“Um…” she said, not sure what to say.
He released her as the guy walked back into the room with a glass of water. “Brady said you might need this.”
Liz took it out of his hand. “Thank you.”
“Liz, I’d like to introduce you to my best friend, Chris. Chris, this is Liz, the girl I was telling you about,” Brady said.
She was meeting someone. She was actually meeting someone in Brady’s life—even if they were meeting in secret, in the middle of the night, at his place so that no one would know about it. This was good. This was a step. That meant that someone knew about her…someone important in his life. That must make her important in his life too.
“So nice to meet you,” she said, switching the glass over to her left hand and shaking with her right.
“Nice to meet you too.”
“He mentions you in his speeches,” she said, dropping her hand and thinking of the only time Brady had mentioned Chris around her.
Chris pinned Brady with a glare. “You’re still using that same old shit? Can’t you come up with something original? I moved to New York, just get over it,” he said, shaking his head, then turning back to Liz. “He’s such a sap.”
A sap. Liz would have never in a million years described Brady as sappy.
“People like to hear that I made the right choice by sticking around. You’re a good emotional trigger, or so the speechwriter tells me. Plus, you shouldn’t have moved so far away.”
“If I hadn’t moved, what would you have talked about?” Chris asked.
Brady shrugged. “I’m sure I could have thought of something else to make fun of you for.”
Liz stared between the two guys. She had never seen Brady act like this. Was he actually cracking jokes and laughing at himself? She had always thought he was pretty serious. Sometimes he was sarcastic with her, but that was dry humor…totally different from this.
“Seriously, convince your speechwriter to come up with new material. People are going to start noticing how full of shit you are,” Chris said as he walked past Brady and took a seat on the couch. Liz giggled and then covered her mouth quickly.
“I’ll pass along the message,” Brady said, shaking his head. He turned back to Liz with a bright, breathtaking smile on his face. He looked so happy and relaxed. “What were you laughing at, huh?”
“Oh nothing,” she said, unable to hold back her smile.
“That’s what I thought.” He reached out for her. “See what I have to deal with? Both of you thinking I’m full of shit.”
“Must mean it’s true if your best friend and your girl think so,” Chris said, lounging across the couch.
Liz’s breath caught. Had Chris just called her Brady’s girl? She looked up into Brady’s face and didn’t see any frustration or anger. He hadn’t bit back a retort. He wasn’t correcting Chris. What was happening?
“Must be,” Brady said, planting a kiss on her lips and then pushing her toward the couch.
She was too stunned to even respond. She just sat down.
Brady took the seat next to her and draped his arm over her shoulder. She had so many questions, not the least of which was Why was this okay? She wasn’t complaining; this was incredible. She just didn’t know that this was going to happen. Could she honestly think of a better surprise?
“So, Liz, Brady tells me you’re at UNC. What are you majoring in?” Chris asked, switching gears. He picked up a controller off of the table and tossed it to Brady, who caught it one-handed. “You don’t mind, do you?”
Liz shook her head. Video games. Seriously, who was this guy she had been seeing the last two months?
She broke out of her trance to answer Chris’s question. “Journalism. I work at the newspaper.”
“Nice. I used to read the kvetching column every day.”
“Oh dear Lord, you’re one of those?” she asked, unable to hold back.
Chris and Brady both laughed at that. “I didn’t care about much in college, so it wouldn’t surprise anyone that I’m one of those, as you said.” He turned on the XBOX and the icon blasted onto the enormous screen.
The guys set up their game as they talked, and soon they were trying to kill each other on the television screen.
“So, journalism, huh?” Chris said, bobbing and weaving with his player. “What made you choose that?”
“I’ve always wanted to be a reporter, since I was a little kid. Most people change what they want to do as they grow up, but my goals stayed pretty consistent,” she told him.
She couldn’t help staring at Brady instead of the screen. He was playing video games. His smile was contagious, and everything that he and Chris said to each other was a riot. They could badger each other and still laugh. It was very clear they had known each other for a long time.
She suddenly felt a loss grip her, as if she had missed a part of him for the past two months. He could very clearly enjoy himself and be normal when he felt completely comfortable and didn’t have to hold back.
“Nice. I changed majors about ten times in college. Ended up getting a business degree like Brady. Professors hated having us in classes together,” Chris told her.
“I can see that. You two seem like you could get in a lot of trouble together.”
“Wait a minute,” Brady said. “Professors hated having you in class. They didn’t have a problem with me.”
“Don’t believe everything he tells you. He f**ked up as much in college as the rest of us,” Chris said as Brady grumbled curse words under his breath.
Liz laughed again. “I bet he did.”
“Seriously don’t believe him,” Brady whispered into her ear. His lip brushed against her earlobe and she shivered.
“Are you from the area then?” Chris asked.
“No, my family lives in Tampa. My dad’s a professor at South Florida,” she told them.
“Your dad is a professor?” Brady asked, stopping his movements on the controller and turning to look at her. Chris proceeded to kill Brady’s character off.
“Yeah,” she said, staring up into his dark, intense eyes.
“I didn’t know that.”
“You never asked.”
“What does he teach?” Brady asked, suddenly very interested.
“Calculus primarily.”
“Huh. And you’re not a math person?” he asked.
“I’m a Morehead scholar. I’m perfectly fine at math. It’s just not my area of interest,” she told him diplomatically.