Page 118 of The Charlie Method

I finally have someone who looks like me.

My throat closes, clogged with emotion. I don’t want to cry in front of him. He might be my brother, but he’s also a stranger. I don’t cry in front of strangers.

The silence drags on. It’s heavy, weighted down by all the things we don’t quite know how to say yet.

Finally, Harrison makes the first move.

“I’m sorry I freaked you out last week. I hopped a flight to Boston not long after you messaged me on the site,” he admits. “I wanted to scope you out before I approached you, and then once I decided you seemed like a normal person, I was trying to figure outhowto approach you, but every time I saw you, I chickened out.” He looks sheepish. “I swear I’m not some creep. I really wanted to meet you, but I…ah…I don’t trust a lot of people. I didn’t know if you were running some sort of scam, and I just had to be sure.”

“So you’ve been lurking?” I ask, still processing.

He scratches the back of his neck, grimacing. “Yeah. Not my best plan. I’m sorry.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I was at a motel in Boston, but now I’m at the one here in Hastings.” He runs a hand through his hair. It looks soft. I wonder if it’s as silky as mine. “This is a great little town. I take it you didn’t grow up here, though? You’re only here for college?”

I nod. “I grew up in Hamden. Connecticut,” I clarify at his blank look. “And you were raised in Nevada?”

“Not quite. That’s just where I’ve been living the past few years. I moved all over the place when I was growing up.”

“Did your parents have to move for work? Military?”

“Work. My adoptive father was between jobs a lot. We moved wherever he could find work.”

Hisadoptivefather. The qualifier stands out to me because I’ve never once used it to describe either of my parents. And the flat intonation behind the words is hard to miss.

“What about your mom?” I ask.

“My adoptive mom died two years after they brought me back from Seoul. Car accident.”

His voice lacks emotion, and I wonder if that’s because he doesn’t give a shit or because he’d known her such a short time before she died that he never had time to properly bond.

“She was the one who wanted kids,” Harrison continues, his expression shuttered. “She pushed Brian—my adoptive father—into going through the adoption process after they struggled for years with infertility. To be honest, I don’t think he wanted kids at all, biological or otherwise. He did it for her.”

And then she died and left him with a kidis the unspoken implication.

“How about you?” he counters before I can respond. “How was it? Growing up, I mean.”

I note the tension in his jaw, the way his gaze fixes on his fingers. “I had a great childhood, actually. My parents—they’re wonderful. I never wanted for anything.”

He nods, but something in his expression makes my stomach twist. “That’s good. I’m glad you had that.”

I sense the undercurrent of bitterness in his voice. “Do you remember anything about Seoul? The orphanage? Obviously, I was way too young, but you would’ve been four?”

“I remember a lot of it.” He takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “After you were adopted, I stayed in the orphanage for another year. Older kids don’t get picked as much. Most people want babies, especially with international adoptions. And our orphanage only worked with American adoption agencies.”

I swallow, guilt gnawing at me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I don’t even remember—”

“It’s not your fault,” he cuts in. “You were just a baby. You didn’t get to choose.”

“But you got left behind.” The weight of those words settles heavily on my heart. “I don’t get it. Why did they separate us? Isn’t it customary to adopt siblings out together?”

Harrison’s eyes become distant, as if he’s seeing something far away. “I don’t know. I was angry at first when I found out you were gone. The babies lived on the bottom floor of the building, so I barely saw you after we got there. I used to beg them to let me stay with you in your crib, but they forced me to sleep upstairs in a dormitory with the older kids. And then one day I asked to come down to see you and they told me you’d been adopted. I didn’t understand why your new family took you and not me.”

My eyebrows soar. “You think my parents chose not to take you?”

“You just said so yourself—siblings are typically adopted together. They had to have known about me.”

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