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“I thought I could pretend you were him,” he says. “But I can’t lie to you anymore.”
“I don’t understand?” I whisper, and grab his hand.
He lets me go as we both stare out at the valley below. “I, I loved him,” he says with no emotion in his voice.
“You mean… you were… together?”
He shakes his head. “No, I was too fucking chicken shit to say anything to him. We were best friends, and I loved him. The night before everything changed, I went over to your parents’ place to tell him how I felt.”
“And did you?” I ask, and now it all makes sense. The way he tried to protect me, the push and pull, why he never tried anything in all these years.
“I’m sorry, Lem, for stringing you along,” he says, casting his eyes down. “You remind me so much of him, and I thought I could love you the same.”
“But you can’t, can you?”
“No, I had my chance. He was the love of my life, and I was too afraid to tell him how I felt about him. Don’t make the same mistake with the snowboarder, Acie.”
“I had no idea…” I swallow hard.
“You know what the last thing I said to him was?” he asks.
“No.” Tears stream down my face because I can feel his pain. Now I know why he never really told me how he felt.
“Don’t die on me,” he says, choking on the last word.
“Oh, Shane, I’m so sorry,” I say, hugging him tight.
A broken sob escapes his body. “He told me to go fuck myself and that he loved me too,” he says, wiping both hands over his face. “I just stood there like a dumbass and didn’t say it back while he went inside the house.”
“That was the night,” I say, clutching my leather jacket.
“What do you mean?” he asks, as he runs a shaking hand through his hair.
I smile through my tears. “He came into the kitchen while I was making some hot cocoa. He stayed with me, and we talked about stupid things until two in the morning. What we wanted to eat on Friday, where we were going on vacation. But I remember him saying something… it didn’t make sense at the time.”
“What?” he asks, the light slowly returning to his eyes.
“He said he finally told someone how he really felt, that he said it as a joke, but he meant every word—”
“He did?” Shane asks, smiling through his tears.
“It didn’t make sense, but now I know he was talking about you,” I tell him, hugging him tight.
He buries his face in my hair, and I rock him while his body softly shakes. “I’m so sorry, Acie, for holding on to you while he was gone.”
I kiss his cheek and whisper in his ear. “We held on to each other, but Ronnie would want you to be happy.” Before he can respond, my brother opens the glass door.
“Hey, guys, how’s it going?” Layne asks, closing it behind him.
“Good,” Shane tells my brother, wiping at his red-rimmed eyes while he turns to the mountains again.
“You guys look like shit,” Layne answers, laying his hands on our shoulders.
I clutch his hand and smile as the cold air cools my cheeks.
“You guys wanna talk about it?” Layne asks, his voice soft. “I know Ronnie was always the center of attention at these parties.”
“No, we’re okay,” I tell him while I look at Shane.
