She shook her head. “It’s fine.”
It was hard to not feel horrible talking about guys in front of Kate.
There was that forced smile again. “Spill.”
God, I loved her. She’d been a tough kid, and at twenty-one, she was still the bravest person I knew.
I sucked in a deep breath, ours the kind of relationship where I didn’t even need to say that this was all a secret. Sister bond and all that. They knew.
“I kissed one of my law school professors.”
Kate had the biggest reaction, which wasn’t surprising considering she’d known a version of me who definitely didn’t do things like that. Unfortunately, my announcement caught her mid–mimosa sip and the orange liquid spurted onto my dark leather couch. She grabbed a napkin from the tray on the ottoman, cleaning up the mess with a pointed smile.
I was notorious for being a neat freak.
The spill taken care of, Kate turned her attention back to me. “Sorry, but when my professors come to mind, kissing is the last thing I’d want to do with them.” She was in the final year of her political science undergrad at Georgetown. “Please tell me he’s not seventy and bald.”
I snorted. “He’s definitely not seventy and bald. He’s hot. Seriously hot.”
“So how was it?” Jackie interjected. “I need more details.”
Kate frowned. “Did he come on to you?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I kind of jumped him.”
Kate gaped at me. “You jumped him?” I nodded. “You jumped him?” she repeated.
I laughed. “You can say it as many times as you’d like, but that won’t make it any less true.”
Her eyes narrowed. “It took you six dates before you even kissed Thom.”
“I was fifteen,” I protested. “And I’d never been kissed before. And if you’re going to bring up Thom, you can also add in the fact that clearly he wasn’t dying to kiss me.”
Kate winced. “True.”
“But you like this guy, right?” Jackie asked.
“Yes. Sort of. It’s complicated.”
Kate shook her head like Martians had invaded my body. “Since when do you do complicated? By choice?”
“I don’t.”
Jackie’s gaze darted back and forth between me and Kate as if she were trying to decipher our relationship. These were the moments when I remembered that as much as Jackie had slid into the role of sister with relative ease, there was a lifetime of memories and experiences that she’d missed out on.
“But you kissed your professor,” Jackie interjected. “So ergo, complicated.”
Kate grinned. “Ergo?”
Jackie rolled her eyes, her voice teasing. “Stop giving me shit so we can get to the good stuff, please. Let’s start with what it was about him that made Blair jump him.”
That was the easy part.
“His voice. His eyes. His confidence. The way he carries himself. His great hair. How scarily intelligent he is.” I gulped down the rest of my mimosa. “I told him I was confused in my con law class and he actually explained the Commerce Clause to me. So if I’m going to go with an excuse,” for the second kiss, at least, “it’s definitely going to be, the Commerce Clause made me do it.”
Jackie snagged another mini-croissant. “Sounds legit to me. What’s his name?”
“Gray.”
“Ooh good name. And he’s cute?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t go with cute.” I searched for the right word and still felt like I came up short. “He’s intense. In a way that makes you think you have to kiss him. Even when you shouldn’t.”
“Because he’s your professor,” Kate said, her voice tinged with judgment, her eyes full of worry.
“Partly. There’s more. He’s kind of a mess,” I admitted, feeling like saying it aloud made it that much more real. I knew it, I’d seen it, I’d heard it, and yet here I was.
“How?” Kate interjected. I might have been two years older, but she had a hell of a protective streak.
“He has some baggage. He was married.” Jackie and Kate just stared at me. “Divorced now. There were some girls when they were separated. And some substance abuse issues.” I sort of ran the last words together as if that would hide the ugly truth.
Kate shot that hope down instantly.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
I winced. “I told you it was bad. He didn’t cheat when he was married, but when he was separated, and after, apparently he went a little off the rails. And before that, during, and after, he had some substance abuse issues. But he’s clean now.”
Kate shook her head. “Fuck that. You just had a guy cheat on you. At your wedding. Getting involved with another cheater, even if they were separated, even if you are just kissing one, is stupid.”
I scowled at her. “Thanks. I kind of realized that when I told you things were messy.”
She made a face like she’d swallowed something foul. “I expected you to know better.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why? Because I never get to take a risk or make mistakes? Because I’m not supposed to feel something as simple as attraction and act on it? I didn’t say I was marrying the guy. I didn’t even say I was dating him. I just said that I kissed him and things were complicated.”
“He’s going to hurt you.”
The image of Gray’s face in the car, the look in his eyes, hit me again. “You don’t know that.”
“Once a cheater, always a cheater,” Kate snapped while Jackie looked on, an uncomfortable expression on her face.
She’d been raised an only child, so I figured she was completely unprepared for a knockdown, drag-out sister fight.
“You don’t think that’s a little closed-minded?” I challenged. “They were separated. They weren’t actually together.”
“Please,” Kate scoffed. “Tell me you didn’t have the same thought.”
She was right; I’d had the same thought. And now I was vaguely ashamed of it.
“He made a mistake, Kate. A huge mistake. I’m not saying I feel sorry for him or that he didn’t deserve the consequences of his actions. But at what point does that end? Should we have him in the stocks at noon? Ask him to self-flagellate? Should I really judge him for something in his past that he’s trying to put behind him?”
“A good man doesn’t cheat,” she said, her lips in the stubborn line I recognized from our childhood. “In any way. Period. If you’re willing to forgive Gray his infidelity, what would you say about Thom? He cheated on you on your wedding day, your professor cheated on his wife. How are they any different?”
“Is it really cheating if they were separated?” I countered.
“Would you call it cheating if it had happened to you?”
Kate had the strongest sense of justice of anyone I knew. She was determined to work in intelligence after graduation—I’d bought her a spy kit as a joke for Christmas last year—but if anything, she would have been a better fit for law school than I was. I hated conflict with every fiber of my being, whereas Kate jumped into battle with her sword ready.
She didn’t sugarcoat anything, not even with someone she loved, and she had an annoying habit of being right.
“Thom hasn’t apologized for what he did. For all I know, he isn’t sorry at all.”
Okay, maybe I wasn’t taking his calls, but I just didn’t know what was left to say. I figured sex on our wedding day said it all.
“So remorse makes it okay?”
Jesus, she really should reconsider her future career path. She’d kill in a courtroom. Being on the receiving end of this was kind of torture.
“I think there’s a difference between doing something wrong and being sorry for it, and doing something wrong and not giving a shit and continuing to screw people over,” I snapped, my voice rising with each word. There was something about fighting with my sister—no one could push my buttons like Kate.