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The waitress chose that exact moment to bring their coffee.
Nick was glad for the distraction, though. It gave him something else to look at, something new to do with his hands.
When she was gone, Michael said, “It’s difficult to explain.
Nothing I would have put my finger on, you know?” He paused, then stirred his coffee. Pointless, since he drank it black—but maybe he needed a minor distraction, too.
“Little things,” he said. “Meaningless things. You’d go out with girls, but you never really talked about them. You’re not aggressive. You’re not . . . Jesus, Nick, I don’t know. I’ve never thought, gee, Nick might be g*y, but when you said it, it was like the last piece of a puzzle, if that makes any sense.”
“It makes sense,” Nick said. He couldn’t quite believe that Michael was sitting here dropping a phrase like Nick might be g*y without batting an eye.
“Am I the last to know, as usual?” Michael said.
“No. The first. Sort of.”
“The first! I should be celebrating.” Then he raised an eyebrow. “Sort of?”
“Hunter knows.”
“How’d he take it?”
Nick shrugged and wondered if there was a safe answer to that question. Well, you know. Last night, he caught me in bed . . .
“Hunter was okay.”
“Yeah, I can’t see him having a problem.” Michael paused.
“Not Gabriel?”
Nick stared into his mug and shook his head.
“So that’s why you two are fighting.”
“We’re not fighting.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Nick gritted his teeth and looked away. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Are you afraid of how he’ll take it?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
Michael didn’t say anything for the longest time. After a while, he drained his mug of coffee, then set it back in the saucer.
“I remember,” Michael said, “when you were babies, Gabriel used to scream his fool head off. All the time. He wouldn’t fall asleep at night unless Mom put you in his crib.” He smiled. “It got so that any time he’d fuss, I’d just pick you up and put you next to him.” His smile turned a little sad. “I still remember the one time Mom caught me doing it. She was fit to be tied.
Michael! Do not pick up the babies! ”
Nick held still. It was rare that Michael would talk about Mom and Dad.
He kept talking. “But even when you grew older and got your own beds, we’d always find you in there with him in the morning. Curled up on top of his covers, just sleeping next to him. Mom used to say that you always knew when your brother needed you.” He paused. “I used to find you like that after they died.”
Emotion balled up a fist and struck Nick square in the chest.
He tried to breathe around it. He remembered that. He remembered it.
“She was wrong,” he said, his voice husky. “That was when I needed him.”
