Free The Apartment (Apartment #1) by Amanda Black Page A

to sit in silence for long, though, since he had already arrived at the madhouse formerly known as his parents’ home.
    There were cars lining both sides of the street. Emma had been right; their mother should have booked a hall. At this rate they were going to be lucky if they the cops weren’t called for a violation of some sort of city ordinance.
    After finally parking and heading inside, Ethan looked around until he saw some familiar faces milling about the foyer. One of them was a lithe beauty with a dark-blonde pixie cut, and when she saw him approaching she smiled widely, excusing herself from the group of people she was talking with. A tall, dark-haired man followed closely behind her, unwilling to release her hand as she walked away.
    “I knew you’d make it,” she said, standing up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
    “Did you really ever doubt me, Emma?”
    “Of course not, but Brandon owes me five bucks.” She nudged the man at her side, causing him to laugh nervously.
    “Hey, I only said that I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t make it, not that he wouldn’t. This is a whole lot of people to take in at once.”
    “Oh whatever, you still owe me five bucks.” She turned her teasing smile from her husband to Ethan, her face growing more serious in the process. “I’m not going to ask you how you’re doing again. But please keep in mind that we’re all here for you. Always. You don’t even have to talk about it—we can just hang out if you want.” Dropping her voice to a whisper, Emma added, “I miss you.”
    “Come here,” Ethan said, holding his arms out. Wrapping her in a tight hug, he leaned over and spoke in her ear. “Listen to me. I may not have been around much over the last few years, but don’t ever think I don’t remember that you were always the other half of me when we were little.”
    Emma and Ethan were fraternal twins, but as Ethan loved to remind Emma, he was older by twenty-two minutes. They had been extremely close growing up, going so far as to have their own secret language that pissed off everyone around them, especially Eric. Ethan couldn’t help wondering what his life might have been like if they had remained close, rather than growing apart in their teens.
    “Thank you,” she replied, hugging him even tighter. “But now I’ve got my own other half, and he makes me happier than I ever could have imagined. It makes me so sad to know that you haven’t found yours yet. I’d hoped you had, but…” she trailed off awkwardly.
    He bit his tongue and nodded gruffly. “Yes, well… these things happen.”
    Ethan patted her on the back and shared a few pleasantries with her husband Brandon, who he hadn’t gotten to know as well as he felt he should have for someone who was married to his twin. He vaguely remembered seeing Brandon on occasion, when Emma first started bringing him home with her on her breaks from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but Ethan had already been too deep into his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago—and well on his way to becoming a first-class pompous asshole—to give a shit about him.
    After a few more minutes of idle chitchat, they made their way into the main room that had been decorated elaborately for the occasion. Nearly all the furniture had been removed until it was a wide-open room, perfect for large masses of people to stand around like cattle and exchange stories about his father.
    Making his way across the room, he was stopped numerous times by distant relatives and business associates of his father. The gamut ran from cousins he hadn’t seen since his teens who had come all the way from Boston to an over-enthusiastic, ass-kissing OBGYN who Ethan could have sworn was flirting with him. Over and over again he would pause, shake their hands, listen to the same boring stories and offers to get together sometime, all the while remembering to smile and nod at just the right times. He didn’t know any of these