Chapter 24 #2
Nate is standing in the hall, much happier to see me than the last time I saw him. I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to figure out how to fix things between us. To come up with a sentence big enough to express the magnitude of how sorry I am.
“Hey,” is all I say.
He crosses the room, and I brace for anything. I was an asshole to his wife. But then his arms are around me. And we’re not huggers, but I hug him tight anyway because things have been weird between us for months, and they’re about to get a lot worse.
“I’m sorry,” I say, into his shoulder.
“I know you are.” He pats my back before he pulls back and looks over my shoulder at Mike, standing behind me in the doorway.
“You remember my roommate, Mike? He offered to help us pack.”
“How could I forget? You flirted with me and my wife,” he says with a laugh, oblivious to the fact that I’m glaring at Mike over the memory.
“Right,” Mike responds with a grimace, an apology in his eyes.
“Alright, well, you boys get to work. These boxes ain’t move themselves,” Nate says, heading back toward his bedroom.
Iris finds me in the hallway after Nate’s put us to work taking boxes to the truck. She appears at my side, and we can hear Nate saying something to Mike about where to put things through the open garage door.
“I’m so proud of you,” she says, with a gentle smile and a squeeze to my arm, but she keeps walking without waiting for me to say anything.
I stand in the hallway for a second, letting the words sink in.
I’m so proud of you.
No matter what happens, I think I’m proud of me too.
By the time we call it, we only have the bigger furniture left that we’ll move tomorrow.
Mike and Nate have ended up in a twenty-minute-long conversation about music and his band that makes my heart feel too big for my chest. I catch Iris’s eye across the room, and she smiles like she feels the same way.
“Who’s ready for burgers?” Nate announces.
The kitchen is the only room in the house that isn’t empty at this point. The table and chairs are still there, and they decided to pack up the dishes tomorrow. It settles the thing inside me that’s been hurting since we walked through the door.
Nate moves around the kitchen, the last time cooking something in here. Mike leans against the counter and offers to help.
Nate gives him the tomatoes to slice, while Iris washes the lettuce, and I stand at the island with nothing to do but watch the most important people in my life all in one room and try not to make how much I love them obvious.
When we sit down to eat, Iris asks Mike more about his band, and he answers with his whole self the way he does. Everyone laughs at whatever he said, while I stare at the table.
My heart is hammering, and my palms are sweaty and won’t stop shaking. Mike reaches under the table and puts his hand over mine without saying a word, and I know what I have to do.
Nate’s telling a story about one of his players. Something that happened over the season. Mike is smiling beside me, his thumb moving back and forth over my knuckles.
I can’t hold it in anymore.
“I have to tell you something,” I blurt out, in the middle of Nate’s sentence.
The room goes silent, with all three of them looking at me, and I have no idea how to start.
Every word I’ve ever rehearsed has disappeared.
But I look at Nate, and he’s watching me, and I can tell he knows this is something serious.
He’s got that look he gets when he’s worried about me. When he’s asking me what’s wrong.
Except this time, there’s nothing wrong.
It’s the opposite.
It’s Mike beside me, steady and warm and everything I didn’t know I needed. I look over at him, and he gives me a small smile and a nod.
I look back at Nate.
“Mike isn’t just my roommate,” I say, and it comes out clear. “He’s my boyfriend.” I take a deep breath.
“I’m gay.”
I watch Nate’s face, taking in what I said, his eyes moving from me to Mike, back to me.
Back to Mike.
The silence stretches, tense and terrible, all of us watching Nate for some sort of reaction, until he gets up from the table.
He pushes his chair back, stands up, and walks out of the kitchen without saying a single word.
I hear the back door open.
And then it’s the three of us and the empty chair across from me where my brother was sitting.
I knew this would happen.
Everything in me knew he wouldn’t accept me, that he would hate me if he knew, and I still decided to say it even though I knew exactly how he would react. It still feels like the floor has dropped out from under me. I still had hope.
We don’t say anything for a long time. Waiting, hoping that maybe Nate will come back inside, that things will be okay.
Finally, Iris stands up and follows him outside.
The back door opens and closes again, leaving Mike and me at the kitchen table with half-eaten burgers and the shallow, too-fast breathing I think is coming from me. “He hates me,” I say, my voice cracking on the words.
Mike turns toward me, shaking his head. “He doesn’t hate you.”
“You saw him. He didn’t even say anything. God, I knew this would happen. Fuck.” I hide my face in my hands because the tears are already coming, and I’m so tired of crying.
“Alex.” Mike’s voice doesn’t waver. “He’s just processing. Give him some time.”
“He’s been out there for five minutes.”
“That’s not very long.”
“It feels long.”
“I know it does.” He shifts closer, until his forehead presses against mine, taking my hands. “But he’ll come around.”
Mike puts his arm around me, and I lean into him until my head is against his chest. He rests his chin on top of my head, and I close my eyes, breathing in the comforting scent of him, trying to calm my racing heart.
“Whatever happens,” he says, rubbing my back in a soothing circle, “you did it. Okay? You came out to your brother, and you should be so proud of yourself.”
“But what if he—”
“Stop worrying about what ifs. Just breathe.”
I listen to him, taking deep breaths, trying to feel proud instead of worried. He holds me, and outside I can hear the low sound of voices but no words. I keep my eyes closed, and I breathe.
At some point, the door opens, but I don’t even hear it until Mike goes still under me.
When I sit up, Nate and Iris are standing in front of the table watching us.
I don’t move away from Mike. I probably should, but right now, he’s the only thing in the entire world that’s holding me together, and I can’t.
Nate looks at us again, his eyes moving from me to Mike to the way we’re sitting, his arms around me, our bodies turned together.
It’s intimate in a way that can’t be explained away.
And when Nate takes a deep breath and opens his mouth, I prepare for him to say anything, but “Is he treating you right?”
I stare at him.
At Iris, standing to the side, looking at her husband with an expression that isn’t surprised, where this is going. And that makes one of us.
“What?” I croak.
He crosses his arms, his jaw clenching when he glances at Mike. And I’m starting to get the feeling he’s not mad at me at all. “I asked if he’s treating you right.”
“Nate—”
“It’s a simple question, Alex. After what happened with that fuckin’—” Nate can’t say his name.
“Yeah,” I say, disbelief filling my voice because, what? “He is. Of course.”
He nods, turning his gaze on Mike, and I know that look. It’s the one he gets when people make fucked up comments about Iris. And Mike doesn’t even flinch.
“You.” Nate points at him, one finger. “You hurt him, we’re going to have a problem. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” Mike says, nodding. “I understand.”
Nate holds his gaze, and the tension in his shoulders falls away.
“Okay then,” he says, pulling out his chair. He sits back down at the table like he didn’t just threaten my boyfriend, my boyfriend, like a protective dad.
Iris sits down across from me and catches my eye with an expression that says I told you so, and maybe I deserve that.
I’ve been terrified over Nate’s reaction, hurting Mike in the process, and he’s already back to business as usual, telling Mike that he should think about playing some country music for his next show and—
Everything is okay.