Page 87 of Near Miss

It’s not full. It’s empty. And those are things I’ll probably never have.

“Jesus, Beck.” Nathaniel shakes his head, golden hair falling across his forehead. “She’s done a fucking number on you. I mean, I think I get it now.”

I ignore all those fake things, taunting me from my periphery, and narrow my eyes. “I thought you were terrified of her.”

“Nah.” Nathaniel’s eyes flick down to his arm for some reason. “She’s not so bad.”

A soft smile curls on Sarah’s lips, and she tips her head, chocolate hair just like mine falling all around her. “You can tell us all aboutthe gamethat has you so distracted. Come on, we want to take you to breakfast.”

I debate making an excuse, saying I hurt myself during the tackle, and I need to take an ice bath or foam roll out my legs. But they both look at me—wide, expectant smiles and those eyes we share catching in the early-morning sunlight as it streams in through the windows—and I don’t mean to be, but I’m back in time with them: scratching out a calculus equation with Nathaniel and braiding a wig for Sarah because her fingers were too tired.

I don’t want to be there—I want to be here. But I’m not sure a here exists for us, and I don’t want to hurt their feelings, so I grin and jerk my chin towards the door.

“Your girlfriend is really good with a needle.” Nathaniel pulls back his sleeve, holding up his arm where a tiny piece of gauzeand medical tape sit at the crook of his elbow. He squints, inspecting it, before looking back up at me, grinning. “Not even a tiny bruise. I mean, can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve seen her do a running whipstitch.”

I look down at my menu, and I repeat the same mantra that runs through my head on a steady loop now. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

She’s not mine. She’s not my girlfriend. She won’t compromise for you, and she shouldn’t have to.

You’re in love with someone you can’t have, but that’s okay, you’ve survived before, and you’ll survive this.

Maybe.

“Wait, what?” I glance back up, and Nathaniel nods, tapping his arm again.

“Oh! Let me see. My IVs used to bruise me all the time.” Sarah lights up when she grabs his arm, inspecting it, like she’s talking about rainbows and unicorns, not her cancer-ridden adolescence, and we aren’t sitting in an upscale brunch restaurant on the bottom floor of a hotel in the financial district. She turns back to me, nodding in approval. “It looks great.”

“I’m sure it does.” I drop the menu and point towards my brother’s arm. “I’m sorry, what are you talking about? Why was she giving you an IV? Are you alright?”

These warring ideas—that something might be wrong with Nathaniel, but also, maybe, that there’s going to be this other person I need to be for them—make me want to sink into the ground and disappear.

“Beck.” He reaches forward, grabbing my forearm, face pale before he lets go with a little shake of his head. “I’m fine. Sorry, it was a joke. I got a little carried away with the wine at dinner last night watching your game with Greer. She just gave me an IV to help with the hangover before I left.”

I roll my shoulders a few times, like that’s going to shake off decades of expectations and the fact that one of the first things I think when there might be something wrong with my brother is whether my family might need more from me. I exhale and try to smile. “She lets you call her Greer?”

Nathaniel kicks back, nodding and raising his palms in the air. “I know. I really gained a lot of ground last night. We hung out, and it was only scary, like, eighty-five percent of the time. Some might call it pretty great, actually.”

“She’s pretty great.”

A massive, colossal understatement.

Nathaniel clears his throat and cuts a sideways look at Sarah. She sits up straighter, giving him a tiny nod in return.

They remind me of two kids preparing to show a parent the routine they’ve spent all day painstakingly practicing.

And I guess they kind of are.

I’m not sure what I am to them—but I’m not the same thing they are to each other.

“She gave me a bit of a talking to.” Nathaniel runs a hand across his jaw and exhales. “I’ve been—we’ve been—we haven’t thanked you enough for everything that you’ve done for us.”

There’s a weird feeling in my chest. My heart pumps a bit faster than it should, all because of the idea that there’s this person in my life who thinks I’m worthy of defending. But I give a jerk of my chin. “You always say thank you.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Nathaniel shakes his head, glancing around like he’s realizing, maybe, upscale brunch wasn’t the best place for this conversation. He looks back at me, raising one hand before he shrugs. “I don’t know how to be around you sometimes. And it’s not because you’ve done anything wrong. It used to make me so mad you’d trot out for all these press conferences and commercials, for any other noble cause you deemed worthy, but you’d never show up for my blood drives,and it never occurred to me there was something taken from you that wasn’t taken from me.”

Swallowing, I give them a noncommittal jerk of my shoulder. I try to grin, but it gets stuck.

Kind of like the three of us.

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