Charlotte and Alec have been here a couple days. We haven’t really talked about anything important. I’m still being a douche and not telling her about Columbia, and I can’t even say why. We’re cool, I appreciate her being here, and most of the time I’m over last summer, but I feel like there’s still so much I don’t know.
I hate that I don’t have all the answers. Charlotte and Alec exchange looks I don’t understand. No matter how much I try to forget it, part of it is always there. He’s always there, too. We all played pool downstairs and watched a movie and him and my brother are pretty much best friends.
I feel like shit that Alec knows Brandon better than I do, so basically the guy just pisses me off all the way around. Not a real cool thing to admit.
Mom is still hanging in there and the baby is still doing well, so I try to focus on that stuff instead.
And Charlotte.
“Hey.” We just finished a game of pool and she’s putting her cue up. “Sneak out with me tonight?” I wink at her. Dad comes back and forth a little, but he’s spending most of his time at the hospital, but pretending we have to sneak out sounds fun.
Her face lights up. Tell her you still love her. That you’re going to Columbia and that you want to be with her.
“Same time?”
“Nah. I can’t wait that long. We’ll be rebels and sneak out early tonight.”
“I didn’t know you were such a troublemaker. What time were you thinking?” She crosses her arms.
I look at my cell. “How about…right…now.”
“I’ll grab my telescope!” Charlotte runs to the stairs. I’m right behind her. We grab her telescope and I get a blanket out of the closest. Unlike at her place we have neighbors close, but the backyard is private and it’s quiet.
I lay the blanket out and even though we’re in New York, it feels the same as it has the hundreds of other times we’ve done it. Charlotte sets up the telescope and I sit and watch her as she looks through it. Of course the stars aren’t bright, but she makes them seem that way.
“So?” I ask, when she doesn’t say anything.
“They’re incredible.”
“They’re the same as they are in Virginia.”
“Not to me.” Charlotte shakes her head. “The stars here and the ones there are each special for their own reason. You grew up looking at these, while I looked at mine. Now we’ve both looked at each of them together.”
Not for the first time, I’m in awe of her. “No one I know looks at things the way you do. I’ve never known anyone like you.”
Charlotte crawls over to me and straddles my lap. “You said that to me the first summer too.”
“You remember that.” I brush her hair from her face.
“I remember everything.”
“Me, too.” And then I kiss her. She tugs on my hair and kisses me back. I pull back far enough to say, “I still love you, Star Girl.”
“I love you, too.”
“Come up stairs with me?” I ask.
“Yes,” she replies. I take her hand, and hope this time, I never have to let her go.
Alec and Charlotte are gone for the day. She’s going to Poughkeepsie, and Brandon and I decided to hang out. We went to the park and played basketball. He had a friend of his buy us some beer and now we’re back at the house, downstairs, drinking together.
“I owned you today,” I tell him. We played two games of one-on-one and I beat him at both. Brandon can take me any time where football is concerned, but we’re pretty evenly matched in other sports. Today was my day.
“Everyone gets lucky once in a while,” he teases.
“Yeah. I just get luckier more often than you.”
We both laugh. It’s the first time in a long time that I remember us hanging out all day without fighting.
After we settle down, Brandon downs the rest of his beer before saying, “So you really are in love with her, huh?” He opens a beer and downs another big swallow.
“Yeah.” I sit on the couch while Brandon leans against the pool table. “I think I’ve always loved her. She’s…I don’t know, she’s just always in my head, ya know? Everything about her.” Then those times come that make me wonder what I’m doing. There’s still something going on that I don’t know about and it sucks that she doesn’t trust me with it. The way I didn’t trust her that night?
Brandon nods. “Yeah. I know.”
But really I don’t get how he does. As far as I know, Brandon has never been serious about any girl.
He’s fidgeting with the bottle in his hand, peeling the paper. When he sets it down, I could swear his hands are shaking. An anchor suddenly weighs down my stomach. “What is it?”
“I’m just going to say this even though I’m scared shitless to do it. I’m mean, I’ve never even said the words out loud before, but you’re my brother and who can a guy talk to if he can’t talk to his brother? Mom talking about how strong the Chase boys are and everything…I want to be strong. At least by telling you.” He shakes his hands like they fell asleep and he’s trying to wake them up or something.
My heart is going crazy, trying to figure out what could have Brandon this stressed out. Fear fills me.
“Don’t freak out on me, okay, Nate? I really need you to not fucking freak out on me.”
“Dude, I’m your brother. You can tell my anything—” All sorts of thoughts are running through my head, making me wonder what could be wrong with my brother that I missed.
“I’m gay.”
I stop breathing. Totally not what I was expecting.
The bottle in my hand slips through and falls to the floor, beer foaming out. I don’t even pick it up. “Excuse me?” It’s not that I’m homophobic or anything. Hell, what other people do is none of my business. To each their own, but hearing my brother tell me he’s gay isn’t something I ever thought I’d hear. I never suspected.
“I’m gay, man.”
“Since when?”
“What do you mean since when? Since forever. It’s not just something someone wakes up and decides.” He starts pacing the room.
“Shit.” I run a hand through my hair. “I didn’t mean to ask that. I just…you go out with girls. You talk about sleeping with them all the time. Hell, I saw you having sex with Sadie once.”
“That’s because I didn’t want to be gay!” he yells. “Who wants to deal with that? People judging you and looking down on you. I’m a fucking football player, Nate. You play sports. You know how that is. You hear the shit people say. I just…” He stops moving and looks at me. I’ve never seen my brother look so lost and scared in my life.
“I thought maybe I could fake it…or change it. Didn’t you notice I wasn’t really with anyone after her? It was wrong. I had sex with her and then I went home and ignored all her calls because she wasn’t what I wanted. I felt sick, but then even worse for feeling that way because I should want her, right? That’s what everyone says. That would make me fucking normal, right?”
Wow.
Brandon falls onto the couch, his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. And I just sit there. I don’t know what to do or what to say.
“Tell me I’m normal, Nate?” Then, my brother starts to cry. It’s not just tears in his eyes, but full out crying. “Tell me, tell me, tell me,” he says over and over.
I’ve never seen strength like I see from my brother right now. Because even though he’s breaking down, he’s manning up, too. He’s admitting who he is and I hate the fucking world for making him feel like he should be ashamed about it. “Hey. There is nothing wrong with who you are. You hear me? Fuck anyone who tells you anything differently.”
Brandon looks over at me with red eyes. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He breaks down crying again and this time and I hug him. It’s awkward at first. I don’t think I’ve hugged my own brother since I was five years old, but soon it feels more natural. He’s still crying and I’m still trying to process what he said. It’s hard to work through it, but I don’t want him to see me struggle. I just want to be here for him.
My brother is gay.
He’s been lying to us, to everyone his whole life.
But he told me now.
It feels like forever until he stops crying. I scoot back and Brandon wipes his face with his shirt.
“Shit. I can’t believe I just broke down like that. That makes me feel more like a pussy than being gay.”
He laughs and even though I don’t feel like doing it, I laugh, too. Neither of us feels it, but we need to try to do something to lighten the mood.
“You could have told me,” I tell him. “All these year…you could have said something.” He’s been carrying that alone and it has to be killer.
“Yeah?” he sounds like he’s not sure if he believes me.
“It doesn’t matter to me. You’re still my brother and…I don’t think I’ve given you the credit you deserve all these years. I just didn’t know, man. I didn’t know you were holding all of that in and I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry you felt like you had to keep quiet about it and…I want you to know, I’ve never been more proud to be your bother than I am right now.”
I’ve obviously just said the wrong thing because Brandon looks like he’s about to be sick. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“What is it?” I scoot back, waiting for him to tell me something huge. Nothing prepares me for what he says.
“That second summer…Alec and I…”
“What?” I jerk off the couch and push to my feet. My world tilts, then things start to align. “Alec?”
“I mean, I kind of new that first summer, but I didn’t want to believe it. I tried to fight it, but we talked all that year. I thought maybe if I didn’t go back, I could try and forget everything. Then the second summer…we just got closer then, ya know? I know you hate him, but you don’t know him like I do, Nate. Not a whole lot happened that year, but yeah, we started…” Brandon trails off before picking up the conversation elsewhere. “We kept talking again all year after that, and then last summer…”
I shake my head. Not wanting to hear more. Somehow knowing exactly what he’s going to say. “Don’t.”
“I have to. I need you to understand. We were scared. No one could know. His dad…and college…football…” He’s throwing out all sorts of words, but not finishing a sentence.
“What are you even talking about? Alec’s been all over Charlotte her whole life. He hated me. Kicked any guy's ass who messed with her. He wanted to run The Village with her one day.”
One look at him tells me it was a lie; Alec was lying, just like Brandon did. That Alec wanted to use Charlotte the same way my brother did with Sadie. “Tell me,” I grit out, backing away.
“Charlie caught us that night. Alec went after her. He was freaked out, Nate. He thought she would tell and he was scared.”
“So he kissed her to make up for it? And you knew. You knew I was gutted all year and you never said anything!”
“Fuck you, Nate! That’s easy for you to say. You don’t get it! You’ll never get it unless you’ve experienced it.”
“What I don’t get is letting your brother be miserable for nine months. I loved her, man and you let me think she wanted him!”
“Gutted? What about Marisol? You moved on.”
“The way you did? You just admitted to me that you were with people you didn’t want, so fuck you, Brandon. I love her! We had all these plans and…and you all knew. Everyone knew, but me.” Now it’s me who’s pacing the room. “I was the only one in the dark. I was wrecked and all three of you could have said something to ease it, but no one did!” Another thought hits me and it takes everything inside me not to tackle my brother and kick his ass. “I lost her so you could what? Keep Alec? So you guys could have your secret?”
“No. That’s not it! We didn’t talk last year. It didn’t feel right. You don’t fucking get it, Nate!”
The downstairs door opens, and Alec and Charlotte walk in.
“You didn’t tell me,” is the first thing I say when she walks in.
Charlotte looks at Brandon, then at me and back to Brandon again, putting all the pieces together. Alec is right next to her. I can’t read the guarded expression on his face and I don’t want to.
“How could I, Nate? I wanted to, so bad, but it was their secret to tell. It…it wouldn’t have been right.”
I’ve always felt like I fit with Charlotte. Like we belonged, matched even though there are things about us that are so different. We made sense and I felt like I would always fit with her.
But I was wrong. Just like last summer, they’re on one side, and I’m on the other.
“No matter what, I would always do anything to make sure you weren’t hurt. Do you know what it felt like to see you with him? It was like you punched through my chest and ripped my heart out. You could have found a way. Someway to tell me something at least so I wouldn’t spend all that time wondering what I did wrong or if everything was a lie.”
“I spent months the same way!” Charlotte steps closer to me. “After the first summer you just dropped off the face of the Earth and left me hanging. Don’t you think that whole time I wondered what I did wrong?”
“No.” I shake my head. “That was different. We hadn’t spent the summer saying we loved each other.”
“So? Saying it doesn’t make it truer! I always knew I loved you. I did everything I could to tell you I didn’t want to kiss Alec, without telling something that wasn’t mine to share. You’re the one who chose not to trust me.”
At that, the room goes silent. I’m breathing heavy. Alec has walked over to Brandon. Charlotte and I are standing about five feet apart, staring at each other. She’s right. I’ve probably always known it. I’ve thought about it lately, how I didn’t trust her, when I should have.
Words are lost. I don’t know what to say. Brandon’s cell ringing makes it so I don’t have to.
“Dad? What’s wrong?” I hear my brother say. He pauses. “We’ll be right there!”
Brandon pushes around me and heads for the door. “We have to go! Mom’s having the baby and they can’t stop the delivery.”