“It could have been worse.”

“It could have been worse.”

“How?”

“Derek could have spoken.”

She glanced across the room.

“He is currently explaining to his girlfriend why his former girlfriend kissed another man and appeared happier than she ever did with him.”

Brie released a breath that became a shaky laugh.

“I am sorry. I did not intend for it to become that.”

“Become what?”

She looked at me with the same unguarded expression she had worn before the kiss.

“Something that was not fake.”

I had no clever answer.

“Neither did I.”

For the first time that evening, neither of us stepped away.

The days after the party became uncomfortable in ways I had not anticipated.

Casey called twice, sent four messages and arrived at my apartment Tuesday evening carrying takeout containers that functioned simultaneously as a peace offering and a threat.

“Talk,” she said, placing the food on my counter.

“From where?”

“The beginning. Slowly.”

I told her everything.

Brie’s request.

The conditions.

The kiss.

The moment my brain stopped cooperating with the agreed narrative.

Casey listened with crossed arms and occasionally made a face as if tasting spoiled milk.

“You have known her for ten years,” she said when I finished.

“Yes.”

“She appears in most of our family photographs.”

“I am aware.”

“You have never said anything about her. Not one observation. I would remember.”

“I know.”

“Then why now?”

I considered the question honestly.

“I am not certain it began now.”

Casey waited.

“Perhaps it was always easier not to look too closely because she was your friend. She did not feel like someone I was permitted to have an opinion about.”

“She is an adult, not my property.”

“I know that rationally.”

“But?”

“The boundary was convenient.”

I leaned against the counter.

“Then she asked me to kiss her, and I could no longer pretend I had never noticed her.”

Casey sat at my kitchen table.

“This is either going to become the best thing that has happened inside this friend group or destroy it completely.”

“I was hoping for a moderate option.”

“There is no moderate version.”

She looked directly at me.

“If you hurt her, I choose her.”

The seriousness in her voice surprised me, though the statement did not.

“She has been my closest friend since we were nineteen. You are my brother and I love you, but I will not remain neutral if you treat this carelessly.”

“I would not ask you to.”

PART 3

“You say that now.”

“I do not want careless either.”

Casey studied me.

Some of the tension left her shoulders.

“Then decide what you actually want before speaking to her again.”

“I intend to.”

“She is downstairs right now attempting to write you a message.”

I stared.

“What?”

“She has typed and deleted four versions in twenty minutes.”

“You are reading her messages?”

“I am supporting my best friend through an emotional crisis created by my own brother.”

“That sounds similar to spying.”

“The distinction is ethical.”

Brie’s message arrived twenty-three minutes later.

Can we talk somewhere without forty witnesses?

I replied before caution could intervene.

Coffee tomorrow. Just us.

Her answer came immediately.

Okay.

One minute later, another message appeared.

I am nervous, and I dislike it.

Me too, I wrote.

I meant it.

We met the following afternoon at a small café near her apartment. The furniture did not match, and the chalkboard menu appeared not to have been updated since the building opened.

Brie was already seated.

She twisted a paper napkin into a tight spiral, revealing how little calm existed beneath her composed expression.

“Before you say anything,” she began, “I need to know whether you meant what you said at the party.”

“I did.”

“Or whether it was adrenaline and an audience.”

“It was not.”

“Nathan, I have dated men who spoke beautifully until circumstances became inconvenient.”

She placed the twisted napkin on the table.

“You need to understand what this could cost. I am your sister’s best friend. If we become involved and it ends badly, Casey loses something too.”

“I have thought about that.”

“For one day.”

“For most of the night and all of this morning.”

“That is not very long.”

“No.”

I refused to pretend otherwise.

“But here is what I know.”

Brie waited.

“I spent ten years being polite to you at family dinners because I decided you belonged inside Casey’s life, not mine.”

Her fingers stopped moving.

“The moment you asked me to kiss you, I stopped being able to pretend that distance had ever been completely comfortable.”

“That is a very specific admission.”

“I am finished being vague.”

Brie examined my face as though searching for a reason not to trust the answer.

Whatever she found seemed to release some tension from her shoulders.

“Derek called last night.”

My stomach reacted before I could control it.

“What did he want?”

“To ask whether the kiss was real and whether I was seeing someone.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That it was real and none of his business.”

She smiled slightly.

“Was that true?” I asked.

“The real part?”

“Yes.”

“I hope to determine that over several cups of coffee.”

Something in my chest loosened.

We talked for nearly two hours.

Not about Derek, Casey or the party.

Brie told me she had begun taking a ceramics class on Tuesday evenings because her therapist suggested she needed an interest that did not involve dating applications or emotionally unavailable men.

I told her about the old Craftsman bungalow I had purchased and was restoring during weekends.

The house consumed money and time, offering very little in return except the satisfaction of repairing old wood correctly.

Brie asked thoughtful questions.

Not polite ones.

Questions that made me realize halfway through answering that I had revealed more than intended.

She explained that she worked in marketing for a nonprofit healthcare network and had spent years presenting herself as outgoing because other people seemed more comfortable when she was entertaining.

Her relationship with Derek had begun confidently and ended through a thousand small humiliations.

He corrected her stories at parties.

Compared her career to his.

Made jokes about her needing attention, then became resentful when anyone else gave it to her.

“Why did you stay?” I asked.

Brie did not become defensive.

“Because none of it seemed serious alone.”

She looked into her coffee.

“And because every time I considered leaving, he became the man I remembered from the beginning.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It was.”

By the time we left, afternoon light had turned the street gold.

Neither of us appeared eager to say goodbye.

“So what is this?” Brie asked beside her car.

“A second date that began with a fake first one.”

“Perhaps the first date was real and the fake part was only the excuse.”

She laughed.

This time, I heard the sound completely.

The same laugh that had carried across rooms for years while I trained myself not to notice its effect.

“That is a generous interpretation,” she said.

“I am an optimist.”

“You repair cooling systems for a living. That seems like work designed for pessimists.”

“Someone has to believe the system can be saved.”

Brie stepped closer and kissed me.

Slower than at the party.

No audience.

No plan.

When she pulled away, her fingers remained lightly against my jacket.

“That one was real,” she said.

“I noticed.”

Dating my sister’s best friend was not simple.

Casey observed us with the attention of a federal investigator during the first month. She appeared unannounced at both apartments often enough for me to consider changing the locks.