Unless he’s horny, Bryce though, in which case it’s nearly impossible to shut him up.
“I don’t know what his deal is.”
“What do you mean?”
“His deal,” Merrick repeated, like saying the same thing again would somehow clarify it.
“Merrick.”
“I don’t know. He just comes to work, does his job, and leaves. I don’t know a single thing about him.”
“Have you ever asked?”
“What?” Merrick scoffed at him. “Of course.”
Bryce raised a brow, decidedly in disbelief. His brother was kind, but he rarely thought to engage others in the talking parts of his day.
“Is that why you made him take me to eat?” he asked.
“I asked him to take you to eat because you were hungry and directions to the corner store are confusing.”
“It was three blocks,” Bryce said.
He closed Merrick’s sketchbook and looked at his brother, who was staring at him with an uncomfortable kind of intensity.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Merrick answered quickly. He clutched his coffee to his chest and walked out of the kitchen toward the living room.
Bryce topped his mug off before following after his brother and finding him on the couch. He sat down next to Merrick andstretched his legs out, propping his socked heels on the coffee table. This time, Merrick was the one to match his pose, crossing his legs at the ankle.
“What?” he asked again.
“I think he’s lonely,” Merrick blurted, and Bryce could have laughed at the absurdity of it.
“Why do you think that?”
“He’s just so quiet! I don’t think he has any friends. I don’t think he has a girlfriend, and I don’t think he has any family here. I just…”
“You didn’t have any family here until yesterday,” Bryce countered. “And if you have a girlfriend, you haven’t told me.”
“I have friends,” his brother argued.
“I’m not saying you don’t. I’m just saying it sounds like you don’t really know a single thing about him so I’m not sure what your goal is.”
“I don’t think he has friends and you don’t know anyone here,” Merrick explained. “I thought the two of you could maybe be friends.”
“I’m sure he has friends.”
“You don’t.”
Bryce sighed. When his brother got like this, there was no stopping him. Merrick would get these ideas in his head and convince himself they were real, even if they had no basis in reality. Bryce figured it had to do with Merrick’s overactive imagination or something. He’d never been sure.
“I’m fine, Mer. And I’m sure he is too.”
“Well, if you wanted to be friends with him?—”
“I don’t,” Bryce said sharply. Maybe too sharply. He forced a smile and shrugged his shoulders. “He probably doesn’t want to be friends with me.”
