* * *
I go homeand don’t tell anyone what happened. Not Andi. Not Reid. I know, all at once, that it’s not my fault and that there’s no good reason to feel so ashamed about it, but at the same time, the guilt feels like a heavy coat on my shoulders, a scarf around my neck. At least it’s still winter.
* * *
The next nightI’m elbow-deep in the dishwater when there’s a knock on the door. I thought Andi couldn’t come over—some volunteer thing at the library—but maybe it got canceled. Shit. Do I have to tell her? Will she know?
“I’ll get it,” Reid says, and heads off. The door opens and then slams shut half a second later, and I’ve just turned my head to see what’s going on when Reid reappears, shoulders hunched and expression locked down. Every alarm bell in my head starts going off.
“Matt,” he says, jerking his head toward the door and disappearing further into the house.
“The fuck does he want?” I mutter, but Reid doesn’t answer.
Matt’s still there, looking annoyed on the porch, holding a cardboard box. We haven’t been on the best terms these last few years.
“Yes?” I ask, and have to bite back an automaticwould you like to come in?
“Mom and Dad asked if I’d bring this over,” he says, hefting the box a little. “Some things of yours from their house.”
He’s got on a polo shirt and khaki pants under an unzipped winter coat, a wedding ring, and ayou’re getting in troublesmirk on his face. I’m not jealous of him. I haven’t been jealous of him in years, not since we were kids and I couldn’t do anything right and he couldn’t do anything wrong.
“Why?”
“They asked me to tell you not to contact them until you apologize,” he says, and the smirk deepens. “What did yousay?”
They—what? Until I apologize? I nearly ask if it’s a joke, but Matt has never been funny in his life.
“C’mon, it’s heavy,” he says. I take it without thinking.
“They don’t want me to contact them? That’s what they said?”
“Yes,” Matt says, like he’s annoyed. “Dad was pretty angry, so I’d wait a few days.”
“I’m not apologizing.”
For the first time, Matt looks uneasy. We watch each other in silence.
“You know they’re not gonna come around,” he says, voice lowered. “They haven’t talked to—” he nods at my house, “—in three years.”
It’s the nod that snaps me out of it, the way he won’t even say Reid’s name.
“I know,” I say, stepping back, and then: “Thank you,” by accident.
Matt’s frowning as I shove the front door shut, and then stand there. I stare down at the box without seeing it because—don’t contact them?Don’t contact them?Outside, footsteps fade, and I finally breathe again because of all people, I don’t need Matt around for this. Fuck, I don’t need anyone around for this, for—myparents. Jesus.
My fingertips are going cold where I’m clutching the bottom of the box, and I don’t know what happened. Iknow, of course, I was there, but I don’t understand. I was so sure I had more runway betweendon’t call my girlfriend a whoreandwe’ll talk again when you apologize. Or maybe I was further along on the runway than I thought, for the crimes of sheltering Reid and defending Sadie and still talking to Elliott. For not coming to Christmas. For not settling and not reproducing and never being sorry enough for any of it.
Seems like it should take more, though, for your own parents to stop talking to you, or maybe this is all much more and much worse than I thought because—how can you do something so wrong thatyour own parentswon’t pick up the phone?
They haven’t spoken to Reid since they learned he’d come out and they haven’t talked to Elliott for much longer than that, but that’s because my parents are assholes. I thought I’d threaded that needle just enough to stay on everyone’s good side, enough that I can be there for everyone who needs me, but—fuck.Fuck, now I can’t even do that, I can’t—
“He gone?” Reid asks, floating half into the doorway like a jeans-and-hoodie-wearing specter. He’s got his hands shoved into the hoodie pocket and dark hair just long enough to get into his eyes, and he looks at the closed front door like there’s a leopard behind it. Reid’s short for a man, and he always will be, and right now his face is still more delicate and angular than mine, like it’s always been. It took a year, but this summer he’s finally got an appointment at the gender clinic in Richmond to start hormone therapy. I already took the day off work so I can drive him; Richmond is an all-day trip from Sprucevale. It’s another thing I won’t be able to tell my parents, because my parents won’t talk to me.
“Matt, I mean,” Reid clarifies, frowning, and I realize I haven’t answered. I clear my throat.
“Yeah, coast is clear,” I say, but he keeps frowning.
“What’d he want?”
