More Than Meets The Eye

Chapter Three

Makena and I both got off work at two a.m. We’d each been sent home with huge slices of cake, and my friend held a plastic-wrapped paper plate in each hand as I drove us across town.

When we reached the Mission District, I was surprised by how many people were out and about, until I remembered it was Friday night. All the bars had just closed, and there were a lot of them along this particular stretch of Sixteenth Street.

Makena glanced at a group of college-age women dancing on the sidewalk. “I don’t think I was ever that young,” she murmured. She was thirty-eight, but she could have easily blended in with the club crowd. When I told her that, she said, “Yeah, no thanks. That was never my scene.”

“Same. When we turned twenty-one, Sam and I started hanging out at a sports bar in my neighborhood, but we were never big partiers.”

She turned to study my profile. “Speaking of your best friend, are we going to talk about why you picked up an extra shift on your birthday? Because that looked an awful lot like you were trying to avoid spending time with him and your brother.”

“I see them all the time. In fact, tomorrow they’re making me brunch.”

“But you didn’t want to see them today, did you? Was that a birthday gift to yourself?”

I sighed. “You’re way too perceptive.”

“It’s a gift.”

She was waiting for me to say something, and finally I admitted, “Okay, yes. You’re right. I didn’t want to spend my birthday smiling and pretending to be happy about the fact that my best friend and my brother are a couple, and I’m now a third wheel. I’m really sick of feeling like this. They got together two months ago, so why can’t I just accept it and move on?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because it ripped your heart out when your best friend, who you’d secretly had a crush on for years, fell in love with your younger brother instead of you? That had to hurt like hell, especially since you’d always thought Sam was straight. But no, he just didn’t want you.”

“I feel so much better now,” I muttered. “Thank you for that.”

“I don’t mean to be insensitive. But I think we need to drag this out into the light and call it like it is, you know? That’s the only way you’re going to move on.”

“You’re right. I feel like such an asshole, though. Sam and Vince mean everything to me, and I really am glad they fell in love. They’re so happy now, and that’s exactly what I want for both of them.”

“Of course you do,” she said. “But at the same time, it’s okay to admit it hurt when Sam didn’t pick you. It’s even okay to admit you’re jealous of your brother.”

“I don’t want to be like that, though. It’s not who I am.”

“No, you’re always Mr. Nice Guy. I know you pride yourself on being this cheerful, easy-going person. It’s why everyone loves you, including all our patients. But you’re allowed to have some negative feelings, Xander. You were hurt when Sam and Vince got together, even though you love them. It was always the three of you, for more than half your life. Hell, you even moved out here from St. Louis as a trio, that’s how close you were. It doesn’t make you a bad person to admit you’re a little pissed off now.”

I shook my head. “I’m not pissed off. I was at first, but I got over it.”

“Well, it’s okay to feel sad and lonely then.”

“You’re making me sound pathetic,” I grumbled as I slowly pulled into the short driveway of Makena’s hot pink Victorian. I had to get the front of my old Honda Civic within an inch of the garage door, because if any part of it stuck out over the sidewalk, it was sure to earn me a parking ticket.