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“Do not say the Q word, Derek Chang.”
“I’ve been an emergency nurse for ten years, Joni. You think I’m gonna say that word? No way.” He rolled and leaned his head on his elbow.
Joni smirked. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“No offense taken. We should go get dinner this week. I need to get out of that apartment. We haven’t since…”
“Since Olive left,” Joni said quietly. “You still sleeping at Dylan’s?”
“Yeah.” Derek turned onto his back and faced the ceiling, letting more thoughts spill out of him because it had been so long since he’d spoken to Olive without needing to keep certain secrets. He needed to talk to someone. “I thought about going to my mom’s for a few days, but she said the guest room’s spoken for right now. I mean, that’s not that weird. She’s hosted women in crisis over the years, sometimes kids too, through a program at her church for the victims of domestic violence. But if it’s that, why’s she being weirdly cagey? My sister—the one who’s still talking to me—also noticed and now’s basically on the verge of hiding in my mom’s shrubs with binoculars to figure out what’s going on with her, and I don’t want to get in the middle of that. My mom deserves her privacy if she wants it, you know? But I can admit it’s weird. And everything’s weird. And then there’s Dylan…”
“That’s a lot.” Joni took a breath. “What’s the trouble in roommate paradise?”
“Paradise?” Derek snorted. “Basically, having me there is hell for him. I think the guy hates me but is too nice to show it.”
“I thought you hated him.”
“I thought he…” Every time he remembered the hurt in Jake’s eyes, he hated him. He had been so focused on listening to Jake being so entirely un-Jake-like that he hadn’t really been hearing him.
He’d always seen Jake through his rose-colored crush goggles or through Olive’s little sister perspective of thinking Jake hung the moon. He was a fantastic brother, but even Olive had made jokes about Jake’s reckless behavior in other areas of life. Especially the dating and the drinking. Once, she’d even had to manage two boyfriends who had shown up at the town house on the same day when he was traveling.
Maybe Dylan hadn’t been the one who was the asshole.
He covered his face as that sunk in, fitting into the version of Dylan he’d gotten to know.
Shit.
Obviously Dylan hadn’t been the asshole in that situation.
It wasn’t lovestruck regret in Jake’s eyes. It was probably Derek’s own jealousy that had made him interpret it that way. Nope… it had been guilt. When Olive was guilty, she had the exact same body language.
“Where’d you go?” Joni asked.
“I thought…” Derek rubbed his forehead. “I think… I’m pretty sure I was wrong about Dylan.”
“What do you mean? Is he still fixing the stuff he said he’d fix?”
“Oh. No… not about that. And yeah. He’s doing a lot. He’s a machine.”
“So… what were you wrong about?”
“It’s complicated.”
Joni played with the end of her stethoscope. “Maybe if I knew why you inexplicably hated him in the first place I’d understand?”
“It’s really dumb.”
“It’s not dumb if it’s something that’s important to you, or something that impacted you.”
Derek emptied his lungs completely before speaking again. “I think he dated Jake. And I think things ended badly.”
“Whoa… Olive’s Jake?” Joni sat up.
He nodded.
“Small world.”
“I’d met his brothers a couple times before, but I never made the connection.”