Chapter 8
Alex
“Could you quit that?” Olivia says.
“What?” I say.
“You’ve been playing the intro to Street Spirit for ten minutes.”
“Sorry.”
I didn’t even realize I was doing it. We’re having band practice to get ready for our Christmas gig at the pub.
Olivia and I are the first two here at the practice rooms. There’s a battered old drum kit, a couple of Blackstar amps, a bass amp, and the skeletons of broken music stands all over the floor.
Plus the lingering scent of weed. While we wait for the others to get here I’ve been noodling around on the guitar without thinking.
I guess I’ve been playing exclusively sad songs, my mind still stuck on Dane.
“So what’s wrong?” Olivia says.
“What do you mean?”
“Something’s bothering you. You haven’t smiled since you got here. What is it?”
I sigh and start playing again. Olivia claps her hand over the fretboard of my guitar with more aggression than necessary.
“One more note of Radiohead and I break this guitar in half,” she says.
I hold up my hands in surrender. “Noted. Do you really want to know what’s up?”
She nods.
“It’s your stupid brother.” I might as well tell her. She’s capable of holding my guitar hostage until I do. “It’s just… I thought he might actually ask me out or you know… at least be willing to be seen with me.”
“As more than friends,” she says.
I shrug, trying for casual and probably just looking pathetic. “I guess.”
“And he isn’t? Willing to be seen with you, I mean?”
“Doesn’t look like it. We nearly got caught fooling around after his exhibition match. We got away with it. No one even saw anything. But he looked terrified even so. Like he was ashamed of me.”
She finally lets my guitar go in sympathy.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” she says. “I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say. I can’t force him to like me, and I don’t want to force him anyway.”
“I think he already likes you.”
Really? I fight off the small, desperate seed of hope sprouting inside me.
Why does it make me feel so good to hear that he might possibly feel something for me?
Why am I so desperate for this immature boy who doesn’t even know what he wants?
This boy who cares more about what everybody thinks than about how I feel.
“It’s irrelevant if he never plans to do anything about it,” I say. “I don’t think he’ll ever be ready for anything real. I’m tired of waiting for him.”
In a way I’ve been waiting since school. How sad is that? I’ve been with a few other people at uni, but nothing you could really call a relationship. Have I been waiting for Dane this whole time without even realizing?
When I think about it, what right have I got to be waiting for him?
I would never demand that he come out for me, or try to rush him into it.
That isn't fair. He has to make his own decisions, like I made mine. Maybe this whole tentative attempt at a relationship over the last few days has been stupid. Maybe I should just leave him alone to come out in his own time. Or never. I don’t want to be the catalyst that blows up his whole life. I don’t want to cause him pain.
When I was fourteen I wasn’t old enough to see the whole picture.
I didn’t fully realize how different it would be for someone whose family wasn’t supportive, like my mum.
I knew intellectually, but I didn’t really get it on an emotional level.
Plus, his friends were all a lot more “traditional” than the circles I ran in.
Unlike me, he actually cared what the rugby team thought of him.
Shit, he was on the rugby team. Unlike me.
The older I get, the more I realize what I did to Dane when I waited for him under that mistletoe.
I thought I was giving us our moment, but maybe all I was doing was dragging him into a painful spotlight he never asked for.
And I did it without even asking. I really thought he’d want to show off our budding relationship as much as I did—I wasn’t trying to forcefully out him. But I almost did.
Now I’m older, the thought makes me shudder.
“Why is it so much harder for him than you?” I ask Olivia.
I know it’s a stupid question. They’re siblings, but they’re not the same person.
Just because Olivia came out doesn’t mean that Dane can, or wants to.
Still, I can’t help overanalyzing this, wondering why Dane finds it so hard to just be open about his feelings.
Assuming he even has any for me. Maybe he just sees it as a physical thing.
No, I don’t think so. If that was true why did he want to cuddle and watch Christmas films together? Why did he hold me so tight when I got squeamish at Home Alone, of all things, like he was really worried about me?
Why did my support help him to win that exhibition match when almost everyone else was against him?
“He’s a fucking idiot,” Olivia says. “But don’t give up on him just yet.”
“I’m pretty close,” I say.
“I know you are. Just…trust me, okay? I’ll have a word with him.”