Page 33 of Something Borrowed

He held his glass up. “Let’s get this party started.”

They put away the leftovers and did the dishes together very inefficiently—drinking and chatting—not about Vic—and listening to a playlist called “Friday Night Chill.”

Then Teddy Swims’ “Bad Dreams” came on. Its opening lyrics were a little too on-the-nose.

Cal sighed.

“Take a load off?” Carrie asked, pointing at the comfy living room chairs a few strides away.

“So, we kissed,” Cal admitted without preamble and without Carrie having to push him for details again.

Carrie leaned in from her perch on the mustard chair. “That’s great! Tell all. When are you seeing her again?”

“I’m not. Nothing’s going to come of it.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

That makes two of us, Cal thought.

“Start at the beginning,” she demanded, waving her wine glass for emphasis. “Spill.”

Cal and Carrie were close. They always had been. He’d heard some dysfunctional homes drove wedges between siblings. In their case, the opposite was true. Their parents’ multiple issues and obsessive, consuming dislike of each other brought them together and made them allies. In fact, Carrie was the closest thing he had to a best friend. Scratch that. She was his best friend. Still, she was also his sister and had her own relationship demons to deal with, so he normally mildly censored, or at least was highly selective, about how deep he went into some topics with her. Tonight, though, while nowhere near drunk, the wine—and the music—loosened his tongue.

Obediently, Cal did as he was told and spilled. He told her how the evening started, how easy and natural it was to talk to Vic, how great it was to laugh and eat together. How they hadn’t, like, bared their souls or anything, but they also had touched lightly on things that were real, were deeper than favorite colors, foods, and movies or whatever. Then he shared the fallout after the kiss.

Carrie’s face crumpled on his behalf. “That sucks, Cal.”

He nodded.

“Is it . . . possible that maybe your kiss—or the kiss, I mean—just didn’t do it for her?”

“I don’t know.” He slowly rolled the stem of his nearly empty wineglass between his palms. The movement reminded him of Vic’s fidgeting. He stopped abruptly, swallowed the dregs, and set his glass on the coffee table.

“She seemed into it, and it was, well, sweet at first, but then pretty steamy—” He smiled at the memory.

“Gross,” Carrie teased.

“And I would’ve been happy with just the kiss, over the moon, in fact. So, I don’t understand why she made the move to come over for the night and—”

“Maybe she got cold feet, or maybe it is exactly like she said. She’s not in a good place for a relationship and doesn’t want to lead you on.”

“Yeah.”

Carrie looked at him for a long time, then refilled their glasses.

“Last one,” he said, leaving his on the table for now.

“Sure, sure,” she grinned, but it fell from her face, no doubt taking in his gloom. “Okay, that’s not what’s really bugging you. Your heart isn’t broken after one unofficial date and one kiss, no matter how hot it was.”

Cal cracked his knuckles, then moved his head side to side. His old-man neck cracked and popped, too.

“What’s bugging me is how easy I am.”

“What does that mean? That like every other guy on the planet, you’ll take it if you can get it?” She threw a sapphire blue cushion at him. He caught one-handed and lobbed it back.

“I’m serious—and I’m not talking about sex. I . . .” How to put it into words. How?

He picked up his wineglass and took a big mouthful. Carrie had switched from Chianti to something called Jammy Red Roo from the Australian winery Yellowtail. It was jammy—sweet and delicious, a perfect after-dinner treat instead of dessert.