Page 17 of If the World Was Ending

“I had an old CD that you burned. Like your senior year or something.” Colby tried not to look as astonished as he felt.

“It would have been junior year. You definitely don’t have anything I did during my senior year. Unless you stole it,” Colby muttered and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“I might have found it lying around the house when I came to visit. Before they packed up your stuff,” Atlas replied as his friends shuffled past him and down the hall.

Colby leaned on the door frame, refusing to enter the space that was no longer his. He felt a tightness in his chest he hadn’t felt for a long time. Atlas sighed and ran a hand through his shaggy dark hair. He took after their mom’s side of the family with thick, curly chestnut colored hair and dark hazel eyes that were easily mistaken for brown. His skin was a shade darker than Colby’s, more like how Colby’s looked if it were tanned. They didn’t look alike, but until the incident, they’d been as close as brothers could be.

“You’ll like Gina. She’s great,” Atlas offered. Colby stared blankly at him. “My fiancée. Gina. She went to Kennedy with us, but she graduated two years before me.”

Colby’s brain flashed on the woman Briar was going to talk to downstairs. “Gina, the old cheerleading coach?”

Atlas nodded excitedly. “Yeah! We connected at a season-ticket holder event for the team. Turns out she worked in marketing for the team. She loves baseball in general, and she’d been following my career since college. She was so proud I was a local boy and requested to work on the event because I was there.”

“So, you decided to…” Colby’s eyes darted down the hall, and his voice dropped an octave before he continued. “You decided, wow, I should pretend to be straight for this woman because she’s a big fan. That’s a level of narcissism I don’t even think Dad has reached.”

Atlas’s face went stony. “I didn’t decide anything for her. I’m not… not straight. And don’t fucking label me, Colby. It’s not your place.”

“Right. Well, I’m just connecting the dots, Atlas,” Colby hissed at him, working as hard as he could to keep his voice low so no one would hear. “Let’s see… at fourteen you told me you thought guys were hot.”

“I said hot too,” Atlas shot back. “Too.”

Colby rolled his eyes. “Do I need to remind you about Thanksgiving? Your freshman year of college, when you came home, and I found you and your bestie?—”

“I was young, horny, and Foster was obsessed with me,” Atlas spat out. He tried to mask the pained expression on his face with a scowl. “And bisexual people exist, Colby. I thought you would get that. Don’t you pretend to be bisexual?”

“I don’t fucking pretend anything. And does your future wife know they exist?”

“I’m sure she knows they exist. She’s liberal as fuck. Dad would actually shit if he talked politics with her,” Atlas replied.

Colby stared at Atlas. His chest tightened further. “But Gina doesn’t know she’s marrying one?”

“I’m not bisexual. I thought I was then. But I was… confused. I’m not now. I don’t need to tell her about every fucking stupid mistake I made as a child,” Atlas scoffed and moved to sit on the couch that was pushed up against the wall where Colby’s bed used to be.

“Oh, okay then.” Colby felt warm, like he had a fever. It was rage, and he knew it. “Then let’s go downstairs, and you can tell Dad that you borrowed my iPad when you were eighteen and it was you who was watching the gay porn he found in my browser history, not me. But it’s okay because you were just confused then and now you’re not.”

Atlas’s whole body tensed. His jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth. His eyes lost any light they’d been holding. “Why can’t you just let that whole fucking thing go? We’ve all moved on except you.”

Colby stared and fought to keep his mouth from dropping open. He really should have been expecting the denial and the gaslighting. Atlas seemed to understand he was making this worse. He stood up and walked closer to Colby. “I was young and stupid, and I panicked. I admit it. Colby, you were already…”

He glanced at Colby’s hands, which were balled into fists at his side. Atlas lowered his voice. “You were already accepted as different. Mom and Dad expected me to be like them. Not you. Plus, in my career I can’t be… I just can’t.”

“I never said I was gay,” Colby said in a voice so low and menacing it was like a growl. “And I wasn’t the one who saved those images.”

“Yeah, I know. And I wasn’t the one who put all that gay porn in your browser history. Not all of it,” Atlas countered, and Colby’s fingernails dug into his palms as he fought the overwhelming urge to hit him. He didn’t want to do it—not because Atlas didn’t deserve it, but because Colby didn’t deserve to become the guy who did that.

“I had a right to figure my shit out privately,” Colby replied through gritted teeth. “I had a right to tell our parents what I wanted to when I wanted to.”

“So, it’s been almost ten years since I told Dad the pictures he found on the iPad were yours,” Atlas whispered hotly. His eyes took on a defiant glint. “What did you figure out? About your sexuality? Because I figured shit out too. I need to be with a woman. And you?”

Colby’s brain jumped to Hunter for some reason, right in the middle of this family rift the size of the Grand Canyon. All Colby could see was the friendly, slightly awkward dark-haired guy with broad shoulders and smooth, glassy skin and an anxious smile. He blinked and shook his head a little, which had Atlas smirking. And that brought Colby’s anger back tenfold. He reached out and fisted the front of Atlas’s pristine polo shirt. “What you did will never be okay. And you’re kidding yourself if you think marrying her is going to change the truth. You’ll always know it. You’ll never pretend it away no matter how hard you try. And maybe I’m pathetic for still not figuring myself out, but at least I’m not so much of a coward that I’m ruining an innocent person’s life by lying.”

Colby let Atlas go and turned and left the room before another word could be spoken. Gina was climbing the stairs as he descended them. She stopped short. “Oh! Hey! You’re Colby, right?”

He had no choice but to stop and be nice. She was, after all, the innocent victim about to ruin her life. He plastered on a smile. “Yeah. Hi. Congratulations.”

“Thank you. I was talking to Briar, your date, she’s so great. I remember her from when I coached cheer,” Gina said and smiled. “I was still in college when I got that job and felt like an imposter, but the girls, especially Briar, were so great. And I also remember when the cheerleaders did that routine at the talent show, and you sang at it. You were fantastic.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”