Chapter 10
"So who's the girl?" Alex heard Nick's question as they were finishing work for the day and heading towards the house.
"What girl?" Alex didn't seem to know or pretended that he had no idea what Nick was talking.
"The blonde." Nick explained.
"Ah, the blonde." Alex grinned as they entered the house and exhausted collapsed on the coach. After a second Nick got up and went to get beers for the two of them. When he came back, he sat on the couch next to his brother and handed him the beer. "Thanks." Alex smiled.
"So who is she?" Nick asked again, hoping to get a clear answer.
"Oh, just some girl."
"Now that's very concrete." Nick laughed.
"Well what do you want me to say? She's just some girl I met at the truck stop. She dropped her purse, I picked it up, she smiled, I asked her out."
"You know, that's the problem with you Alex. With you it's always some girl. One this week, another one next week." Nick summed his brother up.
"What? Are you jealous?" Alex grinned at his brother.
"Oh give me a break. You know what I mean. And just when I think you could have something with…"
Nick tried to finish, but Alex cut him short.
"With who?"
"Oh you like don't know." Nick shrugged.
"I don't know!" this time Alex really didn't have a slightest idea what Nick meant.
"Oh come on, the whole damn town knows that you and Claire…"
"Me and Claire?" Alex laughed. "Get out of here! You must be joking."
"I'm not and you know it." Nick sent his brother a meaningful look. Alex didn't say anything. "Come on, it's obvious that the two of you grew really close for the last couple of weeks. You can't deny that. I mean, haven't you ever thought of Claire like that?"
At first Nick's questions seemed really ridiculous to Alex and he wanted to tell his brother to go to hell. But after a while he realized that those questions somehow were really valid.
"I don't know. I mean she's…" he paused for a moment looking for an appropriate word. "She's Claire."
"No kidding!" Nick laughed and looked at his brother funny.
"You know what I mean. She's just always been my mate and I can't imagine my life without her. But me and her romantically? I don't think so."
"Why not?" Nick was really interested in Alex's answer to this question.
"For starters she seems to hate me nowadays, so that's one reason."
"She doesn't hate you." Nick tried to convince him.
"Oh come on, she won't talk to me more than she has to, she runs away every time she sees her chance in avoiding a conversation with me. She keeps sending me those looks. I'm telling you, this is not a woman you wanna mess with. And she is the last person on this planet who would be remotely interested in going out with me."
"And you know that how?"
"I just know, OK? I'm not her kind of guy." Alex said trying to cut the conversation short, but somehow Nick seemed to notice a trace of sadness in his brother's eyes.
"And what exactly is her kind of guy?" Nick asked.
"Someone like Peter Johnson." Alex said with a pensive expression on his face.
"You mean a cheater and a liar?" Nick looked at Alex trying to understand what he meant.
"You know what I mean."
"No, actually I don't, because I don't see one single thing that Peter is and you aren't. You really should work on your self-esteem, brother dear." Nick laughed as he patted his brother on the shoulder. "Why are you so threatened by this guy?" Nick was curious. "Is it because he got Claire in a couple of weeks and you couldn't for 15 years?" Nick joked, but the joke seemed to hurt Alex really badly.
"Shut up, will you?" he shouted and seemed to be really offended.
"Found your soft spot, huh?" Nick grinned and continued torturing his brother. "You are just jealous of him, aren't you?"
"Would you stop with the bullshit! I am not jealous of Peter Johnson."
"Yeah, you keep telling yourself that." Nick smiled.
"You're crazy!" Alex was getting more and more impatient. "Get out of my sight!" he said and hurriedly left the living room.
"Goodnight." Nick called after him in a pretend sweet voice. He also smiled to himself, because he finally had his big brother all figured out.
Alex almost slammed the door to his bedroom. He was sick of Nick teasing him and making fun of him. What was he thinking making comments about him and Claire and about stupid Peter Johnson? He hated that knob, but it was for totally different reasons than Nick thought. Or was it? Did he hate Peter for breaking Claire's heart, or for stealing her heart in the first place?
"This is ridiculous." He mumbled as he took another gulp of his beer and sat on his bed. But Nick's words still echoes in his head. 'He got Claire in a couple of weeks and you couldn't for 15 years.' What if Nick was right? What if there really was more to it than he wanted to admit.
'Damn Nick and his stupid ideas' he thought as he was sitting on his bed thinking about the woman that he couldn't get for 15 years…