My Best Friend’s Brother

“I still have no idea how you convinced that guy!”

“I know. I still can’t believe he fell for it.”

We are laughing in the elevator, then Colin looks at me for a long time, and I question:

“What?”

He says:

“I was missing you so much.”

I can’t help but melt and hold his face with both hands and give him the long, deep kiss on the lips that I have missed so much these past two months.

I pull away from him and look into his eyes, trying to keep my breathing regular. Then I say:

“I was missing you a lot too.”

…

Colin proposed to me last night in a Japanese restaurant that I love.

I bet he got this information from Julie, and we always go there on the weekends that she doesn’t go out with Brennan, which is not rare.

We are in the hallway leading to my apartment. We look at each other and start laughing again.

Then a familiar, annoying voice gets in the way when it says:

“Hey, could you two keep it down, please? People want to sleep here!”

Julie’s brother is shirtless, with his hair all messed up and the door ajar, where you can see a mattress on the living room floor and a girl wrapped in the sheets.

Julie is certainly not at home. He looks at me, then at Colin, and closes the door again. I feel like killing him for the second time after meeting him five months ago.

Five months ago.

It’s six in the morning, and my phone vibrates with the arrival of a new message.

“Damn it! Who can it be at this hour?”ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

I pull out my sheets with my eyes closed and look for my cell phone that always stays on the nightstand next to my bed.

“Oh, shit!”

I remember that I left it on the living room table last night. I get up like a zombie with my eyes still closed and guide myself into the dark because if my visions come in contact with the light, it will be hard to sleep again.

I hope it’s not Chantal, and I share an apartment with a girl who loves to sleep outside and keeps forgetting the key.

Anyway, I reach the living room table and press a button on the cell phone to read the last message, and my vision is still a little blurred.

But I can see that it’s from Julie asking me to come to her apartment, she wasn’t doing very well last night, so I go back to my room and take a hobby and go towards her apartment, which is a few meters away from mine.

“Okay, I’m going!”

Julie is standing in the doorway of her apartment with her nose and eyes red from a cold.

“I love you, love you, love you! I would hug you, Molly, but I don’t want to make you sick.”

I tell her I better go back to bed and change my plans to sleep late on a Saturday to pick up Julie’s brother from the airport.

I go back to my apartment, shower quickly, wear dark jeans and a white t-shirt, wear some sneakers, and grab my keys from the coffee table in the living room.

I get in my car and drive towards the airport, cursing Julie’s brother for taking this flight that arrives so early.

The traffic doesn’t cooperate, and I arrive at the airport at eight-thirty in the morning. Julie gave me a picture of him, but there is just a guy sitting on the shoulder of the parking lot with black clothes and messy hair that makes him charming, and he has Julie’s features, white skin, and straight black hair.

He doesn’t look pleased. I park my car a few feet away, get down, and walk toward him.

I took the photo that Julie handed me just in case. I look at the picture and then at him, but I can’t find any resemblance. As no one is around, I conclude that it must be him. I get closer and question:

“Are you Chris?”

I smile at him to see if it helps improve his face’s bad mood. I would look like this too if I had been alone in an airport since five in the morning. He looks at me, surprised, and says, answering and asking at the same time:

“Maybe. Do you want me to be?”

I don’t quite understand whether it is irony or humor in his voice. But, I decided to let it go and say:

“I am Molly, Julie’s friend.”

I hold out my hand that he doesn’t even bother to shake.

“Okay.”

Maybe people in California don’t have this custom of shaking hands in an introduction, or perhaps he’s highly annoyed, and I let it go again.

He stands up, and I notice that he is tall and has a well-defined body that doesn’t remind me one bit of the skinny guy in the picture Julie gave me. He starts to collect his bags and says:

“Where is Julie?”

As I approach him to help him with the bags, I smell a strong odor of alcohol. He lifts a suitcase and throws himself off balance, and almost falls. I step back and watch him take a bottle from his coat pocket, bring it to his mouth and take a long sip.

“Oh my God! Are you drunk?”

He gives me an unfriendly look and says:

“So what?”

“It’s 8:30 in the morning!”

“I know.”

He raises his wrist where there is a watch, swings it close to my face, and says:

“It’s to know the time that I bought it.”

But why is he being such a jerk? I take a deep breath. There is silence.

As soon as he has secured all the bags, we walk toward my car.