Dylan was looking at the middle distance, which was where Dylan looked when he was saying things that cost him something to say. He had Dad’s jaw and Dad’s hands, and he had been doing everything right since before I arrived at the Morrison house and disrupted the whole system. And now he was standing in a locker room after a loss telling me not to mess up the thing with Nathan.
"Dylan," I said. “I’m—"
"I'm not done," he said.
I waited.
"Decker said the thing," Dylan said. "In Toronto. About cleaning up after you."
"Yeah."
"I've thought that," Dylan said. To the middle distance. Flat and even, the way Dylan said things he'd been sitting with for a long time. "A hundred times. A thousand. That it's exhausting. That I do everything right and you show up and it doesn't matterwhat I've done because you just—" He stopped. His hand moved. The gesture covering something he wasn't going to say directly.
"Dylan—"
"I've thought it," Dylan said. "And then Decker said it. And I thought—" His jaw set. "I thought: you don't get to say that. That's mine. That's between me and him. Some fourth-line pest from Chicago doesn't get to say that."
I didn't say anything.
"That's the thing about it," Dylan said. Quieter. "I can think it. I've been thinking it for years and that's allowed. That's me and you. But it doesn't—" He stopped. "It doesn't mean what he meant by it."
The facility hummed around us.
“And you're my brother. And doc left a good job to stay with you. And you should know that I know that. And you should not fuck it up."
I waited, to see if there was more. When there wasn’t, I nodded.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay," he said.
We stood there.
Dylan was still looking at the middle distance. Something in his face that was tired and real and had been under everything else for a long time.
"You're a good player," Dylan said. To the wall.
"So are you," I said.
"I know," he said. "We both had to be."
I held that. All of it.
"Hey, Dylan?”
He looked at me. One second.
"You're a good brother," I said.
Something moved through his expression. Fast and then gone, but there.
"Don't push it," he said.
He picked up his bag.
He walked out.
I stood in the empty locker room for a moment.
