Taylor sat on Isaac’s couch with his knees pulled tight against his chest. Isaac was sitting at the other end pretending to watch “Casino Royale,” but really watching Taylor out the corner of his eye the entire time, something Taylor was entirely aware of but too mentally exhausted to mention. In the day that had passed since his encounter with Quin in her shop, Taylor had done a lot of street roaming and a lot of staring blankly into space which had prompted Isaac to drag him over for dinner and a movie. Zac was due to come over at any time and Becky was keeping herself busy elsewhere in the apartment so the guys could do their best to fix whatever was wrong with Taylor.
An hour into the movie, Isaac sighed heavily and pressed pause on the remote.
“What is your problem?” he demanded.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Taylor replied, obviously an automatic response he had been preparing.
“Are you going to make me beat it out of you or what?” Isaac asked, half giving him a hard time and half meaning every word. He was about two minutes away from forcibly shaking his younger brother until he told him what had happened. Never in their entire lives had he seen Taylor act so bizarrely and frankly, he was sick of it. It was either something Taylor needed to talk about or something Taylor needed to seek professional treatment for and Isaac hoped and believed wholeheartedly that it was the former.
Zac came in the apartment with the sacks of Chinese food a few moments later and made his way immediately into the living room where he found his older brothers sitting there in silence.
“I come bearing Chinese goodness,” he said meekly, setting the bags down in the middle of the table before sitting down beside it on the side opposite the couch so he could have a good view of whatever was happening between Taylor and Isaac.
“Did you get my Egg Drop Soup?” Isaac asked.
“Have I ever forgotten your stupid soup?” Zac retorted, prompting Isaac to huff and start digging in the bags for his requested items, “I got you Broccoli Chicken, Tay, since you wouldn’t tell us what you wanted.”
“I don’t want anything,” Taylor said simply, staring at the paused image on the screen.
“Well you’re eating anyway so just shut up and dig in,” Isaac ordered, shoving the little white carton at Taylor and staring at him until Taylor groaned complainingly like a little kid before opening the box and eating some small bites to appease them. He didn’t mean to act like such a jerk, but all he wanted was to be left alone with his thoughts.
In the last twenty-four hours, his entire life had turned upside-down and his brothers just didn’t seem to understand that he had a process he needed to go through in order to make sense of it all. No, they had to be pushy and attempt to force him into strained and awkward conversations in which he wasn’t ready to participate. Once he had eaten about half of the container, he set it down and excused himself to go to the bathroom. He didn’t have to go, but wanted a few minutes to be away from them and the sounds of their chewing so he could think.
With slightly shaking hands, he boosted himself up onto the bathroom counter where he sat with his back against the wall and his feet pressed firmly into the cool black granite. Once the exhaust fan was on, officially silencing any sounds the rest of the apartment was emitting, he could finally think.
The entire time he’d been talking to Quin, he hadn’t had the slightest idea what he was saying to her. He was a man without a plan, trying to do his best to reach his next goal, which seemed to be getting Quin to go to lunch with him, or getting to know her better at the very least. She was reluctant to the point that he didn’t buy her resistance for a moment. He knew that she was resisting because she thought it was the right thing to do, not because she didn’t want to go anywhere with him or get to know him better. But, she had resisted and said some fairly nasty things in the process. And while he wanted to be upset with her for calling him impatient, which he knew he was, and demanding, which he knew he most certainly was at times, he couldn’t. He couldn’t because the entire time she was standing there telling him all the reasons why they couldn’t go to lunch together, all he had been able to think about was how beautiful her mouth was when it moved to form the words he lips were speaking and how musical her voice sounded when inflected with a series of varying emotions.
Taylor had never found another woman to be intriguing enough to want more than one night with them. Most of them had turned out to be needy or clingy or flat out bat-shit crazy, but Quin was none of those things. She didn’t need him at all, for anything. He was entirely sure of that. And maybe, he mused, that was why he found her so intoxicating. His problem with most women was that they expected him to take care of them even during a short night together, but Quin wanted the exact opposite. She wanted to be left alone to her own devices and Taylor wanted the same thing.
When she had been telling him all of the things she didn’t want, obviously assuming he did want them, all he could think about was how he didn’t, how terribly she was misjudging his intentions and all he had wanted was to take her out to lunch so they could talk. He had been practicing what he was going to say to her in his head as he stood there staring at her with his arms folded defensively when the words in his mind had started to turn on him. They had begun to take their own path and it had become more of a declaration that the definitive statement he had been hoping for. While he had stood there and allowed his brain a minute to think, things had become crystal clear. They were both personally opposed to the same things. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. He had been thrown into a state of near depression when she had left him the morning after a night of incredible sex and companionship. Isaac had been right all along; the stupid big brother trait that never seemed to fail. Taylor had realized in that moment that he did have feelings for Quin. But, having never been there before in his entire life, he had absolutely no idea what that meant.
Once he had been through all of these thoughts again, reorganizing them and preparing them for the undoubtedly lengthy conversation that was sure to follow once he got his brothers started on the topic, he took a deep breath and looked at himself reassuringly in the mirror for several moments before turning on the shiny surface and sliding to the floor. He walked slowly down the hallway and went immediately back to his seat on the couch, speaking before they had the chance to interrupt or he had the chance to change his mind.
“I have feelings for Quin,” Taylor told them.
“Duh,” Zac rolled his eyes, earning a chopstick to the face from Taylor.
“And?” Isaac asked, knowing that Taylor wasn’t finished and ignoring Zac altogether.
“And I don’t know what to do,” he took a deep breath and swallowed hard before saying the words he had sworn he would never in his entire life say to them, “I need your help.” He didn’t want to ask his brothers for relationship advice, but they were the only people who would actually listen to him and understand. And there was the fact that they had both been in long-term relationships and most of Taylor’s other friends were as promiscuous as Taylor had always been.
“Say the magic word?” Zac teased.
“Fuck off and die,” Taylor spat.
“That was more like three words,” Zac said.
“Try four. God damn it,” Taylor sighed, “You know what, forget it.” He tried to stand but found himself held in place by Isaac’s hand on his arm.
“You really have feelings for her?” Isaac asked, prompting Taylor to nod, “How do you know?”
“Well, I’ve never felt this way about anyone before and I hardly even know her. I think she’s beautiful and interesting. She’s smart, she’s successful on her own so I know she doesn’t need me or my money and that’s not why she slept with me. And, I don’t know… ever since I first saw her at Fuse, she’s the only woman I’ve thought about at all. Oh, and the small fact that every time she turns me down I feel like I’m going to fucking die.” Isaac and Zac shared a look.
“Okay, we’ll help,” Isaac said.