Page 2 of Bruised

“Yeah,” I mutter back, not at all salty. I can’t afford a good college like him, and even if I could, my grades are too shitty to get accepted.

“What are you going to do?” Oliver asks, taking a sip of Dr Pepper.

I shrug. “I don’t know. Start working at Dad’s place in the fall, maybe.” I wince as soon as I say it. It feels so wrong, but I haven’t found anything that feels right. The hollow feeling in my stomach grows, and I try to fill it by munching on more chips.

“What about Micah?” Oliver asks.

I scoff and pull my knees up to my chest. “Dumped his ass.”

“Too boring?”

“Too nice.”

Oliver flashes a grin. “Nice is bad?”

I fiddle with at a loose string on the seam of my black shirt, then start picking at my chipped black nail polish. “I don’t know. He just… couldn’t give me what I need.”

“And what do you need?”

“Well…” I shrug, forcing a sheepish grin. “You can’t give me what I need, either.”

“Thank God.” Oliver laughs in relief—we both do, but the laughter dies quickly and ends in silence.

We’ve never talked about it, not seriously, but we both knew it was never going to be like that. Not between us. We’re the same kind of lonely, just not the kind that fits together.

Oliver’s gay, same as me, but we both prefer to be, uh… on the receiving end. Not that we’ve talked about it at length. We have other things in common—us both being bottoms is just one of them.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” I mumble, and the hollow feeling in my stomach swells and makes me want to crawl out of my own skin. I pull at the choker around my neck, fidgeting with the black velvet band and the silver ring at the front.

“I know.” Oliver’s voice is subdued, pitying in a frustrating way. “Me too.”

“Yeah? Then why don’t you just stay here?” I want to yell at him, but I can’t. Just because I have no fun opportunities in life doesn’t mean I can drag Oliver down with me.

Restless, I jump off the couch and study the photographs lining the shelf above the TV. I haven’t noticed them before, and now I’m desperate for a distraction.

“Hey, who’s that?” I point at a dusty family photo. There’s Oliver, Oliver’s mom, and what I assume to be his stepdad, who left the picture when Oliver was thirteen. No surprises there. But in the corner, there’s a taller, older boy I can’t pinpoint.

“That’s my brother,” Oliver says. “Mason.”

I study the photo more closely. Oliver must’ve been around thirteen, all big brown eyes and a mop of soft, sandy hair that curls a little at the ears. He’s grinning wide, leaning in against his stepdad.

I don’t think I’ve ever smiled like that in a photo. Even when grown-ups asked me to, my face remained blank and tight-lipped, sullenly glaring into the camera.

And then there’s him.

The older one on the edge of the frame. He’s not smiling exactly, but a smirk tugs at the corner of his lips. His hair is brown, close-cropped, and his slate-gray eyes look straight into the camera as if he’s daring it to blink first.

I put the photo back in its place. “You never told me you had a brother.”

Oliver shrugs. “We don’t really talk.”

“Why not?”

“He’s, uh… locked up.”

It’s Oliver’s turn to fidget, and I lie back on the couch, knowing not to pry. Whenever the subject of his stepdad comes up, he gets all twitchy and angsty, and maybe the same goes for his big brother.

We put on a movie: a mindless action flick, something we’ve both seen before. After a while, Oliver yawns and pulls a blanket over himself.