Page 89 of All Our Nevers

“It is?”

Owen nods.

“Does he know?”

He shakes his head.

Tucking myself under his other arm, I say, “Tell me.”

“You won’t tell him?”

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

Owen takes a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling. “After our dad left, our mom started working as a waitress for extra income on top of her salary as a teacher’s aid, which was basically nothing. Some days she’d bring leftovers from the restaurant for us for dinner, but other days she had to work too late. Spaghetti was the first thing Andy and I learned to cook for ourselves. Spaghetti and red sauce. We made it every night that mom wasn’t home, until we got sick of it and Andy decided to learn some other recipes. He was around twelve then, I think. And he turned into this great cook, and I stopped helping with dinner, and now it’s just one more thing we don’t have in common. One more way I let him down.”

He clears his throat, shaking loose the emotion building there.

“Anyway, so I got this for him. For those days when we were kids and we were still in it together. And for all the days since then, when we weren’t. To remind myself what I’m doing all this for—the job I hate and the move to Boston and… all of it. It’s supposed to be for my family.”

I cup his cheek in my palm, turning his face towards mine. “You’re a good man, Owen. Andy is lucky to have you as a brother.” I kiss him lightly, hoping to convey the tender affection suddenly swelling in my chest.

When we separate, I let my hand trail across his jaw, then down his neck, to the final tattoo curling around his collarbone. “And what about this one?”

He looks down to the place where my fingers rest, then back to the ceiling. “That one’s for my dad.”

When he doesn’t offer more, I shift up onto one elbow, placing my palm over the twisting serpent. “Tell me.”

“It’s as obvious as it seems. He was a snake. He was a bad, evil person. And he’s half of who I am. And I guess I wanted to remind myself that that’s in me, but it’s not who I want to be. That I can never let myself become him, even if it’s in my nature.”

His words crack open a door to our conversation at the wedding—the conversation we never finished.

“You said he used to hit your mom?”

He nods.

“Tell me the truth. Did he hit you too?”

The ceiling holds his gaze. “We’re not talking about this right now.”

My instincts are usually to push, leverage the force of my will to get my way, but for this I don’t want to. For this, I want him to choose to trust me.

So, instead of fighting back, I drop my head back to his shoulder, draping my limbs over him with the comfort of having done this a hundred times instead of a single, fragile once. I scrape my nails gently across his chest—back and forth, soothing and steady. And as his heartbeat starts to slow, I offer, “I’ll trade you, a secret for a secret.”

To my relief, he says, “Okay.”

“You remember at the wedding when you asked me why I’m a ruthless misandrist?”

He laughs, and it’s a dry, involuntary thing. “That’s not exactly how I remember it, but okay.”

My cheek tightens into a smile against his shoulder, then it gradually fades away.

“I had this boyfriend in college. I was a sophomore and he was a senior, and I used to keep a lot of things about our relationship secret. From NASA and everyone else.”

“Things like what?”

My fingers follow the column of his throat, learning each inch of his skin to ground myself in the present. I’m not there anymore. I’m here, and I’m safe.

“He had… anger issues. He didn’t hit me,” I’m quick to clarify, “but he would do other things and I… couldn’t bring myself to leave. Most days it was fine. He was normal and we had fun. He was older, and it felt special that he wanted me.” I scoff at myself. “I was young and an idiot, obviously. But also, on the days it was really bad—just a couple days—I thought he would really hurt me if I tried to leave him. Even now, I still think he could have. And I was a fucking coward, and he was graduating anyway, so I just stayed with him until spring and eventually he broke up with me.”