All Chapters of Falling for My Best Friend's Brother: Chapter 351 - Chapter 360

404 Chapters

351: Meeting Gerald

Avery's POVGerald was behind the counter when I came in after my class. I wanted to wait till after the game to go to him, but I have some free time before the game and decided to go over.He looked up and said, "There she is," which was a good sign of a possible positive response."Pat said you were back Monday.""Yea I took a few days and was back by Monday," he said. "I had a week off. My back." He straightened slightly to demonstrate it. It looked mostly right. "Pat said you came in. Said you asked about paid hours.""I did. I need to talk to you about it properly if you have ten minutes.""Yes of course I do," he said. He came out from behind the counter, took the chair across from me, and put his hands flat on his laps the way he did when he was prepared to listen. "Talk.""I lost my other job," I said. "The one I was doing at the club. It is done. The income is gone and I have not replaced it. I have bills due in three days and I am three hundred dollars short." I kept my voic

352: Stay in silence

Liam's POVWe won by ten points.It wasn't because the other team was weak. But because Tate played the best game of his season on the offensive line and gave me time I had not had in the last three games and I used every second of it. By the final quarter we had built something the other team could not recover from.I walked off the field, went to the changing room, took my helmet off, and looked at the floor.It was a good win. The kind that felt clean all the way through rather than scraped together at the end. I should have felt what I usually felt after good wins, which was the physical satisfaction of doing a hard thing well. I felt it though. It was there, beneath everything else. It was just not the loudest feeling in the room.The rest of the team came in around me and the changing room became the usual noise of a win. Relief and laughter and someone's music and the release of men who had been locked inside a game for ninety minutes and were now allowed to be normal again.I

353: Date

Avery's POVI couldn't bear to stay inside my house doing nothing anymore, especially as Jade, and Liam, who I would usually be with after game days weren't talking to me.I decided to go back to school to catch up on some of my academic work. I ran into Ethan on the way, which was not our usual arrangement."I was hoping I would catch you," Ethan said."You did catch me. I have fifteen minutes before my next thing.""I do not need fifteen minutes," he said. "I need about thirty seconds and then you can go."I looked at him. "Go on.""I want to take you for coffee properly," he said. "Not the campus shop where we happen to end up because we are both there anyway. An actual place. Saturday evening. Seven o'clock. There is a café on Milton Street that does not close at nine like everywhere else on this campus does."I did not say anything.He noticed the pause. "You do not have to answer right now," he said. "I know that is a different question from are you at the coffee shop today.""

354: I like you

Avery's POVThe café on Milton Street had a window table free and Ethan was already at it when I arrived at four minutes past seven."You made it," he said, standing to pull out the chair opposite him, which was more formal than anything from the campus shop."You said seven. I am only four minutes late.""I was starting to worry you had changed your mind," he said."I do not do that. If I say yes, I show up.""Good to know," he said, and settled back.The café was warmer than the campus shop and quieter. They had proper menus and table service rather than a counter to queue at. Ethan ordered a filter coffee. I ordered the same because reading the whole menu felt like more effort than I had in me."How was the rest of your day?" he asked."Long. I started a new job. Well, an old volunteer position that became a real job. Same place, different arrangement.""That is good news," he said. "Congratulations.""It does not pay much. But it is honest and it is steady.""Those are two things

355: Another run in

Liam's POVShe was outside the sports centre when I came out of my training for the day.She was not waiting exactly. She was standing near the entrance with her bag over one shoulder and two cups in her hands, the way she had stood on the running path days ago, except this time it did not feel like a coincidence and neither of us pretended it was."You look like you need this," she said, holding one cup out.I took it."Thank you.""You are welcome," she said.We started walking without deciding where, just moving rather than standing in the cold. She fell into step beside me.The thing about Zoey was that she had always been easy to be around. Even when things between us had been complicated, her physical presence had never been something he had to work on. It was just there, like background warmth. I had forgotten that about her in the months since the relationship ended, the way you forgot the good parts of something when the ending was what stuck. The walk was reminding me."Lon

356: Checking

Avery's POVEthan and I were back at the usual table on Wednesday, the campus shop, the outlet, the two of us working through our own reading with occasional comments thrown across.It had settled into something after our date at the place on Milton Street. Not smaller. Just clearer. He knew where things stood and so did I and the table was easier for both of us because neither of us was thinking about an unspoken question anymore. It was the easiest kind of company. Shared space with shared purpose, no acting required from either side. I had not had enough of that lately."How is the market analysis essay going?" he asked."Slowly. I keep starting the same paragraph and deleting it.""What is wrong with it?" he asked."Nothing is wrong with it. It just does not feel finished even when it technically is.""That is called being a perfectionist," he said. "I have the opposite problem. Mine feels finished when it is nowhere near finished.""That sounds worse.""It is much worse," he sa

357: Together

Jade's POVIt had been almost another week since I stood on the path between our houses and told Avery I needed space.I had kept to it. Not out of stubbornness. Out of the honest recognition that the Jade who would have gone back to her house after a few days was not ready and pretending otherwise would have meant having the conversation twice, badly, instead of once, properly. I had watched her from a distance the way you watched someone you loved when you were not ready to be close to them. Her car in the driveway some mornings, gone by the time I left for my lectures. The kitchen light on some evenings when I got home from the library.I had also, in the same three weeks space between us, started talking to Ethan more.Not deliberately building anything. Just the ordinary accumulation of two people who shared a module and had started saying hello properly instead of the nothing they had been. A conversation at the water dispenser led to a conversation before the lecture, which h

358: Friends

Avery's POVWe were not at the campus shop this time. Ethan had suggested the noodle place near the south entrance because he was tired of the same coffee. I had said yes because a bowl of noodles sounded like an improvement over most of my evenings so far.We got a table by the door and he ordered before I had finished reading the menu, the way he always did, and I ordered the same thing because deciding was more effort than I had available tonight."You look tired," he said."I am tired. Practice ran long. Vega wanted the pyramid section run six times instead of four.""Did it improve?" he asked."Marginally. Enough that she let us go home.""Small victories," he said."I will take them."The food arrived and we ate and the conversation moved the way it always moved between us now, easy and unforced, covering the essay deadline and his sister's visit next month and a professor neither of us could stand."Can I ask you something, and you can tell me if it is a strange question.""Go

359: same person

Avery's POVI had a big shocker.Jade knocked on my door on Saturday afternoon.I opened it and stood there for a second because I had not expected her, not after three weeks of silence, not without warning, and she stood on the step with her hands in her jacket pockets and an expression that was hard to read."Can I come in?" she asked."Yes. Of course." I said as I stepped aside from the door.She came in and we went to the kitchen the way we always did. She took a chair and I settled across from her and neither of us said anything."I am not ready to talk about everything," she said. "I want to be clear about that before we start. The Scarlett thing. I am not there yet.""Okay. I am not going to push you.""I know," she said. "I have noticed that. You have not texted every day. You have not shown up at my door. You gave me the space I asked for and I appreciate it more than I have said.""You are here now. That is enough for today."She nodded and looked at the table."I wanted to

360: Less like grief

Liam's POVI saw her one morning outside the community centre.It was not planned. I had gone to get gas at the station across the road from it and I was walking back to my car when I saw her come out of the side door in an apron, tying her hair back, and a second passed where neither of us moved.She saw me.I saw her.Three weeks of silence hung between us in that half second and neither of us broke it. She looked tired like she hadn't been sleeping much and was working her ass off. She looked like someone who had been deep in thoughts for a long time. I almost said her name.I did not.She got into her car. I stood by the gas station with my hand on my car door and did not move for a full minute.I drove to training instead of going home.Reyes ran us through a light session, recovery work mostly, and I went through the motions without much thought. Afterwards I stayed in the changing room longer than I needed to because I was not ready to be anywhere else yet.Tate found me there

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