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The little dog launches out past her, straight toward Ruthie, dancing around her feet, its little legs pawing at her knees, as if she’s a goddess to worship. Smart dog.
“I see you found some Twix bars,” Mira says.
“What?” I ask, even as Ruthie hustles me inside, the dog following us. Izzy’s on the couch with Danny, who’s reading her one of those unicorn books she’s so hot on.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re here, Uncle Shane,” she says, getting to her feet. “Uncle Danny tried, but he’s no good with the voices. He made Mr. Rumptwinkle sound like an old woman.”
Danny shrugs, the line of his mouth amused, but the expression drops as he gets to his feet, glancing back and forth between Ruthie and me. “Didn’t know you were stopping by, Shane.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” I say, my heart thumping harder. Was this how it was for my father? Did his heart start racing before it happened? It’s a foolish thought—telling my friend something he doesn’t want to hear isn’t going to make my heart stop—but for a second it feels like it. “Can we talk out on the balcony?”
“God, that balcony is such a hotspot,” Mira says, clucking her tongue. “I’m half-tempted to get Deacon to wire it so I can find out what you all talk about out there.”
“I don’t trust him to put in a wire. If you’re really curious, I’ll do it for you,” Danny says. He’s kidding in that dry way of his that some people don’t pick up on. But Mira laughs.
Danny catches my eye and nods toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“But who’s going to read my book?” Izzy asks with a pout.
“I will,” Ruthie says, putting an arm around her shoulder. “But first, there’s something I want to talk to you and Mira about.” We decided that she’d talk to them while I talk to Danny; divide and conquer.
“Are you finally going to share the Twix bars?” Mira asks with plenty of insinuation.
“You have candy?” Izzy exclaims with excitement.
“I now realize that was a regrettable metaphor,” Mira says. I’m guessing it has something to do with sex, and the fact that Ruthie and I have been having a lot of it, but at the moment I honestly could care less. Because my heart is still beating out of my chest, and now I’m following Danny out onto the balcony.
Danny really is a brother to me. The other guys are close friends, family in a way, but he’s the one who held me together when everything else felt like using Elmer’s glue to fix a shattered glass. He’s the one who still goes on those bike rides through the Blue Ridge with me, because my dad used to bring us. Danny’s the one other person, besides my mother and me, who really remembers my dad. Who honors him.
And he might be about to tell me to go fuck myself.
I close the door behind us, then sit down next to him in one of the chairs. He turns on the space heater, but there’s a breeze in the air that makes it less effective than usual.
For a second I let the silence hang, because I’m very aware that I’m coming to him for the second time in as many weeks to share that I’ve taken liberties.
“You got something to say to me?” he finally asks. “Or did you just want to come out here to look at this view you’ve seen a thousand times in the cold?”
It’s funny, and normally I’d laugh. But I decide it’s time for me to confess.
Turning in my chair, I say, “I’m…interested in your sister, and I’m lucky enough that she feels the same way. I want to date her, but you need to know that I didn’t plan on any of this when I asked Ruthie to help me out. I wasn’t…I wasn’t ever going to go there.”
His face gives nothing away. He just watches me for a moment, then shifts his attention to the overlook again. Steepling his fingers, elbows on his chair, he asks, “Have you changed your mind about marriage?”
I flinch. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve always been dead set against marriage. Real marriage. You’ve told all of us hundreds of times. Hell, at one point you wanted us to make a pledge never to get married.”
I think about lying to him and throw out the possibility. “I don’t know,” I finally admit.
I still don’t like the institution of marriage. It brings the law into something that’s supposed to be about feelings. It can be abused, the way Ruthie and I have abused it. And it often does not last. But my aversion to it has lessened.
His gaze meets mine again, sharp and not at all friendly. “So you want to date Ruthie, but you don’t want it to go anywhere.”
“No,” I say, sitting up straighter and sliding to the end of my chair. “It’s not like that. I really care about her.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “That’s news to me. You’re always poking at her, wanting to know what she’s planning with her van. Treating her like she’s an obnoxious kid even though she’s almost thirty. Is that what caring about someone looks like for you?”
He’s not wrong, and the picture he painted doesn’t look good for me. “I’m an asshole,” I say, really and truly feeling it. “I think… I guess part of me was always drawn to her, and I figured I could make it stop if—”
