Page 26 of The Two Halves of My Heart

“The boys are in their rooms.”

“Thanks. Dinner smells great.” There was something about onions and tomatoes, the smell of baked cheese perhaps, that I couldn’t resist. I headed up the stairs and knocked on Mads door before pushing it open. “Hey.”

He was on his computer again, and my hope of speaking to him evaporated, but to my surprise, he turned it off and looked at me.

“Hey.” He was so much taller than me, towering over my five-foot-something.

“Sorry for earlier. Thank you for coming to watch.”

“I always come to watch,” I said in defence, wanting to point out it had been me on the sidelines over the years and not someone else.

“I know.” He stared at me, making me feel even smaller under his gaze. Mads took a step towards me, and my instinct was to move back—to keep some distance between us—but my feet didn’t comply, and my eyes remained locked with his.

My stomach danced, making me feel queasy, and I knew it wasn’t from hunger.

“Hey, Mads, Grace is coming over. Are you going out or not? Oh, Grace, hi.” Oliver barged into the room and looked between the two of us. “Mads? You said you wanted to go out?”

“Another time.”

The boys stared like they were trying to drill holes into one another. I thought back to the first time I saw them, waving toy swords around and fighting. Perhaps brothers were always meant to fight? Was I just getting in the way, or trying to stop the inevitable? Maybe our friendship was always going to have an expiry date with all the challenges and changes you go through as you grow up. I wanted to keep fighting for what we had because I thought it was special.

But I couldn’t deny the shifting of my feelings as we grew up, sliding into something that resembled friendship but was so much more intense. It was bigger than I could contain and hard to ignore, but I kept trying. Our friendships depended on it.

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