She doesn’t understand.

She asks me to get out of her restaurant.

I’m relegated to the hot dogs they’ve got at a 7-11 down the street, the ones that have been rotating aimlessly on a greasy conveyor belt for the better part of a week. To finish off my fancy holiday meal, I grab a random American beer from the cooler, and then I go eat on the curb in the parking lot, trying to pick apart my feelings as best as possible.

This is…inconvenient to say the least.

An epiphany like this would have been great, say, twenty-four hours ago.

Now, it’s agony.

Even with copious amounts of alcohol addling my brain, I know full well this is not a simple case of wanting what I can’t have, or not knowing what I had until it’s gone, or simply being a stubborn asshole. It’s not even just a bad case of the holiday blues.

Even if I wasn’t abso-fucking-lutely sure of it already, my driver would be quick to remind me that my twice-weekly stalker episodes at Morgan Fine Art Gallery might prove that underneath it all, I have very real, very obvious feelings for Lainey Davenport. Of course I do. I always have. She pulled at my heartstrings even when we were younger. There’s a French expression for this: la douleur exquise, the heart-wrenching pain of loving someone unattainable.

I’m suffering the improbable possibility of pushing Lainey away over and over and over again out of some self-righteous need for independence, only to be given exactly what I want and despairing over it.

It starts to snow while I mope there in my pajama pants and robe, which feels apropos. I look down at my half-eaten hot dog, now covered in icy snowmelt. Zut.

My phone starts to ring, and I dig it out of my pocket. When I answer, Alexander tells me he’s been pounding on my front door for the last ten minutes.

I can’t even be bothered to add inflection to my tone. “I’m not home. I’m down the street.”

“Where?”

“Out on the curb.”

“You’re what?”

He thinks the connection is bad.

“I’m eating a hot dog.”

“Jesus Christ.”

It’s not even five minutes later when his driver pulls into the parking space right in front of me, and my younger brother, the one I’ve dragged out of clubs, reprimanded, shaken sense into countless times in the past, looms over me in an Armani suit and a camel-colored wool jacket.

“You’re wearing your house slippers.”

I look down.

Huh. I hadn’t realized.

“Why are you sitting out here?”

“J’ai une peur bleue.”

I’m scared to death.

“Of what? Getting heartburn? Because if you finish that hot dog, you’ll be regretting it later. Believe me.”

Inspiration hits suddenly. “Do you have Lainey’s phone number?”

He smiles and shakes his head. “Let’s hold off on making any important phone calls for now. You’re not in the best state, frère.”

Fine.

“Why were you at my house?” I ask.