so the opposite of how it was supposed to be. They postponed the wedding, Rachel is in love with someone else and is moving a thousand miles away and Carter isn't going with her. And here I am bummed out about a guy who hasn't even kissed me.
"Is there anything I can do?"
Rachel shakes her head. "No. I don't deserve pity. I mean, it's not like I'm the victim in all of this. It was good, though. Carter and I sat down and had a long talk about our relationship. We both knew it was crumbling around us but we just kept trying to patch up all the cracks. We agreed that it was a good time to end things. I gave him back his ring," she says, waving her bare left hand at me as proof. A faint tan line on her ring finger is all that remains of their engagement. "I didn't think there was any need to tell him about Hank. Carter and I wouldn't have worked out in the long run, whether or not Hank came into the picture. I didn't see any point in upsetting him."
"But Adam told him?" I ask.
She nods. "I had a box of my stuff in my hands and Carter was walking me toward the door when Adam came barreling into the apartment."
"Shit, I'm sorry," I say, as I wince.
"It's not your fault. And Adam didn't think he was doing anything wrong. He saw the box in my hands and realized that Carter and I had broke up. He assumed, out loud, that I had told Carter about Hank." She shakes her head. "Carter automatically assumed the worst and, honestly, I think he would have been more okay if I had just been screwing Hank behind his back. The fact that Hank and I actually have feelings for each other is what hurt him the most." She chews on her bottom lip for a moment, and I know she's near tears.
"How ugly did it get?"
"Not ugly, just sad. Carter looked so broken. He said he understood why I would go to someone else, since our relationship was waning. I kept apologizing but I think it just made things worse. It went from being an amicable split to a sobbing mess."
"Have you talked to Hank?"
"Mmhmm," she says, taking a bite of her ice cream schnapps float. "He said he screwed up things for you and Adam. I didn't realize there were things to screw up for you two."
"There's not." At least, there's definitely not now.
"Could have fooled me," she mumbles as she inspects her next bite of ice cream. I stare at her and wait for her to say more. She's had too much alcohol that she can't be silent for too long. She drops the spoon into the carton. "It's just … you two were spending so much time together. I thought it was obvious that there was something going on between you guys."
"I-- I don't know. If there was, it's gone now," I say, the anger on Adam's face still present in my mind. He never did respond to my voicemail. I don't think he ever will, but that doesn't mean that I'll stop checking my phone every five minutes.