Page 56 of Gym Bros (Bay Area Bros #2)

CALYX

I ’m used to spending holidays alone. I’m not going to say it’s no big deal.

It feels like a big deal that after seven years, I’ve gotten used to it.

I’d like to say it builds character, but it actually doesn’t.

It strips me raw and shines a light on all the choices I’ve made that have left me on my own.

I may not be the only person in San Francisco this holiday Thursday, but it certainly fucking feels like it.

Initially, I was pissed off about the unfairness of it all, but now I’m only resigned. I keep telling myself “Thanksgiving is just another day.”

Rachel and Priya are out of town separately with their own families.

Ryan and Malcolm are going to two Thanksgivings, one in Ojai with Ryan’s mom, the other in LA with Mal’s dad.

Bailey is only as far away as Berkeley, but while she did invite me to go with her to her family’s dinner, I declined, knowing I’d be terrible company.

The gym is closed for the day, which I think pisses me off the most. It’s very presumptuous of them to think that no one gives a shit about their fitness on an eating holiday.

So it’s just me and Siva at my townhouse.

I thought about going full out—finding some complicated recipes and muddling my way through them just to have something to do—something different.

Instead, I’m watching Merchant-Ivory movies, as many as I can fit in, and alternating between popcorn and ice cream. Oh, and wine.

Glass after glass of wine. I’m not guzzling it, but I’m not allowing my glass to get empty, either.

The texts come in from all my friends who left me behind wishing me unironic Happy Thanksgivings.

I release a bitter laugh after each one.

They all know exactly where I am today. On my sofa, by myself.

Although, I think I might move to the bed soon.

I should have booked a trip to the Maldives, but loathe as I am to admit it, my bank accounts aren’t what they were before I took my time off this summer.

Since I haven’t acquired any more high-paying marketable skills, London is now non-negotiable.

I have Italian Vogue, and another job booked with a British menswear store whose customers are young and trendy, but the rest of my time will be spent standing in front of people assessing my “look,” contemplating whether I fit their vision for their brand or concept.

Marcus will be with me, and Rachel certainly gave me an earful about that, but he’s been nothing but professional since…well…since Samuel shoved him into a building.

I wonder how that Thanksgiving is going. Although I’m trying not to think about it. It makes my heart break over and over again, knowing it could be Samuel’s last with his whole family together and knowing I had a hand in that.

So, no, I didn’t tag along with anyone on their Thanksgiving trips. I have nothing to be thankful for. Only regrets—rotting me on the inside.

But you’d never know it to look at me. Nope. The genetics are holding up just fine. It’s disgusting, really, that as ugly as I feel, the outside never matches. If I weren’t so superstitious—and vain—I’d break all my mirrors.

But I am vain. Vain to the point where a pimple sends me into an irrational tailspin.

Vain to the point where even though I’ve got nowhere to go and no one to see, I still moisturized this morning and carefully styled my hair because I knew I’d see.

I knew there wouldn’t be a reflection I could resist. I plucked a few stray hairs from my brows, and I even put on a lip stain, just to make myself look less ill.

I’m watching Maurice, which I haven’t seen in years, and I don’t remember it being so sad. Does it even have a happy ending? I hope so. I’m about to Google it and look when there’s a knock on my door.

Since everyone who knows where I live is out of town, I pause the movie and get up, assuming it’s a delivery from Rachel or Priya. Maybe one of them sent me a turkey.

“Oh, shit,” I whisper when I find Samuel standing on the doorstep of my townhouse with a beanie covering his head and the rest of him clothed in warm layers.

“Hey,” he says quietly, but I hear him fine because everything is quiet today. Even the rain.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came for the usual reasons. To see you. To talk.”

“To— talk ?”

“You’re still sharing your location. I knew you were here, so…”

“But it’s Thanksgiving.”

“Yeah.”

“You should be at home—in LA.”

He looks off down the street and blows out a breath that forms a cloud in the cold. “My mom said the same thing, but I thought I might rather stay here.”

“Why?” I ask .

“Because you’re here.”

“But you broke up with me.”

“If you’re not gonna let me come in, just tell me, because I have a much warmer place I can go.”

Fuck. I step out of the way and let him in the door, closing it quickly behind him because wet cold is a special kind of bone-chilling.

He immediately removes his hat and jacket, both covered in drizzle. I take them off his hands, hanging them on the hooks where I keep my outerwear. He stays in the entryway, and I don’t urge him in any further yet. To be honest, I’m not sure I want him here.

Being alone sucks, but being with someone who hurt me—who I hurt—is potentially much worse.

“Are you sure you want to be here?” I ask.

He glances at me, then nods. “Is that okay?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“I couldn’t go home,” he tells me.

“Okay. Did something else happen?”

He shakes his head. “No. I just can’t see my dad right now.”

I can’t meet his eyes anymore. There’s too much there. Every emotion ever created. “I get that.”

“I mean, I don’t expect you to get it. I heard he’s going with you to Europe, so obviously it’s not an issue for you.”

Fucking Rachel. She’s the only one who knows about that. I mean, she probably told Priya, too, if I came up in conversation, but Rachel is the only one who would blab to Samuel about it.

“Nothing’s happened,” I say. “Nothing will happen.”

“That’s up to you,” he says.

“Okay,” I say shortly and walk away from him. That hurt. I’m not sure he meant for it to, but it was the equivalent of a sucker punch. And Samuel throws a strong punch. I need my wine for this .

Without looking back, I retake my spot on the couch, pull my blanket over my lap, and make sure Siva is situated as a barricade.

Samuel lingers in the living room doorway, his gaze flicking from the TV, to me, to the cat, then the other end of the couch. “You can come in,” I say, and I sound like I’m dreading it as much as I actually am.

He starts to take off his shoes, like he usually does—used to do—when he comes over but then looks at me again.

I just nod for him to go ahead.

He does, and I tell him if he wants some wine to grab a glass.

He doesn’t. He does, however, sit on the couch with me.

On the opposite end, but I’m glad for that.

If he sat in one of the chairs, I would have been fucking shattered.

And the realization of that makes me also realize there’s still more inside me to break.

I want to ask if he came over to finish the job, but I don’t want to fight with him. I have no right to pick a fight with him. He hasn’t done anything wrong. That was all me.

“When are you leaving?” he asks.

“Next Wednesday.”

“For how long?”

I shrug. “Depends.”

“On?”

“On how much work I get,” I say, focusing on my cat, the way my fingers look moving through her soft, thick fur.

“How much work do you want?” he asks.

“It’s not really the work I want. The money, however…necessary evil.”

“I guess so,” he says.

“Yeah.”

And then the silence comes.

I’m not used to silence with Samuel. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed it until now.

How much we talked. Even when talking was totally unnecessary, we were always doing it.

Missing him has hurt, and I thought mostly what I’ve been missing is holding him, him holding me.

His kiss and his smile and his laugh and all the small intimacies that individually don’t seem like much but amount to a relationship I loved.

But I realize now I miss the noise of him, too.

The sound of his random sniffs and the soft little grunts he makes every time he moves.

This silence lays bare the damage I did.

I’m opening my mouth to apologize again, but he says, “Most people watch football on Thanksgiving.”

“I can change it,” I say.

“You a Cowboys’ fan?”

“I’ve never met one.”

He gives me a look that would have cracked me up once upon a time, but I can’t find a laugh inside me to save my life today. “I’m kidding.”

He lets out a breath. “Oh.”

“My dad loved football,” I say randomly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I think it’s one of the reasons he didn’t think much of me. I was never gonna be a ball player. I could have been a figure skater maybe, but I don’t think he would have been too excited about that, either.”

“My mom wouldn’t let me play football,” he says. “She didn’t want me getting a concussion. Joke’s on her, huh?”

It feels like we both understand what he just said at the same time, and my stomach sinks.

“Sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have—anyway, I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I ask. “For loving your mom? For caring about her happiness? Don’t be. It makes you a good person, Sam, and I know what I did. It’s not like I don’t think about it. I think about it all the fucking time.”

“Which part?” he asks softly .

I sigh heavily. “Let’s see. Um…that I used to sleep with married men and didn’t care who their wives were.

I never asked about their kids or even whether they had any.

I didn’t think about whether what we were doing could hurt them.

And then I wonder if the single men who asked me out ever wanted more than a fun night, and I just didn’t give them a chance because what if they did want to actually get to know me and then realized I was just…

” I gesture at myself. “A pretty package. No substance. I wondered that about you, too.”