More Than Meets the Eye - Page 116

“Maybe,” Baz muttered.

“It’s gonna be okay.I’ve been waiting for my chance to support you through heartbreak for nearly thirty years.We’ll get through this together.”

Baz huffed.What did Eevee know about heartbreaks?All she’d ever had was a fairytale romance.

“Really?”Aya asked and sat on the table.“He’s your first love?No wonder you acted like a hormonal teenager.”

“Yes,” Eevee said before he could.“He always refused every notion of romance.I remember our first Pride in the city.We lost each other.I was so worried about you.Joel and I were looking everywhere, and when I finally found you, you were making out with that old guy in that disgusting alley.”

The guy hadn’t beenthatold, and they had done much more than make out, but sure.“And you yelled at me.”

“Because I wanted better for you!But you told me right there and then you would never have a relationship, and I needed to accept that.I was so heartbroken to hear that from a seventeen-year-old kid.”

Seventeen-year-old him had been onto something.

“I was right.I can never live up to you and Joel.”

Eevee frowned.“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Like you don’t know.Things have always been easy between you two.You guys are the perfect match.”

“I mean, I like to think so, but that doesn’t mean we never have any issues.We fight too.”

Baz scoffed.“Yeah, I’ve seen how you fight.”Tense silence and angry hand holding to comfort each other through a disagreement hardly qualified as a fight in his books.

“No, you don’t, because we keep that away from you to not put you into an awkward position.Joel and I are business partners and we live together.Of course we’re gonna rub each other the wrong way sometimes.That’s only human.But we love each other and we respect each other, and so we get through it.”

Everything he knew about them was based on lies too?God, he was worse at reading people than he had thought.

He dragged a hand down his face.“Great.If even you guys have issues, what chance do the rest of us stand?”

“There’s no such thing as a conflict-free relationship, Baz.Honestly, I don’t think there should be.And just because it didn’t work out this time doesn’t mean it never will.”

Others might get a second chance at love.But not him.There’d never be another Sami.

“All right,” Aya said.“Enough sulking.”

A banjo played an upbeat melody over the quick beats of a kick drum—it took Baz three whole seconds to realize the music was coming from Aya’s phone, two more to clock she was dancing, and another five to understand that she was beckoning him to join.

Oh, hell no.He had sunk low enough.

“Come on.You gotta release the negative energy somehow,” she said.

Eevee jumped up too, making a point of wiggling her shoulders when the lead singer sang about it being time to move on.She grabbed his hands and dragged him to his feet, swaying back and forth offbeat.

He didn’t like country music—he was surprised Aya did—but he had to admit, this song was infectious.The rhythm tugged at Baz’s shoulders, made his leg twitch.

Aya and Eevee twirled each other around.Aya mimicked Eevee waving her hands above her head, Eevee swung her hips to the beat, and if that was all that Baz had to show for at nearly thirty, two people who cared enough about him to make fools out of themselves to cheer him up, then maybe he hadn’t gone completely wrong in life.

It took another song until the ridiculousness of dancing after his life had fallen apart had truly sunken in, but then, Baz couldn’t help but laugh at himself.

After more mockery about the state of Baz’s cabinets, Aya ordered pizza, and Baz proposed marriage to her because she might be the only non-relative to ever put up with him.She turned him down with a remark about how ‘a lavender marriage isso50s’ and they laughed and in the midst of it all, it was easier to believe things would get okay again, somehow.At least he wasn’t alone.That counted for a hell of a lot more than becoming untouchable—which was precisely what Sami had tried to tell him that morning on his balcony, wasn’t it?

God, he had seen through Baz’s bullshit so easily, and he had still stuck around, at least for a little while.Baz welcomed the sting in his heart like an old friend.Maybe… He tapped on his phone screen—Aya snatched it out of his hands and tossed it across the floor, far out of his reach.

“Don’t you dare.Stop torturing yourself.”

Fair enough.