At first, Emily’s words don’t make sense. Figured it out? Impossible. Tyler and I have been so careful, so cautious . . . It scares me that even though we’ve tried our hardest to keep our relationship a secret, Emily has still noticed. It momentarily terrifies me that she might not be the only one. How many other people over the years have had suspicions? How many other people have wondered if there’s always been something more between us? All I can hope is that the answer is none. Emily, on the other hand, doesn’t seem fazed by the fact that Tyler is my stepbrother. Not uncomfortable or judgmental, not disgusted or confused. All I can ask her is, “How did you know?”
She takes a sip of her water, still smiling. I’m glad that she’s smiling. I was worried Tiffani’s remark about therapy would upset her, but she seems to have let it go over the top of her head, the same way the remark about the gym has gone over mine. It was a cheap shot at trying to hurt us. Now, however, there are other matters at hand. Slowly, Emily twists the cap back on the bottle in her hand and shrugs. “It just became obvious.”
“How? It wasn’t supposed to be,” I admit quietly, struggling to grasp the fact that I’m actually discussing the subject with someone other than Tyler. It feels foreign. I’m not used to it.
“Yeah, I figured that too,” Emily says with a small laugh. A warm, friendly one. “Honestly, it was a number of things.”
I make my way across the living room toward the kitchen counter. When I get there, I lean down and rest my arms on the worktop as I look across at Emily, both curious and confused. “Like what? What gave us away?”
“Well,” she says, “Tyler went from sleeping on the couch to sleeping next to you. I mean, sure, siblings share beds all the time, but it just seemed like something more than that. When you guys went to sleep early the other night I was looking for you both when I got back here, and when I checked Tyler’s room you were both asleep, but totally wrapped up in each other. All I could think was that I would never be caught dead like that with my brother.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You figured us out just from that?”
“No,” she says. “There was Tyler’s tattoo, too. I noticed it one morning when you were in the shower, and when I asked him why he chose to get your name, he just shrugged and said it was because you’re his sister. I thought that was weird, because what about his brothers? Why wouldn’t he get their names too? Especially considering they’re actually his real brothers. No offense.”
“None taken. I knew that tattoo was a bad idea,” I say, almost laughing. It’s also rather ironic given what I’ve just done, and I quickly glance down at my wrist to ensure it’s still hidden under my sleeve. I’ll show Tyler later. Right now, however, I’m focused on Emily. And of all the times I had imagined this conversation with someone, about Tyler and me, I never once imaged it to be like this. So casual. So easy. “What else gave us away?”
Emily thinks for a moment as she brushes her fingertips over her lips, her eyes squinting at nothing in particular for a short while before she meets my waiting gaze. “Did Tyler ever let you read his speech from the tour?” she asks. It takes me aback for a second as I try to think about the answer, blinking at her.
Tyler and I shared countless phone calls over the year that he was gone, but I don’t quite recall him ever reading his full speech to me. When he first moved over here to New York he was still in the process of writing it, and back then he did sometimes ask for my thoughts on the words he’d pieced together. I always told him everything sounded just fine, raw and honest and so him. I never heard the finished version. I never asked. “No,” I finally admit. “Why?”
Emily’s smile grows wider again and she leans back on the balls of her feet, passing the bottle of water back and forth in her hands. “Toward the end of our speeches, we had to talk about the after-effects of abuse. The psychological damage,” she says, and I wonder if she’s uncomfortable, but she’s not. She’s talked about this endlessly for an entire year, just like Tyler has. She’s used to it. “And so Tyler would talk about the drugs and the booze and everything else,” she continues, “and he always spoke about a girl. He never once mentioned her name, but he would talk about the fact that she was the first person in years to care about what he was going through. The first person to actually want to help, and that that was exactly what she did without her even realizing it. He told everyone that she was the reason things started changing and getting better. He spoke about her as though he was in love with her, and we always wondered why he never said her name.” She pauses for a minute, not quite smiling but not quite frowning either. Exhaling slowly, she parts her lips and says, “I’ve realized it was because that girl is you.”
Her words take a while to sink in. I can do nothing but stare at her as I try to process them. Tyler never mentioned that he spoke about me in his speech. He never once told me that he talked about me in such a way. I’m not sure how to feel about it. Uncomfortable? Not quite. Surprised? Yes. All I can think about is that I am so, so in love with him, yet he’s not even here. I desperately want to reach out for him right now. Touch him, tell him I love him. And not in French this time.
When Emily realizes I don’t have the ability to muster up a reply right now, she continues, walking around the kitchen counter as she does so. “So I thought there was something going on between the two of you,” she says, “but I didn’t want to ask, and then your boyfriend turned up so I thought I must have been imagining that there was something between you and Tyler. But then last night I found out that I was right and that I wasn’t just imagining the entire thing.”
“When I walked out on him?” I guess, pushing myself away from the counter as I turn to face her.
“No,” she says. “After that.” Moving away from me, she heads across the living room and my eyes follow her. She talks over her shoulder as she walks, raising her voice as she disappears into Tyler’s room. “Tyler took a bunch of videos of the tour, so I was emailing them over to myself,” I hear her say, reappearing at his bedroom door with a laptop in her hands, “and I found something that I think you should see. I’m not sure if you know about it or not.”
My curiosity peaks and I rush over to join her on the couch as she places the laptop down on the coffee table, tilting open the screen. I interlock my hands anxiously in my lap as she starts it up. Neither of us relaxes back into the couch. We both sit right on the edge, leaning forward, staring at the screen. Emily doesn’t take long to log in to Tyler’s account, to pull up his files. She scrolls straight to the most recent video to be transferred onto the laptop, and she opens it. It’s nothing but a dark screen. She quickly pauses it before the video can even start, and she turns to look at me.
“So I opened this video by accident and I swear I only watched the first ten minutes or so and . . .” Her words taper off as she glances back at the laptop. She reaches for it, picking it up and gently placing it on my lap. “Well, I just think you should watch it. You might want some space, and you might want to get comfy.”
I furrow my eyebrows at her as she gets to her feet, feeling curious yet slightly suspicious at the exact same time. My eyes follow her as she heads back over to the kitchen to fetch her water, her loose ponytail swinging around her shoulders. She’s always been so nice to me. Always.
“Emily?” Anxiously, I bite down on my lower lip as I wait for her to turn around. When she does, she raises her eyebrows at me and listens. “I’m sorry,” I tell her.
She tilts her head slightly to one side. “What?”
“For the way I treated you at first,” I say, and then I shrug rather sheepishly as I admit, “I thought you and Tyler had a thing.” Embarrassed, I throw my head into my hands and groan.
Now Emily laughs. Really, really laughs, and I join in with her. “Don’t worry about it,” she reassures me. “I can’t blame you.”
It feels nice to be laughing after everything that’s just happened. Despite the fact that Tiffani is most likely storming her way back to her hotel suite to tell Dean the truth and despite the fact that Tyler’s disappeared to God knows where, I’m still smiling. I’m smiling because our secret no longer seems so wrong or so scandalous or so terrifying.
I stand up, the laptop resting on my arm as I look back to Emily once more. “And thanks,” I add.
“What for?”
“For not judging us,” I say softly. She doesn’t reply, only nods. She’s the second person to know yet she’s the first to accept it, and for that I’ll forever be grateful. Acceptance feels nice.
With one final exchange of smiles, I turn and head over to Tyler’s room, scooping up my backpack from the floor with my free hand and then closing the door behind me as I lay the laptop down on his bed. The curtains are closed, like they haven’t been opened all day, and Tyler’s bed isn’t quite made. I can’t blame him. He must have been so hungover earlier. Sighing, I carefully pull off my hoodie and throw it to the side along with my bag. That’s when I remember the new addition to my wrist.
I flick on the lights, holding my arm up as I study my skin up close. The Saran Wrap feels damp and clingy, and the letters are bold and dark underneath it. As delicately and as carefully as I can, I remove the plastic. My skin is slightly raised and a little inflamed, but looking good. It’s exactly what I wanted, just the way I imagined it.
Along my left wrist, the words No te rindas stare back at me. It’s in Tyler’s handwriting, exactly as he wrote it on the Converse he gave me. His words. His writing. His one simple request. He’s the only one who’ll understand it, and for that reason alone, I adore it.
Tossing the plastic wrapping into the trash can in the corner of the room, I turn the lights back off and grab my earphones from the bedside table. Getting comfortable, I adjust the pillows and place them up against the headboard, climbing into the bed and leaning back. I pull the comforter over me and reach for the laptop. Without wasting another second, I plug in my earphones and stare at the dark screen. I hit the play button.
At first, nothing seems to be happening. The video does shift slightly, but it’s too dark to make out what exactly I’m supposed to be looking at. I increase the volume, and to my surprise I hear Tyler’s voice. Low and hushed, nothing but a gentle whisper.
I close my eyes and listen, feeling my stomach twist as I hear his voice. He tells the camcorder my name. He tells it my birthday. My favorite color. My birthplace. The color of my hair and the color of my eyes. Slowly, he keeps going. It takes him a minute to describe my eyes alone, and that’s when I decide to pause the video. I wave the cursor over the screen to bring up the timeline, and the moment I see it, I blink and check it again.
The video lasts for four hours and twenty-seven minutes.
It has to be a glitch. There’s no way.
For four and a half hours, I listen to Tyler’s voice, endlessly whispering and quietly laughing. He tells the camcorder about the first time we met. He talks about all the things he loves about me, some of which are habits and mannerisms that even I’ve never noticed before. He talks and talks and talks, hardly ever pausing and without a single second of hesitation at all as he reflects on the moments we’ve shared together. Of conversations and kisses, trespassing and parties.
As the video goes on, as the hours go by, the darkness gradually lessens. It continues to brighten over time, and outlines begin to become clearer. After the second hour I can see Tyler’s entire face, his bright eyes. He’s in his room, right in the spot I’m in now. By the third hour, he turns the camera away from himself and points it at me. Me. Right there, right next to him, sleeping the entire time.
By the time the video wraps up, it’s daylight on the screen. Tyler doesn’t even look tired as he mentions La Breve Vita, and that’s when it all begins to sound familiar. His words after the point . . . I’ve heard those words before.
It’s at that exact moment that Tyler turns the camera on me again, his soft voice murmuring, “Hey, you’re finally awake.”
“What are you doing?” I sound half asleep as my tired eyes stare straight into the lens. I stare back at myself through the screen.
“Just messing around.” His voice echoes through my earphones, and I shake my head in complete disbelief. Just messing around? He’s been talking about me for over four hours. It’s almost as though he never wanted me to see this, never wanted me to know about it.
I listen to us briefly talk about the Fourth of July, just like I remember we did, and then he moves the camera to the bedside table. That’s when I pull him toward me and he presses his face to mine and we kiss. We’re laughing in between it all, right until I ask him to switch off the camera. He asks if we can keep it on. Seconds later, he scrambles toward the lens and the video shuts off. It ends.
After spending my entire evening hearing what Tyler had to say about me and hearing everything he’s remembered over the past two years, even the smallest of details, he’s managed to reduce me to tears. They’re rolling down my cheeks in warm waves as I stare at the screen. It’s gone black again, straight back to the beginning of the video when it’s the middle of the night, and I can see my reflection looking back at me. I’m not crying because I’m upset. I’m overwhelmed. My entire body feels numb. To really understand just how deeply Tyler loves me, to really feel it . . . I think it’s the most comforting yet frightening thing in the world.
I play the video again, this time skipping straight to the two-hour mark. I jump back and forth for a while within a half-hour time frame, searching for a specific moment. It’s my favorite one from the entire video, the only time Tyler directly speaks to me rather than the camera as I’m still sleeping. When I find it, I exhale, leaning back against the pillows. Hitting the play button once more, I close my eyes, and I listen.
“I don’t know what being in love with someone is supposed to feel like,” Tyler admits with a breathy laugh, “but if being in love means thinking about someone every second of every day . . . If being in love means your entire mood shifts when they’re around . . . If being in love means you’d do anything and everything for them,” he murmurs, “then I am endlessly in love with you.”