Veeti and I always shared a room, but Dex hung with us a lot when we were on the road. He was paired with a junior on his line, and they were close, but not as close as he was with us. Right now, Veeti and Gabe had gone out for a late-night burger and were going to bring something back for Dex and me.
“I can’t believe you never mentioned this mystery girl last year,” he said as he rolled onto Veeti’s bed, pulling a pillow out from under the comforter and bunching it under his head.
The guys knew that Megan had been at the house most nights during the past week. Wednesday, after we’d finished at the food court, I went back with Megan and Chloe to their dorm, where I spent the night, once again forcing Emily to the couch. Thursday after class, we’d left for this trip. On the long bus ride, I’d spilled the truth to the guys about knowing Megan from last year. Well, kind of knowing her.
Not at all in the way that I knew her now. Like she was another part of me. An appendage I hadn’t known was missing. A phantom limb now reattached.
“Holy shit, you’re in deep with this girl,” Dex said, correctly reading whatever sappy look was no doubt creeping across my face as I thought about Megan.
“Yeah. Yeah, I am,” I admitted.
“That’s great, man, really. You deserve a little light in your life after…”
His sentence went unfinished, as people’s comments often did when they regarded losing my brother. I got it. It was hard not knowing if people wanted to talk about their loss, or try to move past it.
What I was realizing through group (and Megan, in a way) was that I would not be able to move past itwithouttalking about it. Which was a huge aha moment for me. For any guy who considered themselves a tough guy. Or just a guy.
What bullshit we bought into.
And, of course, I’d never truly move past losing a loved one. Nobody ever did. But as Marlo often said, grief was moving, shifting, its own entity, and you couldn’t ever really bepastit. Just different.
The stages bit was no joke, either. I could sense the shift in me. It panicked me at first, like losing another piece of J, or being disloyal to him in some way, even though I knew that was bullshit.
Nothing would ever alter the love I had for my big brother.
But I had room for more. For new love, of a different kind.
I thought of how I felt with Megan, beyond—way beyond—the miracle of finding her a year later. She made me laugh. She made me think. She made me more in tune with people around me and what they may be going through. Plus, I was wildly attracted to her and saw no sign that that would ever abate.
“It feels good. It feels right, you know?” I said to Dex, trying to sum up the complicated feelings I had about falling in love with Megan.
“I’min love with her,” I said out loud as I figured it out in my head.
“Duh,” Dex said, rolling on his back and tucking his hands beneath his head. “The question is, does she feel the same way?”
“Yes,” I said quickly, going on gut instinct, the instinct honed from Megan’s clinging to me when I was inside her. And the look she burned into me as she rode me, setting her own pace, making sure we came close together. And how she’d sleep in my arms, feeling safe and at peace, feelings that matched my own. “Ithink,” I amended, remembering her refusal to leave stuff in my bathroom, instead stuffing clean clothes and a toothbrush in her backpack when she came over. Or her confusion when I told her about my feelings for her going back an entire year. But that was more about being cautious than not feeling the same way.
Wasn’t it?
“You know, if she’s skittish at all, it’s probably Philly’s fault,” Dex said, seeming to read my mind as it tried to quantify Megan’s intentions.
Her intentions toward me. The thought made me snort. I’d take anything she intended for me. Then Dex’s words registered in my feelings-hazed mind. “What do you mean? What’s Philly have to do with it?”
“I didn’t know this until a few days ago. Philly said she didn’t think anything about it after that first party we had, when Megan came, until she started sleeping at the house. Then she thought maybe she’d, I don’t know, overstepped or something.”
My body went on alert and I sat up on my bed, swinging my legs to the side, facing Dex, who continued to lie nonchalantly on the other bed.
“What did Philly say?” I asked.
“Apparently at that first party, she kind of gave Megan and her roommates the lay of the land, as far as hockey players. Or at least Bribury hockey players. Although we’re probably all like—”
“What lay of the land? What are you talking about?”
“That we don’t do girlfriends. That we like casual hookups. And nothing more.”
I relaxed. That. Yeah, Megan had mentioned, even teased me, about that. While telling me she wouldn’t chase.Didn’tchase. That was okay. She knew I was the one who had chased. Even though it was she who’d texted me from the corner late at night asking if I wanted to talk.
I had chased. And she had been well and truly caught.
