He stayed — the first of many more nights over the years.
We lay in the dark and I held him as tight as I could and he sobbed into my chest in a way I’d never heard from him before.
Open. Unguarded. Like he’d been holding it for hours and couldn’t anymore.
• • •
That was the first time I’d ever seen him cry.
• • •
And it destroyed me like nothing had ever before. Like I didn’t know true devastation and heartbreak until this moment.
I would have carried that pain for him if I could.
I would have taken every piece of it.
• • •
I wanted to say something. Anything. But nothing came.
Words had always been easy for me and now, when they mattered most, I had none.
So I did the only thing I could think of.
I ran my hand over his hair, slowly, the way my parents did for me when things felt too big.
It was such a small thing.
I hoped it was enough.
He was gone by the time I woke up midday.
And even then — eleven years old, not understanding half of what I was feeling — I knew.
Something had shifted between us.
Some door had been barely opened and shut closed in the same night.
I didn’t have the words for it yet. But I remember the feeling.
CHAPTER SIX
TWELVE YEARS OLD
• • •
He came over every day.
Which wasn’t new. But before there had been noise to it — the pool, the backyard, arguments about whose turn it was to pick the movie. Now he just showed up and sat down and stayed.
My parents let him.
They always let him.
But this was different. This felt less like having him over and more like he had nowhere else to be.
• • •
