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Culture? I dig in my eyebrows, and he sees, rearing back and looking affronted. “Fuck you, I like plays and shit.”
I finally smile a little.
He goes on, staring at the street again. “We were so isolated up there, and I don’t remember a time when those majestic mountains didn’t feel like walls.”
I can’t imagine seeing things like that every day gets boring, but I’m sure it does. We get used to anything.
And the seclusion would be hard. I’m like Noah. I like activity.
“When we did see anyone,” he says, “it was the same old bullshit. You’re rotating the same girls in and out of your bed, determined to live in the present, because the only thing getting you up in the morning is the thought of the beer you’ll get to crack open at five o’clock, and who you’re going to screw that night.”
I watch him stare out at the street, my heart suddenly beating so fast. I’ve never heard him talk like this.
I’m not sure if I’m shocked, or if I appreciate someone in this house speaking to me like I’m not a child.
“But I kept doing it.” His voice sounds strained. “Day after day, year after year, because I didn’t know if I’d find what I wanted if I left, either.” He pauses, breathing hard. “I don’t think I ever would’ve left if she hadn’t first.”
“Who?”
Finally, he looks over at me. “Step-cousin, actually.” He pulls out more cotton candy. “Same as you and Hunter and Kade.”
He offers me more, but I forgot to eat what’s in my hand. I stuff it in my mouth.
“I stayed miserable,” he swallows, “because I was too afraid to leave and risk failing. Kaleb hadn’t spoken a wordsince he was four. And my father had stopped knowing why he was alive. Fear was rotting us.”
He’s talked about Kaleb. His older brother.
“And one day,” he says, pausing to smile, “she comes into our house and we start fighting for our lives again, because now, we have something we don’t want to lose.”
“She’s not there anymore?”
“No.”
He said she left first.
“She found what she wanted, but not what she needed.” We both grab for more cotton candy. “So…this eighteen-year-old girl, desperately in love, breaks her own heart and walks away, because she’s not wasting one more second on anyone who costs her her peace of mind.”
My chest aches and swells, and my eyes water again, and I don’t know why. My grandpa said the people you invite into your life should stay because they make it better. If they make it worse, then…
It’s just hard when sometimes it feels so good.
Noah’s eyes soften. “And I thought, if she could do it, so could I. And when she never came running back, my brother did what he had never done before and left Chapel Peak too. To find her.”
To go after her.
So…
My eyes go wide. “You shared a girl with your brother?”
He stares at me for a second, then waves me off. “Mmm, not just my brother, but I’ll tell you more when you’re grown up.”
Huh?
I blink, shaking my head. Never mind.
“My point is,” he continues, “you’re way ahead of the curve.”
I hold his gaze. I am?
