Seven

Chris

He was putting the loaf of bread he had used for his morning toast back in the pantry when his little sister came into the kitchen.

"Hey," she said brightly, scooting next to him to sit on one of the kitchen stools.

Chris glanced at her warily. Kayla, the baby of the family and the only girl, and therefore the one most likely to get her way in the family, was no doubt here with a purpose. She did not normally look so bright and cheery this early in the morning over winter break. In fact, she was rarely up this early in the morning when she was on vacation.

He had a strong suspicion that his siblings had all discussed it and decided Kayla should be the one to approach him. They had all been back for a couple of days now, and even though his younger brother Andrew joked around as usual, and Kayla hummed Christmas songs as she walked around the house, and Ryan, the oldest, only popped in every now and then to say hi since he had a newborn baby to take care of, Chris knew they had noticed.

"What's up, Kayla?" he said, turning to face her, mentally steeling himself for what was to come. Best to get straight to the point.

But Kayla was never one to cut right to the meat of it when the conversation was uncomfortable. He thought that this must have been why the others had put her up to it. She was the most delicate about this sort of stuff - and the person he was least likely to snap at or be defensive around.

"So…we were thinking it would be nice to go out to lunch today, the four of us," she said, still in that bright, cheerful tone. "You know, especially since mom and dad are out until dinner."

Chris felt the corners of his lips tugging upward into a smile, in spite of himself. This was so typical of his sister. She was always trying to get everyone to hang out.

He considered what she had said. Their parents were out for the day visiting some of their friends over in Greenwich, and it was just Kayla, Andrew, and him in the house.

It was so hard to get the four of them together now that they were all adults. Even though Kayla and Andrew and Ryan all still lived in New York, Ryan had his own family now, and of course Chris could only come for holidays and special weekends.

But that would change soon. Now that school was ending soon - he would be coming back to New York. There was nothing holding him to Boston.

No one holding him to Boston.

Chris tried not to dwell on that thought. Instead, he turned back to his little sister. "Even Ryan?"

Kayla nodded happily. "Yup - he said he was free if we all were!"

Man they must have really planned this in advance.

Chris raised an eyebrow. "Just the four of us? Or the four of us and the SOs?"

His sister blinked, as if caught by surprise. He was getting closer. He thought it was funny that she was here doing the intervention and he was the one leading her closer to the topic she wanted to bring up.

But he had always been one to address things more head on.

"No SOs," she said slowly, although her eyes had grown alert now. She still kept her tone casual and neutral. "You know, Nick is back home visiting his family, and Olivia's aunt is having a thing that Ryan said he could get out of. And Andrew…" she trailed off. "Well, you know Andrew's love life is always a little complicated."

Of course it was. Chris would usually pry a little more if he was in the mood. He and Andrew were closest in age out of the four of them, and as the two middle children they had always had a bit of competition and instigation lurking behind all their interactions.

But this time, he wasn't in the mood.

"Just the four of us then," he reiterated her statement. It would be nice. It had been a long time since the four of them had really hung out or had a meal together. Again, he marveled at the planning and logistics it must have taken to get this to work out. They must be quite worried.

"What's the occasion?" he asked, leading her to the water.

But Kayla was still dancing around the bait. "No occasion," she smiled, popping off her chair. "Well, it's settled then! Let's go to that new Thai place on the Lower East Side. You know - the one mom mentioned the other day."

She moved to leave the kitchen, and Chris thought that the intervention must be saved for lunchtime with all of them. It was a shame, because he'd almost rather get it over with now. It would almost certainly be worse with more of them trying to give him advice. Advice he didn't necessarily want.

But then Kayla stopped, having taken just a few steps away from him, and then she turned back.

"Maybe it will help you to stop being so moody," she said, her hands fidgeting with the hem of her sweater, but her face determined nevertheless.

In their family, Chris was the most sure of himself out of the four of them. Andrew was the most confident, but Chris was the most sure of himself. And because of that, he rarely lived with any regrets, and he rarely was perturbed enough to be described as moody.

"You guys all talked about it, huh," he said, the corner of his mouth tilting up in reluctant acknowledgement. He did feel somewhat pleased they all cared so much.

"Well, it's hard not to notice," Kayla retorted. "You've just been kind of stalking around the house like a dark cloud. You haven't tried to get under Andrew's skin even once this break, and he's been purposely baiting you to get a rise out of you."

That was true. Chris did think he behaved with a little more subtlety than that, but maybe not.

He smiled ruefully. "That's fair," he admitted.
"Well?" Kayla asked pointedly. Now that they were on the subject she no longer felt the need to beat around the bush. She zeroed in on him like a laser. "It's a girl?"

It was a question, but just barely a question. There was only the slightest tinge of uncertainty to her voice. She was pretty certain. School, his job, and the other parts of his life were going quite smoothly.

He nodded, finding himself a bit reluctant to admit it. "It's a girl," he said, and to his surprise the words came out with a sigh.

"Who is it?" Kayla went on, raising an eyebrow. "Someone from HBS?"

Chris shook his head. To his surprise, he didn't find it hard to tell Kayla the truth. In fact, he was almost kind of relieved to get it out.

"Remember my friend Henry?" he asked her. He had mentioned Henry to his family before, even brought him around to their family cabin in the Catskills once.

"Yeah, the one with the fiance?" Kayla asked, eyes raised in question. She had a great memory.

"It's the fiance," Chris said.

He watched as Kayla's face, at first scrunched up in confusion, morph into one of understanding. Her expression softened and her mouth opened into an 'O'.

"Geez, Chris," she said, her face sympathetic.

"Yeah, I know," he nodded, acknowledging the whole thing.

"What happened?" she asked.

Chris had anticipated more prying once the topic started. Kayla was not one to let things go at this moment. He knew Ryan wasn't home but wondered where Andrew was. No doubt he was lurking somewhere in the apartment, if not eavesdropping then waiting for Kayla's update after the conversation.

He thought that he wouldn't want to tell them anything. The four of them had always been close, but he liked to keep things like this close to the chest. He even had a vague half-explanation ready on hand to ward away further questions, but to his surprise, he found that he didn't want to half-explain.

He wanted to say everything.

And so he told Kayla everything. How he met Audrey at the bookstore and recognized her from Henry's photos, how the more they hung out the more attached he got, even though it was probably not the smart move. How they ran into his classmates and then that girl who was into him at dinner. What had happened that night. The whole mess with Henry.

"And then she just stopped talking to me. Stopped responding. Stopped anything," he said.

Kayla had listened to this story attentively, without any interruption. When he finished, however, she didn't say anything right away. Instead, she held out her hand and asked to see the last text messages between him and Audrey.

Chris handed her his phone, and after watching her scroll for a few moments in silence with that look of concentration on her face, he found he had a sudden desire to break the silence.

"I mean, I feel like I didn't do anything wrong," he said, admitting one of the things that really bothered him. "And it feels like she's treating me as if I did. I don't know, maybe I've been reading it all wrong and she's never been interested."

It was a seed of doubt that he usually never felt, but before he could let that thought expand, his brother Andrew waltzed into the kitchen almost as if he appeared out of thin air.

"Okay Mr. I can do no wrong," Andrew said, somehow rolling his eyes and smirking at Chris at the same time. "Cut this girl some slack okay?"

"Andrew!" Kayla groaned in annoyance, making a move to punch him on the arm, but Andrew easily ducked out of the way. "Be more blunt why don't you?"

Chris narrowed his eyes, half annoyed and half amused. "How much of what I told Kayla did you hear?" he asked, although he thought he already knew the answer.

"All of it," Andrew said, completely unabashed as he moved to grab an apple from the kitchen counter fruit basket. He tossed the apple up in the air casually. "Unlike you to be this unsure of yourself Christopher, maybe this is good for you."

Chris almost laughed. It was almost an exact if not word for word imitation of the same thing he had said to Andrew a few months back. He found it ironic that Andrew, whose love life could at best be described as chaotic, was giving him advice on the matter.

Kayla was full on rolling her eyes now. "Can you two ever stop it?" she said.

But Andrew was now turned to Chris. "Alright, Kayla will no doubt tell you something nice like it's okay, there's other girls out there, it's not a big deal, these things happen, blah blah. May be soothing to hear, but not super useful," he said, expertly dodging another punch from their sister after that last line.

He eyed Kayla warily as she was now glaring daggers at him, but without missing too much of a beat he stepped to the other side of the kitchen and continued the conversation as if Kayla didn't just try to hit him.

"I'm here to tell you, Christopher," Andrew said, jabbing the apple in his hand in Chris' direction. "That it seems pretty obvious that this girl is in fact into you for whatever reason, but that maybe you should cut her some slack. Give her some time to process the fact that she does foolishly have feelings for you and come to that conclusion herself because, oh I don't know, maybe it seems just slightly confusing to her that she was engaged to marry your best friend less than a year ago. Maybe it takes her some time since she didn't exactly come into this with a clean slate."

Chris stared at Andrew. It was so absurd that Andrew was giving him relationship advice that his first reaction was to retort with something dismissive, but he couldn't help but dwell on his brother's words.

"So you're telling me to wait until she figures it out?" he asked.

Andrew shrugged. "Do what you want," he said. "Wait for her, date someone else, whatever. But I'm just saying that you're about to do that thing where you're going to go all rigid and unforgiving and maybe you don't need to do that here."

Chris had no retort for that. He couldn't deny that he was prone to doing that. Prone to decide that it was good to be cut out of his life whether it be because he didn't like them or because he found it good for self preservation. He hadn't reached that stage with Audrey yet, but no doubt the longer this silence from her went on for, the more he was moving in that direction.

"Also, your moping around is worrying mom and dad," Andrew said.

Chris almost laughed in exasperation. Maybe in another time he would have had some snarky response handy, but today he just wasn't up for it. He was still trying to turn over Andrew's words in his head, surprised still that at this particular moment, his younger brother might be able to see things more clearly than he could.

When lunch came around and the three of them were all putting on their coats and boots in the living room, the buzzer to their apartment rang.

The three of them looked at one another. They weren't expecting any guests. Their parents would have a key to the apartment and Ryan was meeting them at the restaurant since it was too much hassle to travel uptown and then back down.

Kayla, who was closest to the buzzer, quickly walked over and pressed the button that put it on speaker mode.

Their parents' place was the top floor of a building with a doorman, so it was no surprise that it was their doorman Jack on the other side of the line.

"Yes?" Kayla asked, her finger on the speaker mode button.

"Miss Williams?" Jack's voice came through the speaker. "There's a lady here for your brother."

At these words, both Kayla and Chris turned towards Andrew, whose fingers slipped on the coat he was buttoning up. He looked slightly nervous, but made to move towards the door.

"Okay," Kayla said. "He's coming down."

She let go of the speaker button. And then she turned towards Andrew. "Or did you want her to come up?" she asked.

Andrew shook his head. His brow was slightly furrowed and there was a nervous twitch on his left cheek, a habit of Andrew's whenever he got jittery.

"No, no," he murmured. "I'll go down." And then, without another glance at either of them, he pressed the button for the elevator from their living room to go down to the lobby.

As soon as the elevator doors closed behind Andrew, Kayla turned towards Chris, looking slightly worried.

"We've been so hung up on how you're feeling that we haven't had a chance to ask Andrew what's been going on with him," she said, biting her lip.

Chris mused at this. That's true, he had been so wrapped up in his own world the last couple of days that he had only paid with half a mind while the rest of his family chattered about. He cocked his head towards the elevator. "What are the chances we'll be on time for lunch?" he asked Kayla. It was a rhetorical question, because he knew there was very little chance they'd be on time for lunch now. "Should we tell Ryan? Give him a heads up before he heads out?"

But then, to both of their utter surprise, the elevator dinged again and the doors opened before either of them could pull out their phones to text Ryan.

Andrew stepped out. Alone.

A smile flickered on his face. He looked at Chris as he stepped out back into their apartment. "Wrong brother," he said. "It's for you."

Chris blinked. This was so utterly unexpected that at first he felt only confusion. His thoughts immediately jumped to Audrey.

But that wasn't possible.

She was in Boston. She didn't know his address. She wasn't even talking to him.

He swallowed, but the thought of Audrey had already got his heart hammering. "Who is it?" he asked Andrew.

But his brother only shrugged in response. "I don't know," he said. "I didn't know her and she said she was looking for you. I would've brought her up, but you know. Stranger danger."

Andrew was barely successful in tampering down that smirk on his face though, so Chris thought he must know more than he was letting on. Rather than press him for more information, however, he decided to go down and check for himself.

He saw her the moment the elevator doors opened.

There she was, standing in the lobby of his building, a fuzzy white cap on her head, her brown eyes staring back at him, her hands fidgeting with the sleeves of her woolen coat.

It was such a wonder that she was here that for a moment after he stepped out of the elevator, he wasn't sure what he would say.

He stepped towards her, stopping a couple of feet in front of her, well aware that his expression was one of wonder and disbelief.

"Hi," Audrey said, looking back up at him. Outside of Jack, their doorman, it was just the two of them in the lobby, which was quite large, and Jack was far away enough and discrete enough that it felt like it was just the two of them in that room.

"Hi," Chris said, just simply looking at her. "You're in New York," he stated, mostly because it was still so wild to him that she was here and his brain seemed to be jammed for the moment.

She gave a laugh, one that was tinctured with anxiousness, and shuffled her feet a bit. "Yes, yes I am," she said.

There was a beat where the two of them just stood there, and then Audrey glanced at the elevator. "Your brother came down first, I think they thought I was looking for him," she said.

"Yeah," Chris replied, because it was easier to make small talk at this moment than to address the multiple elephants in the room - why she was here, why she had ignored him for the past few weeks. "Yeah, it's usually Andrew when people come looking. He…he works in the city," he said, trailing off.

"He asked what my name was and then promptly turned around and said you'd be down right away," she said with another little nervous laugh. "I'm glad you're home - I…I should've checked. Sorry I didn't."

"No," he said, shaking his head. He didn't want her to be sorry about anything at all. "No, don't be, I'm home."

"Are you…are you free right now? To maybe chat with me for a bit?" she asked, her eyes bright, fixed on his.

"Yes," he said automatically, even though he knew they were all supposed to meet Ryan for lunch soon. He'd just have to text them and explain.

At that moment, the elevator to the lobby dinged. They both looked over, and he saw that Kayla and Andrew had stepped out, all bundled up and ready to go. He was about to open his mouth and explain that maybe he would be late to lunch, or that he would catch up with them later, but Kayla cut in before he could say anything.

"Well, we're off!" she said brightly, looking at Chris, even though her eyes were darting curiously towards Audrey. Andrew, however, did not even attempt to hide that he was blatantly staring at Audrey, and that upward quirk of his mouth seemed to have fixed his face in a permanent half smirk half grin. Kayla walked towards them and went on. "We'll see you later, bye!"

They'd no doubt discussed it and made the decision for him that he was no longer coming to family lunch.

There was such a flurry of movement between all of them that Chris could barely get in a "This is my younger sister and brother–" before said younger sister and brother already stuck out their hands and shook Audrey's enthusiastically.

"Hi, I'm Kayla."

"Andrew - we already met."

"So nice to meet you. We're just on our way out."

"Yeah we'd love to stay and chat but maybe you guys should first - ow!"

Kayla had given Andrew's elbow a sharp tug and was dragging him out the front revolving doors of their building before he could say another word.

And then they were gone. Chris turned back to Audrey.

"Well, that's my two younger siblings," he said.

She nodded. "Yes, and you have an older brother right?"

He nodded. And then, afraid they were going to be stuck in this small talk limbo for much longer when he couldn't bear it anymore, he said, "How'd you know where I lived?"

Audrey's cheeks flushed, just slightly. Chris thought she looked prettier than ever now. She looked up at him, almost apologetically.

"Sorry, it's a little stalkerish, isn't it?" she said.

He made a move to step closer towards her but then stopped himself. Instead, he said, "Don't be sorry." And he meant it.

She tugged on her sleeve again - that nervous tick. "I went to that bookshop, you know. And I was, I don't know, kind of hoping to run into you there. And of course you weren't home and the girl behind the reception desk told me to get a candy cane and there was a stack of books on top of the table where the candy canes were and your name and address were at the very top of the stack and I don't know, the next thing I knew I was taking a train here."

She said all this very fast, and then she caught herself again and took another breath. Chris could tell that she was nervous, but he was feeling lighter than ever. As she talked, he felt that the weight that seemed to have brought him down for the last few weeks was slowly being lifted.

She moved towards him, just a small shuffle of her feet - almost imperceptible. She still looked nervous but there was now a resolve in her eyes.

She drew in a breath, and Chris could tell that she had practiced what she was going to say by the expression on her face.

"I came here to see if maybe you'd like to go out with me," she said, looking right at him, her cheeks still tinged with red but her eyes unwavering.

Chris felt his lips part in surprise. Whatever he had been expecting when he woke up this morning, it hadn't been this. He could hear his heartbeat drumming in his ears.

He had to be sure. Just so there was no confusion going forward.

"You're asking me out?" he said, to make sure there was no room for misunderstanding. "Romantically?"

At his words, the resolve on Audrey's face faltered slightly.

"Of course, I understand if you don't want to," she said quickly. "I know I owe you an explanation for everything. I don't expect you to still feel the same way. I haven't been the most fair or the nicest person for the last couple of months."

She shuffled her feet a little again, shifting her weight from her left feet to her right, and couldn't hold his gaze any longer. She looked away, towards the door of the building as if thinking about walking out.

But Chris couldn't let her do that. He found that his face was breaking out into a smile, one that he couldn't help.

"Of course I still feel the same way," he said without hesitation.

Audrey's eyes snapped back to his. She saw the expression on his face and a small smile was now tugging at her lips.

She took another step closer towards him. "So about my question…" she said.

Her face was already tilted up to look at him at this proximity. He stepped forward and closed the gap between them. He cupped her face with his hands. Her cheeks were still cold from the outside, and his hands were warm from the heat and the elation that was spreading from the pit of his stomach.

Rather than answer her question with words, he leaned forward and kissed her.