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“Well, the way I see it, so long as she won’t speak to Asher, you two don’t stand a chance. It’s too much to ask him to forget all about his mother, Jordan.”
“I know that,” I said. I wasn’t nursing any hope of rekindling the passion of this summer. Summers ended. Storms carried the heat and excitement away. It was the way things worked.
“Don’t give up on him,” Dad said. He waited for me to look at him again before he spoke. “Asher’s a good person. There was a time when you two couldn’t be in the same room without fighting. It never crossed my mind that there were other reasons for it.” He let those words linger in the air for a few heartbeats. “If what I think matters, then remember this. It doesn’t have to end like this.”
I gripped my hands together and wanted to ask him to stop talking. Asher had left. That was it. The best I could hope for was to go back to the way things had been all our lives. We were very well practiced in pretending we had nothing to do with each other. We knew how to show no emotions to one another.
Seeing him again would feel exactly the same way it had always felt. The cool composure on my face would contain all the pain and longing that raged inside of me. Nothing new.
“You have to listen to me, Jordan,” Dad said. “If you care about that boy, you won’t let it end here.”
I looked at Dad. “What for? You couldn’t look at me this morning, Dad. Should I lose you, too, just because I…” My voice cut off abruptly. Whatever it was that I felt for Asher was nobody’s business but mine. So I shook my head.
“Son, I was surprised. It was terrible timing and it only worked in Eileen’s favor. This way, she can pretend like you kids caused the rift. She doesn’t have to face the fact that she had made a mistake when she married me.” The bitterness in his voice was tangible. “The fact that you two are technically stepbrothers makes absolutely no difference, Jordan. You neither grew up together nor will remain legally related for much longer.”
“Yeah, well…” I stopped speaking and held my breath. It’s what I’ve been saying all along and look at what it did to us.
Dad didn’t let me think about the irony for too long. “Son, you have to make a choice. I can see that you’re trying to build a wall around your heart. It’s the thing I’ve done, too. Twice. And when you finish that job, you’ll have all the safety and peace you can wish for. You’ll be set to handle your solitude. But before you do that, ask yourself if solitude is really the thing you want the most. Ask yourself if you want to never love again.” He paused to let his words reach deep into my soul, planted like a seed. “If the answer is yes, then I won’t tell you another thing. But I hope that’s not what you’ll decide. You’re too young to quit, Jordan.”
Every word he said made my eyes sting harder and my vision blurred. And when my throat was so tight that I couldn’t speak, Dad reached over and put a hand on my knee.
“Go to bed, buddy,” he said softly. “Tomorrow, you need to go after him.”
Go after him? I wondered if that was possible. I wondered if he would even want me to. My Ash.
“Trust me,” Dad said. “He’ll be happy to see you if you give it your best.”
I nodded. At that moment, I wasn’t sure if I was agreeing or simply looking for a way to end this conversation. Dad stood up at the same time as me, pulling me into a tight hug and gently rubbing my upper back. It felt so good and safe that tears almost rolled down my cheeks. I blinked them away and forced a wave of anger through myself to stop me from crying.
When he released me, I couldn’t leave the living room fast enough, but I kept the calm exterior that had defined me throughout my life. The tornado of emotions ravaged me as I slowly climbed the stairs and shut myself in my room.
I doubted I would ever have him again. I doubted I could replace the loss I had caused. But I missed him nonetheless. Right now, here, where we had first given in to our wild fantasies, I closed my eyes and let the sob rock me off my feet. I dropped into my bed and buried my face in the pillow, holding my breath again, letting my shoulders shake.
For better or worse, I wanted to see him.
Even if I had no chance to win him back. Even if I couldn’t make things right.
Unless…
A thought crept into my mind. It was a ridiculous, ambitious, foolishly hopeful idea that would never work. Then again, for years, I had been in love with him, and I had never expected to have a chance to kiss him.
Maybe — just maybe — I could hope for another miracle.
EIGHTEEN
Asher
The three days of silence that followed were only bearable because Phoenix had stayed at Northwood for the better part of the summer break. He was experiencing city life and all it had to offer. And when he first saw me return, he knew something had gone wrong.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I had told him in a tight voice. “Not now. Probably not ever.”
Phoenix nodded and suggested a night out. The first one back at Northwood was the hardest. It was the first night in weeks that I expected to go to bed alone. And yet, even when I felt the pang of desire for Jordan, guilt stabbed me in the chest. It was a permanent mark on my soul, this feeling of responsibility for the destruction of all the relationships that had defined me throughout my life. What were we without the connection to others? Sacks of meat held together by skin. Skeletons trapped in a slowly rotting cage. We were nothing when we were in solitary confinement, and mine was a punishment for all the things I’d done wrong.
Phoenix respected my needs from the very first hour, which made it easy to be around him and let him distract me. We went skating, we had a few beers in the basement, we listened to music, and he told me about his conquests in the weeks we’d been apart. He never asked what had gone wrong with my life, and I never offered an explanation. In fact, I barely spoke at all, but he took it in stride and spoke for both of us.
I woke up on the third afternoon back at Northwood. The window in our room was open and Phoenix was somewhere other than our den. The heat of the day had crawled into the room and sweat matted my hair. I had been napping every day for a long while since I’d returned.
I sniffed my armpits and wrinkled my nose, then opened the windows wide to air the room out. Undressing, I left a trail of sweaty clothes from my bed to the bathroom, stepped into the shower, and turned on the cool water to wash the sweat off my body. After that was done, I brushed my teeth, dried myself with a big towel, and returned to the room. It was so late in the day that the sky was fiery orange and the green backyard appeared weary and dry like my will to keep going.
