“We’re all right here with you,” Michael said from the love seat.
I wasn’t worried about them hearing. I had long since bared all my secrets, that weren’t actually secrets, and told them all about it so they knew how to handle any weird questions if I wasn’t there. But I’d never actually confessed all to my big brother.
“Fine,” I muttered, and pulled out my phone, dialling Jacob before I could talk myself out of it.
“Hey, kid,” he said, so cheerful I teared up. “Can you even believe this?”
“I have to tell you some things, J.”
“Woah. What happened?”
“No, nothing. Everything is fine and yeah, this is amazing. Hard to believe.”
“Then why do you sound like your puppy died?”
“Look, I need you to know something and I have to just say it, and you’re not going to be pleased.”
“Don’t tell me how I’m going to feel about something. Just say it. Did you get kicked off the team? Well, fuck them.”
“No, god, no. But there’s going to be a lot of press, right? I mean, I guess there already has been and?—”
“If this is about you and Perry hooking up with that Alan guy, I obviously know.” I could hear the grin in his voice. “I knew a long time ago you trend away from monogamy so this is not really a surprise for me. None of you have been exactly subtle.”
“No, I know. That’s been on purpose so it can’t be used against us like we were trying to keep it secret.”
“Smart.”
“But this is not that.”
“What, then?” he asked. “Ev, whatever it is, I know you well enough to know it’s not going to be something so bad it changes how I feel about my baby brother.”
“It might.”
“Not possible.”
“It’s about before I met Perry, okay? So you know, none of this ever happened after the night I met him at a party.”
“Oh.” There was a tiny breath of silence, then he said, “That.”
“That?”
“I don’t want details, bro. I do not need to know how many guys you’ve been with. I know it was a lot. You were young and I know you took risks, which I hated, just so that’s on record,but I also know nothing I might have said back then would have changed your behaviour so I just did my best to make sure you knew you had me, always, and to make sure you were as safe as I could make you. We don’t have to talk about it.”
I don’t know if I was relieved or shocked. He said it all so matter-of-factly, like we were talking about his taxes. “It’s going to come up. The Darren twins won’t let it not come up, because they’re assholes. so if we beat them, they’ll try to turn it into a reason not to let me represent. They’ll out me for spite.”
“So you’re going to bring it up before they can.”
“I have to. But I wanted to tell you first.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Clearly.” I let out a long breath. “The press conference might get dicey. So we thought it would be best to warn you beforehand, in case you were watching with the kids and Em.”
“Don’t be mad at me but Em knows.”
“Of course I’m not mad. I always know anything I tell you, or tell her, it’s telling you both so if you know, she knows. That’s cool.”
“Ev?”
