There’s a pause.
“Fuck!” he shouts, followed by a crash.
I love him so much.
The drive into town feels longer than it ever has with Mike in the front seat, messing with the radio.
I’m going to tell Nate.
I made the decision two days ago, when I was sitting on the couch with Mike, telling him the truth for the first time, and even though he says he’s happy, that whatever I can give him is enough, I know what I’m doing to him.
I can’t treat him the way Jason treated me.
Once that thought presented itself in my head, I couldn’t shake it. I’m keeping him hidden from my family, I’m lying to them, and I’m lying to myself if I think that’s any way to live.
I still drive slower than I normally would, knowing that today is the day that I tell Nate the truth, no matter the consequences.
The house is bare.
The yard decorations are gone, and the curtains have been taken off the front windows. There’s a moving truck backed up to the garage and a for sale sign in the yard.
It’s really happening.
I sit in the car after I park, looking at it. My eyes fixed on the boxes sitting in the garage waiting to be moved. Filled with everything from my childhood.
“Hey,” Mike says from the passenger seat, his hand landing on my thigh. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I clear my throat, reaching for the door handle. “Let’s go.”
The living room is packed up already. The shelves are empty, the picture frames and trophies that used to line them are in boxes on the floor, labeled in Iris’s handwriting. The rug is rolled up against the wall. The furniture still sits in the middle of the room, all that’s left.
I try not to feel sad.
But this is the room where I grew up. Where I watched cartoons as a kid, and where we had our first Xbox, that Nate was so proud to get for us. We stayed up way too late every night that week.
Where I was camped out on that couch, that first week home, when I was still convinced I would never feel normal again.
“Alex.”
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 hiswife. 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 meandmy 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.
