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I’m out of my chair before either of them can elaborate, moving fast enough that the legs scrape loudly against the floor and one of my feet catches on the chair on the way up. I nearly take myself out before grabbing the edge of the table and recovering what little dignity I still have left.

“I need a drink,” I announce to nobody in particular as I turn toward the kitchen.

From the head of the table, my father lights up like this is the best entertainment he’s had in weeks. “Tequila?”

I don’t dignify that with an answer. I just keep. Behind me, Santi laughs quietly while Lucía says something I can’t quite catch, followed almost immediately by both mothers laughing again.

Traitors. Every single one of them.

By the time I reach the kitchen, I plant both hands on the counter and drop my head with a long groan, trying to process the fact that apparently I’m never living any of this down. Not the flower, not choking on my water, and definitely not the revelation that our parents spent our teenage years watching Santi and me circle each other while we remained spectacularly oblivious.

The weirdest part is how easily everybody has slipped back into this.

I haven’t seen Santi in ten years. I haven’t seen Lucía or Alejandro in ten years either, and somehow they walked into my house tonight and within twenty minutes our fathers were arguing about hockey, our mothers were conspiring against us, and Alejandro was making jokes at my expense like I’d seen him last weekend instead of a decade ago. Nobody is treating those ten years like a hole that needs explaining, even though there’s an entire chunk of our lives where Santi and I didn’t know each other anymore.

Apparently I’m the only one who finds that remotely strange.

A moment later, footsteps cross the kitchen behind me, soft and familiar enough that I don’t bother turning around.

“You’re very graceful under pressure,” Santi says.

“I will put your flower in the garbage disposal.”

His laugh comes quieter this time, and then his hand settles between my shoulder blades, warm and steady enough that some of the frantic embarrassment starts draining out of me despite my best efforts to remain appropriately offended.

“Matteo,” he says, gentler now. “They’re not laughing at you.”

“Feels suspiciously similar.”

His hand moves slowly along my back, and when I finally glance over my shoulder, most of the teasing has left his face.

“You know what this actually means, yes?”

“That I need to fake my death and move somewhere our parents can’t find me?”

His mouth curves, but his eyes stay serious. “It means you don’t have to earn a place here. You already had one.”

I stare at him.

Obviously I have a place here. This is literally my house. I own the fucking building we’re standing in. If anybody at this dinner needs permission to be here, technically it’s all of them.

The sarcastic answer is already halfway to my mouth when I realize Santi isn’t talking about my house.

Of course he isn’t.

He means Lucía and Alejandro walking through my door after ten years and treating me exactly the same as they did when I was the kid who spent half his life at theirs. He means my parents falling straight back into old rhythms with his, both families around the same table again, nobody acknowledging the decade missing from the middle of the story.

And he means him.

I let out a long breath and finally straighten, although I don’t move away from the hand still resting against my back.

“…You’re really sure they knew?”

Santi’s thumb moves once between my shoulder blades. “I’m sure.”

I stare at him for another second, more affected by all of this than I’d like to admit. “I hate you.”

His mouth curves.