The first person I text when I turn on my phone is my sister. I don’t want her to be mad at me but I’m sure that ship has sailed. After everything I’ve been dealing with, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s also furious.

That’s after Jason’s manager makes me sign a bunch of papers that basically say I’m okay with being stuck here for days and they don’t have to give me money. I’m also apparently signing my right for legal counsel away, since the documents say they would prefer a mediator.

If I had a better idea of what I was getting into, I might be less nervous, but this is uncharted territory for me.

I make her reassure me again that she’s not going to tell Jason I gave my seat up for him and she tells me that it’s strictly confidential.

I don’t want him to think I’m only doing this to impress him. I’m doing it because I owe him and if I could keep doing nice things for him every day of my life, I would.

Once I’m done with her, I walk away and back to my annoying bags.

I’m thinking about dumping them outside and putting them in the garbage. I don’t know how long I can keep lugging them around for and I don’t think that I really need them.

Anyway, I’m avoiding my responsibilities. My sister doesn’t text me back. She calls me instead. I don't want to talk to her, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to get out of it. I'm pretty sure that she's about to ream me a new one, but instead, she seems concerned.

“Hey, Max, you okay?”

Her concern confuses me. “What, why?”

She says the next words slowly, carefully. “Because Alex told me that you ran into Jason Mayes at the airport.”

“Wait, hold up,” I reply. “When did you guys speak?”

I guess that since I didn’t swear Alex to secrecy or anything I can’t be mad that he told Anna, but at the same time, I didn’t think that he was going to tell anyone else my business. I mean, I get it, it’s juicy. But still, I’ve never had any reason not to trust Alex. I’m feeling a little betrayed right now but I know I need to get over myself.

 “I don't know. A few minutes ago. But we've been keeping in touch about this all day, I mean, since you guys were texting…” she trails off.

I shake my head. My mouth open in disbelief. “You been keeping in touch about what?”

“You can't get mad, okay?”

I dread those words. But at least she's not angry at me, and that's something. Even if she's telling me something that is going to make me angry herself. At least I’m not the one disappointing the family for a change. “What is it?”

“Okay, so Alex and I kind of had a bet.”

“Wait, a bet? What kind of bet?”

The idea that my brother and my sister had a bet revolving around me—or rather revolving around me and Jason—makes me feel a little dizzy and a little sick to my stomach.

“You said you wouldn’t get mad.”

“I’m not mad, but you have to tell me.”

She’s quiet for a second. “Yeah. I told him you like dudes.”

“No, you didn't,” I say shaking my head and smiling. I mean, I don't think she's technically wrong because I do like Jason, but I don't like dudes.

I like Jason, and I don't know if the distinction does or should matter very much but it does matter to me. I don’t know why, but the fact that they’re betting on this hurts my feelings.

“Look, I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you would get upset,” she says. “But ever since we were kids, we've kind of known. So, Alex texted me the moment that he stopped talking to you and he told me that I was right.”

“Well, I'm not angry with you for what it's worth.” I reply shaking my head.

“You should so not be angry with Alex, Max. He was just holding up his end of the bargain. Plus, he thought you would tell me anyway,” she says. “Were you going to tell me?”

“Of course I was going to tell you. I just… I just didn't know when. Or how, because I really screwed things up.”

“Oh, no. What did you do?” she asks. “The last thing I heard was that you guys had hooked up, and then that you had called him a derogatory slur, and then Alex stopped hearing from you.”

“Yeah. Well, I did happen to call him a derogatory slur like you said, but it wasn’t meant for him. What happened was Alex text me to see if I still have the same opinion about Jason that I had in high school, and he used the word we used to use a lot back then.”

“Do you mean a word that you used to use a lot back then yourself? Because I don't think Alex ever used that word.”

So she does know what I'm talking about. That’s good because I would really hate having to clarify it. I really don’t want to say the word again since even just thinking about it is making me dizzy with anger. I wish I'd never sent that stupid text, and I wish I had called Alex out on it instead of trying to make the situation something that it wasn't.

“So how long has this been going on for? The bet, I mean.”

“I don't know. I guess ever since Jason came out? A couple of weeks after he came out to everyone was when we first started talking about it, I mean.”

“Wait. You used to think of me and Jason as a thing?”

“Of course we used to think that you and Jason were a thing. That's one of the reasons why we were so weirded out when you guys fell out because he came out as gay. I mean, no offense, but you always acted like you were a couple.”

“He was my best friend. You don't have to be a perv about it.”

“We weren't being pervs about it, Max. I think if anyone was being a perv about it, it was you. Because I think you were super scared of what people would say when they realize that your best friend was gay, so because he was gay you had to have been having sex with him?”

I shake my head once again. “I don't want to talk about it. I mean, I know I acted like a douche. I know I was an asshole, okay? But it is what it is, and there's nothing I can do to make it better. Okay?”

“Okay. I get it. But I mean, obviously things have changed. Right?”

“Well, yeah, it clearly has. Look, Alex doesn't know what happened afterwards. After we stopped talking.”

“What happened after you guys stopped talking?”

I swallow. I take a deep breath, make my hand a fist at my side and try my best to keep my voice steady as I tell her everything. I tell her about sending Jason the wrong text. I tell her about Jason's tearful confession where he told me how he felt about me, how badly I'd hurt him, and how he told me to stay away from him. I tell her I'm going to honor his wishes, regardless of how much they're hurting me. She hears me out, not saying anything. I tell her that I’ve given up my ticket so that Jason gets to go home soon.

I appreciate it, but when I'm done I don't even know if she's still there. I've just told her that I may not be able to make it home for Christmas and I think that she's doing her best to contain herself. I think she's trying not to shout at me because I'm not going to be there for Mom and Dad, who were looking forward to me being there so much. So when I finish and she doesn't say anything, I start to worry. I wait a few seconds until I speak again. “Hey. You still there?”

“Yeah. I'm still here.”

“Everything okay?”

“There's something I think you need to hear.”

“Look, I know Mom and Dad really want me to be there and I want to go. But if this is what I have to do to make it up to Jason, then it's what I'm going to do.”

I expect her to fight me on this, but she doesn't. Instead I can hear her sigh. “Hold on. Give me a second. I'm going in the next room.”

“Okay. Where are you?”

“At Mom and Dad’s. I'm staying here for the next couple of days, because my apartment is so far away and I don’t want to deal with Christmas traffic when I’m trying to get here.”

“Oh, yeah. That makes sense.”

I know we're avoiding the topic at hand, and I think she's doing it on purpose because she's trying not to hurt our parents. I think it's a good thing what she's doing, but I also know that if she's already there, she could just put me on the phone with my mom. I could have easily told her that my flight has been delayed once more. Which is technically not a lie, it’s just not the whole truth.

I don’t know if I’m ready to tell her the whole truth.

I know I need to tell my parents—then again, what is there to tell them? I hooked up with someone in the bathroom? I don’t know, that kind of feels like it shouldn’t be something I share with them. If it had been with a woman, I would have never even considered it at all.

My sister clears her throat before she speaks again. “Hey. Okay. I can talk freely now.”

“You couldn't talk freely before?”

“Not unless you want Dad and Mom to know about this. Do you want them to know about it, Max?”

“I don't think there's anything for them to know about, Anna,” I say as I shake my head. I'm near the gate, watching the spot where Jason used to be standing.

He's gone from the counter now, after Natalie, the manager, has come and collected him. He glanced at me for a second, but then when he caught me looking back up at him, he looked away so I know that we’re still not on speaking terms. Which is okay, because I really would have been a lot angrier if she had told him what I'd done.

“I think they probably also knew you were always in love with Jason.”

“I was so not in love with Jason,” I say quickly, in one breath.

“Okay. Are you sure about that?”

No. Of course I'm not sure about that, and the fact that she's asking me makes me realize just how little I was doing to hide my feelings for him.

And it's kind of crazy to think about because I really thought pushing him away would mean people would begin to think I wasn't into him, but I now realize that I was a foolish teenage boy and that it's probably made things way worse. If I had just been there for him, I don't think anyone would have thought anything of the relationship, and even if they had, who cares. I can say that with a lot of years of experience now, though, and with the fact that we hooked up. And the messaging with my brother that happened only a couple of hours ago.

I always thought that I’d hid it so well, that I made it so that nobody knew just how many feelings I had for Jason. The worst part was that I tried to hide those feelings from myself. I tried to do anything in my power to make them go away. Now, as I'm speaking to my sister, I realize that I think my family would support me no matter what. And whatever I did to Jason, I can say nothing, because my upbringing was full of people who supported me no matter what. And yeah, my family might have been a traditional Latino family, but they loved Jason like one of their own.

They probably still do.

When Jason and I fell out, they wouldn't stop talking about him. I think it only happened when they saw just how hurt I was by the fallout. Of course, they knew it was my fault. And they often told me to stop being ridiculous. But I never did because I never felt capable of it. Now, I'm just full of regrets. Honestly, if I had access to a time machine, I would go back and slap myself silly until I came to my senses.

Because I was being a huge fucking idiot, and it's affected me up to now. Which would be okay, if it had only been affecting me. But it wasn't only affecting me, it was affecting Jason too, and I don't know if I can live with that knowledge. I don't know how long it's going to take me to make it up to him, but I'm pretty sure that I'm making that my life's purpose. The acting thing, of course I want to do, but making up for being a shitty person has just taken priority over everything else in my entire life.

I hate this is the position I’ve ended up in, but it's definitely one that's completely self-imposed. I made myself be this person, and I could have spoken to anybody about it at any point, and I was too afraid. I think I was too afraid to see if Jason also felt the same about me. I know everything that we could have had has been wasted, because I'm an idiot. Because I've always been an idiot, and I've always run away from my feelings.

I couldn't love Sarah because I was in love with Jason, even after all the years we'd spent apart I was still in love with him and it was fucking stupid and ridiculous. I knew that. I knew it back then and I know it now. But now, I also know that there is not a chance with him.

I don't know if it's going to happen for me. Maybe I'm just going to live miserable in the knowledge that I could have had something almost perfect and I walked away from it, but I didn't just walk away from it. I set fire to the ground beneath me, then moved just far enough away from it and turned around and left while the fire burned.

That's how Jason feels to me, like I was the one who made everything suck for him.

I knew it, kind of.

I thought about it a lot. I just didn't think that I had affected him that much. I kind of convinced myself that I was not that big a player in his life. But of course I was.

He was a huge player in my life. I still think about him every day. Even on the best days. Even during the days when I'm not thinking about him at all, or where I'm having a good audition, or when I get a callback. Even those days when things are happy, the first thing that I think about is calling Jason. I know that I can't. I know that I don't deserve to call him—I mean, up until now I didn’t even have his phone number, but even then, even if I had it, I wouldn’t have done it.

But I still thought about it.

A lot.

Like an absolute fucking fool.

“Max.”

“Fuck, no, okay? I’m not sure about anything anymore,” I reply.

I don't mean to snap at her, but there is a lot on my mind. I came into the airport thinking that this was going to be an annoying day, but it has turned out to be the most emotionally exhausting day of the last decade for me. And I'm not sure how to deal with it. I’m also moderately sure that she is going to rip me a new one now that she has walked away from our parents so that they can’t hear her, but instead her voice drops to a reassuring whisper, the kind which I don't hear too often from her. From anyone, really. “I think there's something you need to know.”

“Is it about Mom?”

“Max—”

“Is she okay? She seemed really forgetful when we were on the phone earlier and I know that you guys sometimes don’t tell me things so that I don’t worry but—”

“No, Max, stop,” she says. “It’s not about Mom. She's totally fine. She's on this new medication that makes her a bit loopy, but she's fine.”

“New medication for what?”

“High blood pressure. You know, the ones she’s taken ever since we were little?”

“Why did they have to change her medication?”

I hate that I'm not kept in the loop about this kind of stuff. I mean, I know that it is just blood pressure medication and I know that she has been taking it since forever, but still. This is about my mom's health. I should get to know about it.

“Because they're discontinuing the last medication and it’s taken her a little while to adjust. Honestly, Max. If there was anything wrong with Mom, I promise I would tell you.”

“Do you swear?”

“Of course I swear. I'd be a super shitty sister and person if I didn’t.”

“Okay. So what do you need to tell me?”

“Okay. It's another thing that I don't want you to get mad at me for, just so you know.”

“Oh God. What did you do now?”

“Not exactly what I did, but there's something…”

“What is it?”

“Well, there are couple of things about Jason that you should know.”

“What?”

“Well. First thing that you should know is that his stepdad is sick.”

“What's wrong with his stepdad?”

“Nobody really knows. I mean they don't really talk about it to anyone else, but everyone has their theories. It’s just weird because you know his mom is usually a gossip, but it doesn’t matter. His stepdad is getting thin and he seems sickly. They're pretty sure that this is the last Christmas they’re going to get to spend together.”

“Oh God. Jason didn't tell me about that.”

“Why would he have told you about that? More importantly, when would he have told you about that? While you were sucking each other off in the bathroom?”

I shake my head. “That's not what happened.”

“Oh God, Max. Please don't explain what happened, I don't want to picture it.”

That makes me crack smile at least. “Afraid of the gay?”

“Just don’t want to think about you hooking up with anyone. But also, I’m really proud that you used the word gay for yourself.”

I guess I did. I guess it's a big deal, if she's thinking it is. I smile, but I'm still waiting for her to drop some news on me that is going to change everything. “Okay, thanks, I guess. Are you going to tell me what you were going to tell me or what?”

“Okay. Max, don't get mad, but after you and Jason fell out, he came over one time. You were here of course, but I was under strict orders to tell him that you weren’t and that you had gone out. Of course, Jason was never an idiot so he could tell that you were home. Honestly, I was never that good a liar.”

“Right,” I reply.

She’s right, of course, she was never a good liar. I shouldn’t have put that on her. I shouldn’t have put any of this on any of them and I should not have made it so that they had to back me up in my fight against Jason, which turned out to not be really a fight.

Nevertheless, just thinking about this makes me sick. I wish she hadn't brought it up. “Anna, tell me. What happened?”

“He asked me if it was okay to come in. I said that he could because I thought that you were treating him unfairly. He heard you when you took off through the back door, and you didn’t see anything else that happened. I mean, you weren’t around, and you didn’t want to know.”

“I… yeah,” I say and lick my lips. I remember that. I didn’t understand why Anna let him in but now that she’s explaining, it’s starting to make sense. My heart is beating fast in my chest and I’m scared of what she’s going to say next.

“Well, I was like twelve, so after I invited him in, I offered him a drink. Because I was so young, I couldn't make anything so we sat in the kitchen together awkwardly drinking soda out of bottles. Then he just looked at me and he said, ‘do you know what I did to your brother?’”

“Oh my God. What did you tell him?” I reply, trying my best to ignore the growing knot in my stomach.

She takes a deep breath. “Well, first I told him that you didn't speak to me about that kind of stuff. Which, you know, you didn't. I was a kid, you were a teenager and it wasn't like we were talking to each other about that kind of thing a lot. About anything a lot, really, except how long I took in the bathroom.”

I try my best to smile. “Yeah. Which was a long time.”

“Whatever. You try to be the only girl sharing a bathroom with two brothers.”

“Okay, yeah,” I say. We’re both quiet for a few seconds, at least until I can gather enough courage to keep talking about this. “What did you say to him?”

“Not much really. But he asked me if you were okay, and I told him the truth.”

“The truth,” I repeat.

“Yeah. I didn't think you were. I told him I thought you were struggling with something, that you were sad and you missed him a lot.”

“You told him those things?” I say as I swallow once again, my eyes brimming with tears.

“Yeah. I told him those things. Because those things were true, as far as I was concerned.”

“Then what happened?”

“He got a bit choked up, thanked me, finished his soda, and told me that he was going home.”

“Shit,” I say.

“Yeah,” she replies. “To be honest with you, Max, I thought I would never see him again.”

“But you did.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I did.”

“How?”

“Well, slowly, over time, he kept coming over for drinks. At first, I think it was just so that he could feel close to you. Being in the same house as you wasn’t being with you, but I think he felt like he was losing our family too.”

“You picked his side.”

“There was no side to pick, Max,” she says quietly. “You were being a dick so we stuck by someone we cared about. You can’t blame us for that.”

I exhale heavily through my nose. “I know. Is that how you became friends?”

“Yeah. I grew up a little bit, I started asking him about boys and he started helping me with my math homework, and I started helping him with his book reports. Because he liked reading, but he was always bad at essays.”

“I knew you guys were friends, I mean, from what you told me. I just never realized that you were this close.”

She sighs. “I mean we were never the greatest of friends, but we were totally friends back then. I mean as much as a fourteen-year-old and a sixteen-year-old can be friends.”

“I don’t understand. How come I never knew this?”

“You went out of your way to make yourself scarce when Jason was around. I think you always thought that it was about you when it clearly wasn’t.”

“That’s—so all those times he came over after that, were to see you?”

“Yeah, me or Alex.”

“Wait, Alex was his friend too?”

“Max, he was still our neighbor and you were the one who was acting like an asshole.”

“Fair point. Okay, so… you guys were all his friends behind my back. I guess that makes sense.”

“Still are.”

“What?”

“We’re still his friends,” she says. “I mean, I just spoke to him like a week ago.”

“You keep in touch?”

“Why wouldn’t we? He’s great,” she replied. “We’re friends.”

“I can’t believe this,” I reply and shake my head once again. “You guys are friends and no one ever thought to tell me about this.”

“What is there to tell you? Do you want to hear about all the other friends I have that you might not have known were my friends?”

“Well, no,” I reply and sigh. I know that she’s right but it still sucks. “Just…”

“Just Jason Mayes? Because you were in love with him, clearly.”

“That’s not true,” I say.

“Whatever,” she replies. “But I think he’s going to appreciate the gesture, anyway.”

“Oh, no,” I say. “Please don’t tell him it was me. I made sure that the airline didn’t tell him.”

“Why don’t you want me to tell him?”

“I don’t want him to think I did it just to get on his good side.”

“But that’s why you did it, isn’t it?”

“No,” I quickly reply. “I mean, I guess maybe subconsciously, but honestly, mostly I did it to start making it up to him. I know that I was really shitty to him and that I am going to spend the rest of my life begging him to not hate me, but this is just… he deserves some happiness in his life, I think. He doesn’t need to know I have ulterior motives.”

“Wow,” she says.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” she replies. “Just never thought I would hear you say that about Jason.”

“Well, he does… and he clearly doesn’t care about me, so…”

 “You need to talk to Jason, Max,” she replies quietly. “I’m serious.”

“Okay,” I say, rubbing the bridge of my nose. I have no intention of listening to her. The last thing I want to do is impose myself on Jason again, but maybe it’ll get her off the phone and that will be enough. I don’t want to think about this again. “Can you put me on the phone to Mom? I think I need to tell her that I’m going to be late.”

“Yeah,” she says. “You should speak to Dad, too.”

“Okay. Deal.”

But even as she hands the phone to my mother, all I can think about is Jason and what she meant.