“You’re looking at me like there’s an obvious answer to that question.” And then he half frowned, half smiled at me. “Are we going to make out?”
It was a teasing, throwaway comment, and it made me grin even as my heart thumped. “Better.” I pulled a deck of cards from my jacket pocket and dropped it on the stair between us.
He looked at the cards, then back at me. “So we’re not even going to talk about my idea?”
We didn’t end up talking about his idea, but we did talk about a lot of other stuff, mostly movies, because with me it’s always movies.
I growled when he told me he’d never seenThe Godfather. “We’ll both be dead before I can show you all the awesome movies you haven’t seen.” Then I leaned against the wall and drew one knee up, my cards forgotten. “Doesn’t that depress you? If we watched one movie every night for the rest of our lives, we’d never see them all before we die. And I’m not even talking about all the new movies they make every year. It drives me nuts. I’m doomed to ignorance about so much of something I love.”
“Would you really want to do that?”
“Maybe I don’t want to seeeverymovie ever made, but even half, the good ones, would take more years than I have left.”
“You’re talking about a medium that’s only a century old. Think about all the books you’ll never read or the songs you’ll never hear.”
“You’re not helping me,” I said.
“You brought up the movie thing. I’m pointing out that there are a lot of other things you won’t get to experience. No one will.”
“That’s my point. Doesn’t it bother you?”
He shrugged. “Not really.” He leaned toward me. “Look, if you only see the world as a list of things you’ll never get to do, then you’ll never enjoy any of the things you do get to do. You’ll always be thinking of something else, wanting more, when maybe what you have, what you’ve seen or read or heard or whatever, is pretty great. You’ll never appreciate anything.” He sat back against the opposite wall. “Nowthat’sdepressing.”
“You sounded really wise just now.” I tilted my head at him. “You figure all that out on your own?”
“I had some help.”
“Who?”
“My brother... Greg.”
I picked up my cards again, casually shifting them in my hands so he wouldn’t see how much I wanted him to keep talking.
Sometimes I could tell it surprised him when he brought up his brother. He’d go all tense afterward, like he was bracing for pain that I couldn’t see, much less imagine. But it wasn’t there that time.
“You could tell me about him if you felt like it. I know you loved him a lot. And don’t let it go to your head when I say this, but there’s no way he didn’t love you.”
I lowered my gaze when he stood, both because I didn’t want him looking at me while I basically told him that everyone loved him, including me, and because I didn’t want him to think I was trying to force him into doing something he might not ever want to do.
With my head bent, all I could see were his feet. They’d been pointing away from me when he stood, but then, then turned back.
He started talking about Greg.
ADAM
Ihadn’t meant to bring up Greg. I’d promised to tell her about him sometime, and it wasn’t like he was a secret. Most of my friends had been my friends back before Greg died, so I’d never needed to try to explain how amazing he was to someone who’d never know him. It felt like an impossible task.
But seeing Daniel again had made me realize that, with Jolene, I wanted to try.
“Greg was five years older than me and three years older than Jeremy, but we were close—closer than I’ll ever be with Jeremy.” That was a sad thing to admit even though it was true. Having the role of oldest thrust upon my remaining brother didn’t suit him. Or me. Jeremy never knew the right thing to say or when to say it. He couldn’t get away with half the stuff our brother had without even trying. He wasn’t Greg, and it was a toss-up on any given day which of us felt his lack more keenly.
“He died a week shy of his eighteenth birthday. My brother was—” I broke off, because no matter what I said about Greg, it wouldn’t be enough.
“What did he like to do?” Jolene asked, giving me a place to start when I couldn’t find one on my own.
“Animals,” I said. “He rescued animals, ones that were hurt and would have died without help, and not just the cute, cuddly kind either. He’d get Daniel and they would come home bleeding from scratches and bite marks, barely hanging on to some filthy, furry monster that was still trying to claw their faces off...and Greg would laugh.” I laughed, too, at the memory, and it felt good to be able to remember something that didn’t hurt. “He’d promise the little—and often not-so-little—terror that he was going to take care of them. Daniel wasn’t as lighthearted as my brother, but he never complained about the injuries he got rescuing a hurt and scared animal. They were never as bad as the ones he got from his—” I closed my mouth, and Jolene pretended not to notice. She’d met Daniel, but she didn’t know him. Plus, I was supposed to be telling her about Greg, not Daniel.
Mimicking Daniel’s favorite pose, I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Anyway, Greg always kept his promises. He’d get the animals clean and fed, pay vet bills with money he got from hustling pool with Daniel, and he’d set up places for them in our barn that looked more comfortable than my bed. He even slept out there next to some of the more hurt and skittish ones.”
