He took a sip of coffee, set it down, and laced his fingers together. He looked at me sideways, the way Matt looked at me when he was about to ask a thing he’d been trying not to ask.
“Is this about Dane?”
“What?”
“You learning to say it. This about Dane?”
I could deflect, change the subject, or give him a number—the number of times Dane and I had held hands, the numberof nights I’d stayed at his house, the number of mornings I’d woken up before he had and watched the way his face looked while it was unguarded, which was a thing I’d been doing more frequently and telling myself it was just me figuring things out.
I could do any of that.
I glanced at my brother. He had a daughter who was a few hours old. He ate half a turkey sandwich. He was looking at me with the face he had used when I was thirteen and asked him what a panic attack was.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“It’s about Dane. I think I love him.”
He stayed quiet for a while, and then he smiled. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You think, or you know?”
“I think. I’m choosing to call it ‘think’ for now because I haven’t said the words out loud to him. The words are in my head. I have been holding them there for about nine days. I held them there the first night I stayed at his house, and I’ve held them through every day since. I am now telling them to the second person in my life who would understand what it means to hold words for nine days. The first person was Sable, and Sable can’t argue with me about it.”
“I’m not arguing with you.”
“No.”
“You should tell him.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Don’t work on it forever, Russ.”
“No.”
“Does he?—”
“I think he might be working on the same words.”
“Then both of you should stop working and just say the damn thing.”
“It is not that simple for me.”
“I know it isn’t.” He scrubbed his face with one hand. “I know it isn’t. I’m sorry. I’m tired, and I just had a kid. Tell him when you can.”
“Yeah.”
“He saved your life.”
“Yeah.”
“Russ.”
“Yeah.”
