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“Lisa?” Taylor tried to shake Lisa awake, only to be met with silence. She shot a worried glance at the tower made of energy drink cans in the corner of the room and shook Lisa harder. Could the energy drinks have messed with her heart or something? She shook Lisa harder, and couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief when Lisa let out a quiet groan.
“It’s almost noon, Lisa. You must have dozed off during the night.”
Lisa groaned again and lifted her head up before giving her a bleary look. The laptop’s keyboard had left small square imprints on her cheek. Her computer screen was open on a text processor, and the screen was filled with gibberish. Around the computer, random papers with blurry photos and more gibberish lay in random unorganized piles and still untouched neat stacks. It was a mess, but Taylor knew better than to touch it.
“Want to get up and get some breakfast?” Taylor softly asked Lisa.
She squinted at Taylor for a total of five seconds before laying her head back on the keyboard and trying to doze off again.
“Lisa, no.” Taylor forcefully pulled her up, and the anguished cry Lisa let out almost made her lay Lisa back on her chair again. No, she had to stay strong. Even Alec was up and about, meaning Lisa had slept in for way too long.
She dragged Lisa to the couches and dropped her on one of them, and Lisa immediately nuzzled into one of the couches and started to doze off. Taylor sighed. Well, there was nothing to be done about that.
She headed to the kitchen and started cooking, hoping the smell of breakfast might help Lisa wake up. She tossed two strips of bacon in the pan before cracking an egg into it as well. While those were cooking, she dropped two slices of bread into the toaster. By the time the eggs and the bacon were done, the toaster had popped the bread out as well, and the loft was smelling good enough that Alec had left his room and was padding around the kitchen. When he tried to reach for the cooling bacon, Taylor had a wasp land on his hand threateningly.
“Jeez, if you don’t want me to steal your food, don’t lay it out.”
She glared at him, and he started going through the cupboards for something else to eat.
Taylor piled the food onto a plate and was once again confronted with the sleeping Lisa. She set the plate down on the coffee table before slowly shaking Lisa again. She woke up faster this time and kept the protests to a minimum.
“You need to eat, Lisa.”
Lisa yawned. “Nnuuuh? I don’t need food.”
“Yes, you do. Come on, Lisa, eat.”
Lisa groaned but picked up a piece of toast, and nibbled on it. She had a terrible case of bedhead, and strands of hair were sticking to her mouth. Taylor moved forward gathered the loose strands up, and looked the length of hair in her hand, unsure of what to do. She could try to braid it, but she was terribly out of practice.
“Do you not mind your hair being messy, Lisa?”
“O’ course I do.” Lisa mumbled back.
Taylor bit her lip before heading to her room and coming back with a comb. She straightened out Lisa’s hair, and then put it up in the one style she was sure she couldn’t fuck up.
She heard a heavy set of footsteps jogging up the stairs and turned to see Brian, who was holding onto two cups of coffee, a paper bag, and a plastic bag full of groceries.
“I’m sorry I’m late, but the usual store I go to was crowded and-”
Brian paused on the landing, taking in Lisa's hairstyle, and then looked at Taylor.
“Did you do that?”
“Her hair was messy.” Taylor replied, trying not to sound like a child.
Brain held his hands up. “There’s no need to get defensive. It looks good.”
Alec, who was now heading back to his room with a massive bag of chips in his hand, chuckled. “Of course you’d like it. She looks like a stern librarian, which I’m sure is your type.“
Brian didn’t reply to Alec, instead placing down a cup of coffee next to Tattletale’s plate and turning to Taylor. “I could use some help putting these away.”
“Sure.” They made their way to the kitchen, and for some reason, Alec, who hated any and all work, followed them. Brian set the bag of groceries on one of the counters and turned to her once again.
“Do you like Lisa?”
“W-What?” She croaked out. Alec started to laugh, and Brian shot him a dirty look.
“Do you like Lisa, Taylor?”
“I don’t know how you got that idea, but I don’t like her.”
Alec started laughing even more. “God, you’re perfect for each other. If you don’t like each other, what’s all the playful flirting she does and all the blushing you do about?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She shot back.
Brian hummed. “If you say there’s nothing there, I don’t have any reason to doubt you. But just in case something is there, I want you to know that I think a relationship between members of our team is a bad idea.”
Taylor looked at Lisa slowly munching on toast and sipping her coffee, and found herself unable to answer.
“I don’t-I mean I can’t-”
Lisa seemed to be finally lucid enough to move around and take in things now, and the first thing she did was see her reflection on the massive TV just opposite the couch. She raised a hand to undo the messy bun Taylor had put her hair up in, and Taylor felt a pang of disappointment flash through her heart. It didn’t look good, yes, but Lisa made it look cute, and she’d put so much effort into it. She could have chosen to put it up in something else, but the cowlicks on Lisa’s head made anything other than a bun near impossible.
Both Alec and Brian were out of sight, meaning Taylor was the only one whom Lisa could see. Lisa’s eyes met Taylor’s, and her hand stopped midway to her bun. Then she shot her a smile, and let her hand drop.
Taylor’s heart fluttered, and Brian shot her a glance while Alec silently died of laughter.
The next day found her running one of her usual routes to the Boardwalk to meet up with Brian, what he’d said yesterday still fresh in her head. As the sidewalk under her feet turned into wooden boards, she picked up the pace, rushing past stores and the people opening them.
Brian was in his usual spot, leaning on the wooden railing with an inscrutable expression on his face.
She raised a hand and waved at him. “Hey.”
Brian didn’t reply and instead handed her a bag full of donuts and her usual order of coffee.
“Thanks.”
They both stood there in awkward silence for quite some time before Brian cleared his throat to catch her attention.
“I just wanted to apologize for yesterday. I shouldn’t have poked my nose into your private affairs. It’s just, well, the team is barely stable as it is. I just don’t want one of the most rational members of our team to be driven away by relationship trouble.”
Taylor was surprised. “I’m not the most rational one here, am I? Lisa is-”
“Eccentric.” Brian cut in. “The same as Rachel and Alec. You’re the most normal person we have on the team, Taylor. You’re level-headed, you think things out, and you think about the future.”
Taylor didn’t know what to say about the barrage of compliments. “Thanks, I guess? But how does tie in with Lisa?”
“You have to admit that there’s something there, Taylor.”
Taylor wanted to brush him off, but Brian had something about him that made her feel more at ease about him. Well, she used to feel at ease with Lisa, before something had changed and she’d become a confused mess regarding her.
She gripped onto the wooden railing for support. “I don’t know? I might like girls, or I might not? I don’t have any experience other than crushes to compare my feelings to.”
Taylor stopped staring off into the horizon and tried to focus on Brian who was surprisingly off-kilter. She’d only seen him as someone who was hyper-confident and who always was in charge, so seeing him at a genuine loss for words was strange, but also made him seem more human in a way.
“There are resources online?” He said, framing it like it was a question, his tone making it clear that this was a situation he’d never been in.
“I know.” Taylor awkwardly replied.
The silence after that was even more awkward, and Brian once again was the one to break it. “I still can’t believe that what I wanted to be a casual conversation turned into this.”
“I’m sorry?”
Brian waved her off, and visibly collected his words before he continued. “Figuring out whether you like someone or not isn’t hard, Taylor. All it takes is a bunch of pointed questions.”
Against her better judgment, Taylor was curious. “And what questions might those be?”
Brian’s eyes tracked one of the windsurfers sailing across the water.
“Relationships are about giving and taking, meaning the questions are in the same vein as well. Does she help you fix faults that you don’t even notice? Does she help you cover the bases you’re not good at? Can you see yourself going the distance with her?”
“What if it’s a crush? And I’m sure I’m not gay.” It felt mortifying to ask these questions to Brian, but also freeing in a way.
Brian rubbed the back of his head. “I’m not the best person to ask about this stuff. I’d suggest you talk to Lisa about this stuff, but that clearly isn’t a solution here. But if you ask me, crushes are built around mystique. You only see the bits of someone you like, and you crush on them based on that. You know all of Lisa’s faults, Taylor. You saw her drooling on her laptop yesterday. And as for the gay stuff, I do not have an answer you’d like. You like who you like.”
“But-” Taylor tried to get him to stop, but Brian didn’t seem to want to stop.
Brian continued. “Do you want to more spend time with her? Do you want more from your relationship than what you have now? Do you care way more than is normal about her not liking you back?”
“Yes. To all of those questions.” Taylor finally half whispered back.
“Then you like her, Taylor.” Brian replied, deadpan.
“Okay.” Her reply was meek, but she tried to make it sound grateful as well.
Brian took a sip of his coffee and perused his lips. It had most likely gone cold when they’d been talking.
“What I wanted to say at the start of this was that if you two decide to get into a relationship, I trust you enough to not let it affect your work and let it affect the team. But it’s spiraled into…this.”
“It helped, so thanks.”
Brian sighed. “When you do get together-”
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem for the foreseeable future anyway.”
Brian ignored her, and restarted his sentence. “When you do get together, tell Lisa that I helped you. I’d be nice to finally get one up on her.”
Brian handed her the bag and then left, leaving her feeling a thousand different things at once and once again speechless to voice her thoughts out loud.
In the end, she left for home and prepared for school, trying to put the thoughts of the conversation she'd just had away. She could feel it still prodding at her, and slowly, a weight she didn't know was there lifted off her shoulders. She'd still be skittish around Lisa, but she least had a concrete reason as to why now, because of Brian.
She knew there was a reason she liked Brian the most out of all of them.