“I cannot believe you pulled this off!” Brandon was saying as we sat on the sofa in his apartment, a pizza on the coffee table in front of us. If you really are what you eat, then I’m dating a slice of pepperoni with extra cheese.
“Me neither,” I admitted, dusting my hands off on a napkin. The TV was on, but we weren’t really watching it. The fact that it was almost 7:00 in the evening and I wasn’t counting the minutes until I had to rush back downstairs before curfew was very freeing. Also, we had a lot to talk about. “Hannah will be checking on me every night, though. I’m not sure if she’ll actually come over or just request visuals so she can make sure I’m home.”
“Well, that’s no big deal. You’ve been making it back by 11:00 every evening anyhow.”
“True.” I didn’t think that was going to be a problem, but I know Hannah pretty well, and it did make me slightly nervous to know she was the one who’d be checking on me. If it had been just about anyone else, I would’ve had some wiggle room, but not with Aaron’s second in command.
There was something else I needed to talk to Brandon about, and I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. I’d already tried with my “serious face” twice, and he hadn’t caught on, so once he was done inhaling his sixth slice, I cleared my throat and said, “We need to talk about something else.”
“Oh, no,” he said, wiping his mouth. “It’s never good when your girlfriend says that.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Yeah. You should be worried. I’m probably about to dump you.”
“You never know. You are the hottest girl here.”
I looked around the room. “I’m the only girl here.”
“I mean at LIGHTS. In the world, for that matter.”
I rolled my eyes again. “It’s not that. It’s something else.” He turned around so he was facing me squarely now, his knee up on the couch between us, and I took a deep breath. “You know how you’ve been thinking your dad has been acting strangely lately?”
His eyebrows knit together. “Yeah....”
“Well, I think I know why. I didn’t find out on purpose, but I’m pretty sure I know what he’s been up to just the same.”
He looked really concerned now, and I was hoping by the time I finished telling him, he’d feel better than he did at that moment. “What is it?”
“This morning, when Aaron came to the gym to get me, he asked Aurora if we could use her office, and at first she said okay, but then she came running down the hallway after us to stop us and ask us to use Shane’s instead. She said her office was too messy.”
“Okay....”
“I couldn’t just let that go. That seemed like a lame excuse for us not to use her office. So I popped into her head.” He was looking at me like that wasn’t a very good reason for me to pop into her head, either. So I tried to further explain. “I mean, it didn’t seem very likely that that was the true explanation for what she was trying to hide.”
“I agree. That’s strange.” I could tell he was trying to figure out what this had to do with his dad.
“So... in her thoughts... I saw that your dad was waiting in the office for her.”
Brandon cocked his head to the side and looked at me for a long while. He didn’t say anything for so long, I wasn’t sure if I should wave my hand in front of his face or clap a couple of times. Eventually, he simply asked, “Why?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I didn’t think I should probe any deeper. There’s trying to answer a question, after all, and then there’s just being nosy.” I hoped he didn’t go to the trouble to explain to me that what I had done was both. “But... I would guess that maybe something is going on between them. Like, maybe they’re dating.”
“Aurora?” Brandon said, sitting up straight, like that hadn’t occurred to him. I was certain by his initial reaction it had. “No way.”
“No? Why not?”
“Because... she isn’t my dad’s type. And... he would tell me if he was dating someone.”
“Maybe he would tell you, and maybe he wouldn’t. I have no idea what type of girl your dad likes, but Aurora has red hair, and so does your mom.”
“My mom has strawberry-blonde hair, kinda like Hannah. If you said my dad was dating Hannah, I might think it was a possibility. But not Aurora.”
“She’s a tough cookie. Tall, capable. She can be funny. I can see Elliott liking her.”
“No.”
I realized then there was something else, something he wasn’t willing to tell me, that made him say his dad wasn’t dating Aurora. And I got the impression he would’ve had the same reaction if I had said I thought his dad was dating Hannah—or anyone else. “Okay, I said, shrugging. “I just thought it was weird.”
“It’s totally weird.” At least Brandon agreed with that much. “But it’s not because they’re dating. Maybe he had to ask her a question. Or maybe she wanted him to help with training. He does that sometimes.”
I could never remember a time when Elliott helped with training, and I’d been attending in some capacity or another for a long time. “Maybe so.”
“Nah, I’m sure he’s not interested in Aurora.”
“Okay,” I said again. I was trying not to see this as a personal attack against my former trainer and friend because I didn’t think that’s what Brandon was agitated about. The thought crossed my mind that I could pop into his head and see, but I really do try not to do that. Mostly. He’d give himself away eventually. He always did.
Brandon and I settled back into the couch, and he ate another slice of pizza while we stared blankly at the television set. Part of me wished Elliott would just come home right now so we could ask him. But that would be too easy.