Chapter 15 #2
“Theo’s gotten good at looking for the signs,” Carter says. “He dates a lot more than I do, so he has more practice.”
“Why is that?” I ask.
“Why does he date more?” Carter asks, and I nod. “I don’t know. He’s chasing something, I think. But also…it’s probably not so much that he dates more, but that I date less.”
“Why is that?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Sometimes I think it’s my own fault. When I go out with Theo, it’s hard to compete with him. Even though we look the same, he’s funnier, more charming, better at flirting. And I never go out without him, so I’m not giving myself much of a chance.”
A tiny piece of my heart breaks at the thought of Carter ever feeling like he’s less than his brother. I recognize Theo’s charm, but Carter is steady and good and thoughtful and just as charming in his own way.
I suddenly feel a pressing need to help him see that. To show him that he’s just as dateable as his brother, even more so in my eyes. I open my mouth to tell him, but then I swallow the words. I’m not sure I can say them without it sounding like a confession of feelings.
“You should sleep,” Carter says. “It’s been a long day.”
I let my eyes fall closed. “Yeah.”
Carter gets off the bed and heads to the bathroom while I fight to stay awake. If I sleep, the night will be over, and it’s been a really, really good night. We got engaged, we had champagne, we kissed…
Wait. We got engaged! And I never posted the photo.
I sit up and scramble across the bed to get my phone.
I don’t have much battery left, so I hope whatever charger Carter uses for his phone will fit mine too.
I look through the photos, grabbing the one that makes the ring most obvious, then upload it to Instagram.
I tag Carter’s account and add a caption that reads forever with @c.williamson starts now.
The bathroom door squeaks open, and Carter reappears.
“I forgot to post the engagement photo,” I say. “But it’s up now. I tagged you.”
“Wow,” he says, pausing midstride. “I guess it’s really real now.”
I nod, holding his gaze. “Should I have waited to make sure you were still good to move forward?”
He quickly shakes his head. “Nah. You have my pinky promise, remember?” He steps to the side of the bed and holds out his hand. “Do you need to charge your phone?”
“Will it mean you can’t charge yours?”
He quickly shakes his head. “I’ve got an extra charger. It’ll be fine.”
I hand it over and snuggle back down under the duvet. “Are you even for real right now? You got me toiletries even though I didn’t ask for them. You gave me pajamas. You have an extra phone charger. Are you this good at taking care of everyone?”
“Not everyone,” he says softly, and my heart skips a few beats, loving the thought that maybe it’s just me who gets this kind of treatment.
Once my phone is plugged in, Carter climbs into bed and turns off the light. We’ve been on the bed together for a while now, but the darkness suddenly makes me hyperaware. Exactly how far away is his body from mine? If I roll over in my sleep, am I going to kick him? Will I snore? Wait. Do I snore?
“You okay over there?” he whispers into the darkness.
“Totally. Just having a small existential crisis trying to remember if I snore.”
He chuckles. “I doubt I’ll hear you if you do. I shared a bedroom with Theo for too many years. I’ll sleep through anything.”
“Are you just saying that to make me feel better?”
“I swear I’m not. I really do sleep like the dead.”
I push up on my elbow. “Hey, can I ask you a question before you fall asleep?”
“Sure.”
“What’s with the penny?”
“For being so close to sleep two minutes ago, you sure do seem wide awake now.”
“It was the panic of realizing I forgot to post,” I say. “I’m still buzzing from the adrenaline.”
“You know it would have been fine if you’d posted tomorrow. Technically, it already is tomorrow.”
“Are you kidding? And risk Anna’s wrath? She has the whole timeline planned.”
“Fair,” Carter says.
“So tell me about the penny. Help me get sleepy again.”
He’s quiet for a beat, long enough that I start to wonder if it’s too personal.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I say.
“I don’t mind,” Carter says. “It’s just been a minute since I’ve talked about it.”
I wait, sensing that whatever the story is, he doesn’t need me to yank it out of him.
“The penny I’m wearing is one Theo gave me,” he finally says. “But it’s significant because of my dad.”
Without saying anything, I scootch over on the bed until I’m close enough to find Carter’s hand, then I slip my fingers into his. “This is friendly touching,” I whisper into the darkness. “Just FYI.”
He squeezes my fingers once, then holds on. “Have you ever heard the saying ‘penny for your thoughts’?”
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“It’s just something people used to say.
When you look thoughtful or contemplative, someone might look at you and ask, penny for your thoughts?
Instead of just saying what are you thinking?
So I don’t remember this part, but I guess the story is that I was sitting outside on the front porch, maybe five or six years old, and my dad came out and sat down beside me and asked, penny for your thoughts?
And I guess I looked at him, real serious, held out my hand and said, ‘okay.’”
I chuckle. “Smart kid.”
“So he gave me a penny, and I told him what I was thinking, and it started this whole thing between us. I remember being in high school and having a rough time about something, usually something hockey related, and he’d come in and toss a penny on my bed.
” Carter shifts, changing his position so his voice gets closer, but he doesn’t let go of my hand.
“I don’t know why it worked, but whenever I saw that penny, it felt like permission to just say whatever I was feeling, trusting that he wouldn’t judge me for it. ”
“He sounds like a really good dad,” I say, and Carter breathes out a sigh.
“Yeah. He really was.”
“Did he do the same thing with Theo?”
“He didn’t,” Carter says. “It was just our thing. I think he sensed that was important. That he single us out sometimes. I think Theo resented it. I mean, he had plenty of other things that only he did with Dad, and he never said anything to me about it. It was just something I sensed.”
“I can’t imagine how much you guys had to balance. Looking alike, playing the same sport. Did you fight a lot?”
“All the time when we were really young,” he says. “But it was mostly out of our systems by high school.”
“I worshiped Miles when I was young,” I say, fighting off a yawn. “He was so much older than me, we didn’t really have much to fight about.”
“Hey, there’s a yawn,” Carter says. “My goal to bore you is working.”
I smile into my pillow. I would fight sleep all night if it meant getting to talk to him. “It’s not boring at all! I love it. So why did Theo give you a penny? If it was a thing with your dad?”
Carter spends the next ten minutes telling me the story of the night his dad was killed.
How Theo was driving. How Carter wasn’t with them because he’d stayed late after hockey practice for speed drills Theo didn’t have to do.
He’d clocked times fast enough not to need them.
So the two of them had gone out to grab dinner, with a plan to circle back by the rink to get Carter.
Theo was a good driver. He’d had his license over a year. Followed the rules. Didn’t speed. But none of that mattered. The other driver was drunk, speeding, and ignoring the red light that was supposed to keep all of them safe.
Carter tells me how hard Theo spiraled after the accident. How hard he had to fight to keep his brother on the ice, committed to the goals they were so close to achieving despite how much they were both grieving.
My heart aches for them. That at such a young age, they had to deal with such a sudden and tragic loss.
My mom was sick for years, so sick that by the time I was seventeen, I’d already grown used to the idea that at some point, she wasn’t going to be around anymore.
It wasn’t better—in a lot of ways, it was probably worse.
Living with death hanging over us all those years.
But at least I was prepared when it finally happened.
I rub my thumb over the back of Carter’s knuckles, grateful for the point of contact. For some small way to remind him he isn’t alone.
“Anyway,” Carter continues, “there was one night when I was just so frustrated with Theo. We’d already been drafted and were playing for an AHL team in North Carolina.
He’d had too much to drink and was picked up by the cops for drunk and disorderly conduct, and I was just so angry with him.
Our team captain had to come pick us up, and it just felt like… everything was slipping away.”
“I can imagine,” I say. “Especially when your success was so closely tied together.”
“After he sobered up,” Carter continues, “I pretty much iced him out. I was done trying. Done taking care of him. Being the older brother.”
“Are you older?” I ask.
“By seventeen minutes,” he says. “And I always acted like it. But then I decided if he wanted to throw his career away, I wasn’t going to stop him.
Not anymore.” He pauses, and for a long moment, all I can hear is the low hum of the central heat.
Somewhere down the hall, a door opens, then shuts.
“Then one night after a home game, he came into our room and tossed a penny onto my bed.”
I suck in a tiny gasp. “Because he knew then you’d have to talk to him.”
“Exactly.”
“This is a really good story, Carter.”
“You’re supposed to be getting sleepy over there,” he says.
“I can’t. I have to know how it ends.”
“That’s pretty much the end. We talked, and for once, I didn’t hold back.
I told him exactly how I felt about everything he’d been doing.
He listened, nodded, then a week later, he showed up with two pennies, one for each of us.
Said they were to remind us to never stop talking. That’s what Dad would want.”
“Geez, are you serious right now?” I ask, tugging my hand away from his so I can wipe at my tears. “You could write a book with this story.”
“It’s not that big of a deal,” he says. “It feels a little cheesy.”
“It’s not cheesy. It’s perfect. And honestly, it makes me like Theo a little more.”
“You didn’t like him before?”
“No, I did,” I quickly say. “Theo is fine. But I’ve never liked him as much as I like you.”
Carter shifts again, his foot brushing against mine.
Somehow, our conversation has migrated us closer and closer to the center of the bed.
For once, all this touching really does just feel friendly.
Like it’s more about being present with each other.
“Can I have a three- to five-paragraph essay detailing the many reasons why? As this is the first time in history anyone has ever preferred me to my brother, I’d like written evidence. ”
I laugh. “You aren’t giving yourself enough credit. Anna likes you more. And she says her girls do too.”
“I liked it better when we were talking about why you do,” he says.
“Let’s see,” I say. “One, because you’re nice enough that you aren’t going to freak out when I use your very warm leg to thaw my frozen toes.”
“I’m not, huh?”
“Nope.” I shift my toes, pressing them up against his calf.
“I think this counts as unfriendly touching,” he grumbles, and I dig my toes under a little deeper. “This should earn me at least three more reasons.”
“You’re real,” I say. “And thoughtful. You pay attention and listen with your whole face.”
“My whole face?”
“Yes! You don’t look at your phone. When you’re talking to me, you’re only talking to me. You have no idea how rare that is.”
“This is a fun game,” Carter says, and I reach over and nudge him in the side.
“You shouldn’t ever feel less than your brother. Truly. You’re going to make someone very happy one day.”
The words hang in the air between us, silence stretching for so long, I start to wonder if I said something wrong. But then Carter’s voice cuts through the silence.
“Thanks,” he says softly. “You said some really nice things about me.”
“They’re all true.” Another beat of silence passes before I say, “I’m glad we’re friends, Carter.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I wonder if the word friends feels like enough.
Carter takes a deep, audible breath before adding, “Yeah, me too.”