Dopplebanger (Meet-Cute #5)

Chapter 30

THIRTY

“I need you to at least pretend to enjoy our show,” Tori said. “You didn’t even drool over Elijah, and he’s doing some really deadly stuff while maintaining his gentlemanly edge.”

I pulled my gaze off the TV. Not that I’d seen any of the show. She could’ve told me that everyone had just died, and I’d be like well, that’s too bad. In addition to not being fully present, my emotions had been set to the numb setting. You’d think it’d be nice, but it was more like… drifting. Pointlessly drifting, at that.

All day long I faked it at work, then I came home and pretended to be okay.

Tori turned to me. “Listen, love, I’ve tried to give you some time, but it’s been two weeks since I picked your sad butt up from the airport, and you’re starting to scare me. If you miss him that much?—”

My head jerked up, my eyes doing a combo of pleading and threatening for her to not say it. When Ethan emailed me a flight itinerary, I’d wanted to tell him he could shove his plane ticket bribe up his very nice ass.

Except I wouldn’t have added the “very nice,” even if it was true.

But I’d needed a way to get home in time for work the following Monday morning, and I hadn’t wanted to go back home and explain to my parents or my friends what’d happened. Even when I’d told Tori the whole story it sounded like this twisted, tawdry soap opera that couldn’t possibly be true.

Sometimes I wished I’d imagined it. Or even made it up.

Yet thinking of the time Ethan and I spent together as “not real” also made this awful ache seize hold of my chest. In short, I was a freaking mess.

“Did he call today?” Tori asked.

My chin tried to quiver, but I forced it to remain firm. “No.” I knew that eventually he’d give up. Two weeks was admirable. And since seeing his name on my phone screen hurt, I’d begged him to stop calling. I’d gone to block his number a dozen times. I could never quite follow through, and I didn’t want to analyze that, either.

How could I miss someone who’d deceived me and hurt me so badly?

I hadn’t seen Evan, either. He’d texted once, just a simple I really am sorry. I know it’s a cliché line, but I really would like to stay friends.

“So that was the goal, right?” Tori arched an eyebrow. “Which means you’re glad he didn’t?”

I would’ve appreciated a less skeptical tone, as well as that question mark on the end of her statement, but I decided to pretend they weren’t there. “Of course. I need to move on.”

She sighed like I was being difficult.

“Are you saying I should just be okay with him pretending to be someone else?”

Tori held up her hands. “I’m on your team. I’ve just also never seen you like this. Not even after you found that beeyotch and your douchehole ex in bed together.”

“Not sure calling her a beeyotch fits with how I forgave her and am trying to slowly let her back into my life. Same with the douchehole.”

“Girl, you can go ahead and forgive them, but I’m going to hold on to my grudge forever. It’s my right as your best friend.” She pulled me into a side hug, dropping her head against mine. “Look, as evidenced by my Klaus crush, I’m not totally opposed to guys with a lot of gray area. But I think that if you did happen to give Ethan another chance—and I’m not saying that you should or have to…” Her worlds blurred all together, into a stream that not even I had a chance of interrupting. “But I do think the boy got in over his head, and that he does genuinely care about you. And from everything else you said, he’s not usually a gray area guy. He’s a refined gentleman who sometimes does bad things for his family.” Tori tipped her head toward the screen, where my fictional boyfriend, Elijah Mikaelson, was talking calmly one second and then ripping hearts out of chests the next, all in the name of defending his family.

“It’s okay because he’s a vampire.”

“So you’re saying if Ethan was a vampire you’d forgive him?” Tori tapped a contemplative finger to her lip. “Maybe I’ll tell him to try that next.”

I cocked my head, giving her the narrowed-eyed glare she deserved. “It’s okay because The Originals is fiction.”

“Ah. You have a loophole for everything.” She paused, and my instincts told me I wouldn’t like the next words out of her mouth. “Except the guy you fell in love with.”

“I did not…” Great. My body chose now to lift the numbness so I could experience the full impact of the pain. My heart knotted so tightly that it couldn’t keep pumping, yet it kept on trying, and the only thing it succeeded in getting through my veins was anguish.

It was crazy. I mean, yeah, I fell a little bit for Ethan, but that was because we’d fast-forwarded all the beginning stuff—the part where I’d been dating his freaking brother—to the already intimate phase.

Tori propped her elbow on the back of the couch and leaned closer. “You were saying?”

“Smug is not a good color on you,” I said.

“Hey, I won’t even make you say that I was right. I can see it written all over your face. And don’t even try to claim it’s because you’d dated Evan and thought it was him. You’re talking to the girl who was trying to convince you to have sex with your boyfriend because you didn’t feel—and I quote— the thing . If Ethan hadn’t shown up that morning for coffee, you would’ve broken up with Evan. Or Ethan as Evan. Or…” She swiped a hand through the air. “Let’s not focus on that, because it’s confusing as shit.”

“At least we agree on something.”

“But what’s important is how you feel about Ethan. It might be complicated, but it’s not confusing, and you know I’m right. I’m not saying forgive him. I’m saying maybe see what he says. Find out how good he is at groveling and give him, like, half a chance. Then decide if you forgive him.”

My mind often tortured me with snippets of our trip. Of the sparks and the kisses and opening up to each other. Of breaking into the pool and the way he’d worshiped me with his tongue. Don’t think about that. But what rose up right now—what got to me most—was that moment in the hotel shortly after I’d found out exactly who I’d spent the road trip with and the betrayal was so fresh it was shredding my insides. The moment when, in spite of being in the middle of a mess and me telling him to leave, he’d still asked how it’d gone with Paige. He’d held on to me with this combination of tenderness and fierceness, comforting me while also clinging to me like I was his lifeboat in a storm.

Then he’d said my name. As I’d told him the night of the carnival, I wasn’t sure I liked Guinevere, but when he said it… My heart swelled in my chest, filling with all things Ethan. I squeezed my eyes closed, attempted a centering breath that didn’t help, and then looked at my best friend. The girl who’d never shied away from saying things like they were, no filter or tiptoeing around my feelings. After being stabbed in the back, I admired even more how she was always like this is who I am, and I don’t give a shit if you like it or not.

Maybe she was right. Maybe I had fallen in love. Not that I was ready to admit that yet and hear I told you so . “Even if I did decide to give him a chance… I can’t be the girl who accidentally fell for the brother of her boyfriend. Say it did actually work out, what would I tell my children and grandchildren when they asked how we fell in love?”

I added a little age and wisdom to my voice as I mimicked what that’d be like. “Oh well, you see he pretended to be his brother who was my boyfriend at the time, and then we had this amazing road trip where I felt things I’d never felt before. Oh, and he gave me the best orgasm of my life after breaking into a hotel pool.”

“I’d probably leave the orgasm thing out until they turned eighteen, but otherwise it sounds like a kickass story to me. So much more interesting than we met at a coffeeshop. Or, oh, we had mutual friends. I abhor dullness, you know.” Tori not-so-subtly nudged my phone toward me. She even brought up my contacts so that all I’d have to do to talk to Ethan was tap the tiny phone icon.

My fingers twitched with the urge to do so. I forced my palms flat against my thighs. “I can’t trust him, T. And I can’t be in a relationship where there’s no trust, no matter how tempted I am to try.” My eyes watered, unable to help themselves. “My heart can’t take it. Not after what it already had to go through between my last relationship and what happened with Evan and Ethan.”

Just like that, Tori pushed my phone aside and grabbed my hand. “Okay. Then I won’t bring it up again. Even if your broken heart breaks mine, too.”

“It’ll heal in time.”

I could’ve used a smidge more conviction than the placating hand pat, but like I said, I loved Tori because she wouldn’t lie to me.

Maybe I’d never fully heal. Maybe I’d be the girl who was always a little in love with the funny, caring, liar-pants lawyer who’d driven me home for one of my best friend’s weddings.

But someone once told me I could take on the world if I decided to, and while he did have that gray area problem that resulted in our breakup—or was it not an official breakup since he’d never technically been my boyfriend? Anyway, regardless of the complications, I believed he’d been telling the truth about having faith in me.

I’d hold on to that, claim that it was one of those things I’d learned from a past relationship, and get over this sucky bump in the road of life.

I’d move on. Eventually, I’d even attempt another relationship. After I asked the guy if he had a twin brother, that was.