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I looked over at Morgan, too. Morgan’s face was carefully blank. I couldn’t read it. Was he about to explode on us again? Was he going to rant about how we’d hooked up four years ago and he still wasn’t over it?
This whole week I had been getting ready for Christmas, worried about how it would go, and I hadn’t so much as looked at Morgan if I could help it. He’d been around a bit, talking to Mom and Dad about Christmas, helping with the decorations, but he’d been unusually quiet. I had assumed that it was just because he didn’t want to talk to me just like I didn’t want to talk to him.
What if he had been gearing up this whole time for another attack?
But then a look that I had never seen on Morgan’s face before appeared in his eyes, and it took me a moment to identify it. It was sheepishness. Shame.
“I knew about it,” Morgan said, looking not at Dad but at me. “And I was really… awful about it. I treated Pike and Billie unfairly. I didn’t like the change to the status quo in my life, and I didn’t like the feeling that they had gone behind my back. So I violated their privacy, I attacked them both… you’d be really ashamed of me, Dad, if you knew the full story.”
My mouth fell open in shock.
“I wanted to get more information, to get answers,” Morgan explained, “so I went to Michelle and I asked to talk to her about it. Find out what she knew.” He shook his head. “Boy, did she set me straight. She was really gentle about it, but she—she really helped me see how what I had done was wrong and how there were all these parts to the story that I didn’t know.”
Michelle didn’t know about how awful Carter had been on his date with me. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her by telling her about her brother’s behavior. But I’d made it clear that the date hadn’t worked out, and I was pretty sure she suspected the things that I hadn’t told her.
Whatever she knew, or suspected, about Carter aside, she knew all the rest. About how Pike had been serious from the beginning, how I had been the one to resist, about how we’d discussed our age difference and our issues, and the night of the kegger.
“She told me,” Morgan said, still looking at me, “that just because something might have started out with a mistake, or wasn’t handled the best way, didn’t mean that it should be written off or doomed forever. And that attacking others because you felt hurt wasn’t going to make you feel better, and it wasn’t going to get them to apologize.”
I owed Michelle so damn big for this, holy shit. Michelle, with her gentleness and her quiet but firm way of saying things, had clearly gotten through to Morgan where my anger hadn’t.
Morgan finally looked away from me and over at Pike. “You were my best friend. And while you were my best friend you really were the best, and I mean that. You were supportive, you made me laugh, you were always there for me. You were the guy I always wanted to spend time around. You leaving really hurt me, and so I acted out of anger. I should’ve thought about how different our lives were—how I knew what I wanted out of life but you didn’t. And we were just still stupid kids, I mean, Dad here probably thinks we still are. But I know what a good guy you are. What a loyal person you are. I know that if you say that you love my sister, and that you’re going to be there for her, that you’re going to keep your word.”
Pike looked like he might actually cry. “Thanks, man,” he said. “That means—I really can’t say how much that means. Thank you.”
“Thank you,” I chimed in, and Morgan looked back over at me. “I’ve missed my brother all this time. I hope that I can get him back.”
“If you’ll have him,” Morgan replied.
I nodded.
“Oh for goodness sake, you two, just hug,” Mom said.
I laughed, although it was a bit choked up, and I got up as Morgan did, walking around the table to hug him. I hadn’t hugged my brother in over four years. Since right before the Christmas kegger, in fact. All that time—and it was only now, doing it again, that I realized how much I had missed it. How much I had missed him.
My heart felt so full, overflowing, as I pulled back and sat down in my seat. Dad looked a little thunderstruck. “Anything else that I should know about?” he asked. “Any crazy revelations you guys have failed to mention? You got abducted by aliens? You’re running away to join a band?”
