And even though he knows I can't look at his face, he still reaches for mine. He cradles my cheeks in his big hands and wipes away my tears, silently banishing them from this moment. Working his magic until there isn't anything to cry about. Not right now. Not with him.
Bowen
Age 18
The attic is creaking under Brett’s pacing.
“Jesus, bro. You reorganizing your closet or escaping into Narnia?” His voice is lighter than usual, too loud in the quiet that has seemed to settle between us lately.
I don’t answer, just reach deeper on the shelf, trying to find the stupid jersey I stuck up here the other day. Behind me, I hear the springs groan as Brett flops dramatically onto my bed. I moved my bedroom up here about a year ago. It was time we had our own spaces. Not that he doesn’t find any reason he can to come in here when I’m home.
“You know,” he says, “back in the good old days, we’d all be at the lake right now. Eating hotdogs. Tucker laughing too hard at his own jokes. Kit drooling over your suntan. You, brooding in the corner somewhere pretending not to watch him.”
I roll my eyes, still turned away. “You done?”
“I’m just saying,” he continues. “Maybe if one of you had the balls to talk to the other, I wouldn’t be stuck trying to spend time with both of you separately and also try to make you realize you’re both being stupid, dumb dicks.”
“I’m not doing this right now.”
I feel it before I hear it. The shift in weight. The way something falls wrong from the top of the shelf, too close to the edge. “Shit.”
I turn just in time to see it. A box on the floor, its contents spilling out everywhere with the lid popped off. A shoebox with scattered memories across the carpet.
“Fuck,” I mutter, dropping to one knee.
Brett beats me to it.
He reaches for one of the prints but freezes mid-motion, his fingers hovering. Then, slowly, he picks one up.
It’s a photo of Kit.
Barefoot on the dock, feet dangling, head tipped back mid-laugh. His hand reaching towards the lens, blurry at the edge, like he was trying to stop me from snapping it. It was the summer he talked his mom into getting me a camera for my birthday. Fourteen.
Brett looks at another one. Then another.
Kit with his knees tucked to his chest, face half hidden in a sweatshirt collar. Kit, curled up by the firepit at the cabins, ash on his cheek from Brett. Kit, half asleep in my passenger seat, wearing my hoodie after one of my football games. It was starting to get really shaky with us then, but he still smirked at me when he saw the camera I pulled out from the glovebox.
I didn’t realize how many there were. Or maybe I did. Maybe that’s why I shoved the box so far back on the shelf, because I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away, and I couldn’t stand to look at them.
No one says a word.
I swallow hard. My hands feel stupid and clumsy on the floor, still gathering memories of the life I hadn’t known then that I would be losing.
Brett finally speaks.
“If you didn’t love him,” he says, “this would be so creepy, dude.”
He means it as a joke. He even tries to tack a grin onto it like it would soften the blow. But the words just sit there, heavy and fucking real.
I don’t look at him.
Don’t say anything.
Don’t have to.
Kit
Age 18
