“My sister wants me to spend Christmas with her,” I told him after a long beat of silence.
“The one who helped you move in?”
I laughed, forgetting he’d been around for that. “Yeah. Her husband and kids will be there. She wants it to be some big family affair, but I think she’s just trying to make up for the fact that we never had that as kids.”
“That’s not the worst reason to celebrate the holidays,” Forrest said.
I shrugged. “It just feels like dressing up and playing pretend.”
“Or it’s hiding behind what’s familiar because being vulnerable sucks.” When I met his words with silence, I heard him take a breath. “I’m not judging you. Trust me, I get it. I’ve always been kind of a loner, and when my best friend married my older brother, I refused to celebrate with them for, like, three years because it felt like I was outside looking in. I go now. Reluctantly. I hate their happily ever after.”
I chuckled and let my knee knock against the wall as a sign of solidarity. “I mean, when their lives are the plot to some romance novel…”
“Right?” Forrest said. He knocked back gently. “It’s such bullshit. Ymir’s been giving me endless shit about you, though.”
I frowned, pushing up on my elbow. “Why? Because I suck so much as a neighbor?”
“Because he thinks our book trope is even worse,” Forrest said, and I swore I heard a smile on his lips. In that moment, I would have killed to know what he looked like. “Rival neighbors to…”
“Reluctant friends?” I offered, a little breathless because if I went any more intimate than that, I would be in trouble. Forrest was already toeing a line that terrified me.
“Something like that,” he murmured. I heard a strange shuffling noise, then he asked, “What do you look like, Jules?”
I blushed and stared down at my socked feet. “Nothing special.”
“That’s not an answer. Give me something different. Describe yourself in a way that doesn’t require looking.”
I bit my lip and tried not to think of the way Nicolai saw me, or how others on the street did, or even how I saw myself. What did this man think of when he remembered our conversations? “I’m soft,” I said. “Short. I like to be warm. If I was a food, I’d be one of those cinnamon rolls you buy at the mall—a little stale and crusty on the outside with icing that got a little hard, but there’s still a tender middle.”
“That,” he said, and there was a roughness to his voice I wasn’t expecting. “I like that. You remind me of cinnamon.”
I don’t know why that was the best compliment I’d ever received. Maybe it was because it was so goddamn genuine. I wasn’t sugar. I was hardly sweet. I wasn’t bland, but I wasn’t rich or spicy. Too much of me would sour, but the right amount?
Maybe to someone—the right someone—I could be perfection.
“What about you?” I asked.
He huffed. “I’d be an orange, or maybe, like, a really good deli sandwich. Pastrami, pickle, mustard, a rich malty rye. Orange slices on the side.”
I laughed so hard my eyes watered because I could see it. “Yeah. Okay. “
“My brother’s a black and white but the good kind. The kind they make fresh every morning with the perfect layer of icing and chocolate. There was this one deli we used to go to as kids, and my mom hated it because she said they put too much butter in the dough, but that’s what I liked about it. He’s one of those.”
“He’s your older brother?”
“Mm. Five years and seven months. We were both born on a Thursday, which is what my mom swears is wrong with us.”
I grinned into my pillow. “I don’t know what day I was born on. I never thought to ask before they died.”
“They…Oh. I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” Forrest said.
I shook my head. “It was a long time ago. But I guess it’s necessary, right? I mean, if this is a romance novel, you need at least one of the heroes to have a tragic backstory.”
“Fair,” Forrest answered with a quiet chuckle. “And I’m too spoiled for that. Inherited a fat sum of money from old grandparents, which meant I could get some useless art degree instead of doing something that would make money. And apart from my family being a little bit too into each other’s business, there’s a lot of love to go around. I don’t think I fit the description.”
“I wouldn’t want you to,” I confessed. “I know the grass isn’t always greener, but it’s dead over here.”
“Jules…”